Postcommunist legacies, values, and behavior

Twenty years after the collapse of communism, a rough consensus in the literature on postcommunist politics is that the past matters. Many questions remain, however, about exactly how, when, and why the past matters, especially in terms of political values and behavior. An original theoretical framework facilitates the consideration of the effect of communist-era legacies on postcommunist political values and behavior. The framework includes a set of mechanisms by which these effects can be transmitted and a set of particular values and behaviors whose legacy effects may be particularly important. Illustrating its utility, the framework is applied to an examination of the issue of trust in political parties.