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Years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the right to freedom of expression remains less important to Germans who lived in the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) than to their West German counterparts. These are the findings of a study by economists from the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg and the University of Groningen. The longer people lived in the GDR, the greater the difference is, the analysis showed. In contrast, there are no evident east-west differences among people born after the fall of the Berlin Wall 1989.
The study was published in the renowned Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. The authors – Dr. Olga Popova (IOS) and Prof. Dr. Milena Nikolova (University of Groningen) – approached the division and later reunification of Germany as a natural experiment to investigate the long-term effects of socialism on individual freedom of speech values. They analyzed data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) from longitudinal surveys, involving the same people in 1996, 2006, and 2016, as well as data from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) covering 1991 to 2018.
Respondents were asked to indicate, for example, how important they consider the protection of freedom of expression to be as a political goal in comparison to maintaining public order, campaigning against price increases, and giving citizens more influence over the government. The researchers compared the responses of people who had lived in the GDR before 1989 with those of people who had lived in the Federal Republic of Germany before 1989. According to the results, citizens of the former GDR consistently gave relatively low priority to freedom of expression.
In 1996, as the economists' analysis showed, 6.3% of former GDR citizens considered the protection of freedom of expression to be the most important political goal, compared to 21% of their counterparts in the West, a difference of 14.7 percentage points. In 2006, the difference was 13.2 percentage points while in 2016, it was 15.4 percentage points. Freedom of expression was also mentioned less frequently by citizens of the former GDR when it came to the second most important political goals. The analysis of the other data sets presented a similar picture consistently from summer 1991 to the end of the surveys. Nikolova explains: “While there is evidence of some convergence in attitudes over time, the rate is very slow. That's why we can assume that the differences still exist today – and will continue to exist for a long time to come.”
The discrepancy in attitudes is more pronounced the older the former GDR citizens are and the longer they therefore lived in the socialist system. Popova: “We cannot explain these differences with absolute certainty; they are probably a consequence of the regime's omnipresent efforts to control information and suppress dissenting opinions through indoctrination and political repression. This can create deep-seated mistrust – and thus a general caution against free expression of opinion. It is remarkable that living in a democracy for more than three decades now has hardly had any contrary influence. On the other hand, those born in East Germany after 1989 do not score lower in terms of freedom of opinion than those from West Germany.”
Nikolova and Popova argue that the study contributes to a better understanding of how political regimes influence individual values and how long these effects can last. It also shows how fragile fundamental rights such as freedom of expression can be, even in established democracies.
The SOEP, based at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), is the largest and longest-running multidisciplinary long-term study in Germany. In the ALLBUS study series, conducted by the GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Mannheim, random samples of the German population have been surveyed on attitudes and behavior.
About the authors: Milena Nikolova is an Aletta Jacobs Professor in the Economics of Well-being at the University of Groningen. Olga Popova is a Senior Researcher in the Economics Department of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), Regensburg. Their previous joint research has focused on how communism and political repression affect the well-being, trust, and preferences of individuals from Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The study: Nikolova, M., Popova, O. (2024). Echoes of the past: The enduring impact of communism on contemporary freedom of speech values. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 227: 106739. Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106739
Dr. Olga Popova, e-mail: popova@ios-regensburg.de
Prof. Dr. Milena Nikolova, e-mail: m.v.nikolova@rug.nl
Nikolova, M., Popova, O. (2024). Echoes of the past: The enduring impact of communism on contemporary freedom of speech values. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 227: 106739. Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106739
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