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

“This provisional situation characterized by a rich dynamic of social problems, together with anunbalanced and chaning distribution of gains and losses. The resulting conflicts become- insuccessful cases- part of the universe myth. In thus universe of myth these conflicts are seen as aseries of crisis/tests, which push the society indirectly from the old order to the new. This originallyopen transition comes to a close when the participants cease to see the current events asprovisional ”(Kabele, 1999).In the words of George Schöpflin (Schöpflin, 1993), the first stage was marked by weakinstitutionalisation, lack of confidence among people, atomization of civil society, a desire forideologisation of all in society and a widespread resistance against politics as such (“antipolitics”).The new politicians were forced to take far-reaching decisions under high insecurity and timepressure. In such unsettled times social preferences and visions of the new society were impreciseand vague. Under those circumstances the characteristics of identity politics and moral politics werestriking.Later, moving towards “ordinary” interest based politics the political life became more predictable,and the prospects of membership of the EU became realistic and not only considered as publicgoods but public necessities as well, thereby constituting a “valens issue”, i.e. issues on which allthe relevant and responsible parties, the post-communist parties included, declare the sameobjective but dispute each other’s competence in achieving the desired policy” (Innes, 2002:90).The tabula rasa account that accentuates the uniqueness and fluidity and chaotic environment of thefirst stage of post-communism, seems to be most appropriate to use when studying the first“extraordinary” stage of post-communism. New concepts had to be developed to capture the newpost-communist situation, as the parties and party-systems in the first years under post-communismshowed qualitatively specific “extraordinary”characteristics that distinguished them from the West-European. At the outset the situation was historically unique and “extraordinary”. As can be seen inthe list of concepts and dynamics (figure ) new concepts, reflecting the unique historical situationhad to be used.Figure : Stages of post-communism. ..... “something else”.Late stage of …… the “break-through” …. Extraordinary ......real socialism politics ……….. ordinary politicstransition anomie......... consolidation of democracy3