WHY WE LOST Explaining the Rise and Fall of the Center-Right Parties in Central Europe, 1996-2002 PETER UČEŇ and JAN ERIK SUROTCHAK (editors) WHY WE LOST Explaining the Rise and Fall of the Center-Right Parties in Central Europe, 1996-2002. Editors: Peter Učeň and Jan Erik Surotchak © International Republican Institute, Bratislava 2005. Graphic design: Stano Jendek | Renesans, s. r. o. Printing production: Renesans, s. r. o. ISBN 80-969417-8-x 3 Table of Contents Foreword ........................................................................................................................................5 Rise, Fall and Disintegration: The Bulgarian Center-Right in Power and in Opposition (1997 – 2005) .............................................................................13 Svetoslav Malinov Why Fidesz Lost: A Successful Government and Unsuccessful Party ................................31 Tamás Lánczi The Failure of the Conservative Project in Lithuania............................................................51 Mantas Adomėnas Why We Lost – The Macedonian Case....................................................................................71 Andrej A. Lepavcov Victories, Defeats, Reconfigurations and Reinventions of the Polish Right.......................87 Marek Matraszek Have We Really Lost in Romania? ........................................................................................ 101 Sebastian Lăzăroiu Center-Right Parties in Slovakia: From Failures to Success .............................................. 119 Grigorij Mesežnikov Explaining Center-Right Defeats .......................................................................................... 133 Peter Učeň Notes on Authors .................................................................................................................... 150 5 Foreword Partisan Desire for Power and the Virtues of Alternation: The Reasons for this Study he purpose for conducting this study is very simple and reflects the experience of the International Republican Institute (IRI) in the region. From 1996 to 1998, pro-reform, pro-Western and generally center-right parties and coalitions won a Tseries of elections around Central and Eastern Europe. In Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, center-right forces defeated post-Commu- nist and national populist parties and formed new governments. All of these promised to implement long-delayed economic and political reforms and accelerate the dual processes of integration into the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Most of them demonstrated solid progress toward these goals. By the next cycle of elections (2000 to 2002), however, six of the seven were out of power, and in several cases (Romania, Poland and Lithuania) the center-right parties themselves were essen- tially destroyed. When IRI launched its Regional Program for Central and Eastern Europe in the summer of 1999, our partners were often busy incumbents flying to center-right summits on govern- mental aircraft. Just a couple of years later we worked with them as with representatives of the opposition at best; at worst, some of our former partners fell into political oblivion. While there is no reason per se to lament failures of specific parties as something necessarily fatal to the progress of the center-right project in the region, it is important for us to un- derstand the factors that led to these failures. Political scientists and journalists sometimes use the term ‘pendulum swing’ to describe a massive and uniform pattern of incumbency change across a region, as if this pendulum effect had the power of destiny and were not sup- ported by definable causes. Our approach, however, is based on the assumption that causes were definable and can serve as lessons for other parties in similar situations. We are fully aware that from the point of view of democratic theory there is a strong argu- ment in favor of alternation of power and its healthy impact on democratic consolidation. 6 why we lost This alternation, however, is not a blessing as such.1 Rather, its import depends first on what kind of actors are involved, and second, on the nature of the learning process they go through when they hand power over to their opponents. For moderate, center-right parties (and for the left, as well), it is crucially important to analyze and reflect upon fail- ures, not only based on the ‘selfish’ interest of avoiding similar mistakes in future cycles of incumbency, but also as a contribution to this learning process and thus to the better functioning of democracy in their countries. For this reason, IRI has commissioned this series of country studies to analyze the reasons for the sometimes spectacular electoral setbacks suffered by center-right parties that fol- lowed their equally spectacular triumphs four years earlier. Funded though the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the ambitions of the project, rather than to produce far-reaching scholarship, are to produce a political over- view that offers a space for reflection on the part of those who care about the fate of the center right in Central and Eastern Europe. This does not mean that authors lack scientific background and rigor; for all of them, the analysis of politics is their quotidian undertak- ing. Each of them comes from a milieu that is sympathetic to, or at least interested, in center-right politics in the country about which he has written. With one recent exception, though, none of them is actively involved in party politics on the national level. Although IRI is pleased to have gathered these case studies together, it is important to note that the opinions expressed are those of the individual authors, not necessarily those of the International Republican Institute or anyone else involved in the publication of this book. In Search of the (Moderate) Right How did we come to call some parties ‘right-of-center’ in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989? A simple recollection of the situation just after the regime changes in this fateful year illustrates the development of changes in perception in this respect. In the early 1990s, the label ‘right’ applied to parties which were anti-Communist, fa- vored free-market economic reforms and championed Western integration, Atlanticism and openness to the outside world. The term ‘conservatism’ was not often used, unless to describe some Christian (usually, but not uniquely, Catholic) parties. Nowadays, even though support for market-liberal reforms, Western orientation and hostility to Commu- nism remains to a great extent at the heart of defining the moderate right in the region, the picture is richer and more complex. Today, the former two characteristics cannot be denied even to some parties on the left, and economic “reformers” are to be found left, right, and center, while Communist successor parties are sometimes more Atlanticist than their right-of-center counterparts. Rather than inquiring into the state of the right in the region as a whole, our ‘govern- ment-oriented’ study rather focuses on the moderate or center-right. The reasons for this are manifold: almost exclusively, major and ruling center-right parties in the region are 1 Certainly, it would not be difficult to offer a plausible argument in favor of unchallenged perseverance in power (over more than one term) of strong, coherent parties endowed with a capacity to implement their programs and policies, assuming these contribute to an increase of wealth and the consolidation of democracy. F o r e w o r d 7 moderate ones. Further, there is a serious body of research available regarding these par- ties positing a widespread assumption that alternation in power of the moderate right and the moderate left as we have known it in the US and Western Europe is the most desirable scenario for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. How, then, did the moderate right develop in the countries of interest in this study? In probably the most successful conceptual treatment of the moderate right in post-Com- munist Europe to date, Seán Hanley asserts that the group of moderate center-right parties should be clearly distinguished from other ‘non-left’ groupings, be they centrist liberals, national populists (such as the HZDS in Slovakia) or the radical nationalist right. (See Hanley, Seán, “Getting the Right Right: Redefining the Centre-Right in Post-Communist Europe,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 20:3, pp. 9-27.) In general, according to this approach, “the center right in the region… is a product of the politics of late Communism, domestic reform, European integration and post-Cold War geopolitical realign- ment, which…powerfully reshaped historical influences and foreign models” (Han- ley, page 9). Elsewhere Hanley reiterates that center-right parties “must therefore be understood as essentially ‘new’ political forces, shaped by late Communism and the subsequent politics of post-communist transformation, rather than a simple throw- back to the authoritarian conservatisms and integral nationalisms of the past. At the same time, however, contrary to the assumptions of some writers, the liberal, neo- liberal, conservative and neo-conservative identities and ideologies adopted by such forces are more than hasty borrowings from the West or dictas from international financial institutions” (Hanley, page 15). Crucial for the development of the right in individual countries was a struggle for