The International Centre for Democratic Transition is hereby announcing the publication of two research studies as part of the Centre's International Visegrad Fund supported project titled "Democratic Consciousness in Central-European Identity and Differences between the V4 countries and Ukraine".  The studies were conducted by the GfK Hungary research institute, the Hungarian branch of the internationally famed GfK Group. 

The first study " Development of Democracy in V4 Countries" analyzes and compares the attitude of citizens of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to democratic values, principles and political institutions over the past twenty years. The second study titled " Democratic Attitudes in Ukraine" includes a country-wide study on the Ukrainian people’s perceptions of democracy  and compares them to those in the V4 countries. The two studies analyze the changes in the opinions concerning the political system, the acceptance of democratic values, and the confidence of the society at large in the public institutions, observed in the V4 countries between 1990 and 2013, and in Ukraine in 2014.

In order to obtain concrete information about the democratic consciousness in Ukraine and the V4 countries, the studies combined the strengths of cross sectional with those of longitudinal investigation. In the case of V4 countries, time series data was used since 1991 until 2011. For elaborating an optimal research program the analysis included secondary data (for the V4 countries) and collection of new data on the population’s opinion (in the case of Ukraine). The opinion poll carried out in Ukraine in June 2014 used a comprehensive representative survey with 1.000 respondent aged 18+.The results of the opinion poll enabled GfK's researchers to identify the most important similarities and differences between the attitude of Ukraine’s population and that of the Visegrad region. As a conclusion of the research, it has to be underlined that the support for democracy among Ukrainians does not fall behind the support registered in countries of the Visegrad Group. Moreover, in spite of a trust in public institutions’ downfall, the support for democracy has not been affected but rather strengthened.

For more information about the results of the two studies, please see the links below: