New Generations, Old Stories? Political Participation, Its Preconditions and the Cultural Heritage in Central and Eastern Europe

One of current political features of Central and Eastern Europe is that political participation is weaker and less developed than in so-called established democracies. In the literature, the post-communist heritage is treated as the predominant explanation for the lack of political participation in the region. Past research portrayed the effects stemming from the communist past in a rather monolithic and predominantly negative way. Therefore this paper breaks down the different facets of the post-communist heritage in order to enable an operationalization of both its economic and societal dimensions. In particular attention is drawn to the time after 1989, to the transformation, which triggered many upheavals, in particular regarding social inequality. Those transformation effects are well described in other parts of literature on the region but are still underplayed in political participation research on Central and Eastern Europe. This contribution stresses the degree of socialization under communism as an indicator for measuring the influence of the post-communist period on citizens’ political engagement in terms of diverse forms of political participation (voting, membership, protest, etc.). The proposed age-period-cohort analysis thus compares different age groups with different biographical and socio-economic backgrounds and their impact on political participation. By using three waves of the European Value Study (1990/1999/2008) the paper takes ten cases into account (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia). This methodological approach enables new insights in regard to the effects of political socialisation on political participation in the case of transforming countries.