Party
Politics
http://ppq.sagepub.com/
Party systems and cleavage structures revisited: A sociological explanation of party system
institutionalization in East Central Europe
Fernando Casal Bértoa
Party Politics 2014 20: 16 originally published online 14 February 2012
DOI: 10.1177/1354068811436042
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://ppq.sagepub.com/content/20/1/16
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
Political Organizations and Parties Section of the American Political Science Association
Additional services and information for Party Politics can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://ppq.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://ppq.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
>> Version of Record - Jan 22, 2014
OnlineFirst Version of Record - Oct 4, 2013
OnlineFirst Version of Record - Feb 14, 2012
What is This?
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
Article
Party systems and cleavage structures
revisited: A sociological explanation
of party system institutionalization
in East Central Europe
Party Politics
2014, Vol 20(1) 16–36
ª The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1354068811436042
ppq.sagepub.com
Fernando Casal Bértoa
Leiden University, The Netherlands
Abstract
Since Lipset and Rokkan (1967) published their seminal work on the importance of social cleavages for the ‘freezing’ of
party systems more than forty years ago, much has been written on the field demonstrating or discrediting the original
hypothesis. In the current article, I examine how cleavage formation and development have influenced the different levels
of institutionalization in four new post-communist party systems (i.e. Visegrad). Analysing distinct hypotheses, I arrive at
the conclusion that neither the number nor the type nor the strength of a cleavage is associated with the degree of party
system institutionalization in East Central Europe. On the contrary, the main conclusion is that party system institutionalization in these democracies has been determined by the way cleavages are structured. In particular, the process of
party system institutionalization is found to be hindered when cleavages cross-cut, while fostered in cases where they
cumulate (i.e. coincide).
Keywords
cleavages, East Central Europe, number of parties, party system institutionalization
Introduction
Since Franklin et al. (1992) trumpeted the decline of ‘cleavage politics’ in Western Europe, Lipset and Rokkan’s
seminal work (1967) on the social anchorage of party systems has been considered to be nothing but a relic of the
past (see Dalton, 2004). In post-communist Europe, where
societies are considered to lack structure (Mair, 1997),
‘dealignment appears not as an endstate but as a departure
point’ (Enyedi, 2008: 297; see also Elster et al., 1998; Lawson et al., 1999).
In contrast to this scholarship, and notwithstanding the
volatile character of the post-communist electorate, this
article constitutes an attempt to discover the social roots
of party system institutionalization in East Central Europe.
In fact, and linking mainly with Evans and Whitefield
(2000) and Kitschelt et al.’s (1999) tradition, the main aim
of this work is to examine how cleavage formation and
development relates to different levels of institutionalization in new post-communist party systems.1
The article is divided in four parts. Section one offers an
analytical perspective on the conceptualization of cleavage
and party system institutionalization. Some of the scholarly
debate on the concept is addressed briefly, showing how
certain aspects of these two notions have led to a certain
amount of confusion and misunderstanding within the literature. Section two summarizes some of the most important
arguments advanced by scholars in the course of the
‘sociology of politics’ debate, examining how well they
travel through a test of their validity in four East Central
European democracies. Section three contains several new
propositions concerning the possible implications the different mode of cleavage formation and development may
have for the institutionalization of party systems. Finally,
section four analyses the causal mechanisms linking cleavage structuration and party system institutionalization in
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.
Paper submitted 1 March 2011; accepted for publication 14 June 2011
Corresponding author:
Fernando Casal Bértoa, Leiden University, Faculteit der Sociale
Wetenschappen, Instituut Politieke Wetenschap, Pieter de la Court
gebouw, Leiden, 2333 AK, The Netherlands.
Email: f.casal.bertoa@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
17
Casal Bértoa
Cleavage and party system
institutionalization: Two debated concepts
Although more than 40 years have passed since the publication of Lipset and Rokkan’s seminal Party Systems
and Voter Alignments (1967), the truth is that, despite the
enormous number of studies making use of the concept,
a univocal definition of ‘cleavage’ is still lacking in the
literature (Maor, 1997; Tóka, 1998). In fact, following
Lipset and Rokkan’s ambiguous use of the notion,2 the
majority of studies published immediately afterwards
simply limited themselves to presenting their own definition of the notion depending on the different analytical
approach being adopted (Zuckerman, 1975).
