Personality and Political Tolerance: The Limits of Democratic Learning in Postcommunist Europe

Abstract

Can all citizens learn political tolerance through engagement in democratic politics? The lack of direct experience with democratic processes may account for a portion of the tolerance gap between mass publics in established and new democracies and suggests optimism about trends in tolerance within postcommunist Europe. Yet learning tolerance may be limited to individuals who are psychologically open to disagreement. Testing the conditional effect of political activism with the 1995 World Values Survey and a 1996 to 2000 Russian panel series reveals that the benefits of political activism are limited by psychological dogmatism and that dogmatists tend toward intolerance over time.