behaviors and concluded that Soviet and American respondents were “basically similar”.<sup>3</sup> Their analysis was however based on a survey of Moscow and New York residents alone.

Subsequent work based on more representative samples of the populations in question – typically drawn from the _International Social Justice Program_ (ISJP) or the _International Social Survey Programme_ (ISSP) - concluded differently, with residents of former socialist countries found to display more egalitarian attitudes to a range of indicators of income equality (Mason 1995, Blanchflower and Freeman 1997, Delhey 1999, Verwiebe and Wegener 2000, Suhrcke 2001, Redmond, Schnepf and Suhrcke 2002, Alesina and FuchsSchündeln 2006). The conclusion was that there may in fact be significant attitudinal barriers to market-oriented reforms. At the same time, the studies that looked at trends found that the preference for equality declined over time (Blanchflower and Freeman 1997, Verwiebe and Wegener 2000, Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln 2006). Thus, post-socialist countries, even if they did not start out with similar preferences, appeared over time to be approaching the preferences found in market economies. Owing to the absence of data these studies did not cover the former Soviet Union extensively outside of Russia. There was also limited attempt to differentiate between post-socialist countries through the use of country dummies and other approaches which allow for variation among countries. So, all post-socialist countries were basically ‘tarred with the same brush’.

The second strand of the literature probes people’s preferences for redistributive spending by the state, which is distinct but not unrelated to attitudes to income inequality. The purpose is to determine the degree to which there is political support for a larger or more active role of the state in addressing issues of poverty and inequality through transfer programs. Data sources for this strand of the literature are broader than the first strand, and include data from the _World Values Survey_ (WVS), in addition to International Social Justice Program and the International Social Survey Program. Coverage of post-socialist countries is somewhat greater (Heien 2000, Andreß and Heien 2001, Boeri, Borsch-Supan and Tabellini 2001, Corneo and Gruner 2002, Lipsmeyer and Nordstrom 2003, and Wong 2004).

The findings of this second strand are consistent with the first strand in the sense that respondents from post-socialist countries are generally found to profess greater support for redistributive state spending than their U.S. or Western counterparts. At the same time, this literature conveys a more nuanced picture. Heien (2000) finds that compared to the U.S., there is greater professed support for redistributive government programs not only among post-socialist countries but also among OECD countries such as Norway and Italy. Thus, strong support for redistribution compared to the U.S. does not appear to be confined to post-socialist countries. Lipsmeyer and Nordstrom (2003) look at two composite indicators of support for redistribution, one based on views of the types of services governments should be responsible for and the other related to views on levels of public spending (including redistributive state spending). They find post-socialist countries to be different from high income OECD countries only on the second indicator but not on the first. Both these papers thus provide only qualified support for the “socialist legacy”

> 3 In their words “Although the Soviet respondents were somewhat less likely to accept exchange of money as a solution to personal problems and although their attitudes toward business were less warm, we found that Soviet and American respondents were basically similar...in their attitudes towards fairness, income inequality, and incentives and in their understanding of the working of markets” (385).

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