Identities, Ideologies, and Interests: Democratization and the Culture of Mass Politics in Spain and Eastern Europe

Democracies inherit distinctive configurations of cleavages underlying differentially divisive issues. This article develops an empirical model that accounts for support for and opposition to postauthoritarian and postcommunist governments as a function of conflicts based on identities, ideologies, and interests. While conflicts inspired by regional identities have troubled Spanish politics, antagonism over alternative economic ideologies had already begun to fade under the authoritarian capitalism of the last decades of Francoism, and the religious factor has been largely peripheral. By now interests rather than ideologies or identities are at stake. In many postcommunist societies in which the absolute level of economic development is inferior to that reached by Spain at the time of its transition, polarities between market and command models endure, and these are often entangled with regional and religious divisions. In others, such as Hungary, where market experimentation preceded political democratization and preindustrial cleavages are less acute, new regimes come under less strain.