YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

General trends in young people’s values and attitudes  39 The values of young Slovenians are mutually complementary, not con- tradictory. On a more societal level we see that young people are primar- ily interested in stability and a clean environment, while family life, friendship, success in professional and scholarly pursuits, and a high de- gree of personal freedom dominate on a personal level. These values tak- en together constitute the so-called “traditionalist” and “private” value cluster. Interestingly, the value of order and stability, which is prominent in the Slovenian case, can take one of two different forms. It can either lean in a more conservative and authoritarian direction, or it can point towards a freer and more liberal orientation. The additional analyses we performed show that young Slovenians favour a liberal, not authoritari- an, order. There is a strong correlation between the value of order and stability, and the (liberal) value of free expression (r = 0.54; p < 0.01). Moreover, there is no statistically significant connection in our case be- tween valuing order and being politically authoritarian. This leads us to conclude that young people in Slovenia are not in favour of the kind of order and stability that is promised by certain representatives of the right-wing political establishment. A remarkable structural stability is also evinced by the young people’s interests. Comparing the scores that were assigned to different interests across the three main youth studies since 2000 – especially the one from 2000 and the present study – we find that the hierarchy of interests re- mains the same. Travel and appearance are the most important to young people. Interest in science, although significantly increasing since 2010, is lower on the hierarchy. Shopping, art and culture, and national history are even lower. Here, as before, one is struck by the general trend towards the increasing dominance of personal interests tied to people’s everyday lives over the more public or societal interests in science, art, and the nation’s history.