… TO BE CONTINUED? CHALLENGING THE CULTURAL LEGACY ARGUMENT IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
… TO BE CONTINUED? CHALLENGING THE CULTURAL LEGACY ARGUMENT IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

Summary/Abstract: According to Nations in Transit 2016, many countries in Central and Eastern Europe are still not consideredfully ’consolidateddemocraties’ One of their features is that political participation is weaker and less developed than in established democraties. Int he literature, the ’post-communist heritage’ is treated as one of the most important explanations for the lack of political participation in the region. In a first step, the paper disentangles the post-communist heritage. In contrast to the widely held beliefs in large parts of the literature, the post-communist heritage is not as monolithic as it is portrayed. With respect to the variety across countries and over time, this paper breaks down positive and negative facets of the postcommunist heritage. Secondly, it is argued that the effects of the transformation are still underplayed in research on political participation in Central and Eastern Europe. By mainly focusing on cultural explanations, scholars therefore tend to lose sight of present explanations for weak political participation in the region.

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