NEIGHBORHOOD TRUST AND TOLERANCE IN POST-COMMUNIST COUNTRIES

Cynthia M. HorneWestern Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, USA

Abstract:

This paper explores changes in neighborhood trust and tolerance in four countries in

Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), starting with the 1989 transitions through more than two

decades of post-communist state-building. The study finds high and stable levels of trust in

neighborhoods over time, with post transition levels remaining robust by regional standards.

Moreover, the trust propensities in post-communist countries mirror those predicted in the

trust literature, with older respondents and more educated respondents indicating higher levels

of neighborhood trust, and respondents in small towns reporting higher levels of

neighborhood trust than residents of large cities. In contrast to the neighborhood trust trends,

tolerance for neighbors of a different race and a different religion remains low or declining.

Religious intolerance increased slightly across the post-communist region since 1989. While

there were some countries showing slight improvements in tolerance for neighbors of a

different race, overall levels of racial intolerance were comparatively high by regional

standards. Intolerance for neighbors who spoke another language showed mixed results, rising

in Romania and falling in Poland. In sum, while neighborhood trust was relatively strong,

religious, ethnic, and linguistic tolerance for neighbors was low or declining. The dueling

tendencies mirror differences in bonding and bridging trust. Building bridges between

different groups creates more generalized trust, while deepening existing bonds within a

group reinforces particularized trust networks. As such, we have some evidence of

maintaining or deepening neighborhood trust in the post-communist space, but lower levels of

bridging trust with remaining intolerance for neighbors who are different. Since both bonding

and bridging trust are seen as necessary to support strong civil societies, the empirics in this

paper raise some concerns regarding post-communist neighborhood trust and tolerance

dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe.

Keywords:

trust, tolerance, neighborhood, social networks

Introduction

A significant body of scholarship in the social sciences has documented positive

relationships between trust, tolerance, civil society and democracy.1 When early post-

communist studies revealed low levels of institutional and interpersonal trust in Central and

Eastern Europe (CEE) and the former Soviet Union, legacies of the secretive and oppressive

communist systems, scholars appropriately cautioned that these low trust environments might

adversely affect the strength of civil society and democratization efforts.2 While scholars have

looked at aspects of social trust and social capital in the post-communist space, little

scholarship has focused on an especially proximate locus of trust for citizens, namely the trust

and tolerance people have for their neighbors.3 This study engages this lacuna asking, what

are the neighborhood trust and tolerance trends in CEE, and have there been changes since the

start of the transition from communism?

Since there has been minimal scholarly engagement with communist and post-

communist neighborhood trust and tolerance dynamics, we do not have a solid empirical

sense if neighborhood trust has gone up or down in the post-communist period. There is

reason to believe it might have changed since 1989. Most countries in CEE engaged in

lustration measures designed to publicly disclose information found in the secret police files

about regime complicity and spying activities that abetted the communist regimes.4 These

lustration revelations and accompanying file access procedures have allowed citizens to find

out if their friends, colleagues and neighbors were spying on them. As such, it is possible that

neighborhood trust in the post-communist period has declined as a result of the revelations

about betrayal and complicity across CEE. It is also possible that neighborhood trust

dynamics have changed significantly over the past twenty-five years as a function of the

widespread changes in social and political structures in the period of post-communist state

(re)building. Finally, in addition to the aforementioned changes, it is possible that the post-1 Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in 5 Nations, Sage Publications, New York, 1963; Seymour Martin Lipset, Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy, in „The American Political Science Review”, vol. 53, no. 1, March 1959, p. 69-105; Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993; Mark Warren, ed., Democracy and Trust, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1999; Eric Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2002. 2 János Kornai and Susan Rose-Ackerman, eds., Building a Trustworthy State in Post-Socialist Transition, Palgrave/Macmillan Press, New York, 2004; János Kornai, Bo Rothstein and Susan Rose-Ackerman, eds., Creating Social Trust in Post-Socialist Transition, Palgrave/Macmillan Press, New York, 2004.3 Gabriel Badescu and Eric Uslaner, Social Capital and the Transition to Democracy, Routledge, New York, 2003; Marc Morjé Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003; Piotr Sztompka, Trust: A Sociological Theory, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1999.4 Lavinia Stan, ed., Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, Routledge Press, New York, 2009.

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communist region continues to look markedly different from other countries in the region, due

to legacies of oppression and betrayal. None of these changes are exclusive of the other, and

the lack of solid longitudinal empirics on neighborhood trust dynamics leaves all of them as

real possibilities.

