Regional Economic Voting: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, 1990–1999

Extract

Regional Economic Voting: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, 1990–1999. By Joshua A. Tucker. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 444p. $29.99.

On the heels of a generation of scholarship on democratic transition and consolidation in postcommunist countries, and after several election cycles, relatively steady economic growth, and the accession of many countries in the region to NATO and the European Union, the theoretical concepts and assumptions derived from studies of mature democracies have increasingly been applied to the new democracies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. One fine example is Regional Economic Voting in which Joshua A. Tucker effectively probes and refines the assumptions of economic voting in established democracies to suggest how variations in economic conditions have affected political support for postcommunist parties. In particular, Tucker explores whether—and under what conditions—traditional economic voting assumptions, that incumbent parties and certain types of parties (right-wing parties in established democracies) perform better if the economy is better, are supported in postcommunist cases.