Patterns of Social Ties, Trust, and Participation after the Fall of the Iron Curtain: New Findings from Central and Southeast European Countries

Abstract

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, more than forty scholars from Central and Southeast Europe (CSE) came together at the University of Graz in Austria to take stock of the social changes that have been going on since 1989/90. The conference in 2014 was the starting point of this issue of the International Journal of Sociology, which covers a wide range of topics: patterns of social networks, social and institutional trust and political participation as well as wage dynamics of East–West commuters. This introduction outlines basic data and theories on the economic and democratic transition in CSE to serve as a frame for the articles presented in this issue. They are country case studies from Croatia, Hungary, and Slovenia and country-comparative studies dealing with East European-Austrian border regions. Altogether, the issue aims at raising international attention to new findings regarding social, structural, and sociocultural changes in the CSE countries.

Keywords:

• Democratic transition
• East–West commuters
• economic transition
• fall of the Iron Curtain
• institutional and social trust
• political participation
• social capital and networks

AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 25 YEARS AFTER THE FALL OF THE IRON CURTAIN

Central and Southeast European societies have undergone severe social, structural, and sociocultural changes since the democratic revolution in 1989/90. The transition processes were preceded by far-reaching upheavals in several countries of this region—that is, in the Visegrád states and the Balkans—and followed by terrible wars in former Yugoslavia. Transition involved changes in the economic institutions—from state socialist, planned economies to capitalist market societies with private property—and in the political institutions—from centralized, socialist systems to democratic, pluralist political orders (Offe 1994; von Beyme 1994). In addition, the multinational state of Yugoslavia broke up and half a dozen new states were established. These economic and political developments went hand in hand with fundamental changes in social structures and relations.

In 2014 social scientists from CSE came together at the University of Graz in Austria to take stock of the social, structural, and sociocultural changes that have been going on since 1989. The conference was titled “1989–2014: Twenty-Five Years After: What Has Happened to the Societies in Central and Southeast Europe since the Fall of the Iron Curtain?” and organized by Max Haller.¹ More than forty scholars from the Visegrád states and the Balkan region as well as from Austria presented new findings from their research. The conference also brought together scientists from different disciplines, including sociology, political science, history, and economics, and promoted scientific exchange and cooperation.

Austrian sociologists already had scientific relations with sociologists in CSE before 1989. This applies particularly to sociologists from the University of Graz. The city of Graz is the capital of the province of Styria, which is located centrally in this area. In October 1987, the Austrian Sociological Association, with Max Haller as president at that time, organized its biannual meeting as an international conference at the University of Graz titled “Societies at Borders: Social Structure and Social Consciousness in East and West Europe.” In June 1988, a symposium was held in Graz on the distinguished Polish-Austrian sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838–1909). In the 1990s, sociologists from the Universities of Graz and Ljubljana organized common seminars for students. Recently, a Joint Study Masters Programme in Cultural Sociology was established as a cooperation between the Universities of Graz, Brno, Trento, and Zadar. Hence, the international conference in 2014 follows a well-established tradition of scientific exchange between the countries of this region.

This issue of the International Journal of Sociology presents four selected and updated contributions from the recent international conference. It focuses on patterns of social ties, trust, and participation in selected CSE countries from a comparative perspective. The aim of this issue is to bring new research findings to the attention of the international public. In 2001—and we believe this is still true today—Nikolai Genov and Ulrike Becker, the editors of Social Sciences in Southeastern Europe, wrote: “Unfortunately, social scientists in Western Europe or North America have very little information about social sciences in Southeastern Europe” (Genov and Becker 2001: 4). The authors add that even social scientists within this area are usually better informed about sociological research in Western Europe and America than in their neighboring countries. Given the one-directional, unequal character of international scientific communication, scholars in the leading countries hardly take notice of research in non-English-speaking ones (Haller 2016).

