A national Deliberative Poll® on policies towards the Roma in Bulgaria

The Roma minority in Bulgaria is experiencing the type of problems which are typical for this minority in many other countries. Generally, the Roma are less educated, less healthy, and less employed than other ethnic groups in the country. They are also poorer, with higher levels of criminal activity. Significant groups tend to live in ghettoes without proper housing and living conditions. They are heavily discriminated against, and their human rights are regularly subject to violation. The Roma are the second largest minority group in Bulgaria after the Turks, but in contrast to the Turkish minority they remain outside of the political process and enjoy very poor political representation.

At the same time, many Bulgarians tend to perceive the Roma as a privileged group in a generally poor country. The reasons for this belief are many. One is the fact that many laws (housing regulations, sanctions for non-payment of utility bills, prosecution of petty crimes) seem to not be enforced with respect to the Roma, while with respect to everyone else they apply much more strictly. Another is the large number of international initiatives to “help” the Roma, including large sums of money spent directly for increasing Roma welfare. A third is the much higher sensitivity of the international community, especially the European Union, with the infringement of the rights of the Roma, including their human rights, than with equally serious cases of infringement of the rights of other Bulgarian citizens.

The relationship between the Roma minority and the rest of Bulgarian society are complex and problematic. Both the Roma and the other groups in Bulgarian society view each other with suspicion and tension, and both groups have reasonable grounds for their attitudes.

In an attempt to address this problematic and complex relationship with the goal of working towards practical solutions to existing and manageable problems, the Centre for Liberal Strategies in cooperation with Alpha Research sociological agency, the Bulgarian National Television, and the Open Society Institute in Sofia organized the second national Deliberative Poll® in the country, which focused on three specific areas of policy towards the Roma.

A Deliberative Poll® is a specific methodology for generating and discussing policy ideas, and then developing understanding and support for their eventual implementation as policies. The methodology starts from a nationally representative sociological sample of citizens, who fill a questionnaire devoted to specific policy areas. Then a sub-sample of the respondents, which is representative of the national sample, is selected, gathered in one place, and asked to participate in a two-day in-depth deliberation of all aspects of the proposed policies. This deliberation includes lengthy discussions in small groups for all policy areas, and plenary sessions for each policy area, at which the participants have the opportunity to hear statements and ask questions about the policy areas to a panel of experts on the specific policy area, as well as to a panel of political leaders. Then the participants in the Deliberative Poll® are asked to fill the same initial questionnaire again, and the results are compared with the way they originally responded to the questionnaire before the deliberation. The methodological basis of the Deliberative Poll® is the belief that, first, citizens do learn when presented with additional information and, second, that learning is reflected in ability to change their opinions about different policies.

The results of the second Bulgarian Deliberative Poll® justify completely this belief. While most of the respondents did not really change their basic attitudes towards different ethnic groups in Bulgarian society, their opinions about concrete policies, about what can and should be done, exhibited some dramatic shifts. And, possibly at least as important, all participants were extremely enthusiastic and gratified about having been a part of the process of deliberation of a significant and visible societal problem.

The three policies discussed in the Deliberative Poll® were: what should be done with the Roma ghettoes, what should be done with criminal justice towards the Roma, and what should be done with the way Roma children are educated. For all three areas the participants received rich briefing materials, deliberated at length in small groups, and had the ability to discuss with experts and politicians. In all areas there were significant changes in opinion.

For example, with respect to housing policy, those who thought that “the Roma should live in separate Roma neighborhoods” declined from 43% to 21% while those who thought the government “should legalize those buildings that meet current regulations and then destroy the rest” rose from 66% to 77%. Those agreeing that “The government should help people living in illegal housing to get and repay loans to build new houses” went from 47% to 55%. After deliberation, participants also placed increased value on self-reliance in approaching this issue. Those agreeing that “The Roma will take better care of houses that they built with their own resources” rose from 76% to 91%. At the same time, the consensus that the Roma should pay their electricity bills like everyone else strengthened from 76% up to 82% and simultaneously the support for the proposition that the Roma ghettoes should be isolated by building ghetto walls almost disappeared from a significant 12% to a negligible 6%.

In the policy area of criminal justice, the percentage agreeing that “the government should hire more Roma police officers” rose from 32% to 56%, while those agreeing that “the government should hire more Roma in the court” rose from 26% to 45%. Those who “agreed strongly” that “more frequent police checks just of the Roma would be unfair” rose from 16% to 27%.

With respect to the education policy area, deliberation led to higher support for integrating Roma children into Bulgarian schools and for closing the separate Roma schools. Those agreeing that “The Roma schools should be closed and all the children should be transported by buses to their new school” rose from 42% to 66%. Support for maintaining separate Roma schools also fell by half from 46% to 24%. The sample also became more convinced that the lack of knowledge of Bulgarian language and culture was an impediment to education of the Roma. Those agreeing that this was a reason “Roma children are reluctant to attend school” rose from 38% to 59%.

In general the 255 participants in the second Bulgarian Deliberative Poll® on policies towards the Roma showed a great desire to be involved, ability to discuss difficult issues, and capacity to generate reasonable solutions. This demonstrates practically that active citizen involvement is both capable to generate policy solutions, and to provide them with necessary support.

For further information about the Deliberative Poll and its results, contact Yana Papazova, Program Coordinator at the Centre for Liberal Strategies, yana@cls-sofia.org, tel. (+359-2) 986-1433. In the US contact Professor James Fishkin at jfishkin@stanford.edu or see the web site http://cdd.stanford.edu.

Georgy Ganev, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, Bulgaria