774 SEER, 8o, 4, 2002 Mason, David S., and Kluegel, James R., with Ludmila Khakhulina, Petr Matej"u, Antal Orkeny, Alexander Stoyanov, Bernd Wegener. Marketing Democracy. Changing Opinion about Inequality andPoliticsinEastCentral Europe. Rowman &Littlefield,Lanham, MA, Boulder, CO, New York,Oxford, 2000. iX+ 292 pp. Notes. Tables. Figures. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. LI8.95 (paperback). THIS comparative study of attitudesto the market and to political pluralism among five post-communist populations (Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and East Germany) is a replication of an earlier (i99i) volume, both of them researched under the auspices of the International Social Justice Survey. The book is essentially Fordist in conception and execution. James Kluegel and David Mason are billed as the 'principal authors'(only they get to thanktheirwives and children in the Acknowledgements ), and theyjointly wrote chapter I, and chapters 7-I0, which comprise the synthesizingparts of the study. In between stand five chaptersdevoted to each of the countries covered by the survey, each written by nationals of the country concerned. Although the research instrument (a questionnaire administeredin person)was adapted in minor ways for differentcountries,all aretreatedasequally 'post-communist'.The taskof the 'locals'wasto provide empiricalfodder for the principalauthors,and it is not thereforenecessaryto considertheirpartin the shapingof the finalproduct. The design of the research was intended to measure the respondents' attachmentsto 'socialjustice norms'.Forexample, theyweregivena statement on a card which read, 'People are entitled to pass on their wealth to their children', and askedto respond using a five-pointscale, from 'stronglyagree' to 'strongly disagree'. Another asked them to say, again using a scalar response, whether, based on their experience, they were for or against socialism. (Nice one! Try it yourself!) The questionnaire did not allow the respondentsto expresstheirviews aboutpressingsocialandpersonalproblems such as unemployment and inequalities. These substantiveissues are introduced by the authors themselves in an ad hocway, whenever it becomes necessary to make an inferential link between values, as measured by the responses,and the social conditionsassumedto explain them. The principal authors summarizethe finding of the five case studiesin the final four chapters of the book, and offer a synoptic interpretationof them. They point out, interalia, that Russians, Bulgarians and Hungarians are becoming increasinglydisenchanted with the economic consequences of the dismantling of state socialism, the Czechs somewhat less so, while the East Germans have been cushioned by their re-absorptioninto a major capitalist state. The new political structures are likewise found to be wanting in legitimacy, and increasingly so, though again with variations around a common theme. In case this summary of the study should appear unfairly dismissive, it must be pointed out that the principal authors show very little interest in the variations. They are discussed in just four pages in the Conclusion (pp. 241-45), and are in fact reduced to a brief account of the economic fortunes of each country, each considered separately.There is no sense anywhere in the book that we are dealing with five states with quite REVIEWS 775 differentpasts, including the half-century of rule by Moscow, and different futurestoo. The problem is that an explicit theoretical model is really not an optional extra in analysing processes of social change, and the principal authors disavow any claim to 'theory testing' (the inverted commas appear in the original).But there is in fact a rudimentarytheory of state-societyrelationsat work here, smuggled in piecemeal, and expressed in the authentic voice of Parsonian functionalism. They are prone to statements like the following, which gives a good sense of the tone and argument of the book as a whole: 'Popularly perceived legitimacy -that the political system is serving the needs of the population is an importantcomponent of political stabilityin any country'(p. I89). The claim is untrue,even ifrestrictedto the specialcase of multi-partyparliamentarysystems.Western democracies (as the principal authors are inclined to acknowledge from time to time) are riddled with apathy and anomie. This study in effect diagnoses a severe case of the same ailment in post-communist states, but offers few clues about how we are to relate the survey findings to the hopes, fears and expectations of the people who answeredthe questions.Fromthat standpoint,the book provokesa sense of disappointmentat an opportunitymissedto listen to realvoices at a...