Was Huntington Right? Testing Cultural Legacies and the Civilization Border

Abstract

This article draws upon a survey concluded in three countries – Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia – to test the “civilization border” between Central Europe and the Balkans that Samuel Huntington and others made famous. In 2000, the authors surveyed three second-wave EU applicant countries, two Balkan and one Central European, and concluded that no differences in democratic attitudes or their predictors were to be found. The most important legacy that still shapes today's political culture is the recent communist past. No evidence was discovered to support the effects of more remote cultural legacies. Political attitudes in former Habsburg and Catholic Slovakia are similar to former Ottoman and Orthodox Christian Romania and Bulgaria. Nostalgia for the “golden age” of communism, distrust in political governments and a preference for direct rather than representative democracy creates a populist syndrome present in all three countries. Multiple regression models are used to explain what makes East Europeans endorse democracy, regret communism or turn to populism.