MOBILIZING DEMOBILIZED VOTERS IN POSTCOMMUNIST SOCIETIES

A stable party system requires people to trust institutions, including parties, but in post-communist countries people have lived nearly all their lives in a political system that created distrust in reaction t o aggressive attempts to mobilize support for the party-state. Compara tive survey data from 10 post-communist countries show that the majori ty of electors are demobilized - that is, they distrust parties, do no t identify with a party, the modal group is a don't know when asked to express a party preference, and committed partisans are only a quarte r of the electorate. The result is that electoral support for parties is extremely volatile in comparison with election results in earlier w aves of democratization. This does not immediately threaten the regime , however, for even though most people do not believe that they can in fluence government, even more importantly they feel greater freedom fr om the state, which cannot influence them as in the days of the commun ist party-state.