Citizenship Norms in Eastern Europe

Research on Eastern Europe stresses the weakness of its civil society and the lack of political and social involvement, neglecting the question: What do people themselves think it means to be a good citizen? This study looks at citizens’ definitions of good citizenship in Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, using 2002 European Social Survey data. We investigate mean levels of civic mindedness in these countries and perform regression analyses to investigate whether factors traditionally associated with civic and political participation are also correlated with citizenship norms across Eastern Europe. We show that mean levels of civic mindedness differ significantly across the four Eastern European countries. We find some support for theories on civic and political participation when explaining norms of citizenship, but also demonstrate that individual-level characteristics are differently related to citizenship norms across the countries of our study. Hence, our findings show that Eastern Europe is not a monolithic and homogeneous bloc, underscoring the importance of taking the specificities of countries into account

The Real World of Civic Republicanism: Making Democracy Work in Poland and the Czech Republic

The literature on transition and consolidation contains both optimists and pessimists concerning the prospects for successful democratic consolidation in Central and East European post-communist societies, and the matter is complicated by dispute over what constitutes 'success'. We can side-step this last issue by treating success in dynamic terms: As the capacity for continuation of the open-ended project which constitutes democratisation but which is also central to the very notion of democracy itself. The civic and republican discourses we have found in Poland and the Czech Republic constitute substantial discursive resources to help them further this project. These discourses reveal major continuities with the political traditions of the two countries. There is no need to suspect them of harbouring latent anti-democratic sentiments, or to shun them in favour of a universal discourse of minimal liberal democracy that can see successful consolidated politics only in terms of the pursuit of material interests expressed in party politics and elections. When it comes to democratisation, one size does not fit all; what democracy means in particular places depends to a considerable extent on the prevailing constellation of discourses, as well as the configuration of constitutional and material circumstances.</p