The aim of the paper is to map differences among European citizens regarding their political interest. In addition to the standard question of political interest, the dataset of the 7th wave of the European Social Survey includes new questions about individual political competences and about the perception of the political system. Based on this data, citizens’ assessment of their countries political system and of their ability to participate in politics can contribute to a better understanding of differences among European countries concerning those factors that affect political interest. The paper first describes differences between the attitudes of citizens and their perception about their political systems from a European perspective. Then it examines how political interest is influenced by external and internal political efficiency. Our study has confirmed that internal and external political efficacy is correlated in almost all countries. We found that residents of a country who believe that they have their personal skills to influence politics are basically those who say that the political system accepts their demands and vice-versa. Overall, our research has confirmed that political interest stems from internal political efficiency, from cultural and learnable factors. External factors as political systems (openness and closeness) have a lesser influence on it, but it is undeniable that individual competences of citizens are consistently higher in systems that are more open. The traditional cultural differences of Europe's democracies, indicated by Inglehart, Huntington and Haller are still relevant in this regard.
The author considers in detail the attitude of political subjects and regional communities to decentralization of state power. Texts of the programs of political parties and a discourse of political applications of representatives of different political forces have been analyzed. Special attention is concentrated on the analysis of results of the population inquiries concerning the expansion of rights of the regions and local communities. The results permit speaking about specificity of decentralization estimation (as political interest) by political subjects and regional communities. If for the former rather separate components of power decentralization are of practical interest than federation of the country as a whole. Then for population of a number of regions the autonomism is rather the self-defense. The autonomistic interests, more expressed in certain regions, are determined by the external (attitude to the union of Ukraine with Russia and Belarus, prospects of joining NATO) and language factors. But results of the inquiry of people from AP of the Crimea permit supposing that the autonomy in the Crimea is not the efficient mechanism for realization of interests of the Crimean regional community.
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