Worlds that Communism Built: Electoral Constituencies of ‘Successor’ Parties in Post Communist Eastern Europe

Presented at the Western/Rocky Mountain Slavic Studies Association Conference

The paper, based on newly collected data, will explore regional and political cultural characteristics of the electoral constituencies of “successor” (former ruling communist) parties in Hungary, Poland, Russia and East Germany. I will decisively refute the “economic losers” theory as a general explanation of patterns of “successor” parties’ vote in Eastern Europe. Instead, I will show that the regional patterns of vote follow a complex set of determinants, based, to a large extent, on a set of cultural variables. More specifically, I would link specific historical trajectories experienced by agrarian regions characterized by the prevalence of latifundism or agrarian poverty in the pre-communist period to the above-average levels of electoral support for the successor parties in the post-communist period.