To preview the main findings, despite all of the post-communist revelations of spying

and complicity with the regime, neighborhood trust levels remained stably high over the

transition and post-communist periods. However, levels of intolerance toward neighbors

increased in some cases or remained high in others. Racial, religious and ethno-linguistic

intolerance did not improve significantly in the post-communist period. Exploring these

micro-level, bounded trust and tolerance propensities, this study considers post-communist

neighborhood trends over time with potential implications for continued regional

democratization efforts.

Social trust and tolerance

In the Annual Review of Psychology, Sullivan and Transue provide an overview of

scholarship on the relationship between political tolerance, social trust and democracy. They

find that “robust democracies require citizens to tolerate others' efforts to participate in

politics, even if they promote unpopular views.”5 Lipset’s research highlighted the central role

of tolerance in support of democracy.6 As Lipset points out, deep cleavages in social

structures or political structures that create social divisions or isolate individuals and groups

can undermine the cross-cutting cleavages emblematic of strong democracies.7 Similarly,

Ingelhart and Welzel’s World Values Survey’s data found tolerance, trust and political

participation to be strongly associated with participatory democracy.8 Most saliently for this

paper, they asserted that democracy must be rooted at the societal level, not just the national

level, encouraging us to consider trust and tolerance in societal groupings such as

neighborhoods.

The findings associated with tolerance overlap with and reinforce the expected

relationships between social trust and democracy asserted by scholars such as Putnam,

5 J.L. Sullivan and J.E. Transue, The Psychological Underpinnings of Democracy: A Selective Review of Research on Political Tolerance, Interpersonal Trust, and Social Capital, in “Annual Review of Psychology”, vol. 50, February 1999, p. 625.6 Seymour Martin Lipset, The Social Requisites of Democracy Revisited: 1993 Presidential Address, in “American Sociological Review”, vol. 59, no. 1 February 1994, p.1-22.7 Ibidem.8 Ronald Ingelhart and Christian Welzel, Political Culture and Democracy: Analyzing Cross-Level Linkages, in “Comparative Politics” , vol. 36, no. 1, 2003, p. 61-79.

2

Fukuyama, and Rothstein.9 Social trust is often called interpersonal trust and describes the

type of trusting relationships individuals have with each other. The trust between friends,

colleagues and neighbors can create bonds fostering social capital and supportive of

democratic consolidation.10 In general, there is a strong positive relationship asserted between

higher levels of interpersonal trust, stronger social capital networks, and more effective

government.11 Additionally, Ingelhart and Uslaner demonstrated that life satisfaction and

interpersonal trust were closely linked with stable democracy, suggesting the importance of

social trust to an array of desirable quality of life goals.12

Given the overlapping and mutually reinforcing nature of tolerance and trust in the

democratization literature, what type of trust-tolerance dynamics do we see in post-

communist countries at the neighborhood level? Circles of trust in one’s neighborhood affect

individuals on a daily level, either smoothing differences and promoting cooperation or

potentially exacerbating micro-aggressions and conflict. As such, neighborhood trust and

tolerance are salient and yet underexplored aspect of trust, meriting careful consideration. The

next section turns to some of the empirics available about these relationships in order to

explicate what types of neighborhood trust and tolerance dynamics we see over time in CEE.

Neighborhood Trust

The World Values Survey (WVS) asks a series of direct neighborhood trust questions,

as well as related questions about tolerance of different types of neighbors that I use for this

paper.13 WVS questions are administered in waves, with a given survey wave taking

approximately four years to complete. Therefore, year on year changes are not possible to

report, although broad trends over time are available for some countries. The graphs provided

in this paper will therefore report survey waves over time with the accompanying years over

9 Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000; Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, Free Press Paperbacks Book, New York, 1995; Bo Rothstein and Dietlind Stolle, The State and Social Capital: An Institutional Theory of Generalized Trust, in “Comparative Politics”, vol. 40, no. 4, 2008, p. 441-459.10 Piotr Sztompka, Trust, 1999.11 Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 1993; Bo Rothstein, The Quality of Government: Corruption, Social Trust, and Inequality in International Perspective, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2011; Charles Tilly, Trust and Rule, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2005. 12 Ronald Ingelhart, Modernization and Post-Modernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997; Ronald Ingelhart, Trust, well-being and democracy, in Mark Warren, ed., Democracy and Trust, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1999, p. 88-120; Eric Uslaner, Corruption, Inequality and the Rule of Law: The Bulging Pocket Makes the Life Easy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008. 13 For the main website see World Values Survey http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp, (accessed 12.09.2017).

