Abstract
This article maps basic sociological characteristics of European presidents elected in direct election after 1989. We focused on the structure of age, education, previous political experience, and gender compared in traditional Western democracies and post-communist Europe.
We concluded that Western European presidents are older on average by about ten years. Age structure does not fluctuate so much.
The most common university degree is law and social sciences, with the variability being higher in former communist countries. After the outbreak of financial crisis more economists were elected in Central and Eastern Europe.
People in this bloc voted former prime ministers more often, while in Western democracies the members of government without leading were elected in one third of the cases. Over the last few years there has been a little increase of presidents without previous political experience in post-communist countries.