Socio-demographic and psychological determinants of political (in)tolerance: Hungary at the dawn of the 21st century

Abstract

The paper presents a socio-psychological causal model of political intolerance in Hungary, on the basis of a national random sample survey data (N=1002). The research improves on the existing models in two directions: by constructing a more complete model through inclusion of a wider set of potentially relevant variables, and by using more reliable operationalisation of the examined concepts. The results indicate that political tolerance in Hungary, as defined by the " content free " method, can only weakly be explained by an extensive set of socio-demographic, psychological and political variables. Contrary to the commonly reported results, socioeconomic status variables displayed a rather complex and often direct pattern of influence on political tolerance, while psychological variables proved to be relatively weak predictors. In Hungary, psychological factors have a relatively strong role in determining the choice of target groups and socio-demographic variables have a stronger role in determining the degree of intolerance. In general, the findings suggest that intolerance of different groups is not uniformly related to social and psychological explanatory variables.