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which each set of surveys was administered. Not all countries are included in every survey

wave, for example there is very little data on the Czech Republic over time so it is not

included. Therefore, the data reported in this paper represent a best effort to capture changes

in neighborhood attitudes in several CEE countries over time, given data limitations.

Trust your neighborhood

The WVS asks individuals to assess how much they trust their neighborhood on a

scale of one to four with ‘1’ indicating ‘trust completely’ and ‘4’ reflecting ‘no trust at all.’14

Figure 1 presents a longitudinal comparison of reported levels of trust in neighborhoods over

time in Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania using the integrated longitudinal aggregate

data from the World Values Survey.15 The survey data spans several WVS waves, covering

the period 1989-2009, which helps in capturing a rough snapshot of communist and post-

communist trust levels. No data is available for Hungary and Bulgaria in the 2010-2014

survey wave, hence no values are plotted for that time period.

First, there is a steady clustering of neighborhood trust levels across the region over

time. Although there is variation between the countries, they group together fairly tightly over

the twenty years of available data. Second, Poland started out as a trust outlier, with

significantly higher levels of neighborhood trust in the first available survey wave, but its trust

levels gradually declined and are squarely situated within the regional norm by the end of

2009. In general, trust levels remain fairly consistent over the transition period, suggesting

small changes if any in neighborhood trust in the immediate post-communist periods. In other

words, despite the possibility of major changes as a function of lustration and public

disclosures of the past or as a function of larger socio-economic changes seen during the

transition, levels of neighborhood trust have remained durably consistent.

14 The exact wording of the question is: “I‘d like to ask you how much you trust people from various groups. Could you tell me for each whether you trust people from this group completely, somewhat, not very much or not at all?: Your neighborhood”. This is question V126 in the 2005/2009 survey wave and question V103 in the 2010/2014 survey wave. Note—the longitudinal aggregate presents a different trust in neighborhood measure as compared to the individual survey waves. This is done to provide more cross-national and longitudinal continuity in figures. Therefore, the values presented here will look slightly different from the values presented in the individual waves. See WORLD VALUES SURVEY 1981-2014 LONGITUDINAL AGGREGATE v.20150418. World Values Survey Association (www.worldvaluessurvey.org). Aggregate File Producer: JDSystems, Madrid SPAIN. 15 I chose these countries because they had the most complete time series data.

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1989-1993 1994-1998 1999-2004 2005-200910%15%20%25%30%35%40%

Figure 1: Trust in Neighborhood (WVS Question G007_18_B-integrated longitudinal

Bulgaria Hungary Poland Romania

World Value Survey Waves

% tr

ust i

n ne

ighb

orho

od

Table 1 disaggregates the survey responses regarding trust in neighborhood to have a

better snapshot of how individuals responded in each country using only the disaggregated

survey responses from the WVS 5 (2005-2009). 16 Hungary registered the highest levels of

trust in neighborhoods, with Romania and Poland having lower levels of trust in

neighborhoods by comparison. If one combines responses from ‘trust completely’ and ‘trust

somewhat’, Poland’s relative position is more on par with regional norms. More than 80% of

Hungarian respondents said they trusted their neighborhoods, as compared to 75% of Poles,

and 74% of Bulgarians. Romania’s neighborhood trust levels were the lowest of this sample,

with less than 50% of Romanians responding that they trusted their neighborhoods.

These figures suggest generally high levels of neighborhood trust, especially when

compared with regional interpersonal trust measures: in other words, measures of how much

trust individuals have for others in general. For example, interpersonal trust measures in the

2005/2009 survey showed 21% of Bulgarians, 27% of Hungarians, and 26% of Poles said that

“most people can be trusted.”17 In contrast, neighborhood trust measures were almost three

times as high as general social trust measures. Even the Romanian figures for trust in

neighborhood were quite high by comparison. Romania’s interpersonal trust level was 31% in

the 2005/2009 survey, but its neighborhood trust was more than 50%, suggesting people in

16 Note, this is drawn from the individual WVS Wave 5 data, hence the scores reported are slightly different from the aggregate longitudinal dataset in which scores are normalized across the country samples. This holds true for the WVS Wave 6 data also reported here. WORLD VALUES SURVEY Wave 6 2010-2014 and Wave 5 2005-2009. OFFICIAL AGGREGATE v.20150418. World Values Survey Association (www.worldvaluessurvey.org). Aggregate File Producer: Asep/JDS, Madrid SPAIN. 17 See WVS 1981-2014 time series data, Question A165.