Of the four articles included here, three are country case studies dealing with Croatia, Hungary, and Slovenia, and the fourth uses a country-comparative approach. Each contribution addresses a substantive question, including the topics of social and political trust, social networks, political participation, and wage dynamics of East European commuters. This set of articles also offers an introduction into the application of the name-generator network technique and regression analyses and will thus be important for researchers interested in using these statistical methods in comparative research.

HISTORICAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE COUNTRIES OF CENTRAL AND SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE

The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 in the CSE countries was a world-historical and revolutionary event. After half a century of communism, which also implied a deep-going breakup of the formerly close relationships between the countries and peoples of CSE, the former state-socialist countries became Western-style market economies and adopted democratic constitutions. The democratic revolution in the CSE countries is outstanding proof of the people’s power to overcome political and social systems that the public no longer tolerated by (e.g., Moore 1982). During socialism, citizens were dissatisfied with economic stagnation, the lack of democracy and freedom of opinion as well as, in some instances, with the political-military hegemony of the Soviet Union over its East European allies. The transition opened up major new economic and social opportunities, increasing prosperity, new ties to Western countries, and, in particular, integration into the European Union. However, transition also implied heavy costs, such as increased inequality and unemployment. Criticism concerns especially the radical speed of the transformation that has been described as “shock therapy” for these countries and the “incompability of simultaneity of democracy and neo-liberalism” (Smajljaj 2012: 59). If the transition is oriented only toward a free market it serves mainly the elites (Smajljaj 2012: 62) instead of the middle class, which needs to be broad and powerful to push forward the democratization process.

In regard to the CSE countries’ historical heterogeneity, the particularities of the transition process, and the different historical roots of these countries, it is somewhat problematic to talk about the CSE countries as one specific group. The historical backgrounds reach from Central European Catholicism, North European Protestantism, South and East European Orthodoxy to Islamic influences in Southeast Europe. The cultural traditions are linked to the geographic proximity and distance between countries such as Austria, Turkey, Greece, Germany, and Russia, and to their differing power influence in the historic past. This internal diversity of Europe also offers a challenge and opportunity for carrying out comparative research (Haller 1990). The varying traditions within Europe have had an impact on the CSE countries’ transition, which did not involve a simple and smooth linear transition process from communism to capitalism (Offe and Fuchs 2007). Neither communism nor capitalism are monolithic systems; many actors, institutions, and traditions besides the state play significant roles.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Claus Offe (1991) introduced the term “triple transformation,” meaning the transition to a nation-state, the transition to capitalism, and the transition to democracy. In this vein, the success of the transition in the different CSE countries depends on at least five factors: (a) the success of economic reforms in different phases, (b) economic relations with Western countries, (c) integration into the European Union and building up of international networks, (d) prevention of the emergence of deep social splits and pervasive inequality, and (e) the quality of democratic development. Despite the varying long-term developments, scholars distinguish three common phases of the transition process experienced by most of the CSE countries in different periods (e.g., Kollmorgen 2009: 85–87). The first phase after the fall of the Iron Curtain was characterized by ad hoc reforms in order to privatize land and property as well as the former state-led enterprises. In addition, new forms of welfare state institutions were established, particularly in reaction to growing unemployment. However, in the first half of the 1990s the wars in Yugoslavia had an incomparably negative impact on the transition process in the Balkan region and forced many people to leave their home countries. More than 100,000 people came to Austria, and even more to Germany, and a vast majority permanently resided in these countries. The war in Yugoslavia was not the only reason for emigration. Overall, in the preceding 25 years, more than 20 million people migrated from the CSE countries to Western countries for better life chances (Haller and Verwiebe 2016).

In a second phase, public expenditure was reduced by extensive deregulation and privatization, for example, in the field of old age pensions, health insurance, and labor market policies. By the early 2000s, globalization, in particular transnational influences on the industrial transition and national politics, gained importance in the CSE countries (Bohle and Greskovits 2007). The third and current stage is a phase of restructuring and consolidation in which public social expenditure is again increasing and neoliberal policies are partly attenuated. Thus, scholars speak of a reorientation toward the west European welfare state and the CSE countries’ cultural and political roots (Kollmorgen 2009: 87).

