In search of the egalitarian syndrome: cultural inertia in Croatia? IVAN BURIĆ, Ph.D.* ALEKSANDAR ŠTULHOFER, Ph.D.* Article** JEL: Z13 doi: 10.3326/fintp.40.4.1 * The authors would like to thank the Ipsos Agency for the data that have made this work possible. They also wish to thank Velimir Šonje, Željko Ivanković, Danijela Dolenec, Vojmir Franičević and other colleagues who took part in two roundtables held in Zagreb, in April 2016, at the Economic Institute and Matica hrvatska. We are par- ticularly grateful to Slavica Singer and Nataša Šarlija, who put at our disposal county-level TEA data. Last but not least, we are indebted to two anonymous reviewers of the journal, whose remarks and critical suggestions helped us to remove at least some of this paper’s shortcomings. ** Received: June 1, 2016 Accepted: October 5, 2016 The article was judged the best paper in the regular category in the annual competition for the Prof. Dr. Marijan Hanžeković Prize for 2016. Ivan BURIĆ Department of Communication Studies, Centre for Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb, Borongajska cesta 83d, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia e-mail:
[email protected] Aleksandar ŠTULHOFER Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Ivana Lučića 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia e-mail:
[email protected] Abstract 362 In 1970, Josip Županov presented his Egalitarian Syndrome Theory (EST) to ac- count for the country’s suboptimal socioeconomic development. The theory was operationalized only recently (Štulhofer and Burić, 2015), which enabled an as- sessment of the persistence of egalitarian syndrome, as well as the testing of its 40 (4) 361-382 (2016) practice financial hypothesized (negative) association with indicators of social development.