Development of Parties and Party Systems in ... - lah@sam.sdu.dk

the significance of strategic choices and leadership processes (“political crafting” and “politicalentrepreneurship”). The structural factors have a subjective side in case economic growth and socialmobility are declining such as in the first years after the break-through. When the economic growthand social mobility decline, group consciousness tends to increase and challenge the politicalsystem.At the beginning the political parties tended to have weak organizations with only little presenceoutside the big towns and tenuous ties to the civil societies. Tehy have to be boradly definedincluding well organized mass parties as well as pro-parties, loose political associations and clubs,political factions and movements. Furthermore, in several cases the parties tended to be cadreconfigurations, not mass organizations such as had been the case in the West. As already said, mostparties were established spontaneously in the wake of the demise and collapse of the old systems.Only in Janos Kadar’s Hungary the foundation of political parties took place over one-two years,for that reason we did not find broadly based anti-communist movement parties such as in theCzech Republic (The Civic Forum), Slovakia (Public Against Violence), Poland (Solidarity) orBulgaria (SDS). The political capital, i.e. the spontaneous support from the society, was high, butmore short-term than first expected. As noted by Abby Innes (Innes, 2002), at the same time theEastern European parties had to satisfy two constituencies, one internal, the other external, i.e. IMFand the EU, sometimes with the very existence of the latter inhibiting the development of theformer.Opposite in Western Europe political parties in the East were established as mass parties, and theyhad to find their social base by “looking after their voters”. ”). The weak links to the voters impliedthat the parties often miscalculated the voter preferences. That took place at the first free elections,at which the postcommunist successor partiets overestemated electoral support, at in tha case of thePolish 1993 election, when the “post-communist” parties did surprisingly well. Wek linkages to thesocial gropups and low party institutionalization made the parties more dependent on the media,what might be a danger to the freedom of the press. In addition, the boundaries between parties andinterest groups tended to be porous. In general, the legacy of the communist past seemed to had an“anti-political” bearing on the nascent party systems and party types. To the extent the label”political parties” can be used, it has to be used in the ”minimalist” sense and parties have to beseen as political units that put forward candidates on common lists at the national elections- and notmuch more.The political parties are only able to decide the political agenda if a majority of the electorate feel atleast as well represented through the political parties as through the different interest groups, e.g.trade unions, the church, the military or, in the worst case, mafia-type economic organizations orother kinds of illegal networks 4 . Shadow institutionalisation was not limited to countries on Balkanand in the CIS. Specific for Poland has been the strong position of the church and to some extentalso the trade unions (Solidarnost and OPZZ). If that does not take place, a shadowinstitutionalisation will be the result, giving the church, the military or mafia-like institutions astrong position at the expense of democratic elected institutions such as parties and governments. Inthe CEEC’s the new parties never became mass parties, rather post-communist catch-all parties,later they were transformed to electoral-professional cartel parties.4 In the minimal sense political parties can be defined as ”any group that presents at elections and is capable of placingthrough elections candidates for public office” (Sartori, 1976:64).10