The article attempts to identify major factors of the nationalization of the vote in contemporary Russia using the two level approach: the between- and within-region. The former compares regions as units of analysis while the latter additionally takes into account voting in municipalities to obtain levels of voting homogeneity within the regions. The study uses data from the last 2012e2016 national-regional electoral cycle investigating both federal and regional election results. Following Ishiyama (2002) for the between-region level of analysis the Regional Party Vote Inequality index has been utilized. The Party Nationalization Score proposed by Jones and Mainwaring (2003) has been applied to the measurement of voting territorial diversity at the within-region level. The results show that regional political factors may be still considered as major drivers of the nationalization of the vote as it did in the 1990s. The difference is that in politically recentralized Russia non-competitive regions headed by politically strong governors provides between-region inequality rather than contributing to nationalization. At the same time, the similarity continues in the ability of governors' “political machines” to contribute homogeneity of the vote, but only within their regions.

This article explains the basis for electoral support for political parties in the Czech and Slovak Republics in the post-1993 period. The database consists of results from Parliamentary elections (in the Czech context, elections to the Chamber of Deputies) and of data obtained from censuses carried out by statistical agencies. The theory of conflict lines developed by Stein Rokkan and Seymour M. Lipset was chosen as the theoretical basis. The key analytical tool employed is linear regression. The explanation provided evaluates the dependence of political party electoral support (as defined by seats won in elections) upon socioeconomic variables contained in the theory. Analysis of the results shows that the support parties receive in elections depends significantly upon social characteristics. An especially clear explanation is generated for the support given to Christian and ethnic parties. For protest parties, the impact of the constituent social and economic structure is only marginal.

This article traces the on-the-ground mobilization and recruitment strategies of Ukraine’s radical right party, Svoboda (Freedom) in the years prior to its 2012 electoral breakthrough. Ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Svoboda party leaders and activists in Galicia show how party leaders strategically created an organizational structure aimed at recruiting young people, making linkages with pre-existing nationalist groups, and shifting the ideological focus away from cultural and toward economic issues. Interviews with party activists reveal how personal networks were key in the recruitment and radicalization process, showing that radical right activists were radicalized, or “made,” through political participation. Consequently, Svoboda’s organizational capacity allowed the party to take advantage of a political opportunity — Yanukovych’s unpopularity and weakened national democratic parties — in the 2012 parliamentary elections.

This article examines the relationship between social structure and party choice in Hungary on the basis of a survey from 2009 ( N = 2980). The following structural variables are examined: ascriptive variables (age and gender), territorial variables (region and urban-rural residence), social class variables (education, social class and household income), sector employment and religious variables (religious denomination, church attendance and self-declared religiosity). The analysis shows that age and territorial variables are the most important sociostructural variables for explaining party support in Hungary. The role of religious and class variables is considerably smaller in this respect. The two largest parties, Fidesz and the Socialist Party, are first and foremost anchored in different generations and in territorial variables although different degrees of religiosity also has significant effect on support for these parties. The impact of the religious variables is, however, low. The class variables have the opposite impact on the two largest parties from what we should expect according to traditional class voting. Fidesz gets strongest support from the working class and the lower educated strata while the Socialist Party gets strongest support from the service class. The two largest parties are foremost social coalitions of very different social groups. The explanatory power of social structure on party choice is low in Hungary. This is also confirmed from comparative studies.

How do the features of a rebel group and the external political environment interact to affect the internal dynamics within a rebel group after it transforms into a political party? In this paper we combine literature on organizational change in parties in new democracies with the emerging literature on rebel group-to-party transformation, to develop a framework by which to understand these dynamics. Using the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) as a case study, we find that the legacies of the conflict, the organizational legacies of the rebel group, and the post civil war incentives for electoral gain, create political cleavages within parties that generate considerable organizational centripetal pressures, pressures that will need to be accommodated in new party organizational structures.

Latvia’s highly distinctive proportional electoral system owes its origins to Latvia’s 1922 Constitution and the new democracy’s electoral legislation of 1919 and 1922. Latvia’s unique feature lies in its preference system, offering the voters the opportunity to judge each candidate on their party’s list. Although the system appears to maximise responsiveness to voters’ preferences, in practice this promise remained unfulfilled and the representative quality of parliament was questionable. This was in large measure because of the capacity of candidates to stand in multiple constituencies. In 2009 amendments to the electoral law altered this key provision. This change clearly made a difference, but it could not resolve fundamental problems of Latvia’s political process in general and its political parties in particular.

This article represents a contribution to the debate over the attitudes of political parties to the European integration-one of the hot topics in contemporary political science. It explores the dynamics of attitudes of political parties in the Czech Republic to the EU and analyzes them in the context of parties primary ideologies. On the basis of the results of an expert survey the author interpretes the changes in the major features of “European” debate in the Czech Republic and offers a new classification schema of attitudes of political parties towards the EU, according to the preferences of economic and/or political dimension of European integration.

This paper explores the effects that different institutional mechanisms for legislative representation have on ethnic diversity in the lower chamber of the Romanian parliament. It uses an original data set to examine representational outcomes generated by a combination of proportional representation and reserved seats provisions. The findings highlight the benefits that Romania’s choice of electoral rules generated for smaller minority communities and limitations that these rules impose on the nature and extent of legislative representation of large minority groups. The paper provides evidence for qualifying the scholarly support in favour of proportional representation. It also draws attention to potential trade-offs between communal representation and ethnic inclusiveness of main political parties that the use of special mechanisms for minority representation might encourage.

