What's past is prologue, or is it? Generational effects on voter turnout in post-communist countries, 1990–2013

• We analyse generational effects on turnout in post-communist countries since 1990.
• We use cross-classified random effects model on pooled post-election surveys.
• Socialization in different political regimes has weak effect on turnout.
• Voters under communist regime didn't form a habit of voting under the compulsory voting.
• Younger generations have almost the same propensity to vote as older generations.

A common theme in studies of voter turnout in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is that the legacy of communism attenuates electoral participation. It is argued that socialization and the political habits that emerged under communism impeded democratic development by not motivating citizen activism. This paper examines this claim for voter turnout in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland for all general elections since 1990 using cohort analysis on pooled crosssectional post-election surveys from given countries. This paper shows that socialization and political habit formation under communism have had no discernible effect on voter turnout in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary between 1990 and 2013. Generational effects are evident in Poland suggesting that this country's political history is qualitatively different from that of its neighbours. This research is important in highlighting that citizens' political development within non-liberal democratic regimes does not always lead to lower levels of voter turnout. Consequently, the decline in turnout in CEE is likely to have attitudinal rather than generational origins where contemporary rather than historical political developments are most important.