10


The Role of Political Parties: Political Culture and Electoral Behaviour

Atilla Ágh



Parties and party systems in democratic transition


Parties have been the chief actors of systemic change in its first two periods: in the
pre-transition crisis and democratic transition. By now they have achieved a partial consolidation
in East Central Europe and some stabilization in the Balkans. A more detailed analysis of the ECE
parties gives us a point of departure for the description of the Balkan parties which have shown
more ‘infantile disorder’ than those in the ECE region. The new democratic systems have been formed
as multi-party systems. They have already made great strides from polarized pluralism to moderate
pluralism and from movement parties to cartel parties in developments in East Central Europe and in
the emergence of most relevant parties in the Balkans (see the list of all important parties in the
ECE countries and the Balkans in the Appendix to this chapter).

There have been some very characteristic tendencies of political and electoral behaviour in the ECE
states and, to some extent, in the Balkan countries (most markedly in Bulgaria), which may be
summarized in the following:


1 Electoral and party fragmentation (Table 5.1).

2 High electoral volatility and protest voting.

3 The return of the ‘post-communist’ vote and parties (Table 5.2).

4 Growing abstentionism at elections (Table 5.3).

5 Declining confidence in parliaments and parties.^1
















These five tendencies are, however, the normal features of the party formation process leading to
the emergence of a multi-party system. The first two tendencies indicate merely the temporary ‘high
temperature’ of the political body in the first years of democratic transition. In the initial
stage of democratic transition a ‘hundred-party system’ came into being which was reduced by the
two or three consecutive free elections. The electoral and party fragmentation is, in fact, not
that high; it has been sharply decreasing in the parliaments, and the largest two or three parties
control the overwhelming majority of popular votes and parliamentary seats. The surprisingly strong
wave of traditionalist conservatism and nationalism was also defeated in East Central Europe: these
are great achievements in a few years. The traditional conservatism was the major cause for the
high electoral volatility in the early 1990s, since when it has significantly diminished. The third
tendency proves that the first period is already more or less over, that is, we are at the end of
the beginning in the transition process. The return of a post-communist vote arises from very
different causes in East Central Europe and in the Balkans. In the ECE countries these parties have
gone through a fundamental reform and in the Balkans they have simply kept power, in most cases
turning to national-communism. The reasons for the fourth and fifth tendency are much deeper, since
they are connected with the drastic social transformation, as a cumulative effect of all economic,
social and
























political transformation or that of the high social price paid by the population for the political
collapse and the following transformation. These tendencies will hold on until economic
consolidation is reached, the first signs of which can be seen in most of the ECE countries. This
leads us to the hypothesis about the ‘early freezing’ of the ECE parties (and to some extent the
Bulgarian party system) as a partial consolidation of a partial system. The nationalist-populist
based party systems have also consolidated, to some extent, in the Balkans, with their
‘charismatic’ leaders.



From movement parties to cartel parties: party organization


1 The particular type of political organization which emerged in East Central Europe is the
so-called movement party, and competition among the movement parries created the first multi-party
systems (see Batt, 1991: 55-6). They represented to a degree the ‘original’ and ‘ideal’ unity of
society and party, even though they were fragile and transitory political phenomena, not yet
suitable for the roles of political parties in a competitive multi-party system. They had no stable
and definite memberships, just participants in their actions. The cult of spontaneity was
characteristic of them, since they tried to overcome the division between everyday life and
politics, which brought also a domination of horizontal ties over vertical ones. Leadership roles
were based on personal authority and not on the elected posts of the party hierarchy. The
programmes were vague, emotionally supported and directly connected with such actions as mass
demonstrations. These movement parties and their social movements played a big role in East Central
Europe immediately before and after the collapse of the former system, but they had to transform
themselves step by step into real parties. This turning point came in Hungary in late 1989, in
Poland and Czecho-Slovakia in 1990, It has not yet been fully achieved in Slovakia, where the
Movement for Democratic Slovakia, as the biggest party, has tried to preserve the
national-emotional features in order to maintain itself as a large populist movement (see
Szomolányi and Meseznikov, 1995: 99), close to the style of the Balkan parties (see Table 5.4).

2 In the early 1990s, however, the ECE parties collected some stable memberships, initially as
networks and/or movement parties, and through this they took the first steps to becoming national
organizations with party programmes. Prior to the first, founding elections the early political
organizations were under pressure to decide whether they would or could become real parties instead
of the previous ‘travestita’ or embryonic proto-parties. This was the honeymoon period for newly
emerging parties, since the new legal regulations favoured parties over meso-political
organizations, for example over organized interests and civil society associations. Therefore, many
interest organizations opted for a party existence in order to be able to exert pressure upon
politics; since then the border line between macro- and meso-systerns, parties and organized
interests, has remained blurred. Actually, all bigger ‘baby’ parties had already won some power, or
at least political influence, through negotiating mechanisms between the government and the
opposition. Their specific political strength, however, was still unclear before the elections. In
the Balkans the former ruling parties have remained mass parties with membership continuity and
many parries have become mass parties as movement parties.

The overparticization process was already under way in this early period. Parties became the major
actors of political transformation, and during their formation process they used and abused all
their available resources. This is why virtually all socio-political forces sought to be organized
as parties, otherwise they would have been left out of politics. Parties were, however, more
successful outside than inside; that is, they succeeded in pushing out other actors from politics,
but they were not very successful in organizing themselves. This organizational deficit was clear
even in this dynamic period. The ECE societies were activated and overpoliticized, but the parties’
social ties remained minimal, since people did not join parties in great numbers and the national
organizations remained weak. Therefore, the biggest difficulty for the parties in the early
institutionalization process was to transform themselves from movement parties with loose
organization and spontaneous action (which had the broad but diffuse support of the population), to
organized parties with disciplined memberships, regular and formalized meetings, and extended party
bureaucracy and professional leaderships. Even the most successful baby parties were only elite
parties led by a small group of intellectuals, with a minimal and rather inactive membership.
Actually, in the early 1990s the cultural or tribal wars led to the emergence of the first ‘real’,
that is organized, parties but they emphasized first of all their ideological character. Therefore,
the first ECE party systems can be characterized in Sartori’s term as ideologically based polarized
pluralism (Sartori, 1976/1990: 328). The most characteristic features of this period are the reform
and transformation of the post-communist parties in East Central Europe and their conservation in
the Balkans. Obviously, the partyist ECE regimes are much more democratic than the facade
democracies or elitist democracies in the Balkans.

3 The crucial turning point for the parties came after the first elections through power transfer
and the start of the parliamentarization process. In this period the overparticization was
reinforced by the winners, the parliamentary parties, which acted aggressively to exclude both all
the other socio-political actors and the non-parliamentary parties from politics. Their
justification was based upon the particularistic nature of other organizations compared to parties,
which represent more general, if not national, interests. The exclusion was also seen as protecting
parliamentary democracy from the ‘corporative’ pressure of organized interests which were,
supposedly, in most cases delegitimized by their participation in the former political system. At
the same time, parliamentary parties concentrated all resources in political and public life on
themselves, raising the ‘entrance fee’ into politics too high for the other parties. There was one
historical occasion following the first elections when parties received big office buildings as
their headquarters, along with many other privileges. The democratic institutionalization of
macro-politics - parties, parliament and government - had to take place quickly, and its actors
asserted their rights emphatically and aggressively.

The biggest challenge for the parties’ organizational structure was certainly their participation
in power with all its consequences. The parties were, even before the elections, organized from
above by small groups of intellectual elites taking the initiative. After the elections this
top-down organizational character became absolutely and shockingly quickly predominant.
Overparticization and overparliamentarization reinforced each other, and politics once again became
a remote realm for people, but this time on a multi-party base. The size of party memberships first
quickly increased in the parliamentarization phase, reaching a peak in 1991-2, and then began to
decline slowly. Parliamentary parties re-mained relatively small - except for some post-communist
parties with membership continuity - but still have monopolized the public scene by securing
privileged access to the media for themselves. This cruel selection process among parties by the
first elections was necessary and unavoidable, and it has mostly been successful. But the
selfishness of the ‘successful’ parliamentary parties and their eagerness to become the only actors
of the political game backfired and isolated the parliamentary parties even more from society. The
parliamentarization of parties has played a positive role even in the presidential systems, where
the parliaments have been weak and subdued.^2

The political parties had to turn inside in order to organize themselves under the new, powerful
pressure of parliamentarization. This occurred in two ways: in the parliament as party factions
with their leaderships and expert teams; and within the party as a relationship between the newly
‘parliarnentarized’ leadership and the whole membership. For some time, the parties had very few
leading personalities and an even smaller group of experts. The leaderships of party and
parliamentary factions merged very closely; therefore, the gap suddenly increased between the
narrow party elite and rank-and-file members. In the early 1990s a special ‘con-gressing’ way of
working among the ECE parties began. Since then they have very often convened party congresses or
national meetings to mobilize the membership and to give the activists a chance to participate and
control the leadership, This ‘congressing’ has obviously been a substitute for everyday party life,
missing so far because of the low density of party membership and low intensity of usual party
activities.

The relative social vacuum in and around the new ECE parties was reinforced by the
overparticization in the parliamentarization stage in the early 1990s. It weakened their
‘conversion’ function, that is, they were not able fully to articulate and aggregate social demands
into programme packages as political alternatives at the national level. The more effort they made
to achieve an independent political profile of their own, the more similar they looked. They were
indistinguishable regarding basic issues of social and economic policy. The genetic defect of the
ECE party systems was that most parties claimed to represent the whole nation directly and without
distinction or special preference for the particular interests of some social strata or classes. It
should be noted, however, that there is a second group of parties which are still ‘travestita
interest organizations’, and they represent the highly particularistic interests of some social
strata directly and rigidly. But these organized interests, in the form of parties, have been the
exceptions, and ‘national’ parties have dominated on the political scene. Earlier these ‘national’
parties were exclusi-vist and overcompetitive, but as premature or pseudo catch-all parties they
were yet faceless to the general population. They lacked a solid party identity of their own;
consequently, their party identification was also very weak among their voters. Since they were so
weak in the social wilderness, the parties relied more on their privileged political power
existence, which created, by means of this vicious circle, more and more social alienation from
politics.

