Social Inequalities and Left-Right Orientation in 13 Post-

Communist Eastern European Countries

Krzysztof Podemski

podemski@amu.edu.pl

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Left, centre and right

Popular concepts for categorisation and description of political parties, manifestos, politics and ideologies since the end of XVIII century. They originally referred to the seating arrangements in the Legislative Assembly during the French Revolution in 1791

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Left, centre and right , selected classic theories

Author Left Centre Right Robert MacIver, 1947 Lower class interest Middle class interest Upper class interest Dino Confrancesco, 1975

Liberalisation, Limitation of privileges

Tradition saving

Seymour M. Lipset , 1981

Liberal, progressive, democracy, free market, secularism, social reform, socialism, limited role of the church, low strata rights, more justice division of GDP

In the middle Conservative, reaction, monarchy, economical restrictions, exploitation of rural areas, capitalism important role of church no right for low strata, less justice division of GDP

Arend Lijphart, 1984 Government ownership, government planning, income redistribution support social programmes

Private ownership, No government planning, No income redistribution, no social programmes

Peter Glotz , 1992 Limitation of market logic, Social questions sensitivity

Free market, No social questions sensitivity

Elias Diaz, 1992 Labour over capital, public over private

Capital over labour, private over public

Norberto Bobbio, 1995 Egalitarianism and authoritarianism, trust in state

Centro-left (egalitarianism and liberalism) Centro-right (liberalism and Anti-egalitarianism)

Anti-liberalism and Anti-egalitarianism, trust in individuals and association

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Left-right in contemporary discourse

Left, centre and right as general ideological and political categories have particular meanings in different historical, political and cultural contexts.

For example free market supporters were in the XIX century treated as left (Giddens, 1998). Some authors even argue, that left vs right have

not been longer appropriate categories for describing political scene.

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The end of Left-Right? A.  Michnik (2008): those categories were crucial since the British till the Bolshevik Revolution only but later has been replaced by opposition of

supporters vs enemies of “open society”. J. Baudrilliard (1981),S. Żiżek (2002): left vs right do not exist in the post- politics era, where politics has been turned into media show, so ideologies have been replaced by political marketing.

Some authors still think that left and right are important political labels.

U. Beck (2002): there is a process of pluralisation and differentiation as well left and right in our second modernity into 4 types of left (protectionist, neoliberal, transnational, cosmopolitan) and 4 types of right ( ethnic, neoliberal, transnational, cosmopolitan) N.Bobbio (1995): opposition left – right is still meaningful because it concerns the crucial issue, the issue of the social equality

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Attempt to reconstruct the empirical meaning of the left,

the centre, and the right in Eastern Europe

3 possible different procedures: 1) arbitrary giving labels of left, centre and right to

syndromes of attitudes emerged from surveys 2) reconstructing common definitions of the left,

the centre, the right via qualitative research, close to humanistic sociology approach

3) searching correlations of the left- right scale with sociodemographics and political attitudes and values (an attempt below)

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Frequency distribution the scale the Left (1) – the Right (10)

E3. Many people think of political attitudes as being on the "Left" or the "Right". This is a scale stretching from the Left to the Right. When you think of your own

political attitudes, where would you put yourself?

SHOW CARD 13. LEFT

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

LEFT RIGHT

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Frequency distribution the scale the Left (1) – the Right (10)

13 countries spring 2007

Frequency Percent

1 (the Left) 492 3.1 2 556 3.6

3 1013 6.5 4 1114 7.1 5 4053 25.9 6 2268 14.5 7 1363 8.7 8 1246 8.0 9 589 3.8 10 (the Right) 580 3.7 Do not know 2374 15.2 Total 15648 100.0

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Popularity of left – right self- placement in Eastern Europe

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Means of the scale the Left (1) – the Right (10)

Country Means N Standard deviation

Moldova 4.68 692 2.280

Bulgaria 5.06 894 2.369

The Czech Republic 5.30 978 2.236

Russia 5.39 1969 1.635

Slovakia 5.44 766 2.047

Hungary 5.52 771 2.480

Romania 5.56 1035 2.213

Belarus 5.57 1000 1.477

Estonia 5.62 712 1.900

Latvia 5.78 976 1.961

Ukraine 5.88 1406 2.093

Lithuania 5.90 625 2.000

Poland 5.99 1450 2.143

total 5.54 13274 2.072

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Dominance of the centre Centre: 40,4% of Eastern Europeans chose central (5 and 6) positions of the 10 score scale. That ‘centre’ includes probably also respondents who did not want or were not able to affiliate themselves to clear political labels. In all post-communist countries ‘centre’ identification is the most common. This phenomenon appeared in the highest degree in Belarus (66,7%) and in Russia (63,2%), the lowest in Moldova (25,9%), Romania (26,2%), Hungary (27,8%) and Lithuania (27,8%).

Very left: 3,1% of respondents identified with “the very left” (position 1 on the scale), the most in Bulgaria (7,5%) and Moldova (6,3%), and the least in Belarus (below the 1%).