A first attempt to bring some order into this chaos was
Taylor and Rae’s Analysis of Political Cleavages published
in 1970, where they provided a more explicit and sophisticated definition of cleavage as the division of the members
of a community (or sub-community) into two or more nominal groups with important political differences at specific
times and places according to three different types of division: ascriptive, attitudinal, behavioural (1970: 1; see also
Taylor and Rae, 1969: 536).
Building on Rae and Taylor, Bartolini and Mair (1990)
maintained that these three types of division should be present all together and at the same time. Thus, a cleavage not
only requires social stratification (according to class, religion, etc.) and group consciousness (according to different
values and/or preferences), but also a certain organization
(in the form of a political party, trade union, etc.) which
helps the group to realize their interests and/or beliefs. In
other words, a cleavage is only formed ‘when a particular
social divide becomes associated with a particular set of
values or identities [which are] made politically relevant
by means of an organized party or group’ (Mair, 2006:
373). In this context, a cleavage can be considered to be ‘a
form of closure of social relationships’ (Bartolini and Mair,
1990: 216).
A great advantage of this definition is that it immediately brings about a bridge between the two most important
approaches of political sociology (Maor, 1997: 21). In this
sense, it incorporates Sartori (1969) and Przeworski and
Sprague’s (1977) ‘organizational’ component (top-down
approach), while remaining faithful to Lipset and Rokkan’s requirement of socio-structural origins (bottom-up
approach). Similarly, it is by asking the presence of both
‘objective’ (structure) and ‘subjective’ (values) aspects
of a conflict that Bartolini and Mair help to distinguish the
notion of cleavage from other proximate concepts, such as
opposition, division or divide. Moreover, it is through this
semantic distinction that their conceptualization gains in
simplicity as it avoids any unnecessary qualification of the
term (e.g. social, political, value ‘cleavages’) present in
many other works (e.g. Flanagan, 1980; Inglehart, 1984;
Zieliński, 2002).3 It is for all these reasons that in this
article I rely on Bartolini and Mair’s more strict definition
of the concept.4
Similarly, and although it may be difficult to believe
given its central importance, the concept of party system
institutionalization has no established definition. Putting
it very briefly, and summarizing a discussion sketched out
elsewhere (Casal Bértoa, 2011), most authors dealing with
the concept simple propose a series of ‘dimensions’ of the
notion (Bielasiak, 2002; Grzymała-Busse, 2002; Morlino,
1998), without paying much attention to the conceptualization itself.
Notwithstanding the latter, and despite the fact that
scholars tend to point out different dimensions of institutionalization, the truth is that all meanings of the notion of
party system institutionalization contain the idea of stability and persistence in the rules and nature of inter-party
competition (Lindberg, 2007; Mainwaring and Scully,
1995; Mair, 2001). As a consequence, and bearing in mind
that the core of a party system is to be found in the patterns
of interaction among its subunits (i.e. political parties; see
Mair, 2006; Sartori, 1976), I consider party system institutionalization to be the process by which the patterns of
interaction among political parties become routine, predictable and stable over time (Bakke and Sitter, 2005;
Mair, 2001). In other words, a system of parties can be said
to be institutionalized when political parties cooperate,
collaborate and colligate in a standardized and structured
way – a way that is independent of the relevant issues in
each moment and which random shocks cannot alter
(Mainwaring, 1998).
In order to assess the level of institutionalization in new
East Central European party systems, I rely on Mair’s
(1997, 2007) framework for party system analysis which,
focusing on the patterns of inter-party competition for government, determines whether a party system is institutionalized or not (Table 1).5 Putting it briefly, party systems are
considered to be institutionalized if (1) alternations of governments are either total (i.e. when the incumbent government leaves office in its entirety) or partial (i.e. when the
cabinet in office is replaced by a wholly different party
or group of parties), (2) governing alternatives are stable
over a long period of time and (3) some parties (‘outsiders’)
are permanently excluded from participation in national
government. On the contrary, party systems are to be classified as weakly institutionalized when there are (1) partial
alternations of governments, (2) no stable compositions of
governing alternatives and (3) access to government has
been granted to all relevant parties.
