What’s the level of engagement in the three countries of the South Caucasus? Are people involved? Are they staying abreast of what goes on? Again, our Data Initiative provides insight, since we asked people whether they had engaged in various activities over the last six months.
We seem to be seeing different patterns in the three countries. Print media, for example, is read a lot less in Azerbaijan than in the neighboring countries.
(in the last six months)
But of course, that could just be due to particular quirks: more television, or a bigger country in which relevant media does not make it out to the countryside. Just a blip? No, apparently not.
(also asked for the last six months)
Azerbaijanis indeed are less engaged in events. Few say that they discuss what is going on politically. One reason may be that they live in much more homogenous political space.
Generally, levels of civic engagement are low. This recalls, of course, Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work, which says that civic association forms the basis of both political (in the sense of good governance: public health, education, policing, and so on) and of economic success. Conversely, a people caught in amoral familism will find it hard to collaborate to improve their communities; and since the majority of real public goods can only be attained by collective action, this could be a serious constraint on improving livelihoods.
(yep, last six months)
On that level, we are extremely glad that we have captured this data. It will allow us to track changes over time.
But is the news all bad? Actually, no. Azerbaijan sees quite some volunteering. As rumor has it, the communal subotnik which brings communities together to clean up and improve the neighbourhood still is alive in some places (although volunteering may be encouraged top-down). See the data:
(still: in the last six months)
And in a similar vein, there are contributions to charity in Azerbaijan. In part, this may be because tithing (giving one tenth) to charity is mandated under Islam, and (as you may recall from our previous post) about 15% in Azerbaijan actually say that they pray every day. That almost adds up.
(remember for how many months…?)
What we are describing, ultimately, is a fascinating research agenda: filtering out who the socially active people in a community are, and what makes them different, and how they were mobilized, and how this could be replicated.
Our data set, for anyone who wants to take that stab, is online, and more data on similar questions will follow soon.
