Political Culture under Institutional Pressure: How Institutional Change Transforms Early Socialization (Political Evolution and Institutional Change)

Are world views once formed during childhood and adolescence stable over life or do they change when they come under pressure from new institutional contexts? This book seeks the answer by re-visiting an aged political generation growing up in historically unique interwar Estonia but living their adult lives in exile in Canada and Sweden or under foreign occupation in the then-Soviet Estonia. Some major conclusions drawn are that of dominant "cultural themes" being stable over time in all three groups, while cultural correspondence between country of origin and host society plays an essential role in explaining why the exile communities differ in their degree of genuine democratic citizenship.