In order to minimize subjective judgements when measuring the main (and sole) dimension of party system institutionalization, I quantitatively operationalize each of the
factors suggested by Mair (Table 1). First of all, the degree
of governmental alternation is measured by the so-called
index of government alternation (IGA – see Mair, 2007:
140), which simply adapts Pedersen’s (1979) well-known
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
18
Party Politics 20(1)
Table 1. Criteria and operational indicators of party system institutionalization.
Dimension
Criteria
Indicators
Operationalization
Stability
Government alternation
IGA: Pedersen’s index of
ministerial volatility (MV)
IFA: % ministers of all
familiar governments
If MV 50, then IGA ¼ MV
If MV < 50, then IGA ¼ 100-MV
If the very same combination ¼ 100%
If entirely new combination or new party forms single
party government ¼ 0%
If part of the new government is familiar ¼ % of the
familiar part
If a party earlier in government forms a government on
its own ¼ 100 – % of previous coalition partners
‘Old’ governing parties (see Sikk, 2005)
Governing formulae
Access to government
IC: % ministers from ‘old’
governing parties
Source: Adapted from Casal Bértoa and Enyedi (2010: 19).
index of electoral volatility to the measurement of ministerial volatility.6 The second criterion, based on assessing
whether or not the party or combination of parties has
governed before in that particular format, is captured by
the index of familiar alternation (IFA), which measures
the percentage of ministries belonging to familiar combinations of parties. Thirdly, access to government is measured by the index of closure (IC), which basically
calculates the percentage of ministers belonging to ‘old’
governing parties.
Because time is particularly important when trying to
measure the level of party system institutionalization in a
country (Mair, 1997), I also take into consideration all the
years a particular cabinet has lasted, understanding that if
there have been two or more cabinets in one year, then the
averages of the scores for the different above-cited government features are considered to characterize the year better
than any such individual factors (Casal Bértoa and Enyedi,
2010: 20). Finally, and in order to avoid measuring incompatible scores, I use the standardized (z-) score of the three
variables. The addition of all three z-scores gives the final
degree of systemic institutionalization in what I have
named ‘composite index of party system institutionalization’ (iPSI) which, giving equal weight to all the elements
of stability, has the advantage of paying due attention to it
as the sole dimension of institutionalization.
Application of the above-mentioned criteria to the four
East Central European party systems produces a clear conclusion: party systems in East Central Europe have institutionalized in different ways and at different rates – for more
details, see Casal Bértoa (2011) and Casal Bértoa and Mair
(2012). Examination of the scores in Table 2 indicates that
there is one extreme case at the top end of the scale: Hungary, which on all three measures turns out to be highly
institutionalized. In a similar vein, the Czech party system
is to be considered institutionalized, while its Slovak counterpart only achieves a weak level. Finally, the Polish party
system remains, after 20 years of democratic experience,
completely under-institutionalized.
Table 2. Party system institutionalization in East Central Europe
(1990–2009).
Countries
IGA (%)
IFA (%)
IC (%)
iPSI (z)
98.8
96.7
96.5
92.4
89.6
86.1
81.9
68.7
91.0
91.3
87.0
76.6
2.5
1.4
0.3
-4.2
Hungary
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Poland
The Cronbach’s alpha score among the three sub-indexes is as high as 0.9,
justifying their addition in one (unique) composite ‘index of party system
institutionalization’ (iPSI).
Source: Own calculations.
The ‘sociology of politics’: Traditional
approaches
When trying to capture the social roots of party system
institutionalization, scholars have mainly adopted three different explanations: (1) the number; (2) the type; and (3)
the strength of cleavages. Let us examine each of them in
turn as well as the extent to which they can be applied to
the East Central European context.
Cleavage number
There is now a considerable literature on the relationship
between party system format and the number of cleavages
in a political system. Taagepera and Grofman speak for a
long line of scholars when they note that ‘the more axes
of cleavage there are within a society, the greater will be
the number of political parties’ (1985: 343).
