Institutional Stickiness of Democracy in Post-Communist States : Can Prevailing Culture Explain It?

Structural explanation of political development offers a finite set of factors that cause democracy to consolidate or not (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2006). This approach is, however, insufficient to explain political development of post-communist countries because it ignores a role of social arrangements in democratic consolidation. The field of comparative political economy is becoming more acceptable to the idea that social institutions have significant impact on political development (Boettke et al., 2005). Using transitional experience of post-communist countries, I demonstrate that institutional stickiness of democracy depends on a combination of causal factors, including underlying political culture (Boettke et al., 2008; Pejovich, 2003)