In the following, we outline selected data on the economic and democratic transition process in countries of CSE that are of importance for this issue of the journal: Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and the Slovak Republic. For the purpose of better comparison, country characteristics are extended to include Central European Austria and Germany and South European Greece and Italy as well as Russia. The following description also introduces the topics of the articles and summarizes their major findings.

Economic Transition

Despite their country-specific historical roots, all CSE countries experienced an era of socialism in which the degree of decommodification (Esping-Andersen 1990) was very high and the state was the major distributor. Full employment was common, access to health care and education was free, and income inequality was generally low (Haller and Eder 2015: 187–209).² Although fast and extensive privatization was driven by the countries’ political elites by the 1990s, their affluence and level of living standards on the one hand are still significantly lower than in Western Europe. On the other hand, economic reforms and access to the European Union led to economic recovery, new opportunities for work in the West, and a relative consolidation of the new political system.

In the past 25 years the economy has grown in all of the CSE countries (see Figure 1), however, there are distinct differences across countries. In the Visegrád states and Slovenia the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is 50–80 percent, in the Baltic states 50 percent, and in the southeastern postsocialist countries 30 percent of the European Union (EU) average (Kollmorgen 2009: 81). The more affluent countries such as the Czech Republic and Slovenia are geographically closer to Central Europe; however, transition in both of these countries went along different paths. Neocorporatist Slovenia “is characterised by a firmly institutionalised balance between marketisation and both kinds of social protection, whereby business, labour, and other social groups are accepted as partners in shaping that balance” (Bohle and Greskovits 2007: 446). More than other countries, Slovenia experienced a long tradition of relative self-management and has already been most successful in economic terms during the socialist era. In addition, the impact of left-wing politics has been especially strong there and, together with the ethnic homogeneity of the country, has prevented social exclusion and rising inequality.

FIGURE 1 Trends in per capita gross domestic product in selected CSE countries compared to bordering south and central European countries (in current US $).

In contrast to Slovenia, the Visegrád states followed an “embedded neoliberal” model. The Slovak and Czech Republics attracted foreign direct investment early (see Table 1). Moreover, Figure 1 shows the lowest GDP per capita in three diverse countries: Russia, Croatia, and Hungary. The low GDP per capita in Hungary does not seem to prove the general thesis that geographical proximity to the West is a sufficient condition for better economic development. In addition, it is obvious that the socioeconomic level in Greece, which did not experience socialism, has decreased to the level of the Czech Republic since the recent economic crisis. In contrast, GDP per capita in Italy is still higher than in the CSE countries, although distinctly lower than in Austria or Germany (see Figure 1). The latter two countries but in particular Austria had experienced a strong increase rise in their levels of prosperity since World War II (Therborn 1995: 138).

TABLE 1 Economic Indicators Across Countries and Time (Rounded Values)

Indicators	RUS	HU	Sl	SK	CZ	CR	IT	GR	GER	AT
Unemployment rates %^1
∅ 1991–1999	10	10	7	13	5	11	11	9	8	4
∅ 2000–2009	8	7	6	16	7	13	8	10	9	5
∅ 2010–2016	6	9	9	13	6	15	11	23	5	5
Gini coefficient after taxes and transfers^2
∅ 1990–1999	37	30	22	20	23	29	33	33	27	26
∅ 2000–2009	37	28	23	26	25	26	33	33	28	27
∅ 2010–2014	33*	29	26	26	25	29	32	33	29	29
Foreign direct investment (net inflows, % of GDP per capita)^3
∅ 1992–1999	0.7	6.3	0.9	1.2	3.9	2.9	0.3	0.8	0.6	1.0
∅ 2000–2009	2.5	14.8	2.5	6.0	5.7	5.2	1.1	0.7	2.9	6.3
∅ 2010–2015	2.1	0.6	1.4	2.0	3.3	2.7	0.7	0.7	1.7	0.4
Social Spending (as % of per capita GDP)^3
1990	12	–	22	19	15	21	20	17	22	24
1995	11	25	23	19	17	17	20	18	27	27
2000	10	21	22	18	19	23	23	19	27	27
2005	13	23	21	16	19	19	25	21	27	27
2012/2013	16	22	24	18	22	21	28	22	26	28

¹World Bank.

