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

which attitudes to state regulation and the welfare state are the most decisive single factorsseparating the parties involved in elections.In the case of Poland the left-right axis has been closely linked to the socio-cultural dimension, inparticular questions about the proper role of the church in society and attitudes to the communistpast. Parties with a strong anti-communist and market- and euro-sceptical characteristics has beendescribed as right-traditionalistic. On social issues and state regulation the Polish right wing partieshave behaved more ”social democratic” than the post-communist parties, including the democraticleft alliance SLD and the Peasants Party (PSL). Symbolic politics and low programme crystalizationwas striking, at least compared with conservative-liberal parties and most parties on the politicalLeft.On the other end of the scale we find conservative-liberal parties. These parties are strongsupporters of free market economy. Furthermore they are pro-European and against restitution tothe church and church interference in politics, e.g. in questions about religious instruction in schoolsand abortion. The Freedom Union (UW) in Poland, the ODS and ODA in the Czech Republic andthe Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) in Hungary belong to parties of the conservative-liberaltype.The political left can be divided in orthodox communist parties, left wing social democratic postcommunistparties with roots in reform minded sections of the communist parties and the “modern”nomenklaturea and finally authentic historical social democratic parties with roots back to theperiod before the communist take-over and the forced unifications of social democratic andcommunist parties.The parties in the CECC’s have been divided according to partly overlapping criteria. Neoliberalpro-market and pro-western parties have been contrasted to neo-traditionalistic particularistic andsocialdemocratic type political parties. The parties have alternately been considered as progressive,traditionalist, liberal and authoritarian. On that basis there has been distinguished betweenmodern/rational versus neotraditional/nationalist parties. Furthermore, pro-market and pro-westernparties have been contrasted to market sceptical religious, agrarian or populist socialist (Thomas,1999:8).As noted above, also the division between mass parties, cadre parties, catch-all parties and cartelparties may be relevant also in the post-communist context. The parties in the CEEC’s seemed tomove towards the catch-all electoral-professional type party models, built up hierarchially andcentralitically governed and with tenuous links to the social groups. In other words, the partiesseems to have concentrated on “a wider clientele of voters ... rather than opt for the well-definedsegments of society” 15 . Only agrarian parties, e.g. the PSL in Poland and the IndependentHusmands Party (FKGP) in Hungary were equivalent to distinct class parties. The modern promarketparties suffered at the elections due to absence of a strong and prosperous middle class (“themissing midle”). Thus, the emergence of rather strong right-traditionalist political parties have beenconsidered as a result of the civilisational “backwardness” and the unfinished and distortedmodernisation.15 Peter Kopecky, “Developing Party Organisations in East-Central Europe: What Type of Party is likely to emerge?”,Party Politics, 4, 1995:515-534.22