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

Cartel agreementsbetter representation in parliament byminimizing the waste of votes atelectionsPower sharing agreements, in whichcase the policy-content is neglected,the aim is to keep other parties out, themajority principle, “the winners take itall”Imposed agreements Cooperation between partiesestablished after heavy pressure fromthe international society, i.e. the West,e.g. the EUFree “self chosen” alliancesSeveral coalition alternatives exist,only few historical structural obstaclesand no pressure from the internationalsociety. Agreement on policy level isthe most important, old cleavageswhich may be barriers for coalitionbuilding are de-freezed or nonexistingHistorical compromise Cooperation overcoming deephistorical, i.e. structural cleavages.Reflect de-freezing of old e.g. “Weversus Them” cleavagesRepublic, “Przymierze Polski” inPoland at the municipal and regionalelections in 1998.The agreements between ODS andCSSD in the Czech Republic after the1998 election, especially the first“opposition agreement” just after the1998 electionDifficult to find in the “pure” form,however the government establishedafter the 1998 and the 2002 election inSlovakia can be taken as examples.The governmental coalitionestablished after the 1998 in Hungarybetween FIDESZ and agrarian partyFKGP. FIDESZ could haveestablished a broad coalition with e.g.the Socialist Party (MSZP). After the2002 Czech election the CSSD couldhave continued cooperation with ODS,but took the Coalition (K) as partner ingovernmentThe governmental coalition betweenthe Socialist Party (MSZP) and theliberal Alliance (SZDSZ) after the1994 election in HungaryThe rise of umbrella type parties has been caused by the fragmentation and party splits after the firstfree elections. The umbrella parties have an hegemonic core that dominates smaller parties. Smallparties, that might loose the parliamentary representation at a forthcoming elections, may survive ifthey enter coalitions with stronger (”hegemonic”) parties in order to pass tresholds requirementsand obtain seats in parliament. Most important is to minimize waste of votes caused e.g. by highelection threshold requirements. Umbrella type inter-party cooperation have been seen on both thepolitical right and left side of the political spectrum. Thus, the cooperation between MDF andFIDESZ in Hungary and between the Works Union (UP) and SLD in Poland are examples of such“hegemonic” party-alliances. Before the 2002 election in Slovakia several new election alliancesemerged. Some were transformed to “parties” because of changes in the election rules, decided bythe Meciar led government.The umbrella parties and party alliances may change role and later constitute party federations witha stronger decision centre and even become unified standard parties. The question, however, is towhat extent the parties involved are willing to give up their own party identity. Unification andstandardization has been especially difficult for parties with a long historic tradition and a wellestablished party culture.A third model was establishment of pure tactical alliancse (see figure ... ). In that case the partiesinvolved are capable to cooperate programmatically and put forward common lists at the elections,but they limit themselves to coordination on the policy-level without transforming themselves intoparty federations that include “shadow cabinets” and common long-term political programmes suchas in the case of AWS in Poland and SDK in Slovakia. In other words, the parties maintain theirown party identities and their own party institutions. For that reason the day to day policy problems28