Pro-Western Attitudes in the Central and East Europe : Electoral Behavior

Abstract

The object of this paper is electoral behavior. The paper is concerned in the post-communist countries of the Central and Eastern Europe. It was analyzed EU newcomers of the fourth enlargement wave (Poland, the Baltic States), as well as the states covered by the European Neighborhood Policy such as Ukraine in the paper. The main aim was, analyzing electoral behavior in particular sub-national territories in order to discover differences and common trends for the countries examined. Efforts to interpret electoral behavior in the different sub-national territories of post-communist space as pro- or anti-Western orientation of the voters led to the complicated though interesting picture. Interconnecting relations between socio-economic, ethnic, cultural characteristics of particular sub-national territories and the attitudes of their inhabitants expressed in voting results and opinion polls were discussed. The specific of electoral behavior were analyzed using quantitative method. This method helped to examine the results of parliamentary and presidential elections and EU accession referenda of 2003. The results of elections and referenda were dependent variables. Opinion polls on democratic values, euro-integration, Euro-Atlantic security in particular territories were also taken into account. Then, specifics of regional voting were analyzed. Different depth of dividing state territories into sub-national units allows taking into consideration broad variety of economic and socio-economic characteristics of these territories. These characteristics, such as ethnic composition (percentage of ethnic group other that title one, if remarkable) and economic development (GDP per capita), served as independent.[...]