Concepts

Knowledge and attitudes to the civil society organizations

In the issue 64 the Civic World started presenting parts of the publication “Trust, responsibility for social issues and charity in Macedonia”, published by the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation. The publication is, in fact, a report made on the basis of two questionnaires and the results of four focus-groups. The questionnaires and focus-groups have been carried out by the Institute for Sociological and Political-Legal Researches. The publication in PDF format is available on www.mcms.org.mk.

The survey on trust, responsibility for social issues and charity in Macedonia has also addressed the knowledge and attitudes to concrete civil society organizations and persons from the civil sector. Besides general knowledge of the civil society organizations, the knowledge of the civil society organizations that work in three areas has also been surveyed: fight against poverty, civil society development and fight against corruption.  

Knowledge of civil society organizations that work in concrete fields Knowledge of civil society organizations that work in concrete fields has been surveyed for organizations that work on fight against poverty, civil society development and fight against corruption and the respondents have been asked to name concrete organizations without reminding themselves or being given examples.

Knowledge of organizations that work in these three fields is different and the knowledge of organizations that work on fight against poverty is relatively better than organizations that work on strengthening the civil society and the knowledge of organizations that work on fight against corruption is even weaker.

Chart 1. Recognized organizations in fight against poverty

The first two places on the list of civil society organizations that work in the field of poverty belong to organizations of socio-humanitarian character and deal mainly with emergency aid. In spite of the fact that the target groups of these organizations are the poorest, the general trend that those with higher income per family member know better, is characteristic here, too. Majority of citizens (62.2%) cannot name a single civil society organization working in the field of poverty. 

Chart 2. Recognized organizations that work on strengthening the civil society

Organizations whose goal is really the civil society development are recognized as organizations that work on strengthening the civil society, then organizations that work on human rights protection, elections, democratization etc. Majority of citizens (70.9%) cannot name a single organization working in the field of civil society strengthening.

Chart 3. Recognized organizations that work on fight against corruption

Even less is known about the organizations working on fight against corruption and even those who considered themselves to know, have given non-relevant answers, that is, organizations that do not have any direct activities in that field. This corresponds to the low level of activities that the civil society organizations for fight against corruption take. Although it is not a civil society organization, the Anticorruption Commission is experienced as the most active in the fight against corruption and it is most frequently mentioned. Majority of citizens (75.7%) do not know any organization working on fight against corruption.

Knowledge of civil society organizations has been surveyed by reminding, too. General level of informing has been surveyed (have heard) and the knowledge (know) about a list of 23 organizations. Citizens show different level of general informing and knowledge of different organizations.

Positive/negative attitudes to civil society organizations
Those who know have been asked to say whether they have a positive or a negative attitude to each of the 23 organizations stated on the list.

Positive attitudes to civil society organizations are multiply more frequent than negative ones. The occurrence of negative attitudes to concrete organizations is within insignificant minority of respondents (to 10%) and for only three of the 23 organizations the negative attitudes are over 10% (from 11,7 to 16,6%) and it is minority of citizens.

It is obvious that in the public prevails the positive opinion about all surveyed civil society organizations. The relation between positive and negative attitudes is positive for all organizations involved in the survey, that is, for each respondent with a negative attitude there is minimum 1,7 respondents with a positive attitude (for the lowest ranked organizations) to maximum 13,5 respondents with a positive attitude (for the highest ranked organization).

Chart 4. Relation between positive and negative attitudes[1]

Conclusion

The citizens of Macedonia show good general knowledge of civil society organizations. Majority (67.2%) of citizens can name concrete civil society organizations.

There are unfavorable data moving from general knowledge to surveying specific knowledge of what the civil society organizations work. So majority of citizens (62.2%) cannot name a single civil society organization working in the filed of poverty and majority cannot name a single organization working in the field of civil society strengthening and fight against corruption (70.9%, that is 75.7%). This implies that the civil society organizations are not profiled enough in the public, as majority of citizens (over 2/3) cannot link a concrete organization with activities in concrete fields.