There are three major tendencies which have undermined the organizational strength of the ECE
parties:


1.   The ‘senilization’ of party memberships, that is, the growing age of the members with all of
its consequences, since it is mainly the senior citizens or the elderly who have time and energy
for political activities. The young and middle generations are too busy trying to earn a modest
income in the circumstances of the economic crisis and, in general, the most active and talented
people tend to avoid political careers. After a peak period the younger people usually left the
parties, so that local party meetings, if any, resemble senior citizens’ clubs, where those present
put forward their individual frustrations and outdated ideas.

2.   The ‘law of small numbers’, meaning that even within the small memberships those with
extremist and radical views tend to stay inside the parties and to dominate the party’s grassroots
activities. This leads to the ‘fundamentalization’ or radicalization of party memberships. Thus, a
small number of true believers try to determine the party profiles from below. The radicalism of
true believers usually creates a credibility gap between the party membership and its constituency,
that is, between the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ party. The small radical core in this way alienates the
voters concerned and tries to take the party leadership hostage, making party democracy more
dangerous, if there is any wish at all on the part of the party elites to move in this direction.

3.   The top-down construction and truncated pyramid are characteristic of the ECE parties, in
contrast to the interrelationships of different levels of party existence and to the normal
organizational pyramid of Western parties. First, in my view, parties exist in forms or levels of
social existence (membership party and organization party) and political existence (programme party
and power party). The political existence of the ECE parties is much stronger than their social
existence, and within the political existence the power party is the dominant form. Therefore, the
parties have been built from the top down; that is, from the power party down to the membership
party. Second, concerning the internal organization of parties, among its five layers - top
leaders,

middle-level leaders, activists, members and supporters or voters - the first three are relatively
large, but strangely enough almost equal in size. The membership layer, in turn, is very small
compared to others, and even more so in comparison with the fifth layer, which is relatively too
broad. This structure is similar to a truncated pyramid, but stands on ‘moving sands’, because the
party identification of voters has been largely uncertain. Even with increasing party
consolidation, the party support of about half the citizens has still been very volatile.


New organizational pressure appeared in the relationships of (a) the party elite and the basic
party organizations, (b) the party and its original social movement, and {c) the party elite and
the media. In these premature ‘media democracies’ the relationship to the media turned out to be
vital for these new parliamentary parties in at least three respects.


1.   The new party leaders were intellectuals and they had an extreme sensitivity and vanity
concerning the press, the opinions of their former colleagues and those of their own former
socio-cultural milieu.

2.   The new parties were engaged in a cultural war among themselves because of their vague and
over-ideologized programmes and ‘tribal’, sub-cultural political profiles. In this cultural war the
media was crucially important for them.

3.   Intensive media contacts compensated the party leaders for the organizational deficit and for
the weakness of the national organization with its missing communication channels within the party.
In fact, the media messages (or ‘congressing’) were substitutes for regular party meetings.


As this analysis shows, in the first half of the 1990s the ECE parties were not yet real, fully
developed parties, since they were either above this level claiming to be the only ‘national’ party
(state-party complex) or below this level being the barely concealed representatives of specific
organized interests (interest organization complex). With all these setbacks, parties developed
significantly in the parliamentarization stage, first of all in an
organizational-institutionalizational aspect. There was a large structural differentiation inside
the parliamentary parties among various party institutions, in the forms of special departments in
the party headquarters, and in roles along the lines of the Weberian division of labour between
political leaders, party administrators and special expert teams. Parties were the major actors
also in the parliamentarization process but they were, at the same time, the most important
products of this process, although still unfinished products with both institutional and cultural
deficits. They developed, however, in this period toward a limited or moderate pluralism, in
Sartori’s terms, through the political learning process in the first coalition governments. The ECE
parties reduced their internal heterogeneity (‘many parties in one’) to a great extent and created
clearer party profiles (although not yet unambiguous in many respects), while the Balkan parties
have been kept, at most, in the early parliamentarization stage.^3

4 By the later years of the 1990s, however, the ECE parties and party systems entered a new - the
fourth - stage of their emergence. The widening of politics has now become a vital necessity for
the parties, although they have given up the monopoly of their political roles only with some
hesitation. Yet, the opening up of the national political scene has begun, step by step, to include
organized interests, local-regional self-governments and civil society associations, in terms of
both an institutionalization of the pre-parliarnentary stage in the decision-making process and as
a manifest or covert political pressure on macro-politics. The low organizational level of the
political meso-systems (the missing middle) and its fragility has always been the weakest point of
the ECE political systems and it has been the missing link between parties and the population.
There has been a lack of functional democracy which could provide the interest articulation and
aggregation for the macro-politics, and this negative historical heritage has now to be overcome.

In the present period the ECE parties have turned into cartel parties under the external pressure
of other actors and because of their own social weakness. They rely almost completely on the state
for their resources, and share these resources exclusively among themselves (on cartel parties, see
Katz and Mair, 1995). Similar moves can be noticed in all ECE countries where parties have common
economic interests, drawing about 90 per cent of their incomes from state support. Consequently,
the major contradiction in the ECE party formation process is that the newly emerging parties, with
many difficulties, switched very quickly, in a matter of years, from loose movement parties,
representing some kind of spontaneous unity of parties and society, to rigidly organized cartels as
power parties, expressing a new separation of parties and society - these being dose to the
traditional type of Central European hegemonic parties. This analysis suggests that instead of the
former hegemonistic or state party, a hegemonistic party system as a cartel of parties or a
‘partyist’ democracy may emerge in the ECE countries.^4

^



Towards a relative consolidation


The South European and then ECE developments have proved that strongly organized parties opt for
strong parliamentary governments, while weakly organized parties in Latin America and the Balkans
encourage presidential systems and personal leadership. This approach can explain the contrast
between the Latin American and South European developments, but our concern here is only to show
the relative closeness between ECE developments and the South European democratizations. The
‘strong parties and strong parliamentarism’ connection has increasingly characterized four
countries in East Central Europe. The tyrannical majority has taken a presidential form only in
Croatia, but in Slovakia it has had a purely parliamentary form. Democratic consolidation as the
next step in the institutionalization process has to be prepared and accomplished by the
consolidation of the party systems through a ‘ruptura’ with traditionalism-provincialism and by
promotion of Europeanization. In the case of individual party development, Euro-peanization means
new types of linkage between parties and society, and a social dialogue, institutionalized also by
the solid contacts between political parties and interest organizations. Thus, political party
consolidation has at least two aspects. The first is the above-mentioned ‘external’ consolidation,
that is, through social contacts and establishing firm relationships between macro- and
meso-politics, parties and organized interests. The second aspect is, so to speak, internal,
through a further and ‘final’ institutionalization process of parties in terms of a smooth and
efficient working relationship between the major decision-making bodies, or, in general, between
leadership and membership. The maturation of these two processes can pose arguments to the
hypothesis of the early freezing of parties in East Central Europe.^5

This first stage of maturation may be considered as only the partial consolidation of a partial
system, but it is an important and necessary precondition of the final democratic consolidation of
the entire polity. It means that the specific political profile of the individual parties and the
whole structure of party systems have become almost completed and quasi consolidated. It has a long
way to go to reach West European stability, and even after travelling some way, the ECE party
systems will keep their regional particularities, as the South European party systems have kept
theirs after their first phase of Europeanization. Therefore, we suggest a formulation of the early
freezing hypothesis through Olson’s statement, based on the findings of ECE analysts:


Parties now developing in Central Europe may very well evolve their own distinctive traits, not
closely resembling those currently known in western democracies. The range of possible structure
and behavior is much wider in the new democracies simply because they are starting anew.... We are
perhaps witnessing the ‘freezing moment’ of the new party systems of post-communist countries.
(Olson, 1993: 620)


This hypothesis, seemingly, contradicts the mainstream argument regarding the relative social
vacuum in and around these ‘half-created’ parties and party systems, but in fact it does not. There
has been a rapid advancement of the ECE party systems in the past years. If we take all the
international and domestic factors into account, we can see why this early freezing has occurred to
the ECE party systems. The first determining factor is rather obvious: the ECE parties can survive
internationally and domestically only if they fit into the West European party systems, into the
party Internationals. These Internationals have given a mandatory framework for cooperation to all
major types of ECE parties as their respective partners. They are ready to support and protect
them, but only by forcing them through a political learning process. This is a multi-faceted
process, in which the Euro-connection of parties, including both the demonstration effects of, and
the organizational constraints from, Western parties have to be considered as milder or tougher
forms of this forced cooperation. The Western parties provide informal channels for the practical
operation of their ECE partners and make official declarations to protect their counterparts, also
giving them moral and financial support in electoral campaigns. The snowball effect has been in
force in this respect as well, inasmuch as these ‘import’ models have to be increasingly applied by
the ECE parties as they compete vigorously with each other.

All in all, the EU expects ECE parties to meet the European model of individual parties and
structure of party systems in order to be accepted as partners. There is therefore not much chance
for latecomers, not having West European ‘parents’, or for the ‘non-standard parties’ as the Slovak
political scientists call these ‘outsiders’ (see Meseznikov, 1995:106-8). But there is a strong
chance of a further selection, fusion or disappearance of parties belonging to the same family of
parties. The inner party structures may be fragile, and therefore some smaller parties can still
emerge and/or disappear, but the major actors are already on the political scene and the future
structural transformations in the ECE party systems (except for Slovakia and Croatia) will be only
marginal. The ‘election filter’ has worked efficiently by eliminating the ‘hundred-party system’;
many smaller parties have already been removed from political life and/or been reduced to a mere
formal existence. The ECE party systems are getting closer and closer to the balanced European
model of a centre-left versus centre-right based multi-party system.