Very right: 3,7% identified with “the very right” (position 10 on the scale) , the most in Poland (8,2%) and in Hungary and Ukraine (6,2%), the least in Belarus (1,9%) Russia (2%).

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Four types of post-communist societies (freq. L, C, R)

1)  Relative balance between the centre, the left and the right : the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and to a lesser degree Estonia and Slovakia

2)  Relative dominance of the left over the right : Moldova, Bulgaria.

3)  Evident dominance of the centre : Belarus and Russia

4)  Relative dominance of the right over the left : Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine.

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International comparison CSES, 2005 http://www.umich.edu/~cses/resources/

results/CSESresults_LeftRight.htm,

)

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Social inequalities and the left, the centre, the right identification

Position on the LR scale ought to correlate with

•  social status variables •  values variables •  party support variables These correlations will be different in each

of 13 countries

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Social status (life standard) and Left - Right

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Social status (economic capital) and Left - Right

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Social status (cultural capital) and Left - Right

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Social status (social class) and Left - Right

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Generations (Age) and Left - Right

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LR and social status

Left and right self-placement correlates with social status:

-  never in Lithuania and Belarus -  relatively more strongly in the Czech

Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Estonia and Moldova

-  weak in other countries -  negative with economic status in Hungary

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Values (democracy) and Left-Right

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Values (capitalism) and Left-Right

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Values (egalitarianism) and Left-Right

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Values (welfare state I) and Left-Right

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Values (welfare state II) and Left-Right

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Values (European Union) and Left-Right

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Values (women emancipation) and Left-Right

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Values (xenofobia) and Left-Right

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Values (conservative morality) and Left-Right

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LR and values

Left and right self-placement correlates with values:

-  relatively more strongly in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Estonia and Romania

-  weak in other countries -  often different (negative or positive) in

Hungary and sometimes in Poland

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Support for any party (C3a) and LR

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3 main parties (C3b) and LR •  Bulgaria: BSP (2,36), GERB (6,71),ATAKA (6,86) •  Moldova: CPfRM (3,85), OMAP(6,11), SLP (5,86) •  Latvia: HC (4,02),GaFP (6,88), NE (6,94) •  Slovakia: SMER (4,40), SDKU (7,4), HZDS (6,00) •  Lithuania: LSDP (4,66),HU (8,08),OaJ (5,75) •  Estonia: ECP (4,74), ERP (6,66), PPaRPU(6,87) •  Ukraine: PoR (5,42), BoJT (7,03), PUOU (6,90) •  Russia:UR (5,96), CPoRF (3,92), LDPoR (5,58) •  Romania: PD (6,13), PSD (3,80), PNL (6,73) •  Hungary: SDS (7,98), HSP (4,46),FFD (4,40) •  Poland: PiS (8,12), PO (6,55), LiD (2,66) •  the Czech Republic: ODS (8,29), CSSD

(3,53),CPBaM (2,55)

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dominanceofthecentredominanceofthele/

dominanceoftheright

/or:balancebetweenthele/,thecentreandtheright

highcorrelationswithsocio‐demographicvariablesanda:tudesscales

lowcorrelations

hardlyanycorrela=ons

BEL

RUS

CZE

HUN(‐)

ROM

SLOESTMOL

BUL

UKR

LAT LIT

POL

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Conclusions •  Left vs right identification exists in Eastern

Europe •  Only in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia

and Bulgaria left vs right identifications are more similar to ”classical” Western European patterns (where LR scale relatively stronger correlates with both sociodemographics and values variables).

•  The lack of clear differentiation of the left and the right leads to exclusion of the social inequality issue from the political discourse.

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References - Baudrilliard Jean, Simulacres et simulation, Edition Galilee, Paris, 1981 - Bobbio Norberto, Destra e sinistra. Ragioni e significati di una distinzione politica, Donzelli editore, Roma 1995 - Beck Urlich, Macht und Gegenmacht im Globalen Zeitalter. Neue Weltpolitische Okonomie, Suhrkamp Verlag Frankurfurt am Main, 2002 - Confrancesco Dino, Per uso critico dei termini ‘destra’ et ‘sinistra’, „La Cultura”, nr 3-4, 1975 - Diaz Elias, Derechas y izquiredas, „El Sol”, 1991 - Glotz Peter , Die Linke nach dem Sieg des Westens, Deutsche Verlag – Anslat, Stuttgart, 1992 - Giddens Anthony, The Third Way. The Renewal of Social Democracy, Polity Press, Oxford,

1998 - Lijphart Arend, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-

One Countries, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn, 1984 - Lipset Seymour M., Political Man. The Social Bases of Politics, The John Hopkinss University

Press, 1981 - MacIver Robert, The Web of Government, New York, Macmillan 1947 - Michnik Adam, Marzec, Maj a z wolnością kłopot . Michnik spiera się z Cohn Benditem

„Gazeta Wyborcza”, 24 03 2008 - Żiżek Slavoj, W.I. Lenin, Revolution at the Gates. A Selection of Writings from February to

October 1917, Verso, London, 2002