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The Politics and Economics of Democratic Commitment: Support for Democracy in Transition Societies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Geoffrey Evans  and
Stephen Whitefield
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Extract

Explanations of cross-national variation in levels of popular support for democracy can be distinguished by the relative emphasis they place on the importance of economic and political factors. ‘First generation’ theorists emphasized economic variables, including levels of economic development and rising expectations. In contrast, ‘second generation’ writers have focused on the role of political factors, including the mode of the transition to democracy itself and the effectiveness of the institutions and electoral processes which emerge. This article uses national probability samples from Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine to examine potential influences on support for democratic processes in postcommunist Europe. These influences include evaluations of electoral and market performance, experience of economic well-being in the recent past and the near future, and indicators of the perceived responsiveness of the electoral system. Although both political and economic factors are found to be significant, multivariate analysis indicates that political experience is of greater weight than is economic. Moreover, when support for marketization is controlled for, there is very little link from economic experience to support for democracy.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 1995 , pp. 485 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

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21 Principal components analysis indicated there were two dimensions to these responses. However, as the key distinction appeared to concern the direction of the question wording (‘acquiescence response bias’), the items were assumed to reflect one substantive dimension. See Heath, Anthony, Evans, Geoffrey and Martin, Jean, ‘The Measurement of Core Beliefs and Values: The Development of Balanced Socialist/Laissez-Faire and Libertarian/Authoritarian Scales’, British Journal of Political Science, 24 (1994), 115–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Evans, Geoffrey and Heath, Anthony, ‘The Measurement of Left–Right and Libertarian–Authoritarian Values: Comparing Balanced and Unbalanced Scales’, Quality and Quantity, 29 (1995), 191–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for treatments and consequences of acquiescence in similar data.

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28 It should be kept in mind that general evaluations of democracy and the market are asked immediately after those enquiring about respondents' normative commitments, whereas the other indicators of political and economic experience are only obtained much later in the interview. It is likely, therefore, that the effects of the general evaluations will be overestimated when compared with the other indicators.

29 This is calculated by subtracting the residual variance explained by the country dummy variables from the original variance explained by them in Model I. The residual variance explained is that which is accounted for by the country dummy variables net of the contribution of the economic experience variables in Model 2. Therefore: ((0.09355 − 0.05463)/0.04917) × 100% = 20.8% of the country effect is accounted for by the indicators of economic experience.

30 Examination of the political experience indicators showed that ‘no point in voting’ and, although to a lesser degree, ‘party support’ have more pronounced effects than the other measures. The indicators were therefore entered into the model separately in order to display these patterns. All models were also run using composite scales: the substantive conclusions are the same regardless of which method is used.

31 A possible criticism of this comparison is that the greater number of indicators used to measure political experience compared with economic experience biases the results in favour of the former. However, even if only the two most direct and equivalent market and democracy experience indicators (‘democracy evaluation’ and ‘market evaluation’) are used, the results are still consistent with those presented here. The extra indicators of both political and economic experience are used in these anlyses because they provide the most comprehensive measures of the key explanatory concepts of political and economic experience available in our data.

32 This is not the same as arguing that economic factors have no effects. Rather, it appears that they have little in the way of direct effects. It is possible the effects of economic experience are channelled through their effect on politics. See, for example, Burkhart, Ross E. and Lewis-Beck, Michael S., ‘Comparative Democracy: The Economic Development Thesis’, American Political Science Review, 88 (1994), 903–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Given that there is a moderately strong relationship between economic and political experience (the canonical correlation between the two sets of indicators is 0.51), this may well be the case for the data we have presented. Nevertheless, the differences between countries do seem to be far more closely related to the way in which the political system differs than to differences in economic factors. The model developed by Burkhart and Lewis-Beck may prove accurate in the long run but does not account for current country differences in the region, which are anyway not included in their study. The absence of a link between aggregate economic performance and levels of commitment to democracy, however, is not surprising given the speed with which new democracies have been established. The variety of institutional arrangements which have emerged in postcommunist societies is highly unlikely to have been the result of economic development in the five to six years since the transition.

33 In the early stages of capitalism in Western Europe, democracy was supported by the new middle classes against the aristocracy (see Bentham, Jeremy, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, edited by Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A. (London: Athlone Press, 1970)).Google Scholar By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the middle classes had developed fears about the effect of democracy on their liberty and property (see Mill, J. S., On Liberty, edited by Acton, H. B. (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1972).Google Scholar See Rueschemeyer, D., Stephens, E. H. and Stephens, J. D., Capitalist Development and Democracy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992)Google Scholar for a historical survey of the nature of the relationship.

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