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

After 1989 different types of political leaders emerged. Thus, the Hungarian Attila Ághdistinguishes between four groups:• “Politicians of morals”, who played a significant role in the first stage. They mostlyappealed to patriotic and national values.with references to their own “heroic past”. Aspoliticians they acted reserved, improvised, morally, non-professionally and almostaristocratically, captured by a specific “liberation myth”. Poland’s Jan Olszewski and theCzech Republic’s Vaclav Benda have been included in that first group.• “Politicians of historical vision”. Politicians from that group often left the political sceneafter the demise of the old system. Before 1989 they had not been active dissidents. Aspoliticians they often based their arguments on idelogies and discourses going back to precommunisttimes. Before 1989, they had often entered compromises with the power holders.The political style was arrogant, not compromise seeking and unprofessional. Former primeminister in Hungary Józef Antall and the christian democrat Jan carnogursky in Slovakiabelonged to that group. Also many politicians in the Baltic countries shared a feeling offullfilling a historical mission reestablishing independence after 50 years under communistrule. Nonetheless, many from that group had at some time been leading politicians under theold system., sometimes they explelled from the communist parties due to lack of partydiscipline.• “Politicians by chance”, i.e. persons who became “carried” into politics because of the thenprevailing extraordinary politics and transition anomie. Several times people from that groupbecame embarassment for further consolidation of democracy due to their agressive selfpromotingstyle and onesided aiming at political career. Several from that group wereinvolved in political scandals, and many absurd, often populist and xenofobic policalslogans. Stanislaw Tyminski, Lech Walesa’s rival candidate at the 1990 presidentialelection, Miroslav Sladek, the leader of the right wing populistic repubican party in theCzech Republic, Istvan Czurka, the ringht wing nationalist in Hungary, and VladimirZjirinovski, the leader of the populist Liberal Democratic Party in Russia, belonged to thatgroup.• The old nomenklatura, which to a great extent has survived. Especially the modern part ofthe nomenklatura made a good showing. The conservative “beton-heads” either resignedfrom politics or turned themselves into nationalists. Poland’s president e and former leaderof the left wing SLD Aleksander Kwasniewski and Hungary’s former foreign minister,prime minister Guyla Horn belonged to the “modern” and accomodate part of thenomaneklatura.• Finally Attila Ágh mentiones the new professionals, a mixture of old and new, mostlyconsisting of experts and professionals from the old regime or yungsters without any linksback in time. To the first generation of professionals, people from the “second tier” of theold system, belonged Vaclav Klaus, the party leader of the liberal party ODS and later thepresident of the Czech Republic, and Leszek Balcerowicz, the former Minister of Finance,leader of the liberal Freedom Union (UW), later the Polsh national bank governor.In agreement with Atilla Ágh, András Bozóki from the Central European University in Budapest,breaks down of the new elite in this way:32