The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the advent of free elections there led political scientists to debate whether stable patterns of voting behavior, based on underlying social or ideological divisions, would emerge in postcommunist Europe in the same way they did in Western Europe. Scholars skeptical of the “stabilization” hypothesis argued that such an outcome was unlikely in Eastern Europe given the region's weak civil society, lack of established programmatic parties, and high level of economic uncertainty surrounding the transition to capitalism. Ultimately, the question of Eastern European voting behavior is an empirical one that, because more than a decade has passed since the first free elections there, can now be answered. Hubert Tworzecki's Learning to Choose is an excellent first step in this direction. The author explores social cleavages, public opinion, attitudes toward political parties, voter turnout, and vote choice in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic between 1992 and 1995. His conclusions, based primarily on survey data collected by the Central European University, place him firmly in the stabilization camp.

Tworzecki begins by examining the region's history for sociological factors that might divide the electorate. He convincingly argues that the present cleavages among voters stem from three periods in east-central European history. First, legacies of the precommunist period manifest themselves in Poland as a division between voters with Catholic-nationalist tendencies and those who hold more secular-universalist values. In Hungary, an urban-rural cleavage is present in addition to a religious-secular divide.

Second, unsurprisingly, Tworzecki finds that both the nature of communist rule and the transition to democracy also shape postcommunist society. The pacted transitions of Poland and Hungary allowed the Communist Party to gradually cede power. As a result, reformed communist parties survived the transition, and a key political division in these countries became how harshly, if at all, communists should be judged. In the Czech Republic, in contrast, communism abruptly collapsed, the ex-communists never reformed, and strict lustration laws were passed. As a result, the pro-/anticommunist cleavage was much weaker there. Finally, Tworzecki maintains, the current transition to a market economy divides east-central European voters in all three countries, especially the Czech Republic, into “winners” of the transition, who favor market reforms, and “losers,” who favor social protection to cushion citizens from the market.

Using survey data, the author makes a convincing case that these underlying societal divisions translate into coherent ideological preferences among voters. Just as in Western Europe, mass opinion in all three countries can be broken down along two dimensions. The first, what Tworzecki calls the “decommunization-clericalism” axis, separates voters who favor a public role for the church and strict lustration laws from those who support church-state separation and who are less anti-communist. His “economic” axis separates citizens on the basis of their positions vis-à-vis market reforms and social welfare, as well as their satisfaction with national economic performance and the democratic political system.

The book then investigates whether these clear preferences influence voters' assessments of political parties. Tworzecki unearths evidence of what he calls tendencies or “a general political predisposition rather than loyalty to a specific party organization” (p. 105). For example, voters who had anti-communist beliefs tended to have positive views of anticommunist parties. The author additionally shows that voters were swayed not only by their sociological characteristics and ideological beliefs but also by parties' campaign appeals, leaders, and performance in office. In other words, the short- and long-term factors that shape voter preferences in Western democracies appear to be at work in east-central Europe as well. Tworzecki also finds this to be the case for variables predicting voter turnout.

Finally, the author seeks to connect voters' preferences and party assessments to their actual voting behavior. On the one hand, he utilizes aggregate voting data from subnational units and finds consistent relationships between regional characteristics and voter choice. For example, in depressed regions voters favor leftist parties and in economically successful ones citizens support pro-market parties. On the other hand, when he relies on survey data, he can find less evidence for stabilization; very few central European voters were loyal to a given political party, or even a party family, over the course of multiple elections. Tworzecki blames this situation not on voters, who, he argues, have clear and stable preferences, but on the supply side: “even when there is a clear opening on the political stage … it may take some time before it is filled…. In the meantime voters keep searching for the right match” (p. 208).

Thus, while Learning to Choose provides convincing empirical evidence and logical arguments to make the case that voter preferences have stabilized in east-central Europe, the book also leaves unanswered some interesting questions about the actions of political entrepreneurs and party leaders. If indeed it is the case that east-central European voters have stable and identifiable political preferences, are cognitively able to assess political parties, and make vote choices based on these preferences, why have political entrepreneurs not moved to fill the voids the author identifies? Is it because elites are for some reason unaware of these voter preferences? Do party organizations somehow hinder party movement into the spaces filled by voters? Or are other factors responsible for the apparent inability of party supply to meet voter demand? The book neatly sets up this puzzle for future scholarship to answer. Another limitation is the book's focus on only 1992–95. Tworzecki argues on a number of occasions that while this period may seem quite brief, “time was actually flowing at an ‘accelerated’ rate” due to the quick pace of the change to democracy and the market (e.g., p. 81). Nonetheless, this reader was left wondering how durable some of the observed cleavages will prove. Although religion and economic issues seem likely to continue to divide voters in increasingly modern and capitalist societies, the pro-/anticommunist cleavage seems likely to decline in salience as former communists die off and younger voters enter the electorate. Had the author enjoyed access to survey data from the latter part of the 1990s or the early 2000s, his conclusions would have been all the much stronger.

As it stands, the book is an excellent baseline from which future students of east-central European voting behavior can assess stability (or change) in the decades following the fall of communism. Such scholars may also want to examine how other postcommunist electorates compare to Tworzecki's cases. All three countries analyzed here enjoyed an elite commitment to play by the new democratic rules of the game, and all (after the Velvet Divorce) benefited from clear-cut national boundaries and a relative lack of ethnic conflict. As a result, the stabilization of mass opinion observed here likely was greatly facilitated by the presence of a relatively stable political system, and the results may not be applicable else-where in the postcommunist world.