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Romania have more trust for people in their immediate neighborhood environment than

people in general. This contextualizes the Romanian trust figure, showing that even

Romania’s neighborhood trust levels are strong by regional standards of social trust.

Table 1: Trust Your Neighborhood (WVS Wave 5: 2005-2009)    

WVS-Question V126--% of total responses reported  

  Bulgaria Hungary Poland Romania  

Trust completely 18.3% 30.7% 9.0% 8.3%  

Somewhat 55.1% 50.7% 66.0% 40.6%  

Not very much 22.0% 14.1% 20.4% 38.9%  

No trust at all 3.2% 3.6% 4.1% 10.8%  

No answer 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.7%  

Don´t know 1.4% 0.9% 0.6% 0.8%  

total number of responses in sample 1,001 1,007 1000 1,776  

         

Of the post-communist countries, only Poland and Romania were surveyed on

neighborhood trust attitudes in WVS wave 5 (2005-2009) and 6 (2010-2014). Table 2

provides comparative data on trust in neighborhoods over these periods to facilitate a closer

look at trends in Romania and engage the most recent survey data. Levels of neighborhood

trust in Poland remained stably high, with approximately 75% of individuals polled reporting

they ‘trusted completely’ or ‘somewhat’ their neighborhood in both time periods. Since these

two time periods together cover almost a decade, this suggests a fairly stable level of trust and

distrust in Poland. By comparison, over the same decade, levels of trust in Romania declined

slightly and levels of distrust increased. 50% of Romanians polled said they did not trust their

neighborhood in 2005-2009, increasing to 56% in 2010-2014. This is a small but noticeable

change in Romania. The next section explores some demographic factors that could provide

more nuance to our understanding of neighborhood trust in these countries.

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Table 2: Trust: Your neighborhood (% respondents)WVS survey year-Waves 5 and 6

2005-2009 2010-2014  

Poland  

Trust completely 9% 8%  

Trust somewhat 66% 65%  

Do not trust very much 20% 18%  

Do not trust at all 4% 4%  

No answer 0 0  

Don´t know 1% 3%  

(N-total sample) 1,000 966  

   

Romania  

Trust completely 8% 9%  

Trust somewhat 41% 34%  

Do not trust very much 39% 43%  

Do not trust at all 11% 13%  

No answer 1% 0  

Don´t know 1% 1%  

(N-total sample) 1,776 1,503  

Demographic considerations and neighborhood trust

Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and Romania were polled in the 2005-2009 survey wave,

allowing for an examination of some of the possible ways that demographic variables, such as

level of age, education, and rural/urban divisions, might affect attitudes toward neighborhood

trust.

Age

There is evidence in the trust literature that older respondents tend to be more trusting

than younger ones.18 Table 3 presents figures for trust propensities broken down by age group

to see if there are similar age-trust relationships in the post-communist space. In all four

countries, older citizens have more neighborhood trust than younger respondents. In Poland,

Hungary and Bulgaria there were large differences in neighborhood trust registered between

people younger than 29 and people older than 50. For example, while approximately 13% of

respondents 50 or older in Poland said they trusted their neighborhood completely, only 5.4%

18 For example, Matthias Sutter and Martin Kocher, Trust and Trustworthiness Across Different Age Groups, in “Games and Economic Behavior”, vol. 59, no. 2, 2007, p. 364-382.

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of those under 30 said they trusted their neighborhood. In Bulgaria the gap was also large with

older respondents trusting their neighborhood at more than twice the rate of younger

respondents. Moreover, a high percentage of the young across all four countries said they did

not have much trust or had no trust at all: approximately 27% in Hungary, 31% in Poland,

58% in Romania and 32% in Bulgaria. The trust differences in this cross-national sample

remain consistent with expectations that older respondents are generally more trusting than

younger respondents.