²Solt (2016), Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) Version 5_1.

³World Social Protection Report ILO 2014/15.

Country abbreviations: RUS = Russia, HU = Hungary, Sl = Slovenia, SK = Slovak Republic, CZ = Czech Republic, CR = Croatia, IT = Italy, GR = Greece, GER = West- and East Germany, AT = Austria.

Note: Gini coefficients for Russia were corrected downward in the latest version of SWIID. In this version Ginis above 40 are reported in 1994–96 and in 2000.

Overall, the recent financial crisis hit the CSE countries harder than Northwestern Europe (e.g., Aidukaite 2010). Emigration from them—more than 20 million people migrated to Western countries within the past 25 years—posed a further obstacle to the economic catch-up process because people with essential human capital left their home countries. From this perspective the new opportunities to work in the more affluent West also harmed the CSE countries (Atoyan et al. 2016) while it stimulated growth in Austria and Germany. When talking about the economic transition of the CSE countries it is also important to deal with regional inequalities: “The clustering of complex industries brought about the tight cross-border integration of the Czech Republic, southwestern Poland, the northwest of the Slovak Republic, and northwestern Hungary that further enhanced their attraction” (Bohle and Greskovits 2007: 459). The contribution of Laura Wiesböck and Roland Verwiebe in this issue deals specifically with this topic—that is, the border regions of Austria and Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The authors raise the question of East European commuters’ wage mobility through working in Austria. The topic of cross-border commuting is closely related to individual job perspectives and the degree of unemployment in people’s home countries. In the first phase of the transition process, unemployment in most of the CSE countries increased up to rates of more than 10 percent (see Table 1). Unemployment is particularly high in the Slovak Republic and Croatia and has sharply increased in Greece since the economic crisis. Russia and the Czech Republic though report low unemployment rates comparable to those in Austria and Germany.

For Austria, transition implied that its eastern provinces turned from peripheral areas into central zones between Western and Eastern Europe; huge investment opportunities opened up for its entrepreneurs and bankers. The impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) is a contentious issue. On the one hand, capital flows into countries may create and preserve jobs and stimulate economic development. On the other hand, FDI may also contribute to increasing the wealth of only specific groups of people, thus preserving their already high status in the receiving country. If one takes into account the amount of foreign direct investment (net inflows as a percentage of a country’s per capita GDP) in the course of the 1990s and 2000s, it seemed to have positive effects in the more affluent Czech Republic (see Table 1). FDI was particularly high in Hungary before the economic crisis and above average in Croatia and the Slovak Republic and may have contributed to an increase in prosperity in the early 2000s. Overall, it is obvious that net inflows distinctly decreased since the economic crisis (see Table 1); how this impacts economic development in the CSE countries will be an important issue for the future. An essential side-effect of the significant differences in GDP per capita at levels of income between Austria and its eastern and southeastern neighboring countries has been an emerging pattern of labor mobility. A new macro region came into being (Centrope), including the Austrian provinces adjacent to the Czech, Slovakian, and Hungarian borders and the provinces next to the Austrian border in these countries. As Wiesböck and Verwiebe show in their contribution, a new pattern of commuting has evolved in this macro region.

