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Political Efficacy of Emerging Elites in Post-Socialist Countries: The Impact of Disciplinary Culture and Political Opportunities

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Transition Studies Review

Abstract

Political efficacy is a key determinant of political participation, yet what are the determinants of political efficacy? While the role of demographic and socio-economic factors has been widely studied in this context, less attention has been given to early life socialization and to the aggregate political environment. This paper develops and empirically tests the hypotheses that political efficacy of emerging elites in post-Socialist countries is determined by (1) individuals’ internalized values, which we proxy with the concept of ‘disciplinary culture,’ (2) the structure of political opportunities, measured by the degree of a country’s political competitiveness and openness, and (3) the historical legacy of socialism. Our study contributes to a scarce literature on the topic of political efficacy in post-Socialist countries and to an even more scant literature on political efficacy of young people and emerging elites.

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Notes

  1. For the sake of brevity, we will refer to internal political efficacy as efficacy throughout the paper. It should be pointed out, however, that there is another concept of efficacy referred to as external political efficacy. External efficacy is defined as the individual’s belief about the responsiveness of government (Karaman 2004, p. 32). We are interested in examining the determinants of individuals' self-perception rather than the determinants of individuals’ perception of their environment. Therefore, this paper focuses solely on the issue of internal political efficacy.

  2. The term “political opportunity structure” was first used by Eisinger (1973) and since then has become a key concept in the social movement literature and, in particular, in protest studies (e.g. McAdam et al. 1996; Kriesi 1995).

  3. The term was put forth and developed by Windolf (1992, 1995).

  4. Confidentiality of answers was ensured for all participants.

  5. www.ceu.hu (mission).

  6. http://online.ceu.hu/alumni_placement.html.

  7. Translated from German to English by one of the authors of this article.

  8. The loadings of the original statements onto the four factors are available upon request from the authors.

  9. The loading of factors was quite similar to Armingeon et al. (2000) and Armingeon (2001) in a study of Swiss college students.

  10. Both of these variables—‘interest in politics’ and ‘importance of politics’—have been used with similar wording in the European Social Survey, available at http://qb.soc.surrey.ac.uk/surveys/ess/main_questionnaire02.pdf (pages 7 and 35).

  11. Some papers (e.g. Karaman 2004; Letki 2004) have suggested that membership in the Communist party during socialist times has had an effect on efficacy or participation. Membership in the Communist party is firstly not a relevant proxy for our sample since most students at CEU are too young to have been able to join the party as adults prior to 1989. Second, we believe that membership in the Communist party might not be an appropriate proxy for socialist legacy because it was linked to incentives other than political participation—job opportunities, access to universities as well as potential for higher income (e.g. Titma et al. 2004).

  12. We run but do not report robustness checks of historical legacy, using various measures of the length of democratic experience. The tests show that the length of democratic experience loses its significance once the polity variable is included.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Rositsa Bateson and Anca Simionca for their help in implementing the CEU survey. We would also like to thank Peter Grajzl and Gabor Toka for valuable comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Policy, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

    Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl & Alex Fischer

  2. University of Szeget, European Studies Center, Szeget, Hungary

    Eszter Simon

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  1. Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl
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  2. Eszter Simon
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  3. Alex Fischer
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Correspondence to Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl.

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Dimitrova-Grajzl, V., Simon, E. & Fischer, A. Political Efficacy of Emerging Elites in Post-Socialist Countries: The Impact of Disciplinary Culture and Political Opportunities. Transit Stud Rev 17, 807–821 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11300-010-0171-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11300-010-0171-1

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