Reviewing the literature in the field, and in correspondence with the concept of cleavage adopted, two different
approaches can be distinguished among scholars. The first
focuses on the relationship between ‘social’ cleavages and
party system fragmentation and maintains that, because
political parties represent the political expression of underlying social divisions, social segmentation results in
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
19
Casal Bértoa
Table 3. Fractionalization data.
Country
Hungary
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Poland
Economic
Religious
Ethnic/linguistic
Rural/agricultural
Post-communist
ENEP
0.3
0.3
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.7
0.6
0.2
0.2/0
0.3/0.3
0.3/0.3
0.1/0.1
0.4/0.2
0.4/0.1
0.5/0.2
0.5/0.3
0.2
0.3
0.2
0.2
4.7
5.2
6.3
7.0
Source: Structural heterogeneity is measured using the Herfindahl index of fragmentation derived from census and politico-economic data taken from (1)
the UN Demographic/Statistical Yearbook, for economic (2008) and rural (2007); (2) Alesina et al. (2003: 184–189), for religious/ethnic/linguistic; (3) FAO
Agricultural production yearbook (2008), for agricultural; and (4) Gryzmała-Busse (2002: 32, 36, 43, 52) and Szczerbiak (2001: 579), for post-communist
fractionalization. For the ENEP, see Gallagher’s ‘Electoral Systems’ web site.
multipartism (Powell, 1982; Cox, alone or together with
Amorin Neto, 1997; Spirova, 2007: 160, etc.)
A second group of political scientists uses the number of
‘political’ cleavages to predict the number of ‘effective’
parties. The work within this tradition was initiated by Lijphart (1984), who, in his comparative study of the patterns
of government in 21 democracies, found that the number of
cleavages, operationalized as ‘issue dimensions,’7 and the
number of parties within a system are clearly correlated.
The main logic behind this is that ‘when there are several
dimensions of political conflict in a society [ . . . ] a relatively large number of parties are needed to express all of
[them . . . ]’ (Lijphart, 1984: 147–148). Just one year later,
and using Lijphart’s work (and data) as a point of departure,
Taagepera and Grofman found that the number of issue
dimensions ‘alone can account well for the differences in
[the number of parties] across countries, even if we do not
take electoral systems into account’ (1985: 350). More
recently, Horowitz and Browne (2005), in their analysis of
23 post-communist democracies at three different points in
time, found that regardless of the temporal period under
study ‘political’ cleavages exert, by far, a more important
influence on the number of parties than institutional factors.8
Although the majority of studies quantitatively linking
social segmentation and party system format tend to focus
on only one cleavage, generally the ethnic one (see Stoll,
2008), here I follow Powell’s (1982) seminal study and try
to measure as many ‘social’ cleavages as possible.
In Table 3, I present scores for five different (social)
cleavages: economic (Gini coefficient), religious and
centre–periphery (classical religious and ethnic/linguistic
fractionalization indexes), urban–rural (fractionalization indexes according to urbanization and economic sector) and
post-communist (social fractionalization in accordance
with communist or communist-satellite party membership).
Contrary to what scholars have usually maintained (see
above), there seems to be no association between cleavage
fragmentation and the ‘effective’ number of electoral parties (ENEP).9 Not even rural segmentation, which seems
to separate institutionalized Hungary and Czech Republic
from weakly institutionalized Slovakia and Poland, as it
does not really explain the differences observed within the
previously mentioned groups.
Table 4. Number of ‘issue’ dimensions, cleavages and party system
fragmentation/institutionalization.
Country
No. of
dimensions
No. of
cleavages
ENEP
iPSI
3.5
1.5
3.5
3.5
3
1
2
3
4.7
5.2
6.3
7.0
2.5
1.4
0.3
4.2
Hungary
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Poland
Source: For the number of dimensions, see Table A in the Appendix. For
the number of cleavages, see the text. For the ENEP, see Gallagher’s
‘Electoral Systems’ web site.
