Political behavior and historical legacies in post-communist Europe

Thirty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, political behaviour in post-communist Europe continues to diverge from patterns in Western Europe, contributing to a research paradigm centred on explaining these outcomes as legacies of communism. This state-of-the-art review synthesizes key findings on post-1989 political behaviour and maps central contributions over the last three decades, with patterns often explained by socialization within communist states. It then presents three recurring critiques of interpreting post-communist divergence as communist legacy effects: first, that observed patterns may reflect longer pre-communist trajectories; second, that they may be produced or amplified by post-1989 transformations; and third, that political behaviour is shaped not only by past experience but also by how the communist past is interpreted and contested through memory politics. The review highlights how methodological developments, especially cohort-based approaches, have strengthened inference by isolating generational patterns associated with communist exposure. Building on these advances, it outlines a complementary research agenda that specifies which communist legacies matter and through what mechanisms, by measuring heterogeneous lived experiences under communism and treating memory as a mechanism. Realizing this agenda requires renewed data collection, which is increasingly urgent as temporal distance from communism grows.