IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mod/recent/059.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Individual support for economic and political changes: Evidence from transition countries, 1991-2004

Author

Listed:
  • Riccardo Rovelli
  • Anzelika Zaiceva

Abstract

Using a unique dataset, we propose a new measure of public evaluation of transitional reforms and study, for the first time, the evolution of support for economic and political reforms in 14 transition economies over 1991-2004. We show that support for economic changes has been increasing over time after an initial dip, while support for political reforms has generally been higher. Support attitudes are lower among the old, less skilled, unemployed, poor, and those living in the CIS countries, especially during the 1990s. We also find evidence that transition-related hardship, opinions on the speed of reforms, political preferences and preferences towards redistribution, ideology and social capital matter. Finally, we show that preferences for state ownership and the quality of political institutions contribute mostly to explaining the lower levels of support in the CIS countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Riccardo Rovelli & Anzelika Zaiceva, 2011. "Individual support for economic and political changes: Evidence from transition countries, 1991-2004," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 059, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    • Handle: RePEc:mod:recent:059
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://155.185.68.2/Recentpaper/recent-wp59.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anna Maria Mayda, 2006. "Who Is Against Immigration? A Cross-Country Investigation of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(3), pages 510-530, August.
    2. Milanovic, Branko & Ersado, Lire, 2008. "Reform and Inequality during the Transition: An Analysis Using Panel Household Survey Data, 1990-2005," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4780, The World Bank.
    3. Fidrmuc, Jan, 2000. "Political support for reforms: Economics of voting in transition countries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(8), pages 1491-1513, August.
    4. Kim, Byung-Yeon & Pirttila, Jukka, 2006. "Political constraints and economic reform: Empirical evidence from the post-communist transition in the 1990s," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 446-466, September.
    5. Fernandez, Raquel & Rodrik, Dani, 1991. "Resistance to Reform: Status Quo Bias in the Presence of Individual-Specific Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1146-1155, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Golinelli, Roberto & Rovelli, Riccardo, 2013. "Did growth and reforms increase citizens' support for the transition?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 112-137.
    2. Lehmann, Hartmut, 2012. "The Polish Growth Miracle: Outcome of Persistent Reform Efforts," IZA Policy Papers 40, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Golinelli, Roberto & Rovelli, Riccardo, 2013. "Did growth and reforms increase citizens' support for the transition?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 112-137.
    2. Nauro F. Campos & Paul De Grauwe & Yuemei Ji, 2017. "Structural Reforms, Growth and Inequality: An Overview of Theory, Measurement and Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 6812, CESifo.
    3. Matteo Migheli, 2016. "Behind the Wall: What Remains of the “Communist Legacy” in Contemporary Europe," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 127(2), pages 671-690, June.
    4. Begovic, Boris & Paunovic, Marko, 2011. "Political support for enterprise restructuring and voting in Serbia," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 171-180, March.
    5. Riccardo Rovelli & Anzelika Zaiceva, 2013. "Did support for economic and political reforms increase during the post-communist transition, and if so, why?," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 21(2), pages 193-240, April.
    6. Popov, Vladimir, 2014. "Puzzles of public opinion: Why Soviet population supports the transition to capitalism since the 1980S," MPRA Paper 60915, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Gabriel Felbermayr & Toshihiro Okubo, 2022. "Individual preferences on trade liberalization: evidence from a Japanese household survey," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 158(1), pages 305-330, February.
    8. Kim, Byung-Yeon & Jukka Pirttila, 2003. "The Political Economy of Reforms: Empirical Evidence from Post-Communist Transition in the 1990s," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 120, Royal Economic Society.
    9. Valev, Neven, 2004. "No pain, no gain: market reform, unemployment, and politics in Bulgaria," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 409-425, September.
    10. Kim, Byung-Yeon & Pirttila, Jukka, 2006. "Political constraints and economic reform: Empirical evidence from the post-communist transition in the 1990s," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 446-466, September.
    11. Fidrmuc, Jan, 2003. "Economic reform, democracy and growth during post-communist transition," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 583-604, September.
    12. repec:pra:mprapa:57840 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Tarabar, Danko, 2017. "Culture, democracy, and market reforms: Evidence from transition countries," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 456-480.
    14. Sweder J. G. van Wijnbergen & Tim Willems, 2016. "Learning Dynamics and Support for Economic Reforms: Why Good News Can Be Bad," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(1), pages 1-23.
    15. Matteo Migheli, 2012. "The transition of people’s preferences for the intervention of the government in the economy of re-unified Germany," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 11(2), pages 101-126, August.
    16. Jain, Sanjay & Sharun Mukand, 2003. "Public Opinion and the Dynamics of Reform," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 114, Royal Economic Society.
    17. repec:zbw:bofitp:2003_004 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Bonatti, Luigi & Fracasso, Andrea, 2019. "Policy inertia, self-defeating expectations and structural reforms: can policy modeling cope?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 943-962.
    19. Fałkowski, Jan, 2016. "Promoting change or preserving the status quo? - the consequences of dominating local politics by agricultural interests. Some evidence on structural change in Poland during the transition period," 149th Seminar, October 27-28, 2016, Rennes, France 245115, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    20. Gerard Rpland, 2001. "The Political Economy of Transition," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 413, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    21. Campos, Nauro F. & Horváth, Roman, 2012. "Reform redux: Measurement, determinants and growth implications," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 227-237.
    22. Duranton, Gilles & Haniotis, Toni, 2004. "A comparison between economic systems with an application to transition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 2125-2157, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    political economy; public support; reforms; transition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries
    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights
    • P36 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Consumer Economics; Health; Education and Training; Welfare, Income, Wealth, and Poverty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mod:recent:059. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/demodit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.