Journal Articles

Sticking Together: Explaining Comparative Centre-Right Party Success in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe

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In this article, we attempt to explain varying patterns of centre—right success between 1990 and 2006 in three
post-communist states — Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Success is understood as the ability to construct broad and durable parties. Both macro-institutional explanations, focusing on executive structures and electoral systems, and historical—structural explanations, stressing communist regime legacies, have limited power to explain the observed variance. The introduction of a more sophisticated framework of path dependence, stressing the role of choices and political crafting at critical junctures, adds some insight, but the lack of strong `lock-in' mechanisms required by such approaches makes such a model unconvincing when applied to Central and Eastern European centre—right party development. Other explanations that stress the importance of elite characteristics and capacity are needed to supplement the shortcomings of these approaches, in particular: (a) the presence of cohesive elites able to act as the nucleus of new centre—right formations; and (b) the ability of such elites to craft broad integrative ideological narratives that can transcend diverse ideological positions and unite broad swathes of centre—right activists and voters.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Party Politics

Call Number

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Publisher

London : Sage Publications., 2008

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

1354-0688

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Vol. 14, No. 4, July 2008. Page 407-434

Subject(s)

Parties
Hungary
centre-right
Czech Republic
Poland
STICKING TOGETHER

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

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