The second conditioning factor operates domestically and is much less obvious than the
international one but still operates intensively. The existing bigger parties have already embraced
the major political alternatives and occupied their political space; therefore, there is no longer
any chance for a new party to gain a large constituency. Furthermore, currently, in the present
stage of the party formation process not only are the parties looking for a solid social base but
also the newly emerging social strata are seeking political representation by reconquering the
parties and making them more and more suitable to represent their views. Thus, after the
‘culturalization’ phase the parties have entered now the ‘socialization’ phase, that of
socio-economic constraints and pressures which create closer commitments between some parties and
their respective social bases. Both the individual parties and the party structures have become
more and more arranged according to the cleavages of the Lipset-Rokkan model. After at least two
general elections the parties have developed more capacity for social dialogue and particular
preferences for the specific demands of social strata. There is still a long way to go to the
well-established ‘Rokkanian’ parties and party systems, but it is mostly the same parties and the
same party systems that have to go through the further maturation process.^6

The final - and also very important - conditioning factor in this historical development from
movement parties to cartel parties has been the creation of a political class. It has been one of
the major functions in the party formation process. This political class has already emerged and
become more or less consolidated. The parties have been the chief actors in democratic transition
and they have played an almost monopolistic role in the creation of the new political elite, and
beyond it, of the new political class. The political elite embraces only the top and middle ranking
party leaders, so it is an eminently party and government elite (about 10,000 people in the ECE
countries). But the political class includes all those elected in (national and local) politics and
those employed in public administration who are ‘state-dependent’ and live from politics and for
politics (altogether around 100,000 persons, including the political elite in the average small
countries, more in Poland and less in Slovakia, Croatia or Slovenia). There has been a lot of
debate on elite change, succession or continuity in East Central Europe. Cultural and social
capital has undoubtedly played the dominant role in the emergence of the new professional elites,
including the new political class, the formation of which is a very important factor in the
stabilization of politics and the consolidation of party systems.^7

The competitive party system has already produced this new political class in the ECE countries,
with an increasing professionalization, but so far with a fusion of the economic and political
spheres until the privatization process ends. This has been a very positive development on one
side, with the creation of an active and relatively well educated political class, but a very
negative one with regard to the merger of politics and economics on the other. The next few years
will decide whether the ECE countries after the privatization period, which has made the clear
separation of political and economic interests impossible, will take the ‘Italian Road’ as partyist
democracies with the clientura system of structural connections between politics and business, or
turn towards the ‘Austrian Road’, as some kind of neo-corporatist democracy, with more or less
regulated relationships and articulated separation of these two worlds. The latter is more likely,
since the tripartite institutions are already relatively well developed in all ECE countries. They
have not worked properly so far because of the domination of privatization eagerness in politics,
penetrating the entire political class (see Ágh and Ilonszki, 1996). Further consolidation of the
ECE party systems can be expected at the end of the 1990s when privatization ends and laws on
conflict of interest can be brought into play to achieve separation of the worlds of politics and
business.




Party types: the party formation process


In the conventional literature on the ECE and Balkan parties the problems of party systems and
individual parties have usually been treated without a careful distinction, creating many
confusions. After having analysed party systems through four periods of development from movements
to cartel parties, we deal here with the specific party formation process concerning only the main
individual party types and their internal maturation processes.

There are several ways of characterizing the ECE and Balkan parties by using typologies. The
following analysis outlines the most common typologies, adding my own functional and genetic
approaches as well. This analysis of the development of the individual parties and their types
will, hopefully, provide further arguments for the hypothesis of ‘early freezing’ in East Central
Europe.


Descriptive-quantitative typology Parties may be characterized according to their size as far as
membership or parliamentary seats are concerned. It is easy to conclude that the ‘hundred-party
system’ still exists in the ECE and Balkan countries, since formally/legally there are more than
one hundred parties everywhere, but actually the zones of the large, medium-sized and small parties
have been differentiated sharply. The small parties still exist in great numbers, but they are
completely marginalized politically and do not play any significant public/political role. Yet, we
should not forget about them, because some are very aggressive small groupings on the extreme right
and as ‘happening’ or ‘performance’ parties they sometimes produce a great deal of noise and public
scandals. Most of the medium-sized parties have their own social, political and/or ethnic base by
now, therefore their number in a country (usually below ten, close to five) and public / political
role have already been consolidated. There are only two to four bigger parties in ECE countries,
usually arranged around the centre-left and centre-right axis, which play the decisive role in
public/political life, with 80-90 per cent of all members of parliament (Table 5.5).


Functional typology The party formation process in East Central Europe has produced typical
functions for parties, among which two party types have proved to be predominant. The first and
most characteristic party type of the emergence process, the movement party as an umbrella
organization, has already been described. ‘Popular fronts’, so to speak, came back in the late
1980s in the ECE countries as movement-oriented parties, which at the same time were representative
of the general interests of the whole nation, since they were above parties as ‘fora’ instead of
following ‘narrow’ party interests. These umbrella organizations have disintegrated in the ECE





and Balkan regions, but their successor parties inherited the idea of representing the whole nation
directly as ‘the party above parties’. Actually, all bigger parties more or less followed the
pattern of the defunct umbrella organizations and determined their party profiles as national
parties, that is, parties serving and concerting the interests of all important social strata.
These national parties, with their claim to represent ‘national interest’ directly, were in fact
close to the type of state parties of the authoritarian periods, and this turn look place very
quickly in the early 1990s from loose, action-oriented movement parties to rigidly organized quasi
state parties.

This ECE ‘definition’ of parties above the ‘normal’ party level was accompanied by the other
extreme, by the stubborn existence of some medium-sized parties below the party level, that is, too
close to organized interests. (The ethnic parties are also typical middle-sized parties, but we
discuss them later.) This narrow interest party is also an ‘archaic’ type from the party formation
process, since in the early stages some interest organizations (for example, the peasant parties
and the parties of entrepreneurs etc.) became parties in order to exert political pressure. There
is still a grey zone between parties and interest organizations in which, to various degrees, the
organizations appear legally as parties yet act politically as organized interests. This duality of
national parties and interest parties, as two main functional types, is still - although
decreasingly - an ‘infantile’ feature of ECE party systems, a point of departure for the parties’
further development. There is a tendency nowadays for national parties to be socially more
selective, so that they can anchor themselves more in particular social strata and also for
interest parties to open up beyond their direct constituencies. The early freezing process of
parties is definitely going on, yet this duality is going to stay with us as a long-term functional
feature: the bigger parties are usually national parties or premature catch-all parties competing
for the votes of all strata, and the medium-sized parties as interest parties still rely more on
the ‘automatic’ votes of their direct constituencies (Table 5.6).


Genetic typology Parties may be differentiated by the roles and places they had in the party
formation process. In this respect, we can describe three major cleavages which originally arranged
the types of the newly emerging parties with their twins or ‘anti-parties’. We have in this way six
major types of parties, as discussed below.

The first cleavage line is between the former ruling, now reformed post-communist, parties and the
new opposition parties. This confrontation through negotiations led to the formation of multi-party
systems, and -with mutual deep transformations on both sides - these ‘first generation parties’ of
both types are still the major players. They have mobilized the most talented people as well as the
other resources, and have organized the most important parties along ideological lines most
successfully. The former ruling parties disintegrated, but from among them successor parties have
gone through a modernization process and in East Central Europe we now see everywhere new
socialist/social democratic parties with a consolidated social and political background. The old
opposition parties meanwhile have developed into the new leading parties in many cases, being the
trendsetters of political development in the first years of democratization. Some of these have
become parliamentary parties, eliminating or marginalizing the others from the
parliamentary/political scene by politically and electorally outcompeting them. What looked like an
‘original organizational chaos’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was in fact a quick and cruel
natural selection process on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. As we realize now, the most
important parlies established a place for themselves at a very early stage of the transition
process. In the later stage, they have only further transformed internally, but there have been no
newcomers among the bigger parties since the beginning. The first cleavage line determined the
broad landscape of the party system, on both sides, although immediately after the collapse of the
former system it seemed as if the ruling parties or their successors might be completely
eliminated. Just the contrary has happened to the reformed leftist parties. With a relatively quick
social democratization - the degree of which varies tremendously from country to country - the
reformed post-communist parties in the ECE countries have been able to survive any delegi-timizing
efforts of their competitors and to articulate the demands of the larger society for a renewed
leftist perspective.

At the same time, in the first period the original opposition parties had the legitimacy of
fighting against the one-party system. They also benefited from the early mobilization of the
masses, and attracted the most talented leaders and activists as well. Although the transitional
political elites are already gone to a great extent in all ECE countries, these ‘priority birth
rights’ remain valid. The reformed leftist parries and the most important former opposition parries
have captured both the largest memberships and the most skilled professional politicians, remaining
the leading parties since the beginning. These two types of parties have been connected, as twins,
by the same formation process described above. Both types are successor parties in some ways, since
most of the former party members joined the newly emerging opposition parties in this succession
process. Therefore, not only the formal/legal continuity matters in the reformed post-communist
parties but also the continuity of mentality, membership and organizational principles between the
old ruling parties and the newly emerging opposition parties. These two types of parties have
converged in their major features, becoming national parties or early, premature catch-all parties.
When the early movement parties left the stage, not only the ‘legal’, post-communist successor
parties, but also the new parties inherited the model of the quasi state parties to a great
extent.^8

The former big opposition parties, seizing power after the first free elections in East Central
Europe, became the new ruling parties and showed sometimes more resemblances in this period to the
features of the former ruling parties than did their legal post-communist successors, since the
latter were forced into opposition. Political life became over-ideologized, above all because these
new parties emphasized first of all their ideological confrontations against the former political
system with a loud anti-communist rhetoric, but also because the new leading parties built up
clientelistic organizations rather similar to the old state parties. Thus, for various reasons,
this original dominating cleavage between the reformed versions of the previous ruling parties and
the newly emerging parties mostly lost its force and validity in East Central Europe as the 1990s
wore on, although some new larger parties still try to keep and reinforce it for electoral and
political advantages, as a delegitimizing device against the reformed leftist parties; and it is
still the dominant cleavage in the Balkans (Table 5.7).

