Not Your Mama’s Ideology (But Close): Modest Generational Differences in Ideological Alignment in Post-Communist Europe

This paper examines whether generational change in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is associated with shifts in how political attitudes align along the conventional economic–cultural left–right dimension. Because cohorts in the region were socialized under different political–economic systems, CEE provides a setting to assess whether younger generations display patterns of attitude alignment that differ from those of older cohorts. Using pooled European Social Survey data (2002–2023) and original surveys from three countries, we combine an age–period–cohort analysis of left–right alignment with a network analysis of associations among thirteen salient issues. We find modest generational differences in the early 2000s, but these diminish over time, with all cohorts exhibiting similarly low levels of left–right alignment. Economic and cultural attitudes remain weakly connected, and EU- and foreign-policy issues often form separate clusters. The findings indicate that generational replacement has not produced a shift toward a more conventional left–right organization of belief systems in the region.