Table 3: Trust your Neighborhood by Age Groups (WVS Wave 5: 2005-

2009)

   

Poland       Hungary      

Age

age

<29 30-49 50+ Age

age

<29 30-49 50+

Trust

completely 5.4% 7.2% 12.9%

Trust

completely 22.8% 27.5% 36.8%

Somewhat 62.5% 71.2% 63.3% Somewhat 47.8% 54.9% 48.7%

Not very much 24.0% 18.8% 19.6% Not very much 21.8% 14.4% 10.4%

No trust at all 7.1% 2.5% 3.6% No trust at all 5.3% 1.9% 4.1%

     

Romania       Bulgaria      

Age

age

<29 30-49 50+ Age

age

<29 30-49 50+

Trust

completely 7.5% 7.1% 9.4%

Trust

completely 16.7% 12.9% 23.4%

Somewhat 32.2% 36.9% 46.2% Somewhat 49.0% 56.1% 57.0%

Not very much 43.6% 42.5% 34.5% Not very much 25.8% 27.4% 15.9%

No trust at all 14.7% 12.2% 8.4% No trust at all 6.1% 2.9% 2.3%

Rural/Urban

One might expect smaller towns to have higher levels of neighborhood trust and larger

cities to have less neighborhood trust for reasons associated with overall population size,

density of social interactions, permanency of residents, and crime rates, to name a few. Table

4 presents trust breakdowns by the size of the town, with five population sizes presented for

comparison. As to be expected, in general there was more trust in neighborhoods in very

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small towns and lower trust in more urban areas, with the smallest trust levels in the largest

cities for which data was available. In some of the cases the trust differences were quite

marked, as was the case for Poland and Romania.

For example, only 1.7% of respondents in large cities in Poland said they trusted

completely their neighbors as compared to 16.4% of Poles living in very small towns. Distrust

levels were noticeably higher in larger cities in Romania than smaller towns, with more than

50% of Romanians saying they didn’t trust much or at all their neighborhoods in large cities.

However, more than 60% of Romanians in small towns said they did trust their neighborhood,

highlighting the manner in which town size can affect the way we interpret national trust data.

Table 4: Trust your Neighborhood by Town Size (WVS

Wave 5: 2005-2009)

pop size

2000-

5000

10,000-

20,000

50,000-

100,00

0

100.000

-

500,000 > 500,000

   

Poland  

Trust completely

16.4

% 9.9% 9.2% 5.0% 1.7%

Somewhat

61.2

% 74.8% 65.1% 69.1% 63.3%

Not very much

17.5

% 13.8% 19.9% 20.3% 29.4%

No trust at all 5.0% 1.6% 5.7% 4.1% 4.8%

 

Romania

Trust completely

11.6

% 12.5% 6.0% 4.8% N/A

Somewhat

50.2

% 47.9% 41.4% 29.8% N/A

Not very much

28.8

% 33.3% 45.1% 47.9% N/A

No trust at all 6.4% 6.2% 7.5% 15.4% N/A

 

BulgariaTrust completely 24.5 20.0% 27.9% 13.5% 12.1%

9

%

Somewhat

54.1

% 50.2% 42.5% 50.4% 58.0%

Not very much

18.8

% 20.2% 27.2% 29.3% 21.5%

No trust at all 2.6% 9.5% 1.6% 5.2% 5.6%

 

Hungary

Trust completely

38.6

% 23.0% 25.3% 20.0% 22.8%

Somewhat

40.1

% 61.5% 56.1% 50.4% 58.7%

Not very much

13.0

% 14.1% 15.1% 20.4% 14.4%

No trust at all 7.2% 1.4% 2.2% 3.3% 2.9%

That said, when one looked at mid-size towns, there wasn’t as much variation. For

example, approximately 65-75% of Bulgarians said they trusted completely or somewhat

people in their neighborhood in towns ranging from 10,000-500,000 in population. While

there are trust differences to be sure based on the size of the city, the largest differences were

between very small towns and large cities. These urban/rural trust in neighborhood trends

appear consistent with expectations, suggesting that the post-communist experience fits within

propensities generally noted in the trust literature.

Education level

Research on trust has shown that one’s level of education affects trust, with more

educated people more likely to trust others, although mitigating factors can condition these

expected relationships.19 Figure 2 presents WVS data on trust in neighborhood by education

level, and Figure 3 reports distrust in neighborhood by education level. Distrust and trust are

aggregated figures, with trust representing the sum of the percentage of individuals who said

they ‘trusted completely’ or ‘somewhat’ and distrust representing the sum of the percentage

of individuals who said they ‘did not trust very much’ or ‘did not trust at all’ in order to

capture all responses. 19 For example, see Marc Hooghe, Sofie Marien and Thomas de Vroome, The cognitive basis of trust. The relation between education, cognitive ability, and generalized and political trust, in “Intelligence”, vol. 40, issue 6, 2012, p. 604-613; Francesca Borgonovi, The relationship between education and levels of trust and tolerance in Europe, in “The British Journal of Sociology”, vol. 63, issue 1, 2012, p. 146-167.

