¹ On the distinction between a regime and the authorities constituting the government of the day, see Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley, 1965).Google Scholar In this article a regime is defined in constitutional and institutional terms, by contrast with the social psychological emphasis of Easton.

² The term Eastern Europe is here used in a political sense to refer to all territories in Europe formerly bound together under Soviet leadership. Geographically, the area is extensive, covering significant parts of Central and Southern Europe too. Some cities, such as Prague, are actually geographically west of cities such as Vienna and Venice, which are part of the political west. While the concepts used here can be employed to analyse reactions within the former republics of the Soviet Union, it is an open empirical question whether people in the former imperial power have reacted similarly to those in the countries examined below.

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⁴ The phrase is that of Janos Kis, as quoted in Ekiert, Grzegorz, ‘Democratic Processes in East Central Europe: A Theoretical Reconsideration’, British Journal of Political Science, 21 (1991), 285–314, pp. 287f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁶ On the importance of past experience in relation to present evaluations, see Rose, Richard, ‘Escaping from Absolute Dissatisfaction: A Trial-and-Error Model of Change in Eastern Europe’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 4 (1992), 371–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an example of a ‘timeless’ approach, see Gibson, James L., Duch, Raymond M. and Tedin, Kent L., ‘Democratic Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union’, Journal of Politics, 54 (1992), 329–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹¹ On the compulsory mobilization of public support through elections, see Pravda, Alex, ‘Elections in Communist Party States’, in Hermet, Guy, Rouquié, Alain and Rose, Richard, eds, Elections without Choice (London: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 169–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On private evasion of regimes with a totalitarian vocation, see Shlapentokh, Vladimir, Public and Private life of the Soviet People: Changing Values in Post-Stalin Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

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¹⁵ Colton, Timothy, ‘Approaches to the Politics of Systemic Economic Reform in the Soviet Union’, Soviet Economy, 3 (1987), 145–70Google Scholar, argued: ‘Ordinary Soviet citizens today can vote for or against economic renewal with their hands. Unless they in the end produce more and better goods and services, faster and more cheaply, economic restructuring is doomed’.

¹⁶ Welch, , ‘Issues in the Study of Political Culture – The Example of Communist Party States’, pp. 481ffGoogle Scholar, and sources cited therein. See also, Connor, Walter D. and Gitelman, Zvi Y., Public Opinion in European Socialist Systems (New York: Praeger, 1977)Google Scholar; Miller, Arthur H., Reisinger, William M. and Hesli, Vicki L., eds. Public Opinion and Regime Change (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993)Google Scholar, and the discussion in Camaghan, Ellen, ‘A Revolution in Mind: Russian Political Attitudes and the Origins of Democratization under Gorbachev’ (doctoral dissertation in political science, New York University).Google Scholar

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¹⁸ Kwiatkowski, Piotr, ‘Opinion Research and the Fall of Communism: Poland 1981–1990’, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 4 (1992), 358–74, p. 358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar His paper is one of six in a special issue of the journal. Monitoring Revolutionary Change: Opinion Research in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. See also various contributors to the book edited by Miller, , Reisinger, and Hesli, , Public Opinion and Regime Change.Google Scholar

¹⁹ The first-named author of this article served as the scientific adviser to the Paul Lazarsfeld Society in the writing of the questionnaire.

²⁰ For a systematic analysis of NDB evidence, showing a high degree of commonality in the responses of East Europeans, see Rose, Richard and Haerpfer, Christian, New Democracies between State and Market: A Baseline Report of Public Opinion (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde Studies in Public Policy. No. 204. 1992), pp. 53–77.Google Scholar

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²⁴ It is also consistent with the practice of American constitutionalism, which assumes that the characteristics of the regime ought to reflect the values and beliefs of the citizenry. But the European tradition is very different, for regimes have historically been based on dynastic inheritance, elite domination or force. The state came centuries before the idea of mobilizing the mass or giving it a voice in the direction of government – and this is particularly the case in Eastern Europe.

²⁵ The mean rating of the Communist regime on the scale was – 23 across the five countries; the standard deviation is very large, 58 points on a scale of 201 points.

²⁶ Przeworski, Adam, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reform in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 30f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²⁹ See, for example, OECD, The Transition to a Market Economy (Paris: OECD, 1991), vol. 1Google Scholar: The Broad Issues; vol. 2: Special Issues; Clague, Christopher and Rausser, Gordon, eds. The Emergence of Market Economies in Eastern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1992).Google Scholar

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³¹ To confirm this interpretation, we ran a discriminant function analysis on the pooled data and for each country; reactions to regimes was the dependent variable and all the social and economic variables in Tables 3 and 4 were included as independent variables. In the two significant functions the most important variables were individual evaluations of past, present and future economic regimes. In the pooled data set they classified 50 per cent of respondents correctly in the fourfold regime reaction typology, double what would be expected by chance.

³² Festinger, Leon, Social Pressures in Informal Groups (New York: Harper, 1950).Google Scholar

³³ Rose, and Haerpfer, , New Democracies between State and Market, p. 102.Google Scholar

³⁴ Summers, Lawrence, ‘The Next Decade in Central and Eastern Europe’Google Scholar, in Clague, and Rausser, , eds, The Emergence of Market Economies in Eastern Europe, pp. 25–34, especially pp. 25ff.Google Scholar

³⁵ See, for example, Sik, Endre, ‘From the Second to the Informal Economy’, Journal of Public Policy, 12 (1992), 153–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar