Overview of today’s lecture

• Recap: legacies and the two explanations
• Social-psychological theories as analytical lenses
• Theories I: Identity, justification, and learning
• Theories II: Memory, capital, and dissonance
• Theories III: Conformity, helplessness, and justice
• Theories IV: Deprivation, mortality, and contact
• Integrating theory with evidence: Pop-Eleches & Tucker (2013)

Recap: two explanations for post-communist attitudes

• Pop-Eleches & Tucker (Communism’s Shadow, Ch. 1) identify two candidate explanations for why post-communist citizens differ from others:
  • Living through communism: direct exposure to communist socialisation shaped attitudes
  • Living in a post-communist country: present-day contextual factors (demographics, economic conditions, political institutions) drive differences
• Their key finding: direct exposure — especially during formative years — is the stronger explanation for attitudes toward democracy, markets, and welfare
• Today we explore the social-psychological mechanisms through which these legacies operate

Recap: intensity and resistance

• Pop-Eleches & Tucker use a sunburn analogy: the effect of communist exposure depends on both dose and sensitivity
  • Temporal exposure: years lived under communist rule
  • Intensity: Stalinist vs. post-totalitarian regimes; secondary schooling under communism
  • Resistance: pre-communist literacy (enabling nationalist counter-narratives); Catholicism as an alternative community hostile to communist precepts
• These modifiers map directly onto social-psychological concepts:
  • Intensity → strength of socialisation signal (social learning, conformity)
  • Resistance → alternative identity resources (social identity, collective memory)

Social identity theory: core concepts

• Developed by Tajfel & Turner (1979, 1986)
• People derive part of their self-concept from membership in social groups
  • Social categorisation: classifying self and others into groups
  • Social identification: internalising group membership as part of self-concept
  • Social comparison: evaluating one’s group against relevant out-groups
• People are motivated to maintain positive distinctiveness for their in-group
• Threats to group identity trigger defensive strategies:
  • Individual mobility (exit the group)
  • Social creativity (redefine comparison)
  • Social competition (challenge the out-group directly)

Social identity theory: communist-era applications

• Communist regimes suppressed national, religious, and class identities in favour of a homogenised socialist identity
  • Forced collective identities — workplace brigades, party membership, youth organisations — created in-group structures centred on regime compliance
  • Simultaneously, unofficial in-groups (family, church, underground networks) became repositories of authentic identity
• The repression of national identity often intensified it as a source of positive distinctiveness
  • Resistance identities formed in opposition to Soviet-imposed collective identities
  • Religious identity (especially Catholicism in Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic) became a key alternative in-group

Social identity theory: post-communist applications

• After 1989, the collapse of official in-group structures created an identity vacuum
  • New political parties, civic organisations, and national symbols competed to fill it
  • Many citizens struggled to locate themselves within unfamiliar democratic categories
• Persistence of us vs. them cognitive style:
  • Heightened sensitivity to out-group threats (immigrants, minorities, Western institutions)
  • Nationalist parties successfully activate social identity dynamics
  • Post-communist democratic backsliding often framed in identity terms (true people vs. elites)
• Link to P-E&T (2013): religiosity as the strongest demographic predictor of civic participation reflects the continued importance of religious in-group identity as a civic resource

System justification theory: core concepts

• Developed by Jost & Banaji (1994); extended by Jost, Banaji & Nosek (2004)
• People are motivated not only to justify their own position but also to justify the existing social system — even when it disadvantages them
  • Internalising system-legitimising beliefs reduces cognitive dissonance and anxiety
  • “False consciousness”: disadvantaged groups sometimes hold the most system-justifying beliefs
• Three justification motives:
  • Ego-justification: justifying one’s own outcomes
  • Group-justification: justifying one’s group’s outcomes
  • System-justification: justifying the existing social order

System justification theory: communist-era applications

• Communist regimes were experts at cultivating system-justifying beliefs:
  • Ideology presented the socialist system as historically inevitable and morally superior
  • Critique of the system was framed as deviance, mental illness, or enemy activity
  • Citizens who internalised these beliefs could reduce the dissonance of living under an authoritarian system
• Long-term effect: citizens trained to justify the existing order may apply the same cognitive habit to any system — including post-communist democratic or hybrid regimes
  • System justification can inhibit democratic demand and critical civic engagement
  • “This is just how things are” — fatalistic acceptance of inequality and corruption

