As participatory governance approaches find their way into the development agendas in transition countries, a key question is how to increase citizens' participation rates. This study examines how social trust and mental models inherited from the communist past shape individual decisions to participate in rural collective action. Using unique data from rural Ukraine, I approach these questions empirically distinguishing different types of participation. I find that social trust and mental models about the roles of communities and the state stemming from the Soviet past affect participation with some reservations. Results suggest that community-driven initiatives should invest more in educational and awareness-raising activities.

In January 2012, in several cities of Romania, people turned out to streets to protest. The protests were linked to the wave of movements such as the Indignados or Occupy Wall Street. The students were especially visible among protesters. In this paper, we show that the profile of protests in Romania witnessed a significant shift from workers strikes for higher wages and better jobs, during communism and in the 1990ies, to social movements in which young urban educated citizens mobilize with the help of social networks for issues that are linked to the quality of democracy and life. Furthermore, the shift in protesting is associated, at the individual level, with distrust of the political system, which stimulates engaging in demonstrations. Interestingly, online activism accelerates the feeling of shared distrust of institutions, motivating youth to engage in protest participation, although the effects might be moderate and the causal arrow somewhat uncertain. The hypotheses are tested with data from a general survey on participation in 2012 and a student survey from October 2012. We find that gender, distrust in institutions and family income influence protest behavior. Time spent online has a negative effect on protest engagement and online activism is related to protest behavior.

Using Polish panel data from 1998, 2003, and 2008, I examine people’s knowledge of the governing parties of the Sejm in 2003. I focus on ability, opportunity, and motivation to explain political knowledge. I also examine the effects of knowledge on changes in political attitudes and behaviors from 2003 to 2008. Major sources of political knowledge are prior political interest and the change in interest from 1998 to 2003, political experience, and cognitive ability. There also exists a substantial gender gap in knowledge. Finally, political knowledge leads to changes in political interest, alienation, democratic attitudes, and voting behavior.

Prior to December 2011, instances of widespread collective mobilization were relatively rare in contemporary Russia. Russian citizens are more likely to engage in a different means of airing grievances: making an official complaint to the authorities. This article considers how complaint-making, as a variety of political participation, may contribute either to authoritarian resilience or to political liberalization. The political significance of complaints made to the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Russian Federation is examined. Since it is the broader political context that shapes the significance of complaints, in the absence of meaningful elections individualized appeals to the state are unlikely to promote democratic change, although they may allow for redress of individual rights violations.