When considering the economic transition in the CSE countries it is also important to look at the distribution of incomes. A main characteristic of state socialist countries was their low level of income inequality, both objectively and regarding the legitimacy of the system. It was expected that inequality would generally increase as a consequence of the transition to capitalist market-oriented and liberal democratic societies (Riedl and Haller 2014). Some authors argue that high inequality in the long run endangers economic growth (Eicher and Turnovsky 2003) and the democratic order of societies (Wade 2013). We can in fact observe that simultaneously with the increase of economic prosperity, income inequality has been rising in most of the CSE countries (see Table 1). CSE belongs to the regions worldwide with the highest variation in within-country inequality (e.g., Haller and Eder 2015). Income differences today are noticeably high in Russia and lowest in Slovenia, the Slovak and Czech Republics. In the course of the 1990s and 2000s income inequality grew the most in Russia and, though on low levels, in the Slovak Republic and Slovenia (see also Haller and Eder 2015: 202–6). Furthermore, comparative research on attitudes toward social inequality has shown that criticism of inequality is significantly higher among the CSE countries than in Western countries (e.g., Gijsberts 2002; Örkény and Székelyi 2000; Riedl and Haller 2014).

Criticism also concerns the negative consequences of the privatization and capitalization of the social security systems that today are more advanced in the CSE countries than in Western Europe (Kollmorgen 2009: 76). Table 1 shows that public social spending (as a percentage of GDP per capita) is lowest in Russia and the Slovak Republic and highest in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia (Aidukaite 2011: 216). Despite recent increases in social spending, it is still lower than in Austria, Germany, and Italy. Taking into account different core areas of social security, varying patterns across countries are obvious: in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary the level of public expenditure for health care and the unemployed is similar to that in Great Britain (Kollmorgen 2009). Expenditures for old age pensions and families are comparably lowest in Poland and above average in Hungary (Kollmorgen 2009: 69). Overall, recent research suggests mixed patterns of social-democratic, conservative-corporatist, and neoliberal policies in the CSE countries (Fenger 2007; Kollmorgen 2009).

Against the background of the varying levels of affluence and social protection in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, the first article in this special issue deals with workers who are commuting to Austria. Wiesböck and Verwiebe focus on wage dynamics and occupational mobility of commuters from the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. The lifting of the final transitional agreements in 2011 enabled citizens of these countries to fully access the Austrian labor market as much as those of all other member states (Fihel et al. 2015). The main focus of the article is an analysis of how far East–West commuters in Centrope improve their occupational position and wages when working in Austria, compared to the situation in their country of origin. Wiesböck and Verwiebe show that poverty risk and unemployment rates still vary between the regions, although different efforts to reduce structural inequalities have been made. Further, cross-border commuters obtain mid-level qualifications and are employed in sectors with a great need for working forces, which distinguishes them from the local population in Austria. Findings from regression analysis for the mobility of wage, class, and occupational position finally demonstrate that patterns of cross-border mobility differ by sociodemographic characteristics, economic factors (branches, firm characteristics), and other characteristics (e.g., language skills).

Democratic Transition

The CSE countries entered a long and rocky path toward free market economies, when they established new social security systems and democratic institutions. Several CSE countries still face challenges to establish reliable democratic institutions and to guarantee essential constitutional and civic rights. Bertelsmann Stiftung (BTI) provides an index for the quality of democracy that takes into account 128 transformation and developing countries. This index is composed of four subindicators: (1) the stability of democratic institutions, (2) the extent of political participation, (3) the effectiveness of the rule of law, and (4) the degree of political and social integration. According to the general BTI Index (2016) Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Croatia are categorized as “consolidating democracies.” Hungary, by contrast, is considered a “defective democracy” (see also Brusis 2016: 4). In such democracies a certain level of participation and representation exists but fair elections are not always guaranteed and liberal principles of human and social rights are realized only in part (Von Beyme 2011: 50). However, it is important to state that these categorizations of democratic systems are labels that do not convey the social reality sufficiently.