System justification theory: post-communist applications

• Post-communist citizens may be predisposed to accept rather than challenge the status quo
  • Decades of system-justifying training created durable cognitive habits
  • When post-communist regimes engage in democratic backsliding, citizens may justify this as necessary or inevitable
• Paradox: system justification also led to nostalgia for the communist system once it collapsed
  • “Ostalgie” and similar phenomena reflect retrospective justification of the old system
  • Social security, predictability, and full employment are reconstructed as system virtues
• Link to P-E&T (2013): post-totalitarian socialization (ages 6–17) was the strongest demobilizing factor — consistent with early system-justifying training reducing civic demand

Social learning theory: core concepts

• Developed by Bandura (1977, 1986); builds on behaviourist learning theory
• People learn behaviours, norms, and attitudes by observing and imitating others
  • Modelling: behaviour of role models is observed and replicated
  • Reinforcement: observed rewards for behaviour increase the likelihood of imitation
  • Self-efficacy: beliefs about one’s own capacity to produce outcomes shape behaviour
• Social learning is especially powerful during formative years (childhood and adolescence)
  • Primary socialisation agents: family, peers, school, media

Social learning theory: communist-era applications

• Communist regimes deliberately structured the socialisation environment:
  • Schools, youth organisations, and workplaces were active sites of regime-approved modelling
  • Role models were party members, Stakhanovite workers, and ideologically correct citizens
  • Deviant behaviour — political dissent, religious practice, independent thinking — was visibly punished, reducing its modelling appeal
• Crucially, private social learning within families often transmitted counter-regime values
  • Parents taught children to present a public face while privately holding different views
  • This double life created a lasting split between public performance and private belief

Social learning theory: post-communist applications

• Post-communist citizens learned that political participation was dangerous, performative, or futile — and these lessons shaped civic behaviour long after communism ended
  • Low-efficacy models (citizens who stayed quiet and survived) were more visible than high-efficacy models (dissidents who were punished)
• P-E&T (2013) Socialization Legacy proposition: citizens socialised under communism learned passivity and disengagement as adaptive strategies
  • The strongest effects on civic participation deficit come from post-totalitarian exposure during ages 6–17 — exactly the period when social learning is most intense
  • Stalinist exposure was surprisingly weaker — possibly because its brutality was more visible and less likely to produce internalised compliance

Collective memory theory: core concepts

• Drawing on Halbwachs (1925, 1950); developed by Olick, Pennebaker, and others
• Memory is not purely individual: it is socially constructed and maintained through shared narratives, commemorations, and rituals
  • Groups selectively remember and forget in ways that serve present-day collective needs
  • Collective trauma: shared experiences of suffering that shape group identity
  • Mnemonic communities: groups defined partly by what they remember together
• Memory is also contested: different groups within a society may hold competing narratives about the same past events

Collective memory theory: communist-era applications

• Communist regimes attempted to control collective memory comprehensively:
  • Official histories erased inconvenient facts (Soviet-German pact, Katyń, pre-war democracy)
  • Commemorations centred on party triumphs and liberation narratives
  • Unofficial memory was suppressed but survived in family stories, samizdat, and religious ritual
• Religion played a crucial role as a carrier of alternative collective memory
  • The Catholic Church in Poland preserved national memory outside state control
  • Religious festivals and pilgrimages maintained collective identity under surveillance
• Link to P-E&T (2013): religiosity predicts higher civic participation because religious communities are mnemonic communities — they maintain civic traditions and collective identity resources that communist regimes tried to destroy

Collective memory theory: post-communist applications

• After 1989, post-communist societies faced a memory politics challenge:
  • How to acknowledge communist crimes without delegitimising those who compromised?
  • Lustration, truth commissions, and monument removals became politically explosive
  • Memory wars between victims, perpetrators, and bystanders continue today
• Selective nostalgia (Ostalgie) reflects collective memory’s tendency to reconstruct the past in terms of present discontents
  • Economic insecurity after transition → selective recall of communist social security
  • This shapes political behaviour: support for parties promising to restore stability
• The politics of memory (Holocaust, Soviet occupation, wartime collaboration) remains a potent mobilising resource across CEE

Social capital theory: core concepts

• Developed by Putnam (1993, 2000); building on Bourdieu and Coleman
• Social capital: networks, norms, and trust that enable collective action
  • Bonding capital: ties within homogeneous groups (strong, but exclusive)
  • Bridging capital: ties across different groups (weaker, but broadly enabling)
  • Linking capital: vertical ties connecting citizens to institutions
• Civic participation both produces and requires social capital
  • Dense associational networks sustain democratic participation
  • Erosion of social capital creates a “civic desert” vulnerable to elite manipulation

