Post-communist Specifics in Voting Behavior

• Authors: VODA Petr
• Year of publication: 2014
• Type: Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
• Description: The basic question of the paper is about the effect of post-communism on voting behaviour. Obviously, the question needs further specification. As it is already written in existing literature, there are some important distinctions between “Western” and post-communist democracies. According to claims of authors (Pop-Echeles and Tucker, Evans and Whitefield, Kitschlet) working on political behaviour in post-communist countries, the specifics of voting should be in different role of cleavages (and especially class), in different role of values and different ways of evaluation of economic situation. The aim of analysis is to find out the differences between post-communist countries and western democracies in role of class and values. Multinomial multilevel analysis is employed to achieve the aim of paper. The dependent variable is the choice of party. Before the analysis, parties are classified into group on the base of cluster analysis with data from several expert surveys (Benoit and Laver 2006, CHESS 1999 – 2010, Huber and Ingelhart 1995). Analysis is conducted on data from European Values Study (waves 1990, 1999 and 2008). Results of already conducted comparative analysis of Central European countries indicate a smaller explanatory power of class and values on choice of party and different role of some of social class and values, when post-materialism was connected with voting for leftist parties in western Europe in early 1990s, whereas it was connected with voting for right-wing parties in post-communist countries. Results also indicate that the patterns become more similar over time in these contexts. I expect similar results in multilevel analysis.