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    STUDIA POLITICA - Issue no. 1 / 2009  
         
  Article:   ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF TOLERANCE, OR TOLERANCE V. SOCIAL LIBERALISM? A CROSS-NATIONAL EMPIRICAL TEST.

Authors:  FLORIN N. FESNIC, RALUCA VIMAN MILLER. 		 
       
         
  Abstract:   Scholars agree that political tolerance is a key ingredient of democracy, but the question of what exactly do they mean by ‘political tolerance’ is more controversial. Some define it as a subject’s permissiveness toward her least liked group, while others define it as open-mindedness vis-à-vis issues such as homosexuality, prostitution, divorce or abortion. Our goal in this brief research note is to test whether using one or the other definition makes a difference. Using factor analysis of cross-national survey data, we find that the respondents’ attitudes toward the two types of issues load on different dimensions. These results indicate that only one of the two dimensions truly captures political tolerance (or libertarianism), while the substantive content of the other dimension relates to social liberalism, rather than political tolerance. This finding is confirmed at the level of individual countries, including Romania.

Keywords: tolerance, authoritarianism, conservatism, cross-national measures, factor analysis 		 
         
     
         
         
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