Description:This book examines the effect of economic conditions on election results in five post-communist countries--Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic--in the first decade of post-communist elections. It is the first book length study of economic voting outside of established democracies, as well as one of the few comparative studies of voting in post-communist countries generally. The study relies on an original database composed of regional level economic, demographic, and electoral data, and the analysis features a broadly based comparative assessment of the findings across all twenty elections as well as more focused case study analysis.