Post-communist party systems: competition, representation, and inter-party cooperation

The topic of electoral volatility was not at the center of academic work in Latin America until Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully’s seminal 1995 work Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America (cited in Electoral Volatility as an Expression of Party System Equilibrium). Preceding analyses primarily focused on explaining the breakdown of democratic politics in the region during the 1960s and 1970s. Conventional wisdom that departed from the classic work of Sartori in Parties and Party Systems (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976), maintained that stable party systems are crucial for the durability of democracies, focusing his attention on aspects such as party system polarization and fragmentation. Mainwaring and Scully shift the discussion, arguing that previous literature on the region neglected and inadequately conceptualized an equally important property of party systems: their level of their institutionalization. According to Mainwaring and Scully, party system institutionalization (PSI) is formed by four different dimensions. The first is stability in the patterns of party competition. Thus, institutionalized party systems are those in which actors develop expectations, orientations, and behavior based on the premise that practices and organizations will prevail into the foreseeable future. Mainwaring’s 2018 work, Party Systems in Latin America (cited in Electoral Volatility as an Expression of Party System Equilibrium), argues that this is the only relevant dimension in PSI, while considering that the other three are just underpinnings that facilitate it. So according to this work, an institutionalized party system is the one in which a stable set of parties interacts regularly in stable ways. This stability of interparty competition is traditionally measured with the Pedersen volatility index, a comprehensive measure of the net systematic shift in levels of electoral support for parties across elections. As volatility is negatively correlated with this important dimension of party system institutionalization, conventional wisdom holds that political representation deteriorates when there is persistent high volatility. To this debate, the well-cited 2006 article by Mainwaring and Torcal, “Party System Institutionalization and Party System Theory after the Third Wave of Democratization” (cited in Electoral Volatility as an Expression of Party System Equilibrium), adds the idea that this lack of stability in the patterns of competition in party systems, measured by electoral volatility, is a typical characteristic of new and developing democracies. According to that study, the most important defining characteristic of party systems in less developed countries is captured by their lack of institutionalization, in other words, the amount of electoral volatility in their party systems. Since the publication of these three contributions, the debate on party system dynamics in the region has focused on cross-national levels of electoral volatility, their relationship with other indicators of party system stability, and their consequences for democratic quality and performance, while also broadening the analysis to Europe.

One of the prime incentives for this dissertation was the renewed interest in the role of party agency for the emergence and structuring of party systems that came up in the course of the discussions about the third wave of democracy and the concomitant challenges to the theoretical fundamentals of common party system theory. In addition, scholarly discourse on the third wave brought up again the question as to how the party system as an independent variable impacts on processes of democratic consolidation, national integration and socio-economic development.Trying to examine the role of party agency in this regard and to assess the role of the party system as the independent variable, the dissertation deals with two regional and temporal contexts and a political phenomenon pertinent to these contexts that most often have ranked as unique or paradoxical in scholarly assessments. Academic accounts of post-colonial India are interspersed with references to a deviant case of, or an empirical anomaly to, party system and democratic theory, and the conventional vocabulary used to describe post-apartheid South African political development frequently resorts to such terms as political miracle or societal exceptionalism. A similar confusion and vagueness prevails with regard to the specific configuration of a democratic and competitive party system characterised by the towering and prolonged dominance of one party. The study is an attempt to shed light on these contexts and their party systems by departing from the conventional �paths� of party system theory as well as from the relativist assessments of post-independent India (1947-67) and post-apartheid South Africa (1994-). This is done by means of a diachronic comparison of the two countries� party systems with a distinct focus on the role of party agency in the shaping and maintenance of one-party-dominance and on the role of the two party systems as independent variables. Chapter 1 deals with the conceptual, theoretical and methodological problems, incentives and questions inherent in the kind of cross-national and diachronic comparison attempted in this study. Chapter 2 gives a brief outline of the regional settings at the time democratic party competition was beginning to take shape, outlines the institutional boundaries within which the two party systems were/are located, looks at the main characteristics of the electorate in post-independent India and post-apartheid South Africa and �takes stock� of the two party systems in terms of a broad outline of the dominant party and the relevant opposition parties. The next three chapters present the bulk of the empirical analysis and deal with the emergence, working and functions/effects of one-party-dominance in India and South Africa respectively. Each chapter refers to the basic outline of the analytical framework depicted above and combines theoretical arguments with empirical, as well as historical, givens of the two party systems under examination. Whereas chapter 3 examines how the two party systems were �shaped from above�, i.e. how party agency helped to achieve the dominant position of the INC and ANC respectively, chapter 4 examines the mechanisms of control employed to maintain dominance and the mechanisms of party competition prevailing in the two regional contexts. Both chapters deal with the party agentive factors identified in the analytical framework as responsible for the achievement and maintenance of one-party-dominance in the form of short analytical narratives. The last of these three chapters (chapter 5) sums up and discusses the effects and (redefined) functions of party systems in changing societies and gives an account of how both countries� party systems have fared with regard to these effects and in terms of fulfilling these functions. Chapter 6 takes up the differences and similarities of the two regional contexts as they have emerged out of the preceding three chapters, relates the �lessons� of the Indian experience to the prospects of one-party-dominance in South Africa by means of a comparison and reassesses the two key theses of the study, namely that a) party agency and strategy were among the most decisive factors in the formation and development of the two regional contexts� systems of one-party-dominance and are, in general, crucial for party system formation and development (they are especially relevant in the shaping of one-party-dominance in changing societies); and that b) systems of one-party-dominance have a potentially (but not necessarily) benign effect on processes of democratisation, national integration and democratic development in the crucial period of changing societies� transition to democracy and democratic consolidation.

