Do populists in power affect civic culture? Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe?

This paper tests empirically whether populists in power redefine the state-society relations through tightening the control over civil society and lowering civic culture. I explore a wider conceptualization of civic culture that focuses on citizen mobilization as well as evaluations of formal national as well as supranational political institutions and relate it to the path dependency that originated at the critical junction of the global economic crisis. The results show that besides the strong control over civil society organizations, countries with long-term populist rule lack in strong civic culture as initial conditions. In addition, some evidence of institutional learning under extractive institutions further lowering civic culture exist, particularly in terms of political participation. The comparative example of the post-economic crisis Estonia and Hungary shows divergent paths within the region with the common dual (economic and political) transition. The economy and the ones’ positions in the income distribution as well as the success of the post-crisis recovery years prove to be the most important determinant of the difference in civic culture between the two countries. The former kept within the mainstream neoliberal economic system under the pressure of populism, and the latter reverted to the system of authoritarian capitalism (increased spheres of interests by the elites, verticality of power, reconfiguring the boundaries between public and private, violating the rule of law). I present evidence from the European Social Survey and the V-Dem database supporting the above conclusions.