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REGIONAL POLITICAL CULTURES OF POST-SOCIALIST SOCIETIES

Andrey Zinovyev

Abstract

One of the most cited definitions of “regional political culture” was given by the famous American political scientist D. Elazar. He defined it as a set of persistent political attitudes, values and behaviours that are passed down from generation to generation, which characterize a group of people living in conditions of territorial (geographical) proximity. Thus, regional political culture can be considered as a spatio-temporal phenomenon and in this way it becomes the human geography’s object of study, which is capable of transformation. Transformation happens when at some point of time the parameters of the significant characteristics of space become different, and their essence dramatically changes. Range of different economic, socio-cultural, political and other conditions that distinguish the territory from the rest as well as its location relative to the other at any given time will inevitably generate specific local spatial context. If the established context at some point of time is fixed on a certain area of space, then a stable essence of this territory is formed, i.e. the context turns into environment. Such "fixing" can occur repeatedly, thus, the human-geographical environment is a kind of layering of spatial contexts of different periods of history. Under the influence of the human-geographical environment that has developed on the territory regional political culture manifests itself, and environmental conditions act as factors that set its formation. The motives of political behavior, including the electoral one, are determined through the values and attitudes of regional political culture mediated by the current spatial context and adaptation to the political discourse that has developed in the society. In our research we tried to suggest a technique for investigating regional political cultures of societies in transition, using the example of post-socialist countries of Europe that experienced simultaneously a double transformation: 1) structural changes in the world economy and, as a consequence, in society (transition to the 5th cycle of Kondratiev); 2) systemic transformation from the administrative-command economy to the market economy and from the totalitarian political regime to the democratic one.

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