Corruption frequently tops the list of Ukrainians’ concerns about the state of their country.
Read the story here.
East Europeans attitudes toward democracy
An elderly woman casts her ballot in a village near Kyiv on Oct. 28 during the national parliamentary election. Officials with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe called the election a \u201cstep backwards\u201d for Ukrainian democracy.
More than twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, a closer look at opinion polls in four Eastern European states show two common trends: convergence on the level of values but divergence on the level of governance. While there is a growing tendency to embrace the rule of law, democratic institutions and even human rights among citizens, there is an absence of democratic institutions that could reflect the gradual shift in value preferences. Partly due to this lack of credible democratic institutions, individual (economic) goals have remained the key priority for Eastern Europeans.
This paper describes current trends based on available public opinion polls in four Eastern European countries (Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) in order to provide deeper analysis of the transition process taking place in these countries. It arguesthat the democratic transition in the post-Soviet countries should not be viewed only in terms of changes in the political elite, but also in terms of changes in the attitudes of citizens.
