Regional Economic Voting: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and
the Czech Republic, 1990–1999. By Joshua A. Tucker. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006. 444p. $29.99.
On the heels of a generation of scholarship on democratic transition
and consolidation in postcommunist countries, and after several election
cycles, relatively steady economic growth, and the accession of many
countries in the region to NATO and the European Union, the theoretical
concepts and assumptions derived from studies of mature democracies have
increasingly been applied to the new democracies of Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union. One fine example is Regional Economic Voting
in which Joshua A. Tucker effectively probes and refines the assumptions
of economic voting in established democracies to suggest how variations in
economic conditions have affected political support for postcommunist
parties. In particular, Tucker explores whether—and under what
conditions—traditional economic voting assumptions, that incumbent
parties and certain types of parties (right-wing parties in established
democracies) perform better if the economy is better, are supported in
postcommunist cases.