Social capital theory: communist-era applications

• Communist regimes systematically destroyed bridging and linking social capital:
  • Independent associations (churches excepted) were disbanded or co-opted
  • State-controlled organisations replaced organic civic networks
  • Surveillance and informant networks made horizontal trust dangerous
• Bonding capital within close family and friendship networks was maintained — indeed intensified — as a survival strategy
  • The result: a bifurcated social structure of intense in-group trust and deep out-group suspicion
• This pattern matches P-E&T’s (2013) Demographic Legacy proposition: communist demography shaped the distribution of social capital, particularly through religiosity

Social capital theory: post-communist applications

• Post-communist societies inherited a distinctive social capital profile:
  • Strong bonding capital within families and close networks
  • Weak bridging capital across diverse civic associations
  • Very low linking capital between citizens and formal institutions
• Consequences for democratic consolidation:
  • Civil society organisations are weak, externally funded, and disconnected from citizens
  • Political parties lack genuine membership bases
  • Corruption thrives where linking capital is absent and informal networks dominate
• Link to P-E&T (2013): the civic participation deficit is partly explained by the absence of the associational networks that ordinarily generate participation — especially outside religious institutions, which preserved social capital under communism

Cognitive dissonance theory: core concepts

• Developed by Festinger (1957)
• Cognitive dissonance: the discomfort produced when a person holds two inconsistent cognitions (beliefs, attitudes, or awareness of behaviours)
  • People are motivated to reduce dissonance by changing one cognition, adding new ones, or minimising the importance of the inconsistency
• Dissonance reduction can lead to attitude change: if one cannot change behaviour, one changes the attitude to match the behaviour
• Especially relevant when behaviour is coerced but rationalised over time

Cognitive dissonance theory: applications to post-communism

• Life under communism constantly produced cognitive dissonance:
  • Citizens who publicly endorsed the regime while privately disagreeing needed to reduce the dissonance between their public performance and private beliefs
  • Over time, many citizens partially internalised the attitudes they were forced to perform (Kuran’s preference falsification)
  • This explains why even sincere supporters of the regime often held ambivalent beliefs
• Post-communist dissonance:
  • Citizens who collaborated or benefited from communist institutions face dissonance about their past conduct — resolved through nostalgia, denial, or victim narratives
  • Rapid economic change created dissonance between market ideology and lived experience of inequality — resolved through anti-market attitudes or nationalist framing
• Link to P-E&T: system justification and learned passivity may partly reflect dissonance reduction — accepting the system to avoid the discomfort of resistance

Social influence and conformity: core concepts

• Drawing on Asch (1951), Milgram (1963), Moscovici (1980)
• Conformity: adjusting beliefs or behaviour to match perceived group norms
  • Informational influence: conforming because others seem to know better
  • Normative influence: conforming to gain social approval or avoid rejection
• Minority influence (Moscovici): consistent, committed minorities can shift majority opinion
  • Requires consistency, confidence, and willingness to accept social costs
• Conformity is especially strong in conditions of uncertainty and threat

Social influence and conformity: communist-era applications

• Communist regimes exploited conformity mechanisms extensively:
  • Public rituals (demonstrations, elections, self-criticism sessions) normalised regime support
  • Pluralistic ignorance: many citizens privately opposed the regime while believing others genuinely supported it — making individual resistance seem futile and deviant
  • Informant networks made non-conformity existentially risky
• The collapse of communism in 1989 was partly a cascade of conformity reversal:
  • Once public dissent became visible (Solidarity, Charter 77, Leipzig demonstrations), pluralistic ignorance collapsed and cascades of mass mobilisation followed
  • The speed of 1989 is explicable by conformity dynamics — not just rational calculation

Social influence and conformity: post-communist applications

• Post-communist conformity dynamics persist in several forms:
  • Formal institutional compliance without genuine internalisation
  • “Going along” with populist majorities — democratic backsliding sustained by normative conformity even among citizens who privately prefer liberal norms
  • Media environment homogenisation in captured states recreates conditions for pluralistic ignorance
• Link to P-E&T (2013): avoidance of civic participation may partly reflect conformity to post-communist norms of political passivity — if most people stay home, participation becomes deviant rather than normative

Learned helplessness: core concepts

• Developed by Seligman (1975); drawing on Maier & Seligman’s animal studies
• Learned helplessness: when organisms repeatedly experience uncontrollable outcomes, they learn to stop trying to influence their environment — even when control becomes possible
  • Three components: cognitive (belief that outcomes are uncontrollable), motivational (reduced effort), and emotional (depression and passivity)
  • Attribution style: people differ in whether they attribute helplessness internally (stable and global) or externally (unstable and specific)
• Applied to humans: repeated experiences of political futility create lasting passivity