Table 2 displays the “stability of democratic institutions,” which indicates to what extent they perform their functions effectively and are free from extensive, counterproductive friction. Democratic institutions include democratic and efficient national, regional, and local governments, the parliament, the judiciary, and the public administration. The index ranges from 1 to 10; 1 indicates that there are no democratic institutions as such (authoritarian regime), 10 indicates that democratic institutions function in an effective and efficient way. The results indicate that the stability of democratic institutions is particularly low in Russia (“moderate autocracy”) compared to all other countries and that it has significantly decreased during the past years. A corrupted process of privatization of state assets was enormously damaging for the institutionalization of democracy in Russia (Evans 2011: 42). In Hungary, according to the BTI Index, the stability of democratic institutions decreased as well. This result can be traced back to democratic deficiencies in Hungary when governmental parties, by appealing to legitimating popular wills, go beyond constitutional boundaries and eliminate some political and public mechanisms of power control (Brusis 2016: 3). In Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic democratic institutions have remained quite stable in past years (see Table 2); nonetheless, voter turnout in parliamentary elections simultaneously decreased in these countries.

TABLE 2 Democratic Indicators Across Countries and Time

Indicators	RUS	HU	SI	SK	CZ	CR	IT	GR	GER	AT
Stability of democratic institutions (from 1 = low to 10 = high)^1
2006	5.5	9.5	9.5	9.5	9.5	9.5	–	–	–	–
2010	5.0	8.5	10.0	9.5	10.0	8.5	–	–	–	–
2016	2.5	7.5	9.5	8.5	9.5	8.5	–	–	–	–
Political participation (in %)^2
∅ 1990–1999	–	35.6	39.8	55.7*	51.5*	–	49.8	30.2	64.7	39.2
∅ 2000–2009	–	31.2	33.8	42.3	37.1	30.8	44.4	28.7	54.1	37.6
∅ 2010–2014	–	24.4	33.2	40.0	35.2	28.5	41.6	26.5	50.3	34.0
Voter turnout (in %)^3
∅ 1990–1999	59.0	63.7	79.8	85.2	82.8	76.3	85.5	79.7	79.7	83.8
∅ 2000–2009	59.7	69.1	64.7	62.4	61.3	66.0	81.8	74.2	75.9	80.5
∅ 2010–2016	54.0	63.1	58.7	59.2	61.0	55.9	75.2	63.1	71.5	74.9

¹BTI: Bertelsmann Transformation Index.

²Democracy Barometer.

³IDEA: Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

Country abbreviations: RUS = Russia, HU = Hungary, Sl = Slovenia, SK = Slovak Republic, CZ = Czech Republic, CR = Croatia, IT = Italy, GR = Greece, GER = West- and East Germany, AT = Austria.

Note: SK, CZ: available data from 1993.

A high-quality democracy should allow all citizens affected by political decisions to equally participate in shaping those decisions. Political participation can thus be regarded as “activity by private citizens designed to influence government decision-making” (Huntington and Nelson 1976: 3). The Democracy Barometer provides an index of political participation from 1990 onward and ranging from 0 to 100 (see Table 2). It measures the various activities used by citizens to influence the selection of political leaders or the policies they pursue. It covers (1) rules facilitating participation, (2) effective institutionalized participation, and (3) effective noninstitutionalized participation (Merkel et al. 2016: 47–48). As indicated in Table 2, political participation in Hungary has constantly decreased since 1990 and in 2014 is comparably lowest (together with Greece). Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic also show decreasing levels of political participation but it is still higher than in Hungary. In Italy, Germany, and Austria, slight decreases can be seen as well, although the general degree of political participation is significantly higher.

Political participation is a fundamental right in democratic societies and most commonly practiced in the form of local, regional, national, and supranational elections. Apart from the formal and legal right or duty to vote, the extent to which citizens participate in political processes depends on the political parties’ honest appeals for participation and the provision of opportunities to take part in decision making. Disenchantment with politics is a substantial challenge in many western and eastern societies leading to a general decrease in political interest and decreasing voter turnouts (Crouch 2005; Dalton 2013). In the course of the 1990s and 2000s, voter turnout in parliamentary elections sharply decreased in the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Croatia, and Slovenia from 80–90 percent to 50–60 percent (see Table 2). However, a similar decrease also took place in Greece and to a lesser extent but more than 10 percentage points in Austria and Italy. However, voter turnouts in parliamentary elections are still higher in Austria, Germany, and Italy than in the CSE countries (see Table 2). From a democratic perspective, it can be considered a serious problem if only 50–60 percent of the electorate participates in elections.

