Striving towards democracy? Political participation in post-Soviet countries

The formation of political systems in the post-Soviet region remains a relevant topic even thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Due to social, economic, and cultural factors, the political regimes continue to move from the general communist in the past towards different political futures dominated by either authoritarian or democratic frames. This study aims to investigate the patterns of political culture and participation, focusing on the binary categorization of political regimes prevalent across post-Soviet countries and the application of media trust and the freedom index to outline the patterns of political participation. It focuses on eight post-Soviet countries, four authoritarian and four hybrid political regimes, using WVS/EVS 2017–2020 survey data. The findings specify the importance of media trust in the formation of political participation habits across countries with unconsolidated democracy. It shows that the levels of media trust exert diverging impacts depending on the type of political participation. The freedom index has also been integrated as a moderator due to the importance of freedom for the media to mobilize society. The moderation analysis revealed the distinctive patterns of political participation in countries with lower and higher levels of freedom. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group