Publication |
2008.
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Summary/Abstract |
This article considers two perspectives of the post-Communist European integration movement. One perspective addresses rational choice economics in driving support for both the European Union, a low politics organization that emphasizes trade and social policies and NATO, a high politics defense organization. The other perspective addresses the impact that languages and ethnicity have, two factors derived from Anderson's notion of an imagined community. These two perspectives exhibit differences on how voters perceive and endorse integration in three societies in three different parts of the former Warsaw Pact. In those societies that are more ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous such as Bulgaria and Latvia, there is greater variation in backing endorsement for Western Europe from 1997 through 2004 than in societies that are more homogeneous such as Poland.
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