The article by Andrej Kirbiš, Sergej Flere, Darko Friš, Marina Tavčar Krajnc, and Tina Cupar is based on a case study of Slovenia dealing with predictors of conventional, protest, and civic participation among the youth. The main focus of the study is to test the civic voluntarism model (CVM), an explanatory model of citizen participation including three sets of determinants: institutional resources, political culture, and social networks. As the analysis indicates, CVM is a significant predictor of each of the three dimensions of citizen participation, and it is best suited for predicting protest participation. Regarding geographical, historical, and geopolitical aspects, Slovenia is an interesting “hybrid” post-communist state. It is widely considered to be the most successful of the post-communist countries in walking the path toward a liberal democracy (e.g., Ramet and Fink-Hafner 2006). Finally, the authors conclude that analyzing the determinants of citizen participation by youth can further improve the consolidation of post-communist democracies.

Institutional and Social Trust

After profound power abuses at the hands of former political leaders and elites, it is of great importance to (re)gain the population’s trust (e.g., Mishler and Rose 1997). Recent research has shown that citizens of CSE countries frequently still believe that they do not have any influence on government action and that politicians only work for their personal benefit (Eder 2017). A complex question in this context concerns the necessary level of social and political trust to support democratization. Whereas elitist approaches propose that a high level of trust is desired (e.g., Geissel 2008), representatives of liberal-pluralistic approaches believe that a healthy skepticism is necessary, that is, a certain distrust in political institutions, a critical population that hinders elites from enriching themselves (Mishler and Rose 1997; Schaal 2004). Previous findings for the CSE countries report different levels of political trust and patterns of development across time. Country-comparisons have shown lower levels of political trust in the more repressive regimes of Bulgaria and Romania and higher levels in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Hungary (Mishler and Rose 1997). Shortly after the collapse of communism, trust in political institutions in the CSE countries increased. However, it decreased again in the late 1990s (Mishler and Rose 2001) due to disappointed expectations; in some countries this even led to a nostalgic picture of the past regimes (Ekman and Linde 2005; Mishler and Rose 1999: 88). Scholars describe this pattern as honeymoon effects followed by post-honeymoon disillusionment (Catterberg and Moreno 2005).

Theories of trust offer varying answers in regard to the formation and effects of trust in political institutions. From a functional perspective trust has an important effect in reducing complexity since individuals want to delegate responsibility and decrease transaction costs by trusting (e.g., Benz 2002: 275). Cultural theorists such as Claus Offe (1999) argue that trust in the state can be achieved through “knowing the basic idea or good of an institution” and “its constitutive rules, values, and norms are shared by participants and that they regard them as binding” (Warren 1999: 6–7). Cultural theories also assume that political trust results from interpersonal socialization processes, in the course of primary and secondary socialization. These norms and values as well as lifelong individual experiences are projected on the political institutions (Almond and Verba 1963; Inglehart 1997; Putnam 1993).

The contribution of Anja Gvozdanović focuses on social trust among Croatian youth and aims at analyzing its main determinants. Croatia’s political institutions have experienced deep changes during the past decades—from wartime politics, which lead to international isolation and a democratic deficit, to gradual democratization (Kuntz 2011; Ramet and Fink-Hafner 2006). Social trust is an important precondition for the development of democracy in postsocialist countries, since it encourages cooperation and facilitates the free expression of political views. Anja Gvozdanović focuses on institutional trust (political trust, trust in media, and repressive institutions) and sociocultural factors (religiosity, ethnic distance, and authoritarian attitudes) as determinants of social trust. According to her results both, institutional trust and cultural factors influence the level of social trust. Among sociocultural factors, traditionalist value orientation has a negative impact on social trust, while ethnic distance and authoritarian attitudes positively influence this phenomenon.