The second major cleavage between the ECE party types has been the confrontation between the old
and new parties. The old, ‘pre-communist’ parties usually reactivated themselves only after the
first new parties had emerged and were formed as ‘second generation’ parties; the small ‘third
generation’ parties woke up even later. In that situation a strange contradiction came to the
surface of political life, namely, soon after their emergence the new parties received both
subjective and objective resources and tried to monopolize them. The belatedly arrived ‘historical’
parties, however, protested against that and wanted to get back their former party fortunes. They
hoped to play a dominant role in political life as in good old times, that is in the
‘pre-communist’ period. This belated attempt at political takeover by the historical parties failed
in all ECE and Balkan countries. The historical parties as second generation parties have usually
been relegated to the lower positions of party politics (the Czech Social Democratic Party can be
considered the only exception). They have been dwarfed, or at least significantly reduced in size,
in both their social and political forms of existence and most of them have survived only as
medium-sized interest parties of secondary importance. Originally these historical parries were
connected to particular social strata, and to their values and interests as social democratic,
Christian democratic or peasant parties which led to their ‘automatic’ revival in some cases, but
only in a reduced form. In addition, because of their archaic style and outdated programmes, and
primarily of their old and senilized leaderships, they have sometimes not even been competitive
enough as interest parties. Hence, some new interest parties have been formed, or otherwise some
trade unions or business interest associations have functioned as new interest parties. In such a
way, the contradiction between the old and new types of parties has been reproduced at the level of
interest parties, although not among the national parties. Altogether, the (non-communist)
historical parties have some continuity and relevance in East Central Europe, but much less in the
Balkans (Table 5.8).

The third cleavage is between ethnically and or locally/regionally based parties on one side and
nationalist parties on the other. The ECE and Balkan countries are multi-ethnic societies where
ethnic rights and interests have been traditionally oppressed and their organizations banned or
paralysed. These interests have come back with a vengeance in the democratization process through
the formation of ethnic or regional parties trying to represent these national minorities at the
highest level, that is, at macro-political level. At the same time, there has been the phenomenon
of rising nationalism even in those ECE and Balkan countries that have not produced any significant
extreme right-wing, nationalist-populist, ‘single issue’ parties like in Hungary or Albania. The
only political issue for them is the representation of the interests of ‘true’ Polishness or
Slovakness etc., against the international and/or domestic ‘conspiracy’ of other ethnicities, that
is, their own national minorities and/or the Jews (see Bugajski, 1995a; Hockenos, 1993).

There is no doubt that the ethnically based parties sometimes overdo their legitimate cases because
they are single issue parties, formulating almost exclusively ethnic or regional demands without a
differentiated ideological and political stance. But to a great extent they have been forced to do
so, because it is about the general understanding of democracy as a confrontation between its
‘majoritarian’ and ‘consociational’ varieties. The new ECE democracies are not yet ready to protect
vital minority rights by incorporating the ethnic-regional interests in some ways into the national
policy-making process. The ethnically based parties are also medium-sized parties, like some
interest parties, receiving electoral support almost ‘automatically’. Opposing them, there is at
least one small or medium-sized extreme nationalist party in each ECE country. These extreme
nationalist single-issue parties, however, have a very limited electoral support, and their
political strength varies greatly from country to country. The nationalist-populist parties in East
Central Europe may also be considered phenomena of the political transition, expressing the
frustration and disappointment of some groups in the population, and as a reaction to
Europeanization and modernization. They emphasize only the nation as a symbolic pre-modern
community, the promotion of which will definitely solve all the other social and political
problems. It has been much worse in the Balkans where nationalism has become the major organizing
principle for almost all parties and the national-populist parties of different kinds have been
dominant, in most cases the new ruling parties are ultra-nationalistic and the ethnic parties are
defensive (Table 5.9).

The party systems of the ECE and Balkan countries consist of these six major types of parties, as
three couples or pairs of twins. The predominance of the first cleavage line characterized the
early stage of the party formation process but from the very beginning it has also shown a rather
quick maturation process. Therefore, by now this early feature has mostly been abandoned, although
the parties still bear the signs of their particular emergence from different party ‘families’.
Yet, nowadays the first two cleavage lines already play a less and less decisive role, and the
parties have been arranged more or less according to the Europeanization-traditionalism and
left-right axes. The significance of the third cleavage has not yet been diminished; its two party
types will stay with us for longer because, first, the issues of minority rights and representation
even in the ECE countries are still unresolved, and secondly, the socio-economic crisis and
difficulties of the European integration have produced new tensions facilitating the survival of
the nationalist-populist parties, and even giving them a new push in their extravagant activities.

At the same time, this genetic party typology also shows the huge difference between the ECE and
Balkan parties. First, there is a genuine, although unfinished, social democratization process of
ECE leftist parties, but the successors to the former ruling parties in the Balkan countries have
simply changed the facade by renaming themselves ‘socialist’ parties, when in fact they are mostly
‘national-socialist’ parties. Secondly, the historical parties have revived as significant parties
in the Balkans to a lesser degree than in East Central Europe, but the former communist parties, as
special ‘historical’ parties of the Balkan region, still dominate in their slightly changed forms
against the newly organized parties. Thirdly, both the nationalist and ethnic parties are much
stronger in the Balkans than in East Central Europe. The national and ethnic issues clash in the
Balkans in a violent way, producing hidden or open civil wars, while these clashes are rather
minimal and peacefully controlled in the ECE countries.


Ideological typology The conventional Western typology describes the party families first of all as
liberal, conservative or Christian democratic and socialist or social democratic etc. This approach
has been most frequently applied from the very beginning to the ECE parties as well, and the ECE
parties have been categorized according to those headings available in West European countries.
This typology is evident and almost unavoidable but it was misleading because of two manifest
limitations. First, ideological labels such as liberal, conservative etc. could not be directly
transferred from the West to the ECE region, and much less to the Balkans. These terms are rather
blurred even in the West and their local meanings are absolutely idiosyncratic. Secondly, the basic
information from the countries concerned was not easily available and the profiles of the ECE
parties were not clearly demarcated. Nevertheless, in the ECE countries these broad party families
may be observed, and the parties are moving closer to the West European types.

There are, however, also some further complications, given the fact that the information on parties
has been contaminated with the ideological prejudices of either the local survey teams or those of
Western analysts -in most cases both. This approach is still fruitful and necessary, however, and
there have also been some very instructive studies which have identified 10 types of parties
(communist, socialist, ecologist, liberal, religious, conservative, farmer, nationalist, ethnic and
other) and this typology has offered deep insights into the party dynamics of both East Central and
East European countries. The typology of ideological families was originally very arbitrary and
misleading, but nowadays it is increasingly correct and meaningful, not only because the
theoretical and empirical analysis of the ECE parties has developed a lot, but primarily because
these parties themselves have developed and changed a great deal. Therefore, after many mergers and
splits and internal transformations, they are closer now to the Western types. It is one of the
most characteristic signs of the early freezing and maturation process that the major ECE parties
by now have acquired rather clear political profiles and they can be more or less unambiguously
identified along these ideological lines and labelled as member parties of the European party
Internationals. They are not completely along the lines of the parties of Western Europe, and they
still have a long way to go to become really Christian democratic, social democratic or liberal
parties. The Balkan parties have kept their idiosyncrasies, and no significant similarity can be
observed between them and the Western parties.^9

Summing up the different typologies, we can conclude that, first, the genetic approach - combined
with the functional one - gives us the most correct description of party types, since it appears
the selection of major parties was decided very early in the party formation process. Later on,
after this first turning point or rather solid point of departure, the ECE parties have come closer
and closer to the West European party types, and now they can be seen more or less as proper
members of the ideological party families. They have become mostly ‘standard’ parties, as Slovak
political scientists term them, because in Slovakia they still have some bigger ‘non-stardard’
parties, that is, those without Western parallels or counterparts, such as the Democratic Movement
for Slovakia, and in this spirit the whole Balkan region can be considered as ‘non-standard’. The
second turning point came in the mid-1990s, by which time the first crisis of the ECE parties along
the lines of Europeanization versus provincialism, modernization versus traditionalism had been
solved to some extent. The parties with a clear engagement for modernization cum Europeanization
gained the upper hand at least in Hungary, the Czech lands, Poland and Slovenia.

Secondly, after having overcome the crisis of the nationalist-traditionalist deviation, the West
European roles of centre-right and centre-left parties (or party alliances) have manifestly emerged
and have stabilized among the ECE parties. Thus, the early freezing means that the ECE parties have
been significantly Westernized from outside, but still much less so from inside. The parties’
places and roles, as institutional frameworks, are already defined in the ECE countries, but the
parties as both social networks and political organizations are still underdeveloped and immature.
Yet, some ECE parties have progressed also in this field, and their success in the internal
transformation, through a snowball effect, will force other parties to speed up their internal
changes as well, in order to remain competitive with the most successful ones. In the Balkan region
the parties have been less developed and important in the presidential systems, and yet still have
played a central role in the lopsided development, that is, in both the paralysis and progress of
democratization. The former ruling parties have usually kept their places in the Balkans and there
has been an acute contradiction between the ‘tyrannical’ nationalist parties and the defensive
ethnic parties.^10



Notes and further reading


1.   The Appendix illustrates the high volatility in the first period. In the Appendix, as
throughout the following chapters, the full names of the parties are given in their English version
and generally I use their English abbreviation (e.g. Hungarian Democratic Forum, HFD); but when I
refer to a party for the first time, I also give the abbreviation in the original (e.g. MDF -
Magyar Demokrata Fórum), these being italicized for clarity in the Appendix. There are no
comparative figures about the declining confidence in parties and parliaments, just in selected
countries; two cases are given below:

I   (see Wyman et al., 1995: 540) - Czech Republic: 24-29%; Hungary: 11-22%;

Slovakia: 16-21%; (Russia: 6-12%).

