Report Analysis of Political Compass Results Monitoring of the 2019 Activities of the Ruling Power Political Dialogue

Report Analysis of Political Compass Results Monitoring of the 2019 Activities of the Ruling Power Political Dialogue

REPORT ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL COMPASS RESULTS MONITORING OF THE 2019 ACTIVITIES OF THE RULING POWER POLITICAL DIALOGUE ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL COMPASS RESULTS MONITORING OF THE 2019 ACTIVITIES OF THE RULING POWER YEREVAN 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS Political Compass Report 3 About the Compass 3 The Demographic representation of the Political Compass users 3 Public perceptions and trends 5 War and peace 5 Social issues 6 Socioeconomic affairs 8 Ethnic and religious issues 9 Environmental issues 12 Other issues 13 MONITORING 16 About Monitoring 16 Government Program 16 Optimization of public administration system 18 Security sector reforms 20 Healthcare reforms 23 Educational reforms 27 2 POLITICAL COMPASS REPORT ABOUT THE COMPASS The Political Compass is a quiz prepared by Political Dialogue (PD) in collaboration with political scientist and researcher Edgar Vardanyan and with the financial support of the European Endowment for Democracy The quiz consists of 43 questions on different social, political, economic aspects of life Through a detailed algorithm developed by PD’s IT team, the app locates users on a two-axis political matrix, thus showing their approximate position on the political-ideological spectrum It must be reiterated that this report, as well as the questionnaire, are not scientific findings nor they intend to claim what the entire society believes in Although the questionnaire has been prepared based on political theories and basics of political science, this report is not scientific and merely aims to track different societal trends THE DEMOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF THE POLITICAL COMPASS USERS By the time this report was being prepared, 2244 users had filled in the questionnaire Most of the users belong to the age group of 18-35 years old, constituting the youth According to the RA legislation, citizens aged 18-35 are considered young people The considerably unproportionate representation of this age group was to be expected, since the quiz was an online tool, advertised only on social media platforms, which is predominantly used by that group 3 Besides, the 55% of the users were male, 41% female and 4% either preferred not to mention or did not identify as either Furthermore, the quiz was filled in by the following representation of users from different regions of Armenia (for comparison, the 2011 census is also represented below): The 27 percent of the users did not mention their region, thus leaving quite a big range of uncertainty to be able determine how proportionate the responses have been 4 PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS AND TRENDS: WAR AND PEACE Matters related to conflict, war and peace are extremely sensitive to the Armenian society, to the extent of having become taboos Furthermore, for decades the Armenian authorities have not only militarized the society, but also exploited the sensitivity of the topic to increase their almost non-existent legitimacy This topic has always been used to divert the attention of the society from serious problems or issues in the country At the same time, for decades the rhetoric of Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities have been on different levels While Azerbaijani authorities and especially Aliyev himself have very frequently used the rhetoric of threatening with a military attack to solve the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, including statements like “Yerevan is our land”, etc , these type of statements have come from Armenian authorities to a considerably lesser extent It can be assumed that this rhetoric has had a considerable impact on the perceptions of the society, and the Compass questionnaire results come to prove this claim Compass users, who are predominantly young people from Armenia, understand the importance of preparing the society for peace, believe that starting an aggressive attack (war) is not an acceptable means of solving problems 5 SOCIAL ISSUES Some of the social matters which were asked on the Compass aimed to find out to what extent the users are leaning towards liberal or conservative stances With some percentage differences depending on the matters, the results show that – as expected – the users have conservative views when it comes to social norms More concerning, however, is that in most cases the taboo nature of most of the questions below have ensured a lack of awareness and increased ignorance that cannot be described as simply ‘conservatism’ For instance, the reproductive rights of women or the freedom of movement and assembly of LGBT+ persons are still extremely tabooed topics in Armenia, thus, the majority have views that not only show a conservative approach but also a lack of respect for human rights 6 7 SOCIOECONOMIC AFFAIRS Armenia is a country with approximately one third of its population living in poverty Interestingly, however, this has not created a hatred among the society towards the notion of the wealthy Of course, individual oligarchs, mostly connected to the previous regime and corruption schemes are disliked among the public, but otherwise the rich are not disliked However, when it comes to taxation, the users mostly agreed that it is fair if the rich pay higher taxes (with bigger percentage) and the poor – less (progressive taxation) 8 ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS ISSUES Armenia, a predominantly monoethnic country with little to no interaction with two of its four neighbours, small size and widespread diaspora, is a country that is usually expected to be prone to nationalism and religiousness To the statement “the flow of migrants from non- Christian countries should be strictly limited”, 26% have agreed and 41% of the users have disagreed Taking the abovementioned into consideration, 26% - an extremely high and alarming percentage – is not surprising Importantly, this is also a consequence of years 9 of militarization and nationalistic propaganda by the state institutions in the past Usually in conversations about these topics the citizens feel a sense of panic or fear of being dominated by other nations in case they migrate and exceed Armenians in number Some experts see this as a national security risk, also taking into consideration that the country is technically at war Another view is that such a fear or concern is amplified by the historical memory of Armenians as a nation It is even more thought-provoking to see that the users have been almost identically and equally divided into groups agreeing or disagreeing to the statement “Our nation is above some others” The Compass users have predominantly agreed (67%) that the government should not give any religious group or church a privileged status in the society However, it could be assumed that many users did not consider the Armenian Apostolic Church as a “religious organization”, since many other questions have shown lesser tolerance for religious diversity Still, more than half of the users have disagreed or strongly disagreed to the statement “The Church and the State should be inseparable” 10 11 ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES The three biggest environmental movements of the last ten years-Trchkan, Teghut and Amulsar-show that our society is not completely indifferent towards the environmental issues In this regard, the Compass results are quite interesting, particularly; the users have harsh appraisals of the enterprises that pollute the environment However, when the question also mentions the economic benefits and new workplaces, the response of the users is more subtle 12 OTHER ISSUES One of the main topics of discussion in recent months have been judicial reforms in Armenia In light of those debates, the compass sheds light on how users perceive justice Interestingly, 47% of users have disagreed to the statement “The main purpose of judicial processes is to punish the offenders”, thus, presumably, believing that the main purpose is rather rehabilitation (versus retribution) One of the most agreed upon statements has been the following: Public infrastructures – roads, electricity, water, etc should be state- owned This is interesting considering that many users also believe that governments are less efficient than private enterprises However, the former statement’s results are probably based on security concerns, rather than assumption of efficiency 13 Armenia has often been both criticized and praised for its complementary foreign policy of membership in different international integration unions, thus it is interesting to see how the public perceives this issue 67% of users do NOT agree that integration unions decrease the sovereignty of a state 14 15 MONITORING ABOUT MONITORING Political Dialogue highlights the importance of holding the ruling political power accountable in maintaining its pre-electoral promises as well as the transparency of the implementation of those promises In 2019, we have examined and monitored the compliance of the ruling power to its pre-electoral and post-electoral promises in several areas We have tried to understand the extent to which the steps taken by the ruling power are in line with their promises and how well they fit into the Government’s program GOVERNMENT PROGRAM On February 12, 2019, the National Assembly of the seventh convocation started its work One of the seven items on the agenda for the first session was to approve the government’s program In his two-hour speech, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan presented the government’s program and concluded “We are launching an economic revolution in the Republic of Armenia ” “The economic policy will be based on an investment policy aimed at exporting, expanding employment and encouraging employment. As a

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