Learned helplessness: communist-era and post-communist applications

• Decades of communist rule systematically taught political helplessness:
  • Individual political action had no effect on outcomes — elections were rigged, dissent was punished, and complaints to authorities were futile or dangerous
  • The adaptive response was withdrawal from the political sphere into private life
  • This created what Václav Havel called “living within the lie” — disengagement as a survival strategy
• Post-communist persistence:
  • Citizens who learned that politics is uncontrollable do not spontaneously re-engage when formally free to do so
  • Low external efficacy (“politicians don’t care what I think”) combined with low internal efficacy (“I don’t understand politics”) reproduces passivity
• Central to P-E&T (2013): the Socialization Legacy proposition — demobilization learned through years of communist socialisation persists into the post-communist period; post-totalitarian early exposure (ages 6–17) is the single strongest predictor of deficit

Just world theory: core concepts

• Developed by Lerner (1980)
• Belief in a just world: the tendency to believe that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get
  • Functional: reduces anxiety about random suffering; motivates long-term planning
  • Dysfunctional: leads to victim-blaming; justifies inequality
• Just world beliefs vary across cultures and are shaped by socialisation
  • Strong just world beliefs can sustain acceptance of inequality and elite privilege
  • Weak just world beliefs may fuel resentment and populist mobilisation

Just world theory: post-communist applications

• Communist regimes promoted a collective just world ideology:
  • The socialist system was just by definition; suffering was the deserved fate of enemies
  • Individuals who conformed and contributed would be rewarded with security
• Post-communist just world dynamics:
  • When the transition produced visible inequality and the enrichment of a small elite through privatisation, just world beliefs were severely disrupted
  • Reactive resentment: citizens concluded that the post-communist world was unjust, and those who benefited did so through illegitimate means
  • This fuels anti-elite sentiment, support for redistribution, and vulnerability to populist appeals promising to restore justice
  • “The oligarchs stole our factory” — a just world violation narrative

Relative deprivation theory: core concepts

• Developed by Stouffer et al. (1949); formalised by Gurr (1970)
• Relative deprivation: the perception of a discrepancy between what one has and what one believes one deserves or expects (by comparison with a reference group)
  • Egoistic deprivation: comparison of self with others
  • Fraternal deprivation: comparison of one’s group with another group
• Relative deprivation produces frustration, resentment, and a sense of injustice
  • Classic application: why do revolutions occur not at the peak of misery but after a period of improvement that is then frustrated (Davies’ J-curve)?

Relative deprivation theory: communist-era applications

• Under communism, relative deprivation was managed through information control:
  • Citizens were largely shielded from knowledge of Western living standards
  • Comparison groups were within-country (relative equality of misery)
  • Occasional contact with Western goods and media created desire but limited comparison
• Late-communist period: as information flows increased, relative deprivation intensified
  • “Why do we live like this when they live like that?”
  • Consumer goods shortages acquired new meaning once comparison with the West was possible
  • This contributed to the delegitimation of communist regimes by the 1980s

Relative deprivation theory: post-communist applications

• Post-1989 transition created intense relative deprivation dynamics:
  • Temporal comparison: citizens compared current hardship with remembered stability
  • Spatial comparison: citizens compared their situation with Western Europe
  • Within-country comparison: extreme inequality from privatisation created strong fraternal deprivation
• All three comparison frames were available simultaneously — and all produced grievance
• Link to P-E&T (2013) Differential Stimuli proposition: economic performance significantly predicts post-communist civic participation deficit
  • Countries with worse economic transitions show larger participation deficits
  • Relative deprivation translates into demobilisation when institutions seem unable to respond to grievance

Terror management theory: core concepts

• Developed by Greenberg, Pyszczynski & Solomon (1986); drawing on Becker’s Denial of Death
• Terror management theory (TMT): awareness of mortality creates existential anxiety that people manage by investing in cultural worldviews that provide symbolic immortality
  • Cultural worldviews (religion, nation, ideology) provide meaning, order, and continuity beyond individual death
  • Mortality salience: reminders of death increase investment in worldview-affirming beliefs and hostility toward those who challenge them
• TMT predicts: threat → stronger in-group identification, stronger out-group hostility, greater appeal of charismatic leaders who promise collective redemption

Terror management theory: post-communist applications

• Post-communist transitions involved high mortality salience in a figurative and literal sense:
  • Collapse of the social order, economic insecurity, health crises, and actual mortality increases during transition created existential anxiety
  • The end of communism was also the death of a worldview — leaving a symbolic vacuum
• TMT predicts heightened investment in alternative worldviews offering continuity:
  • Nationalism provides symbolic immortality through the nation’s historical narrative
  • Religion offers literal immortality and collective meaning
  • Ideological movements (including authoritarianism) offer belonging and certainty
• Link to P-E&T (2013): religiosity’s strong positive effect on civic participation may partly reflect TMT dynamics — religious communities provide worldview support and mortality management, sustaining civic engagement against demobilising pressures

