Structure of the session

• Part 1 — The course arc: the fourteen lectures as a single sustained argument
• Part 2 — The theoretical toolkit: the core social-psychological frameworks the course used repeatedly (the twelve introduced in Lecture 4, plus cultural trauma)
• Part 3 — Empirical anchors: the key studies / cases that will feature on the exam
• Part 4 — Exam preparation: format, coverage, worked examples
• Part 5 — Q&A and closing

The signature claim

The same social-psychological mechanisms produce pro-democratic and anti-democratic political outcomes in CEE. What differs is not the psychology but the framing, the targets, and the institutional channels through which the psychology is expressed.

• This claim ties the course together. Almost every empirical finding we have studied supports or refines it.
• CEE is not a region with a unique psychology. It is a region in which a compressed natural experiment has made the channelling process visible.

Three unifying threads

• Thread 1: The dual nature of transition
  • Same psychology → pro-social AND anti-social outcomes
  • Solidarity AND nationalism; WOŚP AND Smolensk conspiracy; 2022 Ukrainian help AND 2015 Syrian rejection
• Thread 2: Framing matters more than disposition
  • Poles in 2015 and 2022 had the same psychology, responded differently to differently-framed out-groups
  • Applied tolerance is shaped in real time by the information environment
• Thread 3: Institutions channel psychology
  • Letki: CP membership produces democratic skills because those skills get re-channelled through democratic institutions
  • Backsliding reverses this: institutions stop channelling psychology democratically, and the same psychology becomes available for exclusion
  • But the reversal is not permanent — Poland 2023 and Hungary 2026 show the channels can be re-democratised

The core theories (1): identity, justification, learning, memory, capital

• Social identity theory (Tajfel) — self-esteem from group membership; in-group bias and out-group homogeneity
• System justification (Jost) — people defend the system they live under, even when it disadvantages them
• Social learning theory (Bandura) — behaviour learned by observing and imitating rewarded models
• Collective memory / ontological security — nations require stable narratives about their pasts to sustain identity
• Social capital (Putnam; Letki) — trust, norms, and networks; underpins civic participation and a credible loyal opposition

The core theories (2): deprivation, threat, contact, and cognition

• Relative deprivation — the feeling of having less than one deserves, relative to a chosen comparison group
• Terror management — existential anxiety buffered by engagement with worldviews (national, religious, familial)
• Learned helplessness (Seligman) — repeated uncontrollable situations produce generalised passivity
• Contact theory (Allport) — intergroup contact under the right conditions reduces prejudice
• Cognitive dissonance — discomfort at inconsistency drives rationalisation and attitude change
• Social influence & conformity — public compliance vs private acceptance; how norms are transmitted
• Just-world theory — belief that people get what they deserve; underwrites victim-blaming
• Plus, introduced later: cultural trauma (Sztompka, L8) and empathy-altruism (Batson, L9 — own slide below)

The empathy-altruism specifics (Batson)

• Empathic concern → altruistic helping for identifiable, similar, present others.
• Empathic distress → escape, not helping.
• Moderators: similarity, identifiable-victim effect, empathic concern vs distress.
• Why this matters for CEE: the 2022 mobilisation activated empathy-altruism (women and children from a familiar culture); the 2015 rejection did not (men from a distant culture).

Key empirical moderators

• Moderators that make CEE outcomes specific:
  • The communist legacy of thin civil society and personalised informal networks
  • The post-1989 economic shock producing visible winners and losers
  • The post-2004 EU opening producing massive migration flows
  • The post-2010 rise of illiberal populism producing backsliding environments
  • The 2022 war in Ukraine producing a new geopolitical frame

Contemporary backsliding cases (to 2026)

• Hungary (Fidesz, 2010–2026): the most developed case — memory politics, media capture, judicial restructuring, anti-migrant framing — reversed at the ballot box in April 2026, when Magyar’s Tisza unseated Orbán with a two-thirds majority.
• Poland (PiS, 2015–2023; reversal 2023; stalled 2025): the opposition coalition won in 2023, but PiS-backed Nawrocki’s 2025 presidential win + no government supermajority has produced gridlock rather than full re-democratisation.
• Slovakia (Fico, 2024–): the active case — NAKA abolished, a public-broadcasting media law, moves against NGOs/protest — met by sustained civil-society opposition (the “Chalk Revolution”, November 2025).
• Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechia: the illiberal model contested or unconsolidated.
• The pattern: backsliding is not one-directional — 2023–2026 shows it can be reversed where opposition coalesces around defence of democracy.