Herbert Kitschelt, Zdenka Mansfeldova, Radoslav Markowski, Gábor Tóka: Post-Communist Party Systems. Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation

CONTINUITY RATHER THAN CHANGE WAS CHARACTERISTIC OF THE Turkish party system during its formative years in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Now, however, party competition in Turkey appears to be approaching a new phase of development. While some political analysts have described the emerging trends in the 1970s with reference to a ‘critical realignment’ in mass electoral behaviour, others have characterized the party system as going through a period of ‘flux and transition’. Indeed, the recent course of electoral politics in Turkey displays some significant changes. First, with the termination of the Justice Party's UP) dominant position in party competition, there has been a transition from a predominant party system to one of moderate pluralism in which the likelihood of coalition government has significantly increased. Secondly, the trend toward greater fragmentation in the party system which partially accounted for the JP's loss of dominance in 1973, appears to have been reversed in the 1977 parliamentary election as the two major parties made substantial gains at the expense of the minor parties. Thirdly, these changes have been accompanied by the increase of ideological polarization in the party system and the intensification of ideological cleavages among the party elites.

Party competition in Germany has become more fluid and unclear. In the recent past, the party systems of the federal states have lived up to their reputation as a laboratory for experimentation and innovation in party competition. But how have the state party systems developed and how regionalised have they been over the decades? And what does this mean for the German multi-level party system? This book addresses these questions and analyses the dynamics of the party systems in the German states over more than seven decades in terms of their temporal and spatial dimensions based on a systematic review of political science theory on party systems.

The classical outbidding model of ethnic politics argues that democratic competition involving ethnic parties inevitably leads to ethnic outbidding where parties adopt ever more extreme positions. However, recent small‐N studies show that ethnic outbidding is only one of a range of strategies available to ethnic parties. This article seeks to explain why some ethnic parties are extremist, whereas others adopt moderate positions. Drawing on the ethnic outbidding and the nested competition model of ethnic party competition, it is hypothesised that the ethnic segmentation of the electoral market, and the relative salience of an ethnically cross‐cutting economic dimension of party competition, account for the varying degrees of extremism. Hypotheses are tested drawing on a novel, expert‐survey‐based dataset that provides indicators for the positions of 83 ethnonational minority parties in 22 European democracies in 2011. Results of ordinary least squares and two‐level linear regressions show that as the economic dimension gains importance, parties become more moderate relative to the party system mean. The electorate's ethnic segmentation has a positive effect on extremism, but this effect is not significant in all models. Contrary to expectations, higher ethnic segmentation of the party system is associated with more moderate positions in the majority of the estimated models.

Party Systems

Political Alignments, Party Systems, and Prohibition

This article explains variation in levels of party system institutionalization in Asia by testing available data against several major hypotheses in the literature. The authors make three contributions to the literature on party system institutionalization. First, this study finds that historical legacies are a crucial variable affecting current levels of party system institutionalization. In particular, the immediate postwar period was the crucible from which institutionalized party systems in Asia developed. Second, the authors claim that for a significant number of institutionalized party systems, historical legacies are rooted in some element of authoritarianism, either as former authoritarian parties or as semidemocratic regimes. Third, precisely because authoritarianism has played an important role in the origins of institutionalized party systems, the authors argue that the concept of institutionalization needs to be strictly separated from the concept of democracy.

ABSTRACTThis research note presents EPAC 2017, a dataset resulting from the second round of an expert survey on ethnonationalism in party competition. EPAC provides cross-sectional data on the positions of (ethno-) national and mainstream parties on an ethnonational (also often referred to as ‘territorial’ or ‘centre-periphery’) dimension, as well as other important dimensions of political competition. The 2017 edition covers 222 political parties in 22 multinational European countries. The research note presents the main survey items and performs a series of validity and reliability tests on the data. Results show that EPAC 2017 provides valid and reliable measures of party positions on an ethnonational dimension. A short analysis of party system changes in Spain and Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates the opportunities of combining the 2011 and 2017 editions. The combined dataset allows studying the mobilization of the centre-periphery cleavage in party competition across Eastern and Western Europe and over time.

