Explaining post-communist respect for civil liberty: A multi-methods test

This article explains the level of respect for civil liberty in post-communist countries. The methodological triangulation employs both QCA methods and OLS-regression to test the influence of structural conditions, the democratization literature emphasizes. The results show that the political legacy, that is, previous experience with civil liberty and a rule-abiding bureaucracy relates strongly to present civil liberty performance. The importance of the remaining factors (modernization indicators, dependence on natural resources, and ethno-religious diversity) is somewhat unclear because the results of the methods applied diverge. Expect a lack of congruence given their different assumptions and logics. As to the QCA methods in specific, they are apparently valuable supplements, and at times even plausible alternatives, to standard statistical tests.