10

As Figure 2 demonstrates, there was a slight difference in reported trust among the

most highly educated people versus individuals with little formal education. However, in

Romania, the most educated respondents were the least trusting and those who completed

only primary school were the most trusting, with trust decreasing by education level. In

Hungary, the most and the least educated shared similar neighborhood trust numbers, with

more variation seen across the middle education levels. Illustrated in Figure 3, Hungary’s

distrust levels looked fairly consistent across education levels. In sum, while education does

appear to have an impact on neighborhood trust, it is not an overwhelmingly important

indicator of trust or distrust in neighborhoods in the post-communist sample.

Poland Romania Bulgaria Hungary0.0%

50.0%100.0%150.0%200.0%250.0%300.0%350.0%400.0%450.0%500.0%

75.2%61.3%

78.1%

84.9%

79.7%47.5%

71.2%

82.5%

72.5% 42.7%

67.9%

79.8%

71.2%41.8%

88.7%

64.5%80.8%

36.8%

72.8%

86.6%

57.2% 80.3%0.0%

Figure 2: Percentage people say can trust neighborhood: By education level (WVS 2005-2009)

no formal primary school technical/ vocationalsecondary school some university completed university

11

Poland Romania Bulgaria Hungary0.0%

50.0%

100.0%

150.0%

200.0%

250.0%

300.0%

350.0%

24.7%

38.7%22.0%

14.6%20.3%

50.7%

27.9%

16.7%

27.5%

56.0%

30.0%

19.8%

25.7%

56.7%

11.3%

32.7%

16.5%

61.8%

25.6%

10.7%

35.7% 26.2%

Figure 3: Percentage people say cannot trust neighborhood: By education level (WVS 2005-2009)

no formal primary school technical/ vocationalsecondary school some university completed university

In sum, the cross-national comparisons present us with some empirics on post-

communist neighborhood trust propensities. First, neighborhood trust levels have fluctuated

some since the transition, but remain high and regionally clustered as of the latest WVS

survey. In particular, there are no regional laggards that might raise red flags as we consider

possible implications of neighborhood trust on civil society and democracy. Given the

possibility that public disclosures of past regime complicity or revelations of spying by

neighbors on neighbors might have undermined neighborhood trust, this is a positive

finding.20

Second, demographic variables comport with our expectations based on the trust

literature. Younger people are less trusting than older people, and people in small towns are

more trusting of their neighborhoods than people in large cities. More educated people are

slightly more trusting than less educated people. In a word, these demographic differences

suggest that there is nothing particularly unusual about the neighborhood trust propensities

seen in CEE. Since this paper is motivated by empirically ascertaining if the trajectories in

post-communist states are situated in what we know about trust, this is good news.

Communist legacies do not seem to have irreparably scarred neighborhood trust propensities

in CEE as feared by some scholars. The next section turns to questions of tolerance, as

tolerance is hypothesized to also be a foundational component of robust democracies.

20 Cynthia M. Horne, Lustration, Transitional Justice and Social Trust in Post-Communist Countries. Repairing or Wresting the Ties that Bind?, in “Europe-Asia Studies”, vol. 66, issue 2, 2014, p. 225-254.

12

Neighborhood Tolerance

Tolerance toward others is considered vital to support robust civil societies and strong

democracies. The WVS includes questions addressing attitudes towards neighbors that

capture some aspects of tolerance and inclusion. For example, the WVS asks: “On this list

are various groups of people. Could you please mention any that you would not like to have

as neighbors?”21 Possible responses include: people of a different race, people who speak a

different language, people of a different religion, and people who are former criminals. I

present data on some of these responses to illustrate tolerance as another important dimension

of neighborhood level interpersonal dynamics.

Different religion

Figure 4 presents a cross-national comparison of the responses “would not like to have

neighbors of a different religion”, covering both communist and post-communist periods.22

Figure 4 also includes data on Germany and Spain in order to contextualize the post-

communist countries within the broader European experience. Data is not available for all

countries in the 1981-1984 wave, so only a subset of the countries was included.