II (see Plasser and Ulram, 1996: 16) - Czech Republic: 24-32%; Hungary: 11-23%;

Poland: 8-24%; Slovakia: 16-22%; (Russia: 14-12%).

2.   Wyman et al. (1995) present very rich data about parties and party behaviour in some ECE
countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) compared to the countries of Eastern Europe proper
(Russia and Ukraine), although in attempting to give a common picture about ‘post-communist
Europe’, they make sweeping overgeneralizations, which reflect usually the EE situation. Yet, the
data describe fairly well the party formation process concerning the ECE countries: (1) the party
membership in these three countries is around 2 per cent of population (trade union membership is
20-39 per cent); and (2) trust in the parties (11-24 per cent) has been the lowest among all social
and political organizations (22-29 per cent for the parliaments and 32-45 per cent for the media).
These data suggest that the overwhelming majority of the ECE populations accept the multi-party
system. It is striking, however, that supporters of the governing parties are much more willing to
ban opposition parties than vice versa. The depth of party identification, of course, remains
weaker than in Western Europe: still 82-89 per cent of the ECE populations favour at least one
party, which is the beginning of the consolidation of individual party identifications.

3.   The Civic Democratic Party was considered to be one of the stablest parties in the Czech
Republic, yet there was a Czech saying that the CDP was a conservative party with social democratic
politics and with a Bolshevik leadership style on the part of Václav Klaus; or it was a ‘liberal
party of Leninist type’.

4.   In 1996 the Hungarian parties negotiated about giving property ‘forever’ to all parliamentary
parties and to the bigger non-parliamentary parties and sociopolitical organizations. The parties
have to publish their budget every year in the Official Gazette; based on those documents, we can
show their dependence on the state budget, which is between 85 and 95 per cent. The tendency is
clear - state support has continuously grown and the membership fees have usually declined, in some
cases drastically, so that Hungarian parties have relied more and more on state support in their
activities.

5.   In this respect, Pridham emphasizes: ‘Consolidation through parties is characterized, above
all, by the organization and expansion of the party structures and the party system as a whole,
which is then able to control and, if needs be, moderate and integrate all forms of
participation.... Clear, long term alignments between parties and social groups are established.
Identities and rules of internal competition among the party elites are formed’ (Pridham, 1990:
37). Parties consolidate themselves ‘incrementally through piecemeal changes’, as Haggard and
Kaufman suggest: ‘Party-system consolidation can be encouraged through a number of different
institutional reforms... Party systems, of course, often reflect social and cultural cleavages that
will persist even after the implementation of changes in electoral rules. Even so, such changes can
make a considerable difference in reducing party-system instability’ (Haggard and Kaufman, 1994:
15).

6.   There have been some regular sociological surveys in Hungary on the stabilization of
relationships between the political parties and their respective social bases, see Ferenc Gazsó and
István Stumpf, ‘Pártbázisok és választói magatar-tastipusok’ (Party support and types of voters’
behaviour)’, in Sándor Kurtán et al., Political Yearbook of Hungary 1995, Budapest: Hungarian
Centre for Democracy Studies, 1995. These data, by the way, show much less volatility among
Hungarian voters than the data in Wyman et al. (see note 1). The only larger change between the
1990 and 1994 election results is between that of the HSP and HDF (which is an eminent case of high
volatility or a ‘substantial pendulum swing’ for some analysts, see Wyman et al., 1995: 537, 546).
Otherwise, the other four parties had almost the same results twice. But even this change between
the HSP and HDF proves that electoral behaviour is stable and consistent, as the HDF presented
itself to a great extent as a leftist movement party in 1989-90 and only later became a
centre-right party instead of a large umbrella organization. Thus, leftist voters cast their vote
in 1990 mostly for the HDF and in 1994 for the HSP. This is the only ‘change’, which shows, in
fact, a remarkable consistency of rational voting behaviour.

7.   First, although the transition from ‘cultural’ politics, based on subcultures and values, to
‘political’ politics, based on social strata and their interests, has been very positive, cultural
and social capital even now still plays a great role, much more than ‘physical’ or economic
capital. Second, Ivan Szelényi argues in his latest writings and interviews (see for example,
Szelényi, 1995) that a managerial capitalism has emerged in East Central Europe, at least in
Hungary, in which cultural and social (network) capital is the most important vehicle to get
coopted.

8.   As to the membership continuity of all parties, Wyman et al. write that, ‘Just who were the
party members?... One of the most striking features of our survey is that in each of our countries
they are also overwhelmingly former members of the communist party. In other words, it is largely
the same people active in politics now as were active in the communist period’ (Wyman et al., 1995:
538-9).

9.   There have been several classifications of party families, e.g. Michael Smart has identified
eleven ‘party streams’: communist, independent socialist, social democratic, liberal radical,
liberal conservative, centre-Christian democratic, conservative, nationalist, extreme right,
ethnic, regional, and ecologist (see Smith, 1983: 329-31).

10.The key issue is, indeed, the emergence of balanced centre-left and centre-right parties which
has taken place in most ECE countries, but the degree and character of which varies from country to
country. In Hungary and Poland the centre-left is well organized, but the rightist parties are
fragmented and un-consolidated to a great extent; in the Czech Republic and Slovenia the
centre-right is well organized and the leftist parties are fragmented to some extent; in Slovakia
and Croatia both sides are still weak and fragmented.




                         Appendix: The most important political parties of

                                East Central Europe and the Balkans


The first figure given indicates the percentage share of the vote, the second the number of seats
and the third (in brackets) the percentage of seats in the national parliament concerned. ‘Lost
vote’ is the vote cast for parties not gaining parliamentary representation. Note 1 above gives
details of the system of abbreviations.



East Central Europe



Poland



In the 1989 semi-free election 65 per cent of seats were reserved for the Polish United Workers
Party (PUWP; PZPR) and its allies (United Peasant Party, Democratic Party and three small Catholic
satellite organizations). Among the Catholic organizations, Pax had 10 seats in the contractual
parliament and was organized later as Christian Democracy, but after 1991 these three organizations
had no parliamentary representation. On 28 January 1990 the PUWP was dissolved and the Social
Democracy of the Republic Poland (SDRP; SdRP) was organized, creating an electoral coalition with
the Confederation of Polish Trade Unions (OPZZ) and smaller leftist groups, called Democratic Left
Alliance (DLA; SLD); membership 60,000.


1991: 11.99 - 60 (13.0); 1993: 20.41 - 171 (37.1); 1997: 27.1 - 164 (35.6).


Polish Peasant Party (PPP; PSL), organized on 5 May 1990 from the United Peasant Party (ZSL) and
from other peasant organizations; membership 250,000.


1991: 8.67 - 48 (10.4); 1993; 15.40 - 132 (28.6); 1997: 7.3 - 27 (5.8).


In the 1989 election Solidarity gained 35 per cent of seats (161), all of those contested; it
organized the Civic Parliamentary Club which disintegrated in parliament into smaller groups. The
biggest ones were as follows. In May 1990 the Centre Alliance (PC) - or Citizens Centre Alliance
(POC) - emerged to support Walesa and in July 1990 the Citizens Movement for Democratic Action
(ROAD) emerged as the liberal wing, which was organized in December 1990 into the Democratic Union
(DU; UD) and the Christian-National Union (CNU; ZChN) (first organized in October 1989 inside
Solidarity). Between 1990 and 1993 a dozen post-Solidarity parries emerged which split and rejoined
each other, more or less following a left-right, conservative-liberal, nationalist-European and
religious-secular orientation (see the major ones below).


Freedom Union (UW), formerly the Democratic Union (DU; UD), organized on 2 December 1990, joined by
the Liberal Democratic Congress, merging in 1994 to UW; membership 15,000.


1991: 12.32 - 62 (13.4); 1993:10.59 - 74 (16.0); 1997:13.8 - 60 (13.0).


Labour Union (LU; UP) from June 1992, formerly Solidarity of Labour (SP), which was organized on 4
August 1990; membership 8,000.


1991: 2.06 - 4 (0.8); 1993: 7.28 - 41 (8.9); 1997: 4.9 - 0.


Fatherland (Ojczyzna), its predecessor in the 1991 election was the Catholic Electoral Action (CEA;
WAK); it emerged as an electoral coalition in 1993, the main force behind it being the
Christian-National Union, formed from Solidarity in 1990.


1991: 8.74 - 49 (10.6); 1993: 6.37 - 00 (one seat in the Senate); 1997: 5.6 - 6 (13).


Liberal Democratic Congress (KLD), organized on 15 February 1990; after the 1991 elections it was
represented in the Sejm by the Polish Economic Programme (PPG) and Polish Liberal Programme (PPL)
as parliamentary factions, but it failed to get into the parliament in 1993. After this failure the
Liberal Democratic Congress joined the Democratic Union and they formed the Freedom Union together
(see above).


1991: 7.49 - 37 (8.2); 1993: 3.99 - 00 (0).


(Citizens) Centre Alliance (CCA; PC-POC) organized behind Walesa but turned against him. Almost
defunct in 1992, since two groups left: the right wing formed the Movement for Republic (RDR),
while the liberal wing joined the Polish Liberal Programme.


1991: 8.71 - 44 (9.7); 1993: 4.42 - 00 (0).


