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

politics and antipolitics, all signifying at the late stage of real socialism and the first stage of postcommunist,have to be overcome as quickly as possible. Therefore a de-freezing of old cleavages,e.g. the old “we versus them” distinction, must occur, but probably unevenly from country tocountry 11 .Negative type consolidation was achieved shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991as a return to the old system has been considered as impossible after the break down of communismand Soviet Union. In other words, consolidation of democracy has been closely connected withregime survival, i.e. prevention of regress to the old state socialist system. However, as argued byO’Donell and Schmitter (O’Donnell & Schmitter (1986:3), transition away from the oldauthoritarian system might well be a transition to “something else”, not necessarily a democraticsystem.The transformations in the CEEC’s were anti-communist, but not necessarily democratic(Przeworski, 1991). Evidence has shown that democracy may be secure against erosion and breakdowneven if party system is not fully developed, and democracy may erode and break down also incase parties and party systems are well institutionalised. Basically the transition to the new systempromoted to types of conflicts, one between those resisting the old system and those defending it,and second conflicts between the different “proto-democratic actors”, mainly former dissidentsaiming to secure for themselves the best possible opportunities in the new post-communist system(Przeworski, 1991). In other words, from the outset many options were open, including alsotransition to non-democratic regimes, e.g. autocratic, electoral, procedural or other forms of nonconsolidateddemocracies.From the experience from the first post-1989 years Attila Ágh concludes that new democracies inmost cases constitute semi-democracies or even pseudodemocracies. Later he became moreoptimistic (Ágh, 1998:17), when describing democratic transition as “the mixture of two systems ina creative chaos, with complicated and painful process of democratic institutionalisation and socioeconomictransformation” and democratic consolidation as “the coherent emergence of the newsystem in all social sub-systems, with the establishment of a democratic political culture- theinvention of democratic traditions”. Transition and consolidation constitute a complex sociationalprocesses including institutionalisation, social integration, participation and formation of a newpolitical culture after 40 year under stalinism, neostalinism and different forms of post-totalitarianreal socialism. Furthermore, Ágh, distinguish between external and internal consolidation, whereexternal consolidation constitute the social links of the parties and establishment of lines ofcommunication in society. The internal dimension deals with institutionalisation inside the partiesthemselves, including lines of communication between the differenct centres of decision making,e.g. the party leadership, the parliamentary group and the party member local organisations (Ágh,1998:110).In some cases democracy may be consolidated when a democratic regional hegemon, e.g.. the EUby using meaningful incentives and disincentives promotes and implants democracy. The EU factor11 As mentioned by Gábor Toka, there can be talk about cleavages in a party context ”if an enduring organizational formis given to a politically mobilized opposition between such members of relatively closed groups who have distinctvalues, beliefs and identity”, see Gábor Tóka, ”Party Appeals and Voter Loyalty in New Democracies”, PoliticalStudies (1998), XLVI: 596, Tóka refers to Bartolini and Mair, Identity, Competition, and Electoral Availability, O.Knutsen and E. Scarbrough, ”Cleavage Politics”, in J. van Deth and E. Scarbrough (eds.) (1995), The Impact of Values,Oxford:Oxford University Press: 492-523.20