In order to examine to what extent the above-cited second approach can be applied to East Central European party
systems, I use Lijphart’s (1984, 1999) framework of analysis
with one modification: post-materialism, almost irrelevant in
post-communist countries (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005), has
been substituted for a so-called ‘post-communist’ dimension, much more relevant in countries exiting from 40 years
of communist dictatorship (Grabowska, 2004).
Table 4 displays the total number of issue dimensions
per country (see appendix) as well as the number of cleavages described in detail in section 4 (see below). When
looking at the table, neither the number of issue dimensions
nor the number of cleavages seems to explain the ranking
of electoral fragmentation or systemic institutionalization
observed. In concrete, both the Hungarian and the Polish
party systems, which are characterized by the higher number of dimensions and/or cleavages, are respectively at the
top and at the bottom of the table in terms of electoral
fragmentation and systemic institutionalization. Moreover, the country with the lowest number of dimensions
and cleavages (i.e. the Czech Republic) is not even the
least fragmented/institutionalized. In fact, the rather low
difference in terms of (electoral) fragmentation (i.e. half
point) between the latter country and Hungary cannot be
explained by the rather large difference (i.e. two points)
in terms of issue dimensions. In a similar vein, and in spite
of the fact that a similar number of ‘issue dimensions’ (i.e.
three and a half) can be detected in both Slovakia and
Poland, their ‘effective’ number of electoral parties
clearly diverges. Needless to say, the explanatory power
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
20
Party Politics 20(1)
Table 5. Legacies, types of cleavage and party system competition.
National preconditions
Marketization
þ
þ
–
Ethnic homogeneity
Established state
–
þ
–
–
þ
þ/–
Type of
cleavage
Party system
stability
Ethnic
Socio-economic
Political
High
Moderate
Low
Source: Adapted from Evans and Whitefield (1993: 540, 542, 545).
Table 6. ‘Predominant’ cleavage type and party system institutionalization.
Level of PSI (predicted)
Country
‘Predominant’
cleavage
Evans and Whitefield
Kitschelt
Hungary
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Poland
Religion
Economy
Ethnic
Religion
Moderate
Moderate
High
Moderate
Moderate
High
Weak
Moderate
iPSI (actual)
2.5
1.4
0.3
–4.2
Source: For the ‘predominant’ cleavage in each country, see Deegan-Krause (2004), Enyedi and Tóka (2007), Jasiewicz (2007) and Brokl and
Mansfeldová (2004).
of the ‘raw’ number of cleavages is not higher either.10 A
similar conclusion can be drawn when looking at the
degree of systemic institutionalization. In sum, it seems
that neither the number of parties nor the level of party
system institutionalization depends on the number of cleavages (neither in its social nor political dimension) present
in a country.
Cleavage type
The second approach which is central to research on the
sociological foundations of systemic institutionalization
relates to the implications of the type of cleavages for party
system stability. In this context, two different works are
worth mentioning.
Echoing Offe’s (1991) ‘triple transition’, Evans and
Whitefield (1993), who pioneered work in this tradition,
established a link between the type of cleavage structuring
party competition and the level of electoral volatility
observed in elections. According to their view, the type
of cleavage emerging in a country is ‘conditioned’ by the
social and historical characteristics present in a nation (see
Table 5). Moreover, the stability of a party system will be
high, moderate or low depending on the predominance of
ethnic, socio-economic or ‘political’ (i.e. valence issues)
cleavages, respectively. The logic behind the previous
hypotheses is that ‘ethnicity involves identity questions
on which it may be extremely difficult to find a compromise [lowering electoral volatility], at least by comparison
with those concerned with economic distribution’ (Evans
and Whitefield, 1998: 135). On the contrary, in those countries where ‘political’ cleavages predominate, voters will
be more willing to switch sides, as ‘the principal issues
around which parties will compete will be consensual’
(1993: 540).
