Mareike zum Felde’s research while affiliated with University of Bremen and other places

Since the mid-2000s, there has been no study of characteristics of political elites at large in East Central European countries. Accordingly, an assessment of long-term trends is not possible beyond narrow case studies of elite sub-segments. This research note introduces a new dataset covering officeholders for 3,277 position/years in six countries (the Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine) for seven reference years from 1990 to 2020. It points to results about broad development trends of political elites concerning sociodemographic characteristics and elite continuity. These include a high degree of sociodemographic homogeneity of elites across countries and time. Concerning the role of the old elites of the socialist regimes, there are considerable differences between the countries, caused among others by different approaches to lustration.

Today’s knowledge about elites in East Germany since 1990 is still shaped by the convergence perspective, which implicitly defines West Germany as the benchmark of desired development. In this contribution, we challenge existing assumptions by changing the reference frame. To do so, we compare a sample of office holders in politics and the economy (1990–2020) in East Germany with corresponding elite members in selected countries of Eastern Central Europe ( N = 2439). We differentiate between two groups within the elite of East Germany defined by the place of their socialisation prior to 1989, which happened either in East Germany or in West Germany. We consider their political learning process, professional background as well as their age and gender. While East Germany’s regional elites are, in many aspects of their social profiles, very similar to the national elites in East Central Europe, our analysis also identifies important differences. Moreover, we argue that for a better understanding of political elites the question of political socialisation and experience should be at the centre of further investigation.