Non-Party Bloc for the Support of Reform (NBSR; BBWR), organized by Walesa before the 1993
election.


1993: 5.41 - 16 (3.4).


Solidarity Trade Union (NSZZ), the trade union wing of Solidarity Organized by Marian Krzaklewski,
the leader of Solidarity after Walesa. It is a trade union party, that is, its organization has
been based on the trade union network in working places, its membership is about 1.8 million. In
1996 it established the Electoral Action of Solidarity (AWS) for the centre-right parries.


1991: 5.05 - 27 (6.0); 1993: 4.90 - 0 (0); 1997: 33.8 - 201 (43.7).


Peasant Accord (PL), the peasant wing of Solidarity.


1991: 5.47-28 (6.2); 1993: 2.37-00 (0).


Confederation for Independent Poland (KPN), a third party family, neither post-communist, nor
post-Solidarity, organized in September 1979; membership 25,000.


1991: 7.50 - 46 (10.2); 1993: 5.77 - 22 (4.7); 1997: 0.


Electoral threshold: in 1993,5 per cent for parties, 8 per cent for coalitions; the 5 per cent
threshold to get seats from the national list (69 seats) was raised to 7 per cent from 4 per cent
in 1992.


Participation: 1989: 62.32; 1991: 43.20; 1993: 52.06; 1997: 47.93 per cent.


Lost vote: 1989: 0; 1991: 0; 1993: 35.14; 1997:11.8 per cent.




Hungary



The former ruling party, the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party (HSWP; MSZMP) was dissolved in
October 1989 and the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP; MSZP) emerged, with no membership continuity
between HSWP and HSP; membership 37,000 (2,500 basic organizations and about 300 party employees).


1990: 10.89 - 33 (8.5); 1994: 32.99 - 209 (54.1).


Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF; MDF), membership 25,000 (587 basic organizations and 136 party
employees).


1990: 24.73 -165 (42.7); 1994: 11.74 - 38 (9.8).


Alliance of Free Democrats (AFD; SZDSZ), membership 32,000 (740 basic organizations and 102 party
employees).


1990: 21.39 - 94 (24.3); 1994:19,74 - 71 (18.5).


Independent Smallholders Party (ISP; FKGP), membership 60,000 (1,700 basic organizations and 76
party employees).


1990:11.73 - 44 (11.4); 1994: 8.82 - 26 (6.7).


Alliance of Young Democrats (Fidesz), in 1995 added the name of Hungarian

Civic Party (MPP); membership 15,000 (300 basic organizations and 45 party employees).


1990: 8.95 - 22 (5.7); 1994: 7.02 - 20 (5,2).


Christian Democratic Peoples Party (CDPP; KDNP), membership 27,000 (750 basic organizations and 24
party employees).


1990: 6.46 - 21 (5.4); 1994: 7.03 - 22 (5.7).


Electoral threshold: 4 per cent in 1990, 5 per cent in 1994.


The biggest non-parliamentary party is the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party

(now Workers Party, WP; MP), vote 1990: 3.68; 1994: 3.19 per cent.


Participation: 1990: 63.1; 1994: 68.9 per cent.


Lost vote: 1990: 10.99; 1994; 9.97 per cent.




Czech Republic



Czechoslovak Communist Party (CCP; KSC) or later Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (CPBM;
KSCM) (organized on 31 March 1990), after the first elections turned into Left Bloc, but separated
from it for the 1996 elections; membership 200,000.


1990:13.24 - 16 (8.0); 1992: 14.05 - 35 (17.5); 1996:10.33 - 22 (11).


Civic Forum (CF; OF), organized on 19 November 1989 and split in 1991 into Civic Democratic Party
(CDP; ODS), organized on 20 April 1990, membership 22,000, and Civic Movement (CM; OH), organized
on 27 April 1990; membership 30,000 -but this latter party has lost its membership and
significance. In the 1992 elections the Civic Democratic Party was in electoral alliance with the
Christian Democratic Party (ChDP; KDS); it was organized already in 1989, but this small religious
party could survive only in alliance with the CDP and in 1996 the two parties merged.


Civic Forum: 1990: 49.50 - 127 (63.5).

CDP-ChDP: 1992: 29.73 - 76 (38.0) of which CDP: 66 (33.0), ChDP: 10 (5.0); 1996:

29.62-68(34.0).

Civic Movement: 1992: 4.49 - 00 (0).


Civic Democratic Alliance (CDA; ODA), was organized as a small rightist group before the November
events, became a party in December 1989, and later joined Civic Forum in a 1990 election alliance.
With the disintegration of CF it became an independent party again. It tries to be the competitor
of the CDP from the right; membership 2,500.


1992: 5.93 - 14 (7.0); 1996: 6.36 -13 (6.5).


Society for Moravia and Silesia (HSD-SMS), left the Civic Forum as a regionalist party in January
1990.


1990:10.3 - 22 (11.0); 1992: 5.87 - 14 (7.0); 1996: 0.42 + 0.27 - 00 (0).


Christian Democratic Union (CDU; KDU), membership 80,000; organized on 3 December 1989 with
Christian Democratic Party (KDS) in an effort to form a federal party with the Slovak counterpart;
in 1992 and 1996 in electoral alliance with Czechoslovak People’s Party (CSL), the latter was
founded in October 1918, and survived during the state socialist period as a member of the National
Front. It combines a rural orientation with the Christian Socialist traditions.


1990: 8.42 - 19 (9.5); 1992: 6.28 - 15 (7.5); 1996: 8.08 - 22 (11.0).


Czech(oslovak) Social Democratic Party (CSDP; CSSD), founded in 1878, reorganized in December 1989,
a historical party as the leading force of the Europeanizer left; membership 13,000.


1990: 4.11 - 00 (0); 1992: 6.53 - 16 (8.0); 1996: 26.44 - 61 (30.5).


Liberal Democratic Party (LDS), organized in November 1898 from the Czechoslovak Democratic
Initiative (1987) and ran in the 1990 election with the Civic Forum; the Liberal Social Union (LSU)
was organized after the 1990 election as a coalition of the Czech(oslovak) Socialist Party (CSS),
the Agrarian Party (CSSZ) and the Green Party ( SZ); membership 11,000.


1990 (separately): 10.89 - 00 (0); (together) 1992: 6.52 - 16 (8.0); 1996: 0 (party disbanded).


Republican Party-Alliance for Republic (RP; SPR-RSC), formed in December 1989, in the 1990 election
ran with the Civic Forum, then separated as an extreme right, nationalistic party; membership
55,000.


1990: 0000-00 (0); 1992: 5.98 - 14 (7.0); 1996: 8.01 - 18 (9.0).


The parliamentary data refer to the Czech National Council.


Electoral threshold: 5 per cent for parties; in 1992 7 per cent for coalitions of

two parties, 9 per cent for three parties.


Participation: 1990: 96.8; 1992: 85.1; 1996: 75.7 per cent.


Lost vote: 1990: 18.11; 1992:19.11; 1996: 11.15 per cent.





Slovakia



Communist Party of Slovakia (CPS; KSS), renamed on 20 October 1990 as the Party of the Democratic
Left (PDL; SDL) and decided on a re-registration of members in January 1991; it organized an
electoral coalition called Common Choice (SV) for the 1994 election, joined by the Green Party, the
Social Democratic Party of Slovakia and the Agricultural Movement; opposed by the Workers Alliance
of Slovakia, representing the close CPS tradition; membership 48,000.


1990:13.13 - 22 (14.6); 1992:14.70 - 29 (19.3); 1994: 10.41 - 18 (12.0).


Public Against Violence (PAV; VPN), emerged on 20 November 1989 as an umbrella organization, it
ceased to exist in the original form in March 1991 as a result of a split between the
pro-federation PAV and the emerging anti-federation Movement for Democratic Slovakia .


1990:29.34-48(32.0).


Movement for Democratic Slovakia (MDS; HZDS), founded by Meciar on 6 March 1991 and organized as an
independent party on 22 June 1991; the MDS has become the biggest Slovak party, although it has had
some further splits; membership 34,000.


1992: 37.26 - 74 (49.3); 1994: 34.96 - 61 (40.6).


Civic Democratic Union (CDU; ODU): the remaining PAV members formed another party (PAV-Civic
Movement, then CDU); it could not survive but it is one of the precursors of the Democratic Union
of Slovakia.


1992:4.03-0(00).


Democratic Union of Slovakia (DUS; DUS), emerged from the split in the MDS, joined also by the
residual CDU; membership 2,000.


1994:8.57-15(10.0).


Christian Democratic Movement (CDM; KDH), founded in December 1989; the ultra-nationalistic
elements were pushed out in March 1992. Solid conservative party; membership 27,000.


1990: 19.20 - 31 (20.6); 1992: 8.88 - 18 (12.0); 1994: 10.08 - 17 (11.3).


Hungarian Coalition (HC; MK), composed of the Coexistence (Együttélés, organized in February 1990),
Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (MKDM, organized in March 1990) and Hungarian Civic Party
(MPP, organized in January 1992); membership 36,000.


1990: 8.66 - 14 (9.3); 1992: 7.42 - 14 (9.3); 1994: 10.18 - 17 (12.0).


Slovak National Party (SNP; SNS), organized in February 1990; membership 7,000.


1990: 13.94 - 22 (14.6); 1992: 7.93 - 15 (10.0); 1994: 5.40 - 9 (6.0).


Democratic Party (DP; DS), founded in 1944 as the Party of Slovak Renewal (gained 62 per cent in
the 1946 Slovak election and was liquidated in 1947-48); reorganized in December 1989 as DP, formed
an alliance in 1992 with the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), which is a small Slovak party and has no
connection with the big Czech party under the same name.


1990: 4.39 - 7 (4.6); 1992: 3.31 - 00 (0); 1994: 3.42 - 00 (0).


