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

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purposes, are channels for “expressions”, fulfill specific roles and solve specific tasks in relation tothe political system.Studies of political parties lay focus on size, ideological characteristics, social links, membership,organisation and leadership, that means the problems related to party institutionalisation. As far asparty systems are concerned emphasis has been laid on the number of parties, i.e. the party systemformat, the structure of the ideological spectrum, types of polarisation and the characteristics ofvoter support 2 . In the post-communist context, besides the distinctions known from studies ofpolitical parties in West-Europe, i.e. between mass parties, cadre parties, catch-all parties, cartelparties, distinctions between programmatic parties, clientelistic parties and charismatic led parties,seem fruitful (Fiala etc, 2003:191).Thus party systems constitute one of the political systems most important subsystems based oninteraction between parties. Functional party systems are characterized by competition and at thesame time a willingness to enter political compromises between the parties involved. As Sartori putit, a “party system is precisely the system of interactions resulting from interparty competition”;therefore party systems consist of “patterned interactions of its component parts, thereby implyingthat such interactions provide the boundaries, or at least the boundedness, of the system” (Sartori,1976:43-44). Looking at the way parties connect society and government, three party systemfunctions can be observed. Basically the party system can aggregate social cleavages, translatesocial cleavages into political cleavages, or block the politicization of social clavages. As noted byMatthis Bogaards the one-party state seem to maximize blocking; the two party state seems to bebest in achieving aggregation; and the multiparty system most suited to translation (Mungiu-Pippidi, Krastev, 2004:250).In addition, Sartori distinguishes between the classical two-party systems like in Britain and US,moderate plural systems characterized by limited fragmentation and moderate centrpetalcompetition, party systems characterized by polarized pluralism, highly fragmentated andideologically polarised party systems, and finally the “predominant” party systems, in which caseone party is in the position of a majority in parliament long time. The crucial factor is the way theparties interact, like “working multi-party systems”, “non-working multiparty systems” or“immobilist” multiparty systems.The system concept is meaningless unless the system has characteristics that go beyond thecomponent parts, i.e. beyond a seperate consideration of its component elements. In other words,the parties are functions of the interaction with other parties and to a great extent react and act in acompetitive interplay with other parties. In case the interaction does not take place or fails party nonsystems or weak party systems (Almond and Powell, 1996:237) may emerge. In those casesconflicts (and interactions) inside the parties become stronger than between the parties. In addition,party systems might be high or low polarised, depending on the intensity of polarisation, and theymay be fragmented or segmented in case of multipartiism and long ideological distance between theparties.Strong polarisation may tend to generate adversary politics, in which case the relations between thebigger parties are characterized by confrontation. In those cases the political life is marked by apermanent election campaign. New great utopia’s were rejected, even the Prague Spring inCzechoslovakia, as the new elites preferred the already tested like the market economies and liberal2 See e.g. Jean Blondel, “Types of Party System”, in Mair, 1990:302.8
democracies known in the West. The political debate has been polemic and personal, nonethelsessantisystem parties i general did not well at the elections. Thus parties which aimed at destroying thenew postcommunist system did not necessarily have a great electoral support. Adversary politics onthe actor level sometimes took place between parties ideologically and programmatically close toeach other.In the later stage of post-communism, moving from extraordinary to more ordinary politics, partiesand party systems can to a great extent be studied by using concepts and cognitive instrumentsknown from studies of the more well institutionalised parties and party systems in the West, e.g. byincluding the well known distinctions between types of political parties and party systems, putforward by Duverger, Sartori, Kirchheimer, Mair etc., e.g. as mass parties, catch-all parties andcartel parties, the different types and forms of polarization and changes over time of the partysystem format.1.3. The formation of political partiesAs noted above, can political parties be considered as a necessary, but not as a sufficient conditionfor consolidation of democracy. That argument can also be used as regards the Central Europeancountries. Most of the new political parties in the CEEC’s were established top-down, suppliedfrom above more than demanded from below and established almost over night as ”sofa-parties andmostly by intellectuals. Some parties - like historic parties - were ”re-invented” or “reborn”. Somewere post-communist, wehich aimed to find a new post-communist identity, some were authentichistorical parties, e.g. social democratic and agrarian parties, other new parties were anticommunistcatch-all movement-parties, i.e. negative alliances appealing to all anti-communist minded sectionsof society.Parties and politicians, pretending to be “above politics”, were successful at the first elections butmostly due to the wide spread resistance against party politics. In the first phase the prevailingpolitical culture was not favourable for the development of functional and standard type politicalparties and party federations and the emergence of professional and responsive politicians.Characteristics from the former system such as extrication, total articulation, output-articulation,anti-politics, overparliamentarization and adversary politics turned out to be be impossible toeliminate over night.Furthermore, several country specific features have been observed. Some have mostly been due tostructural factors, including the legacy of the past, some to the country specific circumstances at thetime of the demise of the old systems and some to the chosen strategies for transformation, i.e. thesubjective factors. Like in Western countries studies of the internal party dynamics has been ratherlimited and difficult to carry through 3 .As noted above the development of political parties and party systems in the CEECs has beenclosely connected with the questions about consolidation of democracy and can therefore beexplained on the same levels, i.e. the actor, structural, institutional and policy-programmatic.Country wide democratic polities cannot be sustained without the organizing and mediating role ofpolitical parties. Parties reinforce identification with the democratic process by taking account of,aggregating the different interests in society and counteracting an excessive particularism (Brown,ed.:211, 213). Actor type explanations have been prominent in case of transitions by emphasizing3 More about that subject, see Szczerbiak, 2001:94.9
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group. RS AWS constituted the Chris
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According to the original plans the
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values. According to Rybicki, as so
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AWS should fight against all types
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2001 parliamentary election, howeve
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and workers voted ZChN. At the 1993
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The League has been considered as a
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establishment like than LPR’s. Th
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jobs in rural areas, especially sma
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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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