Evaluation of government work and parliamentary opposition in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.

In January 2004 the work of the government was evaluated positively by 27 % of the respondents and negatively by 66 %. Only one year ago this proportion of positive and negative answers was almost the opposite: in January 2003 the government was evaluated positively by 48 % and negatively by 39 % of interviewees. The substantial drop in government work evaluation occurred in between January and June 2003. In between these months the number of positive responses lost about 20 % points and on this level it remained also this January. Within the period between January 2002 and January 2004 all four Central European countries experienced a substantial drop in positive evaluation of the work of their governments accompanied by growing negative evaluation (it was especially important in Poland, where the positive government evaluation lost just 3 points, but the negative evaluation grew of 16 % points). Activities of Czech opposition in the Chamber of Deputies are currently evaluated only slightly more positively than the work of the government. The evaluation of the opposition in all four countries is quite alike, the level of positive evaluation in most cases ranges between 20 – 30 %.