EFFECTS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL SYSTEMS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ON STATUS ATTAINMENT: FORMER SOCIALIST CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES IN COMPARISON TO WESTERN CAPITALIST COUNTRIES
Open Access
- Author:
- Tufis, Paula Andreea
- Graduate Program:
- Sociology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 03, 2007
- Committee Members:
- Glenn A Firebaugh, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Duane Francis Alwin, Committee Member
George Farkas, Committee Member
Michael Bernhard, Committee Member - Keywords:
- status attainment
social stratification
Central and Eastern Europe
socialism
postcommunism
transition - Abstract:
- Using ISSP data, this study estimates and compares links among social origins and social status characteristics (education, occupation and earnings) across a range of societies and across time. The research topic is fueled by the idea that capitalism, free market economy and industrialization produce a specific logic of stratification, while state socialist societies, under the influence of socialist ideology and adopted state policies, produce a radically different stratification system, following a different logic from that existing in Western capitalist countries. In order to test this hypothesis, the present research is organized around differences and similarities in patterns of status attainment among countries characterized by different types of socio-political organization and different degrees of economic development. In particular, the study focuses on characteristics of state socialist stratification and the question of existence of socialist effects on social stratification and characteristics of postsocialist stratification – its departures from the ‘logic’ of socialist stratification and that of capitalist stratification. In order to follow this line of research, the question of homogeneity of status attainment patterns within regions of countries characterized by similar socio-political systems and similar levels of development is also examined. The results suggest that there is no single model of capitalist stratification, or a single type of socialist stratification and a common process that describes transformations of the stratification system during the postcommunist transition in all former state socialist societies. The empirical analyses also suggest that while socialism might have had some isolated effects on status attainment processes, the effects are weak and it is not clear whether they are indeed attributable to the influence of socialist ideology and policy rather than other processes like economic development and industrialization. At the same time, the status attainment patterns characterizing statue socialist societies are not radically different from those characterizing western capitalist societies. Postcommunist effects on social stratification are also observed only in isolated cases, and stability rather than change describes the over-time trends in status attainment in the Central and Eastern European former socialist countries.