The Role of Social Capital

During the past decades there have been advances in analyzing and understanding the dynamics of social capital at the micro- and macro level of society. At the macro level, research has analyzed how the collective good “social capital” is a driving force for diverse phenomena such as societal development, political participation, and health of the population. On the micro level, social capital is regarded as an individual’s property, supporting, for example, career development (Hsung, Lin, and Breiger 2010: xxi). According to Putnam (2007: 137), social capital can be defined as “social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness.” Social networks are increasingly viewed as an important source of social capital, allowing individuals to access social support (Ryan et al. 2008: 673). The strength of network ties in a society can explain macro phenomena like the organization of communities, diffusion of innovations, or social mobility (Granovetter 1973). State socialist societies typically suppressed the development of civic networks outside of the officially recognized institutions.

In the fourth contribution to this issue, Zoltán Kmetty, Júlia Koltai, and Róbert Tardos investigate the core ties homophily and sociocultural divides in Hungary from a time-comparative perspective (1987, 1997/89, 2005, 2008, 2015). Thus, an eventful period in Hungary is covered, including the change of the political regime, changes in the occupational structure and further economic and social developments (e.g., Kovács 2004; Tökés 1996). The authors apply the name-generator network technique to measure core network composition and network homophily. Their analysis focuses on patterns of social distance and homophily relating to sociodemographic (gender, age) and resource-type variables (education, occupation). The results indicate that the level of homophily in Hungary has remained on a consistently high level since the late 1980s. Regarding the associations by education and age, the patterns remain quite stable as well and indicate a high and rather increasing level of homophily as far as non-kin ties are concerned.

OUTLOOK

In sociology the investigation of societal change has experienced a long tradition and still constitutes one of the most essential fields of research. Due to the rapid and heterogeneous transition processes in Central and Southeastern Europe, it is instructive to analyze economic and political development from a cross-country comparative perspective. The contributions in this issue cover country case studies dealing with three societies: Croatia, Hungary, and Slovenia. They address various substantive questions ranging from social ties and networks, social and political trust, political participation to labor mobility. Wiesböck and Verwiebe’s country-comparative approach focuses on the wage dynamics of East European commuters from the border regions of Hungary, the Czech and Slovak Republic who choose to work in Austria. Kirbiš, Flere, Friš, Krajnc, and Cupar pose the question of the “Predictors of Conventional, Protest, and Civic Participation among Slovenian Youth.” Gvozdanović deals with “Generators of Social Trust among Youth in Croatia.” Finally, Kmetty, Koltai, and Tardos analyze “Core Ties Homophily and Sociocultural Divides in Hungary from 1987 to 2015.”

Overall, the articles published in this issue underline the complexity of the economic and democratic transition in the changing CSE countries. To understand this complexity, sociology needs to further conduct surveys in these countries, dealing with a great variety of perceptions, attitudes, and behavior concerning economic, political, and social topics such as those of the following articles. Sociological theory placed in a historical perspective is needed to understand and interpret the findings of comparative research including the CSE countries.

This issue of the International Journal of Sociology aims at promoting the visibility of researchers from Central and Southeastern Europe and new findings from their home countries. This is of particular importance since scholars from CSE rarely participate in the international scientific community. In the vein of the conference “1989–2014: Twenty-Five Years After” and the comparative scope of the International Journal of Sociology, the articles should also contribute to the exchange of research from and about the Central and Southeastern European region.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anja Eder

Anja Eder is a university assistant in the Department of Sociology at the University of Graz, and a member of the International Social Survey Programme. Her research interests include social inequality, political sociology, and international comparison.

Hannah Volk

Hannah Volk is a university assistant in the Department of Sociology at the University of Graz. Her research interests center on working conditions, occupational health, and international comparison.

Max Haller

Max Haller is Professor Emeritus of Sociology of the University of Graz and a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include sociological theory, social inequality, sociology of science, and international comparative research with surveys.

Notes

https://twenty-five-years-after.uni-graz.at/.

Furthermore, a small elite, the Intelligentsia, was highly privileged in state socialist societies.