Format and coverage

• Format: written exam; multiple-choice questions drawn from across all 14 lectures.
• Coverage: every lecture is in scope. The course readings, slides, handouts, and speaker notes are all primary sources.
• Emphasis: understanding of the core concepts, the named empirical studies, and the central analytical framework of the course (the “same psychology, different channelling” argument).

How to prepare

• Start with the synthesis: re-read Lecture 15 handout carefully. If you understand the signature claim and can apply it, you have the scaffolding.
• Work through the ten studies: each should be reconstructable in 2–3 sentences — who, what, finding, implication.
• Know the nine theories: be able to match each theory to phenomena in CEE, on both the pro-social and anti-social sides.
• Connect theory to case: for each CEE case (transition trauma, Ukrainian refugees, anti-Roma prejudice, Islamophobia, diaspora voting, backsliding), identify which theories are activated.

Worked example 1

Q: What legacy did observers expect the “homo Sovieticus” syndrome to have for societies in the post-communist era?

1. Societies would be characterised by pathological forms of behaviour and status anxiety regarding the impact of the new changes. ✓
2. Societies would quickly and decisively reject the norms and values of the previous regime.
3. Societies would reject democracy and demand a return to the communist system.
4. Societies would be paralysed by indecision about what kind of regime to replace communism with.

• Homo Sovieticus = the alleged psychological product of communist socialisation — passive, risk-averse, dependent, distrustful.
• Observers expected this psychology to produce pathological behaviour and anxiety when exposed to market conditions that demanded the opposite.

Worked example 2

Q: According to Subotić, why was the Holocaust a source of prejudice in post-communist societies?

1. As it had been a taboo topic under communism, people now felt “free to hate”.
2. The state of Israel started making greater demands for financial restitution after the end of communism.
3. Levels of antisemitism rose after the end of communism.
4. The idea that people in these countries might have benefited from the Holocaust clashed with their self-identity as victims of communism, leading to resentment against the Jews. ✓

• Key concept: ontological security. Post-communist national identity in CEE was built on victimhood. Acknowledging Holocaust complicity threatens this identity. The threat is defended by turning against the minority whose victimhood raises the question.

Worked example 3

Q: What is meant by the term “sociological void”?

1. Under communism, societies were poorly studied.
2. During communism, individuals had a strong attachment to their families and to the national community, but not to intermediary institutions. ✓
3. There were no institutions linking the individual with broader society.
4. During communism, the concept of social class was eliminated.

• The sociological void (Nowak, in relation to Polish society) describes a pattern where attachment is strong at the micro (family) and macro (nation) levels but very weak in the middle (voluntary associations, professional organisations, civic institutions).
• This void is one reason Letki’s finding that associational membership predicts political involvement was so consequential: building the middle level is what post-1989 CEE needed.

Worked example 4

Q: What reason do Pickel and Öztürk give for greater levels of Islamophobia in Central and Eastern Europe?

1. There are greater general levels of racism in CEE countries.
2. People in CEE countries are more religious, which increases the chances of religion-based stereotyping and thus prejudice.
3. People in CEE countries have fewer opportunities to adjust their negative stereotypes about Muslims through face-to-face contact. ✓
4. There are more Muslims in CEE, which means more chances for prejudice-laden contact.

• The contact hypothesis, applied at the country level. Muslim populations are very small in most CEE countries, so citizens cannot use direct contact to update stereotypes — and media/elite framing is free to produce the stereotypes without challenge.

Worked example 5

Q: In the immediate post-communist era, which of the following individuals would be LEAST likely to participate in political activity?

1. A citizen of Slovakia who was previously a member of the communist party.
2. A citizen of Slovakia who was not previously a member of the communist party.
3. A citizen of Russia who was not previously a member of the communist party. ✓
4. A citizen of Russia who was previously a member of the communist party.

• Letki’s findings, inverted: two positive predictors of participation are
  1. country-level democratic experience and (ii) former CP membership. Slovakia, in 1993–94, had more democratic experience than Russia; former CP members participate more than non-members.
• So the person with neither advantage — Russian, non-former-CP — is lowest on predicted involvement.

What the course was really about

• CEE post-1989 is a natural experiment in the social psychology of democracy.
• The evidence that has accumulated over 35 years allows us to trace causal chains from structural shock to individual psychology to collective action to political outcomes.
• The key finding is not pessimistic. The mechanisms that produced illiberalism are the same mechanisms that can produce liberal consolidation — differently channelled. Hungary’s 2026 reversal is the clearest recent proof.
• What matters is who is channelling the psychology, what targets they are framing, and which institutions are carrying the framing forward.