First, there is remarkable comportment across the countries. The post-communist

experiences track so closely that individual country trends are at times visually obscured on

the graph. By the 2005-2009 survey wave, there was a clustering of responses across all of the

countries, including Germany and Spain.23

Second, in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, there was a small but clear rise in

intolerance for people of other religions. In 1989-1993, approximately 8-9% of Bulgarians,

Hungarians and Romanians said they would rather not have neighbors of other religions, but

by 2005-2009 that figure rose to 14-18%. This brought those countries in line with Poland,

which had a communist and post-communist figure at approximately 14-15%. Therefore, the

general level of religious intolerance in the region has risen slightly, hovering at

approximately 15% of the population. Compared to Germany this is low, since Germany has a

reported rate of 24%. Nonetheless, over the past twenty-five years there is a slight increase in 21 There are other more typical responses, such as heavy drinkers and drug addicts. There are also responses focused on specific ethnic groups, such as Jews and Muslims. I chose more broad categories that might apply to societal tolerance of difference. 22 There are various question equivalents by WVS wave: 1995/1999: Question V56_03; 2000/2004: Question V77_03; 2005/2009: Question V39; and 2010/2013: Question V41. The data presented here are from the longitudinal integrated dataset. 23 Germany, Bulgaria, and Hungary were not included in the 2010/2014 survey wave so there is no data available to compare over a longer time period.

13

regional levels of religious intolerance. The post-communist religious tolerance levels look

like their regional counterparts, albeit showing rising intolerance.

1981-1984 1989-1993 1994-1998 1999-2004 2005-20095%

10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%50%

Figure 4: Rather not have neighbors of different religion (WVS longitudinal data)

Bulgaria Germany HungaryPoland Romania Spain

World Value Survey Wave Years

% p

eopl

e sa

y do

nt' w

ant n

eigh

bors

of d

iffer

ent

relig

ion

Different race

The WVS also asks people how they feel about neighbors of another race: “On this

list are various groups of people. Could you please mention any that you would not like to

have as neighbors?-- People of a different race.”24 As with the previous analysis, I plot a

comparison of attitudes in four post-communist countries over time, comparing them to

Germany and Spain. As Figure 5 demonstrates, there is a clustering of responses across the

region, although there is more variation in responses than that seen with respect to the

religious tolerance question.

First, we see generally higher levels of racial intolerance before the political

transitions, with levels of racial intolerance generally declining in the post-communist period.

Although data is not available for all countries for the most recent 2010-2014 period, Poland

registered its lowest rate ever, putting it on par with Spain and at one-third the rate in

Germany. Therefore, although the post-communist countries registered high levels of racial

intolerance by regional comparisons, there was evidence of improvement over time.

24 The number of the question changes in the various WVS waves. 1981/1984: Question V52; 1990/1994: Question V70; 1995/1999 Question V52; 2000/2004 Question V69; and 2005/2009 Question V35.

14

The positive trends notwithstanding, the post-communist countries registered

significantly more racial intolerance than Spain and Germany. In Spain, responses hovered at

the 5% level for the last decade, with Germany’s also averaging at this level, spiking up some

in the 2010-2014 survey. By comparison, Bulgaria’s average level of racial intolerance was

22% in the post-communist period, with Poland’s at 16% for the period from 1994-2009. This

suggests a noticeably higher overall level of racial intolerance among the post-communist

countries, albeit with some improvements over time.

 

1989-1993 1994-1998 1999-2004 2005-2009 2010-20140

10

20

30

40

50

39

17

2820

11 114 6

1523

19

0

12

28 3024

1823

Figure 5: Rather not have neighbors of a different raceWVS Integrated Data-Question A124_02

Bulgaria Germany HungaryPoland Romania Spain

World Value Survey Waves by Year

% re

spon

d w

oul d

not w

ant n

eigh

br o

f dif-

fere

nt ra

ce

Different language

Individuals were asked about their feelings toward neighbors who spoke a different

language: “On this list are various groups of people. Could you please mention any that you

would not like to have as neighbors?-- People who speak a different language.”25 In some

ways this is a proxy for tolerance of other ethnic groups or non-native nationals in a

neighborhood. While data is only available for Poland and Romania, Figure 6 compares the

results disaggregated by age to introduce some generational dynamics into our understanding

of neighborhood tolerance.

