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Abstract
Although coming of age under a totalitarian regime drastically reduces the chances of acquiring democratic values or supporting democracy, factors other than the formal nature of the political regime shape political values as well. The informal structure of the political regime, which consists of rules developed in political practice and economic and human development, may shape individual values and attitudes and produce different attitudes towards democracy in different totalitarian regimes. This article focuses on the effect of early socialization on the support for democracy among citizens who have been ruled under two different non-democratic regimes. We compare the dynamics in Spain and Romania during the post-totalitarian period with the aim of identifying how coming of age operated in these two different totalitarian regimes and how each type of non-democratic regime affected the legitimacy of the new democratic rule. Using survey data from various sources (Standard Eurobarometer, Central and Eastern Eurobarometer and Candidate Countries Eurobarometer) that allow both longitudinal and cross-sectional comparisons, we decompose the social change in support for democracy over the post-totalitarian period in both countries using cross-classified fixed effects models. The analyses demonstrate the different effects of socialization on support for democracy in these two different totalitarian contexts.
Notes on contributors
Malina Voicu has a PhD in Sociology and is currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher with GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany. Her research interests include values change, with a special focus on political values and religiosity. Since 2005 she has been a member of the European Values Study Theory Group and European Values Study Executive Committee.
Edurne Bartolome Peral has a PhD in Political Science and Sociology and is Assistant Professor at the University of Deusto, Spain. Her main research interests include political culture, social and political trust and comparative political attitudes. Since 2003 she has been involved in the European Values Study.
Notes
1. Fuchs and Kilngemann, “Democratic Communities in Europe.”
2. Sears and Valentino, “Politics Matters.”
3. McGregor, “Values Structures in a Developed Socialist System.”
4. McDonough, Barnes, and Lopez Pina, “The Nature of Political Support and Legitimacy in Spain”; Di Palma, “Founding Coalition in Southern Europe.”
5. Weil, “The Sources and Structure of Legitimation in Western Democracies.”
6. See statistics regarding Romania's position on the Human Development Index at http://www.undp.org.
7. Bunce, “Comparing East with South.”
8. Ibid., 97.
9. Evans and Whitefield, “The Politics and Economics of Democratic Commitment,” 485–6.
10. Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy.
11. Weil, “The Sources and Structure of Legitimation in Western Democracies,” 683.
12. Mishler and Rose, “Generation, Age, and Time,” 823.
13. Ibid.
14. Sears and Valentino, “Politics Matters.”
15. Mannheim, “The Problem of Generation”; Ryder, “The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change.”
16. Alwin, “Cohort Replacement and Changes in Parental Socialization Values,” 348.
17. Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Societies; Inglehart, Modernization and Post-Modernization.
18. Sears and Valentino, “Politics Matters”; Ester, Mohler, and Vinken, “Values and the Social Sciences.”
19. Sears and Valentino, “Politics Matters,” 47.
20. Lipset, Political Man.
21. Sears and Valentino, “Politics Matters.”
22. Dalton, “Communists and Democrats.”
23. Alwin and Krosnick, “Aging, Cohorts, and the Stability of Sociopolitical Orientations Over the Life Span”; Danigelis, Hardy, and Cutler, “Population Aging, Intracohort Aging, and Sociopolitical Attitudes.”
24. Alwin, “Generation X, Y and Z.”
25. Weil, “The Sources and Structure of Legitimation in Western Democracies”; Fuchs, Guidorossi, and Svenson, “Support for the Democratic System.”
26. Fuchs, Guidorossi, and Svenson, “Support for the Democratic System,” 328–9.
27. Weil, “The Sources and Structure of Legitimation in Western Democracies.”
28. Fung, “Association and Democracy.”
29. Radcliff, “Associations and the Social Origins of the Transition During the Late Franco Regime,” 152.
30. Brenecker, “The Change in Mentalities During the Late Franco Regime.”
31. Putnam, Bowling Alone.
32. See Deletant, Communist Terror in Romania; Berindei, Dobrincu, and Goşu, Istoria Comunismului din România.
33. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation.
34. Voicu, Penuria Postmodernă a Postcomunismului.
35. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation.
36. Rohrschneider, Learning Democracy.
37. McDonough, Barnes, and Lopez Pina, “The Nature of Political Support and Legitimacy in Spain.”
38. Weil, “The Sources and Structure of Legitimation in Western Democracies.”
39. See Câmpeanu, Ceausescu, Anii Numaratorii Inverse; Burakowski, Dictatura lui Nicolae Ceausescu (1965–1989).
40. Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy.
41. Gunther, Montero, and Botella, Democracy in Modern Spain.
42. Pop-Elecheş, “Historical Legacies and Post-Communist Regime Change.”
43. Scurtu and Buzatu, Istoria Românilor În Secolul XX.
44. Ibid., 183.
45. Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society.
46. See Quality of Government Cross-Sectional and Time Series Dataset 2010.
47. Powers and Cox, “Echoes From the Past.”
48. Neundorf, “Democracy in Transition.”
49. Teorell et al., “The Quality of Government Dataset,” version 6 April 2011.
50. Fuchs, Guidorossi, and Svenson, “Support for the Democratic System.”
51. Neundorf, “Democracy in Transition.”
52. Linde and Ekman, “Satisfaction with Democracy.”
53. Waldron-Moore, “Eastern Europe at the Crossroads of Democratic Transition.”
54. Due to different coding of the variable measuring education in different data sets used in the analysis we recoded education as a dummy variable to obtain an equvalent measure in all surveys and for both countries.
55. Waldron-Moore, “Eastern Europe at the Crossroads of Democratic Transition.”
56. Teorell et al., “The Quality of Government Dataset,” version 6 Apr 2011.
57. Hofferbert and Klingemann, “Remembering the Bad Old Days.”
58. Yang and Land, “A Mixed Models Approach“; Yang and Land, “Age–Period–Cohort Analysis.”
59. Ibid.
60. Neundorf, “Democracy in Transition,” 1097.
61. The probability of support for democracy among 20-year-olds is 0.155 and the probablility of support for democracy for an 80-year-old person is 0.155 + (0.62%* 0.15) = 0.156. Therefore, one can say that the increase in the probablity of supporting democracy between the age of 20 and the age of 80 is weak.
62. Guillén, “Defrosting the Spanish Welfare State.”
63. Ibid.
64. The reference cohort is composed of people born between 1893 and 1914 that were born and at least partially socialized under a non-democratic political regime. Moreover, the establishment of democratic institutions was a gradual process involving many steps and it ended in 1926 when the new electoral law was adopted. Therefore, even the cohort born between 1910 and 1914 was socialized in a changing environment that was not completely democratic.
65. See Weil, “Cohorts, Regimes and the Legitimation of Democracy”; Weil, “The Sources and Structure of Legitimation in Western Democracies.”
66. Weil, “The Sources and Structure of Legitimation in Western Democracies.”