Economic Attitudes in Postsocialist Countries

More than two decades after the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and the collapse of socialist economies, these countries have underwent monumental transformations. The fall of socialism coincided with the rise of neoliberal policy advocacy world-wide, and many postsocialist governments have adopted neoliberal economic policies. In this paper we examine to what extent the economic attitudes of citizens in these countries have changed over time, what the role of the recent economic crisis might have been, and how attitudes compare to those held by their Western counterparts. Using European World Values Survey and Life in Transition Survey in different waves across time, we examine citizens’ attitudes about economic governance, inequality, markets, welfare, unemployment, and corruption. We compare postsocialist countries that are now members of the EU with Russia and the CIS, and the Balkan postsocialist countries.