The contrast between Slovakia’s primary Communist successor party—the Party of the Democratic Left—and its own successor— Smer —offers considerable insight into the interaction between party ideology, organization and electoral success in post-Communist Europe. The Party of the Democratic Left and Smer offered relatively similar programmatic positions, but Smer managed to replace—and far outpace—its predecessor by offering a more charismatic public face, a smaller and more tightly centralized organization and an ideological flexibility that permitted it to take advantage of a shifting electoral environment.

The author argues that political opportunism, an attitude common among communist party members before 1989, turned into both the blessing and the curse for post-communist parties in Poland. Once hopeful of secure careers in the authoritarian structures of the old regime, after the regime breakdown communists found themselves in a situation where the only chance for such a career could be associated with the party reinventing itself as a player in the field of pluralist democracy. Opportunistic attitudes of communist apparatchiks and nomenklatura members were instrumental in transforming them, individually and collectively, into effective actors in market economy and competitive politics. Yet the same attitudes doomed the post-communists once the opportunities associated with access to political power opened up widely. The same people who in the 1990s were so apt in turning the rules of democratic game into their collective advantage, in the 2000s acted with a sense of impunity and lack of any consideration for political accountability that in democracies arrives at the end of any election cycle. Plagued by corruption scandals, they lost their popular base: the economically disadvantaged groups to nationalistic populists, the urbane libertarians to liberal democrats.

A distinguishing feature of Central European polities is a strong policy-shaping role of parliaments. This article demonstrates how party political and procedural factors set the scene for the executive's loss of legislative control in Poland. Parties undermine the governmental grip because of their limited internal cohesion and competitive coalitional strategies. Parliamentary rules reinforce such party effects. The executive can shield its bills from amendments by relying mainly on partisan controls, not formal privileges. But, as an analysis of over 300 bills shows, when party discipline and coalition cooperation are in short supply, partisan controls are ineffective as instruments of legislative control.

Corporatism has been an influential doctrine in the Slovenian polity since its beginning. After the onset of democratization in the early 1990s, its influence remains strong. Forms of corporatism are embodied in the National Council as the second chamber of parliament, in the chamber system, the system of social partnership and the RTVS (Public Television of Slovenia) Council. It is also present in certain socio-political priorities such as a higher value being placed on partnership over competition, on fairness over human rights, on community over individualism. Social pluralism has always been a part of Slovenian public life. Political pluralism emerged at the end of the 19th century and was never fully developed. There has always been a strong inclination in the political life of Slovenia to organize around interest groups and editorial boards of various publications, a tendency that reveals a plurality of voices but a general unwillingness to fight for political power. It could also be concluded that the development of pluralism in Slovenia relies heavily on corporatism because of the general lack of liberal foundations.

The paper estimates party-related and non-party-related factors of electoral success in single-member district elections to the Russian State Duma in December 1999. As demonstrated by the analysis, both kinds of factors facilitate candidates’ performance, but the utility of personal political resources of non-electoral origins is greater than that of party support. Thus it is likely to be valued by Russian politicians as a supplement, not as a core component of their electoral strategies. By distorting the structure of incentives for elite partisanship, this situation conserves party system underdevelopment in the country.

The communist parties’ adaptation to democracy is one of the more remarkable developments of post-1989 politics in East Central Europe. Ironically, unresponsive and incompetent ruling communist parties have in some cases spawned successors that have been able to respond to democratic electoral cleavages and convince large portions of the electorate of their ability to govern democratically and competently. This paper argues that the main factor underlying this ability has been organizational transformation of the communist parties: specifically, the extent to which these parties centralized and streamlined their organizations, while breaking with a discrediting past. This transformation is itself a function of elite skills developed under communism.

This article is an attempt to identify the role of politically relevant values and attitudes in voting behaviour in the Czech Republic. In view of the results of earlier analyses, which show there has been a process of intense crystallization of left–right political axis of the Czech political spectrum, this paper aims to demonstrate the specific roles of declared and value-based left–right political orientations, the effects of external and internal political efficacy, the feelings of anomie, and the required role of state. The analysis of data from the ISSP survey carried out at the end of 1996 shows that a person's declared position on the left–right axis of political orientation has far stronger influence on voting behaviour than does his or her position on the left–right scale based on socio-economic values traditionally underlying left–right political orientations. This difference indicates, among other things, that in the Czech Republic the declared right-wing political orientations so far acted as barrier to voting for left-wing political parties, for which people would likely vote if they voted according to their value-based left-wing orientations.

This article analyzes the structuring of party systems of four East Central European countries. At the outset an assumption is proposed that the region is by no means homogeneous (as is often treated) but exhibits different levels of ideological articulation and party formation. First, we concentrate on the left-right ideological identities and its' attitudinal-issue correlates as well as the social roots of left-right ideological orientations. The main part deals with socio-political attitudes as predictors of ideological orientations, both on mass and elite level. The results indicate different levels of ideological structuration and political divisions of the party systems in Eastern Europe, which are explained not only by socio-economic factors, but mainly by varying experiences of pre-communist rule, communist governance and pathways to democracy.