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

• To the first group belong the professionals, who so to say were “born” into politics, whorecognised that, were in possession of a good ability to adapt themselves to new situationsand find their bearings in new unpredictable situations. Many reformminded communistsbelonged tho that group.• The next group was the those doing “missionary work”, i.e. persons, who felt to perform ahistorical mission. Often we were dealing with writers and other cultural personalities,almost “carried” into politics. For those people politics was not a goal in itself, the goalswere rather metapolitical.• To the third group belonged the “divided”, i.e. people who were not power orientated andwith an unclear vision about heir own role in politics and the political future. Many fromthat resigned from politics with the professionalisation or bureaucratisation of politics.• Finally there were people who soon after the break through in 1989 resigned from politics,some returned to their former work, others moved to the new private sector and becamepolitical advisors.Furthermore, it is important, how many ressources and how great a “capital” that belongs to the thedifferent elite groups (Szelelyi e.a., 1995). According to “capital” we can differentiate between fourdifferent types:• Economic capital, i.e. the possession of property and ccess to financiation, state subsidiesetc.• Cultural capital, e.g. education.• Societal capital, e.g. close networks horsontally and vertically.• The ability to convert capital by using the already established networks to exchangepolitical by economic capital.In some studies a distinction has been made between “laissez faire”, “transactional and“transformational” political leadership (Heywood, 1998:334). In the case of laissez-faire leadershipwe have to do with a considerable delegation of political power to lower levels of decision making;in case of transactional leadership were are dealing with a “hands-on” leadership emphasizingpragmatic goals and underlining party unity and party cohesion; and in case of transformativeleadership main emphasis has been laid on visions, inspiration and carismatic leadership. In case oftransformative leadership the weight has been laid on the closest as possible contact between elitesand voters by means of political mobilisation with the aim to carry through the most necessaryreforms of society.As noted above, the parties were established top-down and for that reason they also to a great extentbecame elite governed. In most cases the new elites were in short of strategic visions andinstitutional capacity to translate visions and strategies into action. In the first stage of postcommunismthe leadership in most cases was “hand on” as the new elites had to formulate a new33