Operationalizing Political and Economic Culture in Eastern Europe

The completion of the first wave of Eastern enlargement determined the European Union (EU) to become more heterogeneous in terms of living standards. All ten new member states (NMS) are below the average EU’s GDP per capita. Furthermore, since this contemporary gap in wealth between the enlarged EU and the rest of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region is even greater, questions of regional security and stability are already present. This short paper aims to shed some light on this subject through a comparative examination of some aspects of political and economic cultural competences that affect the economic convergence of the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) to the EU. One of the problems in dealing with economic culture and its effects on wealth is that it is a broad definition, and that it is not quite obvious how we can operationalize it. In response, Moses suggests narrowing the discussion to a particular aspect of economic culture, by examining specifically libertarian and entrepreneurial values. Arguments presented here are that the libertarian values, that is philosophical mindset that emphasizes the responsibility of the self and the maximization of liberty for every individual, and in particular, the need for high economic and personal freedoms, do exist to various degrees in CEECs and have a significant impact on entrepreneurial values. The second argument is that these entrepreneurial values, as reflected in the support for competition, private business ownership and which put emphasis on innovation, do have a positive and significant contribution towards CEECs ’ convergence