Trapped in the feudal past? Explaining a difference in individual preferences for the governments’ policies to address income inequality between CEE and the West

One may pose the following question: is the demand for income redistribution similar across European regions? If not, what are the reasons for such difference? To answer these questions this study takes a closer look at the case of CEE using neo-feudalism and communism as interpretative frames for the difference identified in the data. The region’s feudal past is often argued to shape (i) personalistic ties, while the communist legacies to influence (ii) public expectations for welfare policy. The study identifies a statistically significant difference between the West and the CEE with regards to the policies of governments on the income inequality. The mature democracies of the European Union are referred to as the West, while the CEE is the group of these post-communist EU member-states. The study uses individual-level survey data from the European Social Survey and attempts to identify the difference in means for both regions using a cumulative data file from the 2002-2018 of the ESS survey. That will allow us to see whether post-Communist states have any greater degree of variability compared to their Western counterparts with regards to their socio-economic policy expectations and discuss potential theory on its source.