Political Culture of Society under the Conditions of Radical Social Changes. A Comparative Analysis of Poland and Ukraine

Abstract: This paper is devoted to the comparative study of political culture in the two post-communist countries Poland and Ukraine, which are in different stages in the transformation from communist to democratic society. Our analysis is based on data sets provided by the New Democracies Barometer III (1993) and IV (1995). Political culture is defined as a system of orientations toward politics. The evaluative component of such aspects of political culture as regime orientation, external competence and political trust is taken into consideration. Our comparison shows that in Poland the evaluation of external competence is more positive than in Ukraine. The population of Ukraine distrusts the political institutions more than the population of Poland. In Ukraine a substantial part of the population feels nostalgia for communist times, and this nostalgia has a tendency to increase. In Poland on the other hand the majority of population evaluates the communist regime negatively. The structure of the relations between the economic and political orientations is mainly the same in both countries under study. Differences in relations presented in the model have a tendency to decrease. The direction in which Ukraine is heading is similar to that of Poland.;