In Principle and in Practice: Learning Political Tolerance in Eastern and Western Europe

Abstract

Political tolerance is a key democratic value believed to undergird successful and healthy democracies. In nascent democracies especially, citizens must tolerate the views and participation of opposing groups in order to ensure methodical transfers of power with successive elections. Yet, despite its importance, little research considers tolerance outside established democracies. In this paper, we compare political tolerance across eight Eastern European countries and six Western countries. We demonstrate that mean levels of tolerance are lower in the newly democratized countries of Eastern Europe and then examine whether they are a function of East Europeans' limited experience with democracy. We also test whether established individual-level theories of tolerance replicate across this wide range of new and old democracies. We find some support for theories of democratic learning and also show that models of tolerance operate differently across the range of countries in our sample.

Shaping tolerant attitudes towards immigrants: The role of welfare state expenditures

“…Our results may challenge the findings by Crepaz and Damron (2009), Kirchner, Freitag, and Rapp (2011), and Marquart-Pyatt and Paxton (2007 who score the positive effects of welfare…”

Legislative Diversity and Social Tolerance: How Multiparty Systems Lead to Tolerant Citizens

“…Moreover, it is unlikely that any information relevant to marginal groups will receive attention in a nation without a free press. We thus expect that the duration a country has been free and democratic will have an impact on any given individual's exposure to minority issues and therefore also on social tolerance (see also Marquart-Pyatt & Paxton, 2007). This reasoning echoes Almond and Verba's (1963) positive linkage of "Civic Cultures" and a country's democratic experience.…”

The European Union and Consolidating Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

“…For example, political tolerance, a key component of support for civil liberties, is best achieved when learned through direct democratic experience, predominantly through the actual use and implementation of civil liberties (Peffley and Rohrschneider 2003;Guérin et al 2004;Marquart-Pyatt and Paxton 2007). While Marquart-Pyatt and Paxton (2007) find that political tolerance remains lower in CEE than in Western Europe, an interesting finding is that political tolerance in the 18-24 age group was considerably higher than in the other age groups in CEE. This, however, should not be surprising because these echo boomers grew up in rising democratic societies, which had embraced tolerance and freedom, unlike the older generations.…”