Diversity of Political Attitudes among Balkan Youth: Insights from Quantitative Data

This paper examines how young Romanians and Balkan residents define their political opinions about social and economic issues, as well as religious belief, gender equality and perceived corruption and financial stability. Southern Eastern Europe stands out as one of the least democratic regions in the world after the fall of communism and is also affected by economic uncertainty and broad disillusionment in political institutions. In this sense, young people from the Balkan countries form an especially important subject for study because the youth generation isn’t always defined by the typical Left - Right ideological spectrum. Low institutional trust and political disinterest on the part of the youth have been widely discussed among experts, as well as the appeal of nationalist, conservative or anti - establishment attitudes. These observations suggest that political ideology alone, based on a general left - right positioning, can’t fully capture young people’s political opinions. The central research question of this paper therefore addresses how young people in the Balkan countries and Romania could be classified into several groups based on their moral, religious and political views. The research uses data collected via the Youth Studies Southeast Europe 2023/2024 survey carried out by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (2023/2024). Latent class analysis is applied to the data to reveal hidden groups of young people by relying on the survey questions about political identification, interest in politics, current financial situation, participation in religious activities and attitudes toward corruption and tolerance of corruption. As a result of the analysis, three main groups have been identified: (1) Engaged and mainly left - wing young people with a moderate financial situation and anti - corruption views, (2) Disengaged and ideologically indeterminate with low financial stability and (3) Conservative - minded youth facing financial hardship and a high tolerance toward corruption. By taking into account the political, moral and social attitudes, as well as economic stability among the youth generation in post - communist countries, latent class analysis is presented as a valuable method to discover new typologies beyond commonly used categories and to shed more light on their political identities.