Green Party (SZ), in 1994 electoral coalition with the Common Choice. 1990: 3.48 - 6 (4.0).


Workers Association of Slovakia (WAS; ZRS), emerged before the 1994 election as a split-off party
from the Party of the Democratic Left; membership 20,000.


1994: 7.34 - 13 (8.6).


The parliamentary data from 1990 and 1992 also refer to the Slovak National Council.


Electoral threshold: 3 per cent in 1990; 5 per cent for one party, 7 per cent for two-three party
coalitions and 10 per cent for more than three parties in 1992 and 8 per cent for two parties in
1994.


Participation: 1990: 96.8; 1992: 84.2; 1994: 75.2 per cent.


Lost votes: 1990: 7.65; 1992: 23.81; 1994: 13.06 per cent.




Slovenia


The League of Slovenian Communists (LSC; ZKS), renamed on 7 February 1990 as the Party of
Democratic Renewal (PDR; SDP) and organized as a coalition for the 1992 election as the United List
of Social Democrats (ULSD; ZLSD) jointly with the Workers Party, Social Democratic Union and
Democratic Party of Pensioners (DSP).


1990: 17.3 - 14 (17.5); 1992: 13.58 - 14 (15.55); 1996: 9.03 - 9 (10.0).

Demos (Democratic Opposition of Slovenia), seven-party coalition organized for the 1990 election,
disintegrated in late 1991 (SCO, SDPS, GS, SDA, SFP - see below; Democratic Party of Pensioners and
Party of Craftsmen).


1990:54.4-47(58.7).


Liberal Democratic Party (LDP; LDS), organized on 10 November 1990; on 12 March 1994 organized a
bigger liberal party coalition as Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (LDS), joined by the Democratic
Party and the Greens.


1990: 14.5 - 12 (15.0); 1992: 23.46 - 22 (24.44); 1996: 27.01 - 25 (27.7).


Slovenian Christian Democrats (SCD; SKD), historical party, reoganized on 10 March 1989.


1990: 13.0 - 11 (13.7); 1992: 14.51 - 15 (16.66); 1996: 9.62 - 10 (11.1).


Slovenian Farmers Party (SFP; SPL) - later Slovenian Peoples Party (SPP; SLS), organized on 12 May
1988.


1990: 12.6 - 11 (13.7); 1992: 8.69 - 10 (11.11); 1996: 19.38 - 19 (21.1).


Slovenian Democratic Alliance (SDA; SDS), later Democratic Party (DS), organized on 11 January
1983; in 1994 joined the LDP but ran again independently in the 1996 elections.


1990: 9.5 - 8 (10.0); 1992: 5.01 - 6 (6.66); 1996: 2.68 - 0.


Greens of Slovenia (GS; ZS), organized on 11 June 1989; in 1994 joined the LDP, but ran again
independently in the 1996 elections.


1990: 8.8 - 8 (10.0); 1992: 3.70 - 5 (5.55); 1996: 1.76 - 00 (0).


Social Democratic Party of Slovenia (SDPS; SDSS), reorganized on 16 February 1989 and became a
rather right-wing party.


1990: 7.4 - 6 (7.5); 1992: 3.34 - 4 (4.44); 1996: 16.13 - 16 (17.7).


Socialist Party of Slovenia (SSS), organized on 9 June 1990.


1990: 5.4 - 5 (5.75); 1992: 2.8 - 00 (0).


Slovenian National Party (SNS), organized on 17 March 1991 from a faction of SFP as an
ultra-nationalistic party.


1992: 10.02 - 12 (13.33); 1996: 3.22 - 4 (4.4).


The parliamentary data in 1990 refer to the socio-political chamber which was the main chamber of
the three former chambers (it had 80 seats) and has become the parliament (with 90 seats). Sixteen
parties participated in the 1990 election and 9 became parliamentary parties, 26 and 8 in 1992, 20
and 7 in 1996 respectively.


Electoral threshold: 2.5 per cent in 1990; 3.4 per cent (3 seats) in 1992.


Participation: 1990: 83.51; 1992: 85.84; 1996: 73.2 per cent. Lost vote: 1990: 8.0;


1992: 17.69; 1996:11.29 per cent.




Croatia



The Croatian League of Communists (CLC; SKH) became the Social Democratic Party of Croatia (SDPC;
SPDH). In 1990 the Socialist Party of Croatia (SSH) had both common candidates with SDPC and
separate ones (here counted together). The SDPC in 1992 received also three Serbian seats (not
counted here).


1990: 34.97 - 20 (25.00); 1992: 5.40 - 3 (2.50); 1995: 8.93 - 9 (7.08).


Croatian Democratic Community (CDC; HDZ) as an umbrella organization was formed on 17 June 1989; it
split in 1993 and the Croatian Independent Democrats (HND) left, but gained only one seat in 1995.


1990: 41.93 - 55 (68.75); 1992: 43.72 - 85 (70.84); 1995: 45.23 - 75 (59.05).


For the 1990 election a four-party coalition was formed under the name of Coalition of People’s
Agreement (KNS), but one member of the coalition, the Croatian Democratic Party (HDS), also ran
separately and had one seat (here counted together and these figures are repeated below at CSLP).


1990:15.34-3(3.75).


Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), organized on 17 February 1990 as an ethnic party and later pushed
into the background during the war; the Serbian National Party (SNS) was organized as a party loyal
to the Croatian government but not representative. In 1992 the three seats it received as an ethnic
party were given to SDPC. In 1995 the Serbian minority received three seats.


1990:1.62 - 1 (1.25); 1992:1.06 - 00 (0); 1995: (-) 3 (2.36).


Croatian Social Liberal Party (CSLP; HSLS), organized on 20 May 1989; a member of the four-party
coalition in 1990 (see above).


1990:15.34 - 3 (3.75); 1992: 17.33 - 13 (10.84); 1995: 11.55 - 11 (8.66).


Croatian Party of Rights (CPR; HSP), historical party from 1861, reorganized on 25 February 1990,
ultra-nationalistic.


1990: -; 1992: 6.91 - 5 (4.17); 1995: 5.01 - 4 (3.14).


Peoples Party of Croatia (PPC; HNS) organized on 31 January 1991. In 1995 joined an electoral
alliance with the Croatian Peasant Party and regionalist parties.


1990: -; 1992: 6.55 - 4 (3.34); 1995: (18.26 - 21 (16.53)].


Croatian Peasant Party (CPP; HSS), founded in 1904, reorganized on 20 November 1989; in 1995 joined
electoral alliance with the PPC and regionalist parties.


1990: -; 1992: 4.16 -3 (2.50); 1995: (18.26 - 21 (16.53)].


Coalition of Regionalist Parties, the Istrian Democratic Assembly (IDS, Pula: February 1990), the
Dalmatian Action (DA, Split: December 1990) and Democratic Alliance of Rijeka (RDS, in early 1990).
In 1995 joined an electoral alliance with two other parties (PPC, CPP).


1990: -; 1992: 3.11 - 6 (5.00); 1995: [18.26 - 21 (16.53)].


Electoral regulations: very complicated and arbitrarily changed several times by the CDC tyrannical
majority. For 1990 only 80 seats of the socio-political chamber which has become the parliament are
counted; in 1992 only 120 seats, because 18 other seats (for minorities) were distributed by the
Constitutional Court. In 1995 there were 127 seats (108 elected in Croatia - both on party lists
and in single member individual districts - 12 in diaspora and 7 given to minorities). In 1995 28
parties ran for the election and 12 parties gained seats in the parliament (five of them only with
one seat). In some ways all opposition parties formed electoral coalitions against the CDC, both on
party lists and in the single member individual districts.

The Coalition of People's Agreement was organized in 1990 by the Croatian Social Liberal Party,
Croatian Christian Democratic Party, Croatian Democratic Party and Social Democratic Party; in the
1992 election several party coalitions were formed; in 1995 all opposition parties organized
resistance against CDC in some ways, but the CPP, the PPC and the regionalist parties formed a
direct electoral coalition.


Participation: 1990: 84.47; 1992: 75.61; 1995: 68.79 per cent.


Lost vote: 1990: 3.1; 1992:11.8; 1995: 0 per cent.









Balkan parties



Serbia



Serbian Socialist Party (SSP; SPS), formerly League of Serbian Communists (LSC; SKS), reorganized
on 16 July 1990 with full organization and membership continuity.


1990: 46.1 - 194 (77.6); 1992: 28.8 - 101 (40.4); 1993: 36.7 - 123 (49.2).


Serbian Renewal Movement (SRM; SPO), began during 1989 as Serbian National


Renewal (SNO); organized in January 1990 and turned by the charismatic writer and orator Vuk
Draskovic to SRM as a party in August 1990. It follows the line of ultra-nationalism for Greater
Serbia but formed an alliance of Depos (Democratic Opposition of Serbia) against Milosevic in May
1992 with the Democratic Party of Serbia (DOS; DSS), the Serbian Liberal Parry (SLP; SLS), the New
Democracy -Movement for Serbia (ND-MS; ND-PS) and the Peasant Party (PP); the 1992 and 1993 figures
indicate the results of the Depos bloc.


1990: 15.8 - 19 (7.6); 1992:16.9 - 50 (20.2); 1993:16.6 - 45 (18.0).


Serbian Radical Party (SRP; SRS) began from the SNO-SPO line but Vojislav Seselj founded a new
ultra-nationalist party in January 1990. As a follower of cetnik tradition it has been the most
militant nationalist party, sponsored and bolstered by the Milosevic regime as a shield for its own
nationalist policies, but it turned later against Milosevic.


1990: -; 1992: 22.6 - 73 (29.2); 1993:13.8 - 39 (15.6).


Democratic Party (DS), founded on 3 February 1990, middle-sized Europeanizer rightist party.