In a similar vein, and around the same period, Kitschelt,
alone (1995, 2001) or with other colleagues (1999), developed what can be considered by far the most consistently
and rigorous work on the cleavage-party system linkage
in post-communist Europe. Kitschelt et al. (1999) found
that in countries with prevalent economic-distributive cleavages, party systems would be more structured than in
countries where cultural or historical-regime cleavages predominated. More specifically, echoing Offe’s (1991) ‘triple
transition’ debate, Kitschelt et al. maintain that where economic cleavages prevail, a bi-polar structure of competition
between programmatic political parties will develop. As a
result, party systems will not only structure strongly, but
also in a shorter period of time. On the contrary, because
socio-cultural cleavages tend to polarize both elites and
masses hindering inter-party cooperation, party system
structuration will be only moderate. Last, but not least, in
those countries where neither economic nor cultural cleavages are prevalent, but are combined with other (ethnic,
geographical, etc.) divisions reinforcing each other, party
appeals will remain weakly crystallized, favouring the formation of clientelistic parties and the lack of systemic
structuration (1999: 383–391).11
Although the above-mentioned authors predicted a different degree of systemic institutionalization according to
the type of cleavages prevailing in a country’s party system
(see section above), the truth is that when looking at the
four countries analysed here no association between these
variables can be observed.
Thus, and as follows from Table 6, both Hungary and
Poland should display a moderate level of party system
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
21
Casal Bértoa
institutionalization. On the contrary, and in spite of the fact
that the structure of competition has been turned around
religion, the level of institutionalization observed in both
countries is clearly the opposite: high in the first country,
low in the second. In the same vein, the Slovak party system is neither the most (Evans and Whitefield, 1993), nor
the least (Kitschelt et al., 1999) institutionalized. Finally,
economy has brought a moderate level of systemic institutionalization to the Czech Republic, something Evans and
Whitefield, but not Kitschelt, had already hypothesized.
However, the problem here is that, contrary to their expectations, the level of institutionalization displayed by the
Czech party system is higher than the Slovak, rooted on
ethnic oppositions. As a result, and similar to what we have
seen in the previous section, it seems clear that the degree
of institutionalization in a party system does not at all
depend on the types of cleavages that are prevalent.
Cleavage strength
Other scholars, more in the tradition of Lipset and Rokkan
(1967), do not distinguish so much between types of cleavage as determinants of the degree of party system stabilization, but focus on the different strength a particular
cleavage may have.
Although many other scholars had attempted to study
the above-mentioned relationship before them (Alford,
1963; Devine and Stearns, 1985; Pappi, 1984, etc.), it was
in Bartolini and Mair’s (1990) Identity, Competition and
Electoral Availability that a first attempt to measure cleavage strength independently of electoral behaviour was
made. In their work, and using an index of cultural heterogeneity and another index of organizational density, Bartolini and Mair managed to quantitatively operationalize two
of the three cleavage dimensions, namely: empirical and
behavioural. Unfortunately, as they recognized themselves,
the second dimension (i.e. identity) was left aside. Moreover, their analysis only referred to one of the four classical
cleavages referred to by Lipset and Rokkan, namely, class.
Still, the results they found were quite striking: the greater
the strength of the (class) cleavage, the lower the level of
electoral instability (1990: 225, 243).
Although some authors have preferred to follow the former approach and quantify cleavage strength in relation to
electoral behaviour (e.g. Franklin et al., 1992; Knutsen and
Scarborough, 1995; Tóka, 1998), other political scientists,
when analysing the determinants of party system stability
whether in Africa (Ishiyama, 2003), Latin America
(Madrid, 2005; Roberts and Wibbels, 1999), Eastern Europe (Tavits, 2005), or the whole democratic world (Mainwaring and Zocco, 2007), have preferred to continue the
path initiated by Bartolini and Mair of measuring the
strength of a cleavage by the degree of social homogenization (e.g. first three above-cited studies) or organizational
density (e.g. Mainwaring and Zocco’s work). Interestingly
Table 7. Cleavage strength and party system institutionalization.*
Country
Hungary
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Poland
Economic Religious Post-communist
–2.4
2.1
0.6
–0.2
0.2
–0.2
–1.5
1.5
0.4
–0.7
–1.6
1.9
iPSI
2.5
1.4
0.3
–4.2
*Cleavage strength is calculated by summing the (z-)scores for each of the
three components of a cleavage: namely, structural (i.e. the fractionalization
data in Table 3), normative (i.e. ‘issue salience’ in Table A