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

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elections and the Slovak communists who surprisingly were represented in parlament at the 2002election.Political strategies were to a large extent determined by aims of recognition and survival. As notedby John Ishiyama and András Bozóki the communist successor parties have passed their owninternal transformations. The post-communist parties adopted various strategies of adaption to thepost-communist environment, and strategies were changing over time. Seen in that perspective,party change can be considered as a rational and purposeful moves by the partis involved, inresponse to internal or external stimuli. Major changes have often been precipitated by poorelectoral performance.The take-over of governmental responsibilities came earlier than first expected. The participation ingovernment made a deideologizing, pragmatizing impact. As noticed above, the limited freedom ofmaneuvre in the economic and social policy turned the political Left closer to the political middle,however, at the same time removing those parties away from the voters and the civil societies. Atthe national elections in 1996 and 1997 in Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and Poland transformationloosers and socially marginalised felt themselves deceived by the “postcommunists”. Many decidedto be “sofa-voters” or alternately vote on the right-traditionalist market sceptical populist parties.The electoral support for the neoliberals remained modest, mostly encompassing the “transitionwinners”.Being in government the policy of the Left was determined by the low freedom of maneuvre in theeconomic and social policy, marked by a specific postcommunist pathdependency. Opposite, afterthe fall of communism, the ruling socialist parties in the South European countries had to movesocieties from plan to market under extremely difficult conditions internally as well as externally,thus without carrying through the social dimension promised during the election campaigns. Alsothe left governments had to pass the “valley of tears” before – slowly – moving to economicgrowth.Ishiyama and Bozóki identify four different adaption strategies among left-wing post-communistparties: the national/populist, the orthodox communist, the modernization/reformist and the nationalcommunist. Ishiyama and Bozóki distinguish between four different types of post-communiststrategies:• Leftist-retreat involves the successor party embracing its Marxist traditions (rejecting thefree market), repudiating western influence, and adopting the status of an anti-systemopposition party. This pattern is a long way exemplified by PDS in Germany and KSCM inthe Czech Republic.• The strategy of pragmatic reform attempts to distance itself from “dogmatic Marxism” andredefining the party involved as a “European” social democratic party consisting of“experts”, “technocrats” and “pragmatists”.• The national-patriotic strategy, which unlike the pragmatic reform strategy does not involvean attempt to redefine the party as a “European” social democratic party. Rather this strategyseeks to associate the party with nationalism, a modern ideological alternative tocommunism. This strategy often involves the formation of “red and brown” coalitions or so-26
called “nationalist-patriotic” and “fatherland” fronts such as has been the case in e.g. Russiaand Romania.1.9. Coalition buildingSeveral election party alliances have merged, often with the explicit aim to pass the tresholdrequirements stated in the lection laws, only rarely the explanation as an approximation on theelitelevel or the policy and programme level. As we shall se in the cases of Solidarity in Polandandthe Quadre Coalition (4K) the obstacles for establishing functional party federations became almostinsurmountable. The main problem was to create the sufficient loyalty on actor level and thenecessary cohesion on the policy and programme level. A common “federal” party identity wasalmost impossible to establish. On macro level, the change of party identity can be explained asmuch by factors internal to the parties involved in the federation as by external factors, i.e. factorsfrom the outside 20 .In several cases only loosely institutionalized party-alliances and umbrella-parties wereestablished. As noticed above, in several cases we have been dealing with negative party alliancesthat were focusing on a common enemy such as SDK in Slovakia (Meciar), AWS in Poland (”postcommunists”)and the Four Coalition (4K) in the Czech Republic (Klaus and Zeman). These partyalliances were not able to obtain sufficiently stable and definitive party memberships, rather wehave been dealing with ”participants in their actions” (Ágh, 1998:103). In general, the cohesion andloyalty on the elite level has been low. The movement parties tried to express the ”original” and”ideal” unity of society and party. However, they were organizationally fragile, mostly transitorypolitical phenomena, never constituting functional political parties like we find them in “standard”competitive multi-party systems. The cult of spontaneity and the movement line may overcome thedivision between everyday life and politics considered in the broader sense, but only in the shortterm.Figure : types of cooperation and alliances among parties in the CEESTypes of cooperation/alliances Characteristics ExamplesTransitory governmentsNormally formed just after the demiseof the old system and until the firstfree election, often set up according toa compromise between representativesfrom the old and new system, i.e. theoppositionNegative party alliancesTactical alliancesCooperation between parties primarilybased on a common enemy, i.e. the(post)communists and in spite ofdisagreements on both policy andactor levelParty cooperation with the primaryaim to secure the parties involved aThe first non-communist governmentin Poland, the government inCzechoslovakia after the velvetrevolution until the first free electionMay-June 1990Election Alliance AWS and the AWS-UW government in Poland, the SDKledgovernment in Slovakia after the1998 election, Democratic Conventionin Bulgaria, and (partly) the 4K in theCzech RepublicThe first stage of the four partycooperation (4K) in the Czech20 John Ishiyama and András Bozóki, “Adaption and Change:Characterizing the Survival Strategies of the CommunistSuccessor Parties, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.17, No.3, September 2001:32-51.27
Page 3: “This provisional situation chara
Page 6 and 7: marketisation and privatisationshor
Page 8 and 9: purposes, are channels for “expre
Page 10 and 11: the significance of strategic choic
Page 12 and 13: presidentialism gave rise to “flo
Page 14 and 15: antipolitics and reinforcement of a
Page 16 and 17: In the late 1990’s elections most
Page 18 and 19: determined primarily by “politica
Page 20 and 21: politics and antipolitics, all sign
Page 22 and 23: which attitudes to state regulation
Page 24 and 25: Anti-communism has been defined in
Page 28 and 29: Cartel agreementsbetter representat
Page 30 and 31: Basically the absence of clear cons
Page 32 and 33: After 1989 different types of polit
Page 34 and 35: complex project for transition unde
Page 36 and 37: window of opportunity in spite of s
Page 38 and 39: analyses of party institutionalizat
Page 40 and 41: political messages and slogans. Thu
Page 42 and 43: well established party culture may
Page 44 and 45: expected, much due to the many spli
Page 46 and 47: Furthermore, the polarisation on el
Page 48 and 49: Finally, Solidarity can also be con
Page 50 and 51: whole, on the one side an authorita
Page 52 and 53: The economic recession and the grav
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Page 56 and 57: The formation of AWS can be conside
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Page 60 and 61: According to the original plans the
Page 62 and 63: values. According to Rybicki, as so
Page 64 and 65: AWS should fight against all types
Page 66 and 67: 2001 parliamentary election, howeve
Page 68 and 69: and workers voted ZChN. At the 1993
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Page 72 and 73: establishment like than LPR’s. Th
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industrial policy. According to the
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pressurizing the government to give
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democrats, thereby locating itself
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To conclude, the Freedom Union (UW)
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Polish middle class. Thus, in Janua
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such as KSCM and KSS in The Czech R
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The SLD leaders were mainly recruit
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the falling popular support for pri
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innovation was formation of the pol
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place after talks with each applica
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Has the Left any freedom of manoeuv
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medicine, changes in the labour cod
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The Labour Union (UP), Democratic U
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Nevertheless, before that had taken
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