ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concept of complex politics and how it relates to opinion polling in contemporary European societies. The increasing peripheralisation of production-based politics in late-capitalist societies has its origins in the general processes of restructuring of economic, social and cultural life which has been a feature of such societies. The post-communist societies which are emerging in Central and Eastern Europe are characterised by their increasingly complex and shifting political environments which, in terms of the implications for opinion polling, are not dissimilar from late-capitalist societies. The tendencies towards complex politics are emerging in both late-capitalist and post-communist societies, and to be aware of the obvious differences in context. Regardless of the differences in which the restructuring processes are conceptualised for late-capitalist societies, the implications for class politics is that there has been a general and incremental 'decoupling' of the links between voters and the traditional mass-based parties.