Contact theory: core concepts

• Developed by Allport (1954); extended by Pettigrew & Tropp (2006)
• Contact hypothesis: under appropriate conditions, direct contact between members of different groups reduces prejudice and intergroup hostility
  • Allport’s conditions: equal status, common goals, institutional support, cooperative rather than competitive interaction
  • Extended contact: knowing someone who has cross-group friendships can reduce prejudice
• Contact theory implies that segregation and restricted interaction perpetuate prejudice
  • Conversely, well-designed contact interventions can shift attitudes

Contact theory: communist-era and post-communist applications

• Communist regimes imposed a distinctive contact environment:
  • Formal internationalism (socialist fraternity) coexisted with ethnic homogenisation through forced resettlements, border changes, and expulsions
  • Contact with Western citizens was restricted; contact with Soviet citizens was mandatory but often resented
  • Roma, Jews, and other minorities experienced discrimination despite official equality
• Post-communist contact deficits:
  • Low experience of genuine multicultural contact makes societies more vulnerable to out-group threat narratives
  • EU freedom of movement created new contact opportunities — but also new anxieties
  • Anti-immigration attitudes in CEE partly reflect contact theory dynamics: countries with less actual immigration experience often show the most hostility

Pop-Eleches & Tucker (2013): the civic participation deficit

• Pop-Eleches & Tucker (“Associated with the Past?”, East European Politics and Societies, 2013) ask: why do post-communist citizens participate less in civic life than comparable non-post-communist citizens?
• Using World Values Survey data, they find a robust post-communist participation deficit across multiple forms of civic activity:
  • Membership in voluntary associations
  • Signing petitions
  • Attending demonstrations
  • Contacting officials
• The deficit persists even after controlling for standard socioeconomic predictors

Three propositions

• Pop-Eleches & Tucker propose three explanations for the deficit:
  • Socialization Legacy: citizens socialised under communism internalised passive civic orientations — politics was something done to you, not by you
  • Demographic Legacy: communist demography (especially suppression of religiosity) reduced the supply of civic resources — religious citizens participate more everywhere, and communism deliberately reduced religiosity
  • Differential Stimuli: post-communist economic and institutional context provides weaker stimuli for participation — economic crisis demobilises, and weak institutions offer fewer meaningful participation opportunities

Empirical findings

• The post-communist participation deficit is large and robust — not explained away by controls for income, education, or urbanisation
• Demography (especially religiosity) explains approximately 40% of the deficit:
  • Religious citizens participate significantly more in civic life
  • Communism systematically suppressed religiosity
  • Lower post-communist religiosity → fewer civic participants
• Post-totalitarian early socialisation (exposure during ages 6–17) is the single strongest demobilising factor
  • More years of post-totalitarian schooling → lower civic participation
  • Stalinist exposure is surprisingly weaker — perhaps because overt terror is less effective at producing internalised passivity than softer post-totalitarian pressure
• Economic performance matters: worse transitions → larger participation deficits
• Political institutions do not: the type of post-communist government does not independently explain civic participation

Connecting theory and evidence: summary

What the theories add to the evidence

• P-E&T’s empirical findings are compelling but under-theorised at the individual level:
  • Why does post-totalitarian early exposure demobilise so effectively?
    • Social learning: passive civic models; conformity to non-participation norms; learned helplessness from unresponsive political environment
  • Why does religiosity protect against the deficit?
    • Social capital (bridging networks); social identity (in-group civic norms); collective memory (alternative traditions); TMT (worldview sustaining engagement)
  • Why does economic performance matter more than political institutions?
    • Relative deprivation theory: grievance → demobilisation when institutions seem unresponsive; system justification → passive acceptance of economic injustice

Implications for democratic consolidation

• The social-psychological legacy of communism creates a structurally thin civil society:
  • Participation habits are not easily rebuilt through institutional reform alone
  • Generational replacement may be slower than expected if passive civic norms are transmitted culturally as well as through direct exposure
  • Religious communities remain the most robust source of civic capital — but also carry conservative values that may resist liberal democratic norms
• The combination of demobilised citizens and weak civic institutions creates conditions for democratic backsliding:
  • Low civic participation → less accountability pressure on governments
  • Populist parties can mobilise identity grievances in a civic vacuum
  • Contact theory suggests integration and exposure to out-groups could help — but post-communist societies have limited experience of managed diversity