Political Parties in Central and Eastern Europe In Search of Consolidation Central and Eastern Europe Regional Report Based on Research and Dialogue with Political Parties Political Parties in Central and Eastern Europe In Search of Consolidation Central and Eastern Europe Regional Report Based on Research and Dialogue with Political Parties Authors: Věra Stojarová, Jakub Šedo, Lubomír Kopeček and Roman Chytilek Institute for Comparative Political Research (ISPO) at Masaryk University, Brno International IDEA Research and Dialogue Coordination: Roger Hällhag Head of Political Parties’ Programme Matthias Catón Programme Officer for Political Parties Maja Tjernström Programme Officer for Political Parties About this report Political parties are indispensable for making democracy work and deliver. Finding the proper conditions for better internal functioning and effective legal regulation of political parties is of key importance anywhere. This report is a result of world-wide research and dialogue with political parties. Together with national and regional research partners, International IDEA is improving insight and comparative knowledge. The purpose is to provide for constructive public debate and reform actions helping political parties to develop. For more about the Political Parties’ programme, please visit www.idea.int/parties This publication is co-supported by the Czech Ministry of Education under the programme “Political Parties and Representation of Interest in Contemporary European Democracies” (MSM 0021622407). © International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance 2007 International IDEA publications are independent of specific national or political interests. Views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the views of International IDEA, its Board or its Council members. Applications for permission to reproduce or translate all or any part of this publication should be made to: International IDEA SE -103 34 Stockholm Sweden International IDEA encourages dissemination of its work and will promptly respond to requests for permission to reproduce or translate its publications. ISBN: 978-91-85724-01-7 ii Preface More than 15 years have passed since the fall of Central and Eastern Europe’s non-democratic regimes yet the study of political parties in this region, in particular their development, character and manifestations, remains an enormous and important project. The development of party systems in post-communism has some unique characteristics, such as its occasionally haphazard dynamics, which can lead to various mutually contradictory and incomplete outcomes. Over time this has dislodged the long-standing conviction of social scientists (e.g. Lipset 1996) that a vital and stable party system is a necessary condition of democratic consolidation, in favour of more circumspect views, be it Tóka’s claim that political parties influence only the quality of democratic consolidation (Tóka 1997), or even the belief that the reproduction of democracy and the formation of party systems are not obviously connected (Anckar, Anckar 2001, cf. Fiala, Strmiska 2001). The political parties in post-communist countries had to convince the citizens that they were playing a crucial role in democratic society at a time when parties were becoming unfashionable worldwide as a means of political participation. That in Central and Eastern Europe this would be a rather thankless task became obvious fairly quickly. In many countries, there was either a non-existent or far too distant experience with autonomous competition between political parties and competition that would be at least to some degree independent from the state. Political parties were therefore perceived negatively, and mobilization against them even became a source of legitimacy for exponents of the new regime. It is enough to remember the slogan with which Civic Forum, led by Václav Havel, won the first free election in Czechoslovakia in 1990: ‘Parties are for party members, the Civic Forum is for everyone.’ Nevertheless, 27 parties were represented in the Polish Parliament after the first democratic election. With so many parties, it was a delusion to think that they could properly fulfil the functions that the Italian political scientist, Giovanni Sartori (Sartori 1976), expects of vital parties that constitute parts of a whole: an ability to balance partisanship and non-partisanship in government, loyalty towards the party and loyalty towards the state, and the interests of the party and the interests of the state. It might therefore be surprising that today most of the countries studied have relatively vibrant party systems. Party configurations in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have in the first post-transformation years managed to navigate between the Scylla of disintegration (the whole breaks up into parts) and the Charybdis of a new devouring of parts by the whole and of fusion of parties with the state—to use Sartori’s words. Political parties have proven themselves extraordinarily active players, contributing to the cultivation of their environment. The more or less successful attempts at institutional (mostly electoral) reforms are good examples of this. In Poland, for instance, electoral reform of 1993 was instrumental in the fact that only six parties managed to win seats in the second election of the Sejm . Herbert Kitschelt (Kitschelt 2003) points out that some of the activities of political parties were made possible by the credit that stemmed from the advantage of backwardness of post-communist countries. Since it was fairly easy and inexpensive to modify a party’s identity at that time, parties could react to the wide variety of new challenges arising from the transformation of mediation of interests in a way that was hardly imaginable for their Western European counterparts. The Western European parties are compared to bulky oil tankers by Kitschelt. Kitschelt’s view presents us with an alternate path to the previously accepted claim that the Central and Eastern European political systems (in this case: party systems) are undergoing gradual, but more or less obvious, consolidation, and are approaching those of Western democracies. At a time when party systems in some Western European democratic polities are undergoing a period of instability and a significant transformation in both intra- and inter-party functioning, it is no longer absolutely clear precisely what a party system should look like in order for it to be considered ‘consolidated’. Even the accession of many countries of post-communist Europe to the European Union, connected with the ‘Europeanization’ of party politics, is not a completely one-way process: parties from new member states use strategies that can potentially modify the European level of politics and the direction of the EU as a whole. It becomes increasingly clear that the Central and Eastern European parties are not, and probably never will be, simply derivatives of their Western European counterparts (cf. Fiala, Holzer, Strmiska 2002). iii Studying party politics in Central and Eastern Europe means keeping up with a very lively playing field, where the players often change and modify the rules mid-game. However, this should not discourage scholars from attempting to gain as much information as possible about the environment in which the parties of post- communist countries operate—by analyzing the modes of competition of political parties and studying their inner functioning. The present report intends to contribute to this end. It results from cooperation between International IDEA and the Institute for Comparative Political Research (ISPO) at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. The report’s main goal is to be a source of information about the current state of party politics in Central and Eastern Europe. We also tried to identify the main problems that adversely affect the effectiveness of party politics in each country and suggest possible reforms. We hope that you, the readers—whether members of party elites, party activists, non-governmental organizations, social scientists, the media, or other—will find this report useful. Petr Fiala Director, Institute for Comparative Political Research, March 2007 Acknowledgements The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the draft, which helped to improve the text significantly. They would equally like to thank their colleagues from the Institute for Comparative Political Research (ISPO) at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, especially the director of the Institute, Petr Fiala, who welcomed and supported their efforts. Hana Vykoupilová deserves a special mention for her productive communications with International IDEA. Kateřina Vráblíková and Barbora Dudáková undertook the enormous task of gathering and verifying information on the political actors in the region. The authors are equally grateful to Otto Eibl for his efficient assistance in completing the appendices of the manuscript and for his suggestions regarding the book’s overall concept. Štěpán Kaňa, Julie Brown and Todd Hammond provided welcome and timely assistance with English. iv Contents About the Project and Methodology ..........................................................................................1 Project methodology ................................................................................................................1 Regional Analysis – Party System .............................................................................................4