Majoritarian Democracies for Divided Societies: How Tolerant are Estonians and Latvians of Their Minorities?

For Estonia and Latvia, the collapse of the Soviet Union entailed a return to national independence after decades of enforced communist rule. At the same time, the legacy of Soviet rule included large Russian-speaking minorities. Previous research has demonstrated significant differences in political orientations between the titular populations and the Russian-speaking minorities in the region. But it also shows systematic variation between the countries. Drawing on a collection of public opinion surveys conducted in 2014, this paper will analyse the effects of institutional performance on political orientations in the two countries. More specifically, by contrasting the ethnic majority to corresponding attitudes among the Russian-speaking minorities, as well as contrasting the cases of Estonia and Latvia, it discusses the aspects of democratic political culture in the two countries. Several processes have shaped this culture: the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the creation of majority-dominated states for ethnically diverse resident population, closely intertwined political and economic integration into the EU, while high levels of geopolitical insecurity emanating from the proximity to Russia. In the light of these, many of the expressions of populist politics found in Central and Eastern Europe have been absent or weak in Estonia and Latvia. This might be a matter of supply rather than demand: This paper discusses the support for several attributes of democracy revolving around the relative value of liberty versus order and open-mindedness towards diverging opinions. The purpose of the paper is to offer explanations to variation found in between social, including ethnic groups by comparing the two countries. These are similar in several respects but differ significantly in relation to institutional performance and satisfaction with democracy, which as we find are the key issue to explain popular and populist attitudes towards civil liberties and/or expressions of tolerance towards out-groups.