THE EFFECTS OF PARTY IDEOLOGY ON PUBLIC ORDER AND SAFETY SPENDING IN FORMER SOCIALIST COUNTRIES

Dejan Bursać

Abstract

The study is designed to empirically test the effects which different ruling party ideologies have on spending for public order and safety budget component in Central and Eastern European countries. The transitional environment and especially post-Cold War security context have altered the concept of security in former socialist societies. Our assumption, based not just on theoretical concepts of left and right ideologies, but also on studies examining this matter in more developed Western democracies, was that right-leaning cabinets will have higher levels of budget consumption for law and order than leftist governments. The empirical model confirmed this hypothesis, albeit only partially. A number of other political, economic, and contextual variables connected with transitional setting, which usually have effect on general levels of spending or certain budget areas, have demonstrated a low significance when comes to law and order spending.

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