Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The transformation of the states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs) from communist satellites to capitalist democracies and full members of the European Union is a process that is generally understood as one that has been driven by EU conditionality and its impact on the compliance of the CEECs. This project aimed to investigate EU conditionality and evaluate its impact on institution-building in states undergoing post-communist transformation in Eastern Europe. The following were employed as case studies: (i) regional policy and the process of regionalisation and (ii) minority issues. The research was developed around two key and innovative elements. Firstly, how post-communist transition is affected or shaped by actors and structures at the sub-national level, in regions, cities, and localities. Secondly, the effects of EU conditionality and 'Europeanisation' in the CEECs were investigated by examining whether there was a transference of state forms, traditions and administrative practice from EU states. The researchers conducted large-scale systematic interviewing of elites in seven cities in eastern Europe, including states that were first wave candidates for membership, states that were in the second wave, and states that were unlikely to become members. The interviews conducted in five of the seven cities have been amalgamated to produce a dataset for studying the attitudes of regional and local elites to economic and political transition, to the European Union and NATO, as well as sociological data on their career trajectories since the collapse of communism.
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The dataset includes the results of local elites interviews conducted in five cities in Eastern Europe between 1999 and 2001. The case study cities were Pecs in Hungary, Tartu in Estonia, Maribor in Slovenia, Cluj in Romania and Katowice in Poland. The data falls into a number of categories: (i) basic sociological data concerning age, education and occupational trajectory, and civic and political activism of the respondents; (ii) a range of attitudinal results recording attitudes to the European Union, regional reform, NATO, democratisation and marketisation; and (iii) the results of questions relating to the respondents' ethnic origins and current identity.
Elite members in each city were selected as follows:First positional criteria were used to identify an initial selection of 20-25 individuals for interviewing who were drawn from senior elected and appointed officials in the executive and legislative bodies of each city. After this initial selection, the process was snowballed to other elite members using reputational criteria to identify other leading elite members. Using this method, as many as possible of the elite members identified were interviewed. Most of these came from regional and local government, business, the mass media and to a letter extent, the cultural intelligentsia, up to a maximum of 75 in each city.
Face-to-face interview
The results of the interviews were coded and combined to make a composite dataset.