First, in the 2005/2009 survey a total of 11.5% of Romanians and 8.4% of Poles said

they did not want neighbors who spoke a different language. In 2010/2014, 16.7% of

Romanians and 5.1% of Poles responded similarly. This suggests a noticeable decrease in

tolerance in Romania and an increase in tolerance in Poland. Second, when comparing the

results by age group, respondents over 50 were the least tolerant and respondents younger

25 Question V44 in the 2010/2014 WVS, V42 is the equivalent in the 2005/2009 survey.

15

than 30 were the most tolerant. However, in Poland in the 2005/2006 survey this trend was

reversed with the youngest cohort the least tolerant. By the 2010/2014 survey, attitudes

among the below 30 year old group changed the most, dropping to a nearly negligible 1% of

respondents. It is of note that intolerance in both age groups younger than 50 in Poland

dropped measurably, with the major difference in attitude registered between groups above

and below 50. Figure 6 shows that intolerance of people speaking a different language

increased in Romania and decreased in Poland, with salient changes within the young in both

directions. These findings do not suggest consistent post-communist trends, hinting instead at

the need to consider domestic level factors affecting tolerance toward ethnic or linguistic

differences within neighborhoods.

Romania Poland Romania Poland2005/2009 2010/2014

0.0%5.0%

10.0%15.0%20.0%25.0%30.0%35.0%40.0%45.0%50.0%

Figure 6: Don't want neighbors who speak different language-By age group

% re

spon

ses

In sum, the WVS questions related to tolerance of different types of neighbors

produced mixed results. Nearly twenty-five years after the end of communism there was a

slight increase in regional levels of religious intolerance, however those levels were on par

with Spain and below Germany. While there were within and between country improvements

in racial tolerance in the post-communist countries, levels remained high by regional

comparisons. Finally, intolerance of people speaking a different language increased in

Romania and decreased in Poland, with salient changes within the young in both directions.

While this section cannot comment on what causes shifts in tolerance in CEE, the empirics

shed some light on trends in post-communist societal attitudes toward different ethnic,

religious, and linguistic groups.

Conclusion

16

The central questions motivating this paper were what do the neighborhood trust and

tolerance dynamics look like in CEE, and have they changed in the post-communist period?

The empirics presented in this paper present a mixed view of trust and tolerance trends.

First, neighborhood trust trends evidenced some fluctuations both within and between

countries since 1989, but in general the post-communist countries converged on each other by

the 2005/2009 survey and improved slightly. Overall levels of neighborhood trust were high,

with 75% of Poles, 73% of Bulgarians, and 80% of Hungarians saying they trusted their

neighborhood. Even the lowest reported numbers from Romania were relatively high by

comparison with typical regional interpersonal trust responses. When looking at trust

propensities by age, education level, or urban/rural divisions, again the post-communist

region appeared consistent with expectations. Older people were more trusting, more

educated people were more trusting, and respondents in more rural areas registered higher

levels of neighborhood trust. In general, there was high neighborhood trust in the CEE

countries considered here, with expected demographic factors affecting neighborhood trust.

Second, there was more mixed evidence with respect to tolerance of different

neighbors. Religious intolerance increased some in the region, although the most recent levels

put CEE on par with Spain. Racial intolerance in the region was quite high under

communism, and has decreased some over time, with Hungary being a regional outlier.

However, racial intolerance remains high by comparison. Intolerance for people who speak a

different language increased in Romania and decreased in Poland. The findings paint a picture

of some improvements but still challenges with respect to racial, ethnic, and religious

tolerance in the post-communist space.

These findings might appear at odds with each other if not for the insights of Robert

Putnam’s work into bridging and bonding forms of trust.26 When one trusts outside of one’s

established group, one builds trust bridges to others, thereby expanding the community or

circles of trust. When one bonds more densely within an already established group, one

deepens already existing social networks. Building bridges between different groups creates

more generalized trust, while deepening existing bonds within a group mainly reinforces

particularized trust networks. As such, we have some evidence of maintaining or deepening

neighborhood trust in the post-communist space, but lower levels of bridging trust with

remaining intolerance for neighbors who are different. Such dueling tendencies constitute

26 Robert Putnam. Bowling Alone, 2000.

17

important findings, since scholarship has suggested the reification of narrowly defined

community bonds can potentially undermine social capital and civil society.27

In conclusion, one of the primary reasons we care about trust and tolerance levels is

because of the expected relationships between more trust and tolerance and higher levels of

life satisfaction, stronger civil societies, more robust democracies and more effective

governments. To advance these meta-goals, the empirics in this paper point to a need for

consideration of neighborhood trust and tolerance dynamics in post-communist countries,

with an eye to fostering both bonding and bridging trust networks.

27 Ibidem; Francis Fukuyama, Trust, 1995.

18