This article explores changes in party competition and coalition-building patterns in the Czech Republic that underpinned its twin transition to democracy and a market economy in the 1990s and early 2000s. It charts the domestic political landscape that underlined the Czech Republic's evolution from a communist state to a modernising political economy under relatively benign global and regional conditions. A key objective is to map the new internal political space that led to the deepening of the Czech Republic's integration into the global economy as well as to explain the ways in which internationalisation has transformed that political space over time. Internationalisation relates to the expansion of global markets, institutions and norms, a process that gradually reduces the purely domestic aspects of politics. Although progressively more aspects of domestic life become responsive to external processes, internationalisation does not necessarily imply global convergence (a term closer to 'globalisation'), at least in the short to medium terms, when domestic responses tend to vary across political sectors, institutions and time. We refer to Europeanisation as a process of domestication of European Union (EU) policy directives, recommendations and standards by states acceding to the EU. Our interest is to evaluate the particular response of the Czech Republic, and the sources of that response. In particular, we seek to: (1) identify changes in patterns of party competition; (2) outline the implications of coalitional patterns for policies and outcomes regarding internationalisation more generally, and Europeanisation in particular; and (3) assess the challenges that Czech leaders face in the changed global political and economic environment of the early twenty-first century.

This Special Issue aims to (1) theorise party strategies in multi-dimensional policy spaces; and (2) apply the theory to party competition in multinational democracies characterised by a salient territorial dimension alongside a more established economic dimension. The introductory article brings together recent contributions treating spatial and salience theories as compatible and policy spaces as two-dimensional to propose four party strategies that can be ranked from one- to two-dimensional competitive behaviour: uni-dimensionality, blurring, subsuming, and two- dimensionality. The remaining contributions operationalise these strategies and draw on a variety of data sources ranging from manifestos to parliamentary bill proposals and expert surveys to describe when and explore why parties use these strategies in competition, focusing on patterns of party competition in multinational democracies, selected as typical cases of multi-dimensional competition.

Political parties serve as fundamental institutions in democracies today. Their role often is as intermediaries between citizens and the state. Parties mobilise voters, aggregate interests and advocate for civic involvement. Party systems in the Balkans are the backbone and the drivers of political representation. Howe-ver, the relationship between party systems and civic engagement is not uni-form across regions, particularly in countries undergoing profound transforma-tion. As countries are still on the journey of democratic consolidation amidst post-conflict realities, the role of political parties is even more fundamental in this region. Parties’ effectiveness, however, is shaped by a wide range of factors including institutions, socio-political conditions, historical legacies. The Balkan countries stand at the crossroads of historical complexity and po-litical transformation, offering a distinctive context for exploring their party systems dynamics and influence on the democratic prosses in the countries.

This article explores statelessness as a multidimensional problem that directly impacts access to education and civic identity, particularly in Asia and Europe. Around 10 million people worldwide are stateless, deprived of basic rights such as education, health and employment due to the absence of legal documents. In Malaysia, thousands of children from migrant communities and ethnic minorities such as the Rohingya and Filipinos in Sabah lack access to national schools and public services due to their legal status. Meanwhile, in Europe, historical legacies such as the breakup of the Soviet Union and structural discrimination mean that many children from groups such as the Roma are born stateless and excluded from the education system. This article highlights that formal policies, such as "Zero Reject", are not enough without political alignment and effective identification mechanisms. Through human rights-based approaches and cross-sectoral cooperation, the elimination of statelessness should be a priority agenda in global citizenship and education policies. This will not only guarantee individual rights, but also build the foundations of an inclusive, just and civilised society.

Focuses on the concept of electoral and party competition as the key mechanism leading party elites to respond to the preferences of voters. While competition is of central importance in both democratic theory and in empirical studies of party behaviour, the concept (as operationalized in many studies) is vague and ambiguous; in particular, it has very different meanings in the real world of electoral and parliamentary behaviour, on the one hand, and in the formal models of rational‐choice scholars, on the other. Discusses the unintended by‐product (social value) of competition, and gives an overview of the intellectual origins (from Simmel, Schumpeter, and Downs) of this approach. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to an original criticism of the problems inherent in applying this import from economic theory to the study of electoral competition, first focusing on key dimensions of this competition—contestability, availability, decidability, and vulnerability, and then arguing that these four crucial dimensions of competition interact with one another in ways that are fundamentally incompatible with the simplifying assumptions upon which the economic model depends. Each of the dimensions of electoral competition impinges on the others in an interactive, if not sometimes contradictory manner, and as a result of these multidimensional interaction effects, party competition cannot be conceived of as a linear process that unfolds between minimum and maximum points on a single continuum, but rather as a moving point shifting about in a four‐dimensional space within which no equilibrium point can be identified; accordingly, electoral preferences cannot be regarded as exogenous to party competition, but are decisively influenced by parties and party elites.