1990: 7.4 - 7 (2.8); 1992: 4.2 - 6 (2.4); 1993:11.6 - 29 (11.6).


Democratic Party of Serbia (DOS; DSS) - small, pro-monarchist party; in May 1992 left the
Democratic Party and joined Depos for the 1992 elections.


1990: -; [1992:16.9 - 50 (20.0)]; 1993: 5.1 - 7 (2.8).


Democratic Community of Hungarians in Vojvodina (VMDK-DZVM), Hungarian ethnic party organized on 31
March 1990, later splitting on the question of autonomy and the more conciliatory Organization of
Hungarians in Vojvodina (VMSZ) was created.


1990: 2.6 - 8 (3.2); 1992: 3.0 - 9 (3.6); 1993; 2.6 - 5 (2.0).


Albanian Democratic Party, a small pro-Serbian party in Kosovo; ran only in the 1993 elections.

1993:0.7-2(0.8).


Participation: 1990: 71.5; 1992: 69.7; 1993: 61.6 per cent.


Lost vote: 1990: 10.8; 1992:14.0; 1993:13.9 per cent.




Macedonia



Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDUM; SDSM), renamed in 1991), formerly League of Macedonian
Communists (LMC; SKM) (founded in 1943) and later Party of Democratic Transformation (PDP; PDT)
(organized in 1989), led by Kiro Gligorov; for the 1994 elections an electoral coalition, Alliance
for Macedonia, was established.


1990: - 31 (25.8); 1994: - 58 (48.3).


Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO; VMRO), organized originally in 1894 as a
pro-Bulgarian movement to attach Macedonia to Bulgaria. Reorganized on 17 June 1990 in Macedonia as
a populist-nationalist party, adding the party name Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity
(DPMNU; DPMNE). Very militantly nationalistic and anti-Albanian, yet still split in January 1991
when an even more pro-Bulgarian and anti-Muslim group left (IMRO-DP). In the spirit of Macedonia
only for (pravoslav) Macedonians, the IMRO has opposed the consolidation of the present Macedonian
state.


1990: -38 (31.6); 1994: did not run.


Alliance of Reform Forces of Macedonia (SRSM), emerged during the first multi-party elections,
later on adding the name of Liberal Party (LP; LS) as well; urban based liberal party.


1990: - 17 (14.1); 1994: - 29 (24.1).


Socialist Party of Macedonia (SPM; SPM), grew out from Socialist Alliance (SS), founded on 28
September 1990; advocates socialist and ecological values.


1990:-5 (4.1); 1994:-7 (5.8).


Party for Democratic Prosperity in Macedonia (PDP; PDP), ethnic Albanian party, organized in April
1990, at the first multi-party elections in electoral coalition with the other Albanian party, the
National Democratic Party (NDP; PDP, organized in early 1990), adopting more radical positions.


1990: - 23 (19.1); 1994: - 10 (8.3).


Participation: 1990: 84.8; 1994: 77.3 per cent.


Lost vote: none (majoritarian system, single member districts with two rounds).



Bulgaria



Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP; BSP), the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP; BKP, founded in 1891),
changed its name to BSP in April 1990, with full institutional and membership continuity. In the
1997 election ran as Democratic Left (DL; DL).


1990: 47.15 - 211 (52.7); 1991: 33.14 -106 (44.2); 1994: 43.5 -125 (52.0); 1997: 22.2 -57 (21.6).


Union of Democratic Forces (UDF; SDS), organized from 16 political groups by Zheliu Zhelev on 23
November 1989 as a member organization including BANU (see below). It has become a
national-conservative party; the liberal democrats left, organizing the UDF-Centre and the
UDF-Liberals for the 1991 elections. In the 1997 election ran as Alliance of Democratic Forces
(ADF; ODS) with BANU-NP (see below).


1990: 36.20 - 144 (36.0); 1991: 34.36 -110 (45.8); 1994: 24.2 - 69 (28.7); 1997: 52.2 -137 (55.7).


Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BANU; BZNS) - the great historical party, organized in 1900. It
split in late 1989, with the more radical wing separating and taking the name of the post-war
leader Nikola Petkov (BANU-NP). This wing separated again in 1994, when one group joined BSP (the
Stamboliyski wing), and the other the Popular Union (see below).


1990: 8.03 - 16 (4.0); 1991: 3.86 + 3.44 - 0; 1994: [6.5 - 18 (7.5)]; 1997: -.


Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF; DPS), the ethnic Turkish and/or Muslim party, founded on 4
January 1990 by Ahmed Dogan. In the 1997 election ran as Union for National Salvation (ONS).


1990: 6.03 - 23 (5.7); 1991: 7.55 - 24 (10.0); 1994: 5.4 - 15 (6.2); 1997: 7.5 - 20 (12.5).


Popular Union (NS) emerged before the 1994 elections from the liberal wing of UDF and BANU.


1990: -; (1991: 3.20 + 2.81 - 00 (0)); 1994: 6.5 - 18 (7.5); 1997: -.


Bulgarian Business Bloc (BBB; BBB), pro-Western entrepreneurial party.


1990: -; 1991: -; 1994: 4.7 - 13 (5.4); 1997: 4.9 - 12 (5.0).


Participation: 1990: 90.79; 1991: 84.1; 1994: 75.23; 1997: 58.1 per cent.


Lost vote: 1990:1.69; 1991: 34.95; 1994: 15.59; 1997:12.3 per cent.

Romania



National Salvation Front (NSF; FSN), organized by Ion Iliescu and Petre Roman on 22 December 1989,
based on the decomposing Romanian Communist Party (PCR). Before the 1992 elections there was a
split between the traditionalist and modernizing wings, the former with Iliescu adopted the name of
Democratic National Salvation Front (DNSF; FSND), later on the Party of Social Democracy in Romania
(PSDR; PDSK). The modernizing wing with Roman kept the original name (NSF) and first merged with
the Democratic Party and later on with the historical Romanian Social Democratic Party.


1990: 66.31 - 263 (67.9); 1992: 27.71 - 117 (35.5); 1996: 22.2 - 91 (26.5).


Democratic Party of Romania (PDR), organized on 27 December 1989 as a pro-Western democratic party,
merged after the 1992 elections with the NSF of Petre Roman. Before the November 1996 elections
this new party merged with the small historical Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSDR) and Petre
Roman founded the Social Democratic Union (SDU; USD) which became a member of the Socialist
International at its New York conference in September 1996.


[1990: 66.31 - 263 (67.9)]; 1992:10.18 - 43 (13.2); 1996:13.7 - 53 (15.4).


Christian Democratic National Peasant Party (CDNPP; PNT-cd), one of the great historical parties,
founded in 1869, refounded in 1895, banned in 1947, reorganized on 26 December 1989. Originally a
peasant-populist party, although somewhat modernized recently, it has kept the inward-looking
peasant orientation. It was the major force behind the Democratic Convention of Romania (DCR; CDR),
the umbrella organization of the opposition in the 1992 and 1996 elections. The figures for 1992
and 1996 indicate the DCR results.


1990: 2.56 - 12 (3.1); 1992: 20.01 - 82 (25.4); 1996: 30.2 - 122 (35.5).


National Liberal Party (NLP; PNL), the other great historical party, originally founded in 1876,
disbanded in 1948, reactivated on 30 December 1989. A more urban based, liberal oriented party,
with a series of split and mergers. There have been almost a dozen successor parties with the name
‘liberal’. As a junior partner, it participated in the 1992 and 1996 elections in the Democratic
Convention of Romania.


1990: 6.41 - 29 (7.2); [1992: 20.01 - 82 (25.2)]; [1996: 30.2 - 122 (35.5)].


Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR; RMDSZ-UDMR), the Hungarian ethnic party,
organized on 21 December 1989.


1990: 7.23 - 29 (7.2); 1992: 7.45 - 27 (8.1); 1996: 5.8 - 25 (7.3).


Party of Romanian National Unity (PRNU; PUNR), an ultra-nationalist party, emerged before the May
1990 elections, based on the socio-cultural nationalistic organization Romanian Cradle (Vatra
Romaneasca), headed by Gheorghe Funar.


1990: -; 1992: 7.71 - 30 (8.9); 1996: 3.7 - 18 (5.2).


Greater Romania Party (GRP; PRM), established in May 1991 by a group of journalists of the
newspaper Romania Mare (Greater Romania) (created in June 1990), headed by Corneliu Vadim Tudor, as
an ultra-nationalist party, it competes with the PRNU.


1990: -; 1992: 3.89 - 16 (5.1); 1996: 4.1 - 19 (5.5).


Participation: 1990: 86.2; 1992: 76.28; 1996: 76.11 percent.


Lost vote: 1990: 0; 1992: 20.02; 1996: 20.3 per cent.




Albania



Albanian Socialist Party (ASP; PSS), formerly Albanian Workers Party (AWP; PPS); changed its name
to ASP in June 1991.


1991: 56.17 - 169 (70.4); 1992: 25.73 - 38 (27.1); 1996: 20.37 - 10 (7.1); 1997: 53.4 –

118(76.1).

Albanian Democratic Party (ADP; PDS), formed by Sali Berisha on 19 December 1990.


1991: 38.71 - 65 (27.2); 1992: 62.09 - 92 (65.7); 1996: 55.53 - 122 (87.1); 1997: 25.3 -24

(15.4).


Unity Party of Human Rights - formerly Omonia, the ethnic Greek party. 1991: 0.73 - 5 (2.0); 1992:
2.90 - 2 (1.4); 1996: 4.04 - 3 (2.1): 1997: n.a.


Participation: 1991: 98.92; 1992: 90.35; 1996: 89.0; 1997: 65.2 per cent.


Lost vote: 1991: 4.11; 1992:1.79; 1996: 0; 1997: 0 per cent.



In: Ágh, Attila: The Politics of Central Europe. London-Thousand Oaks-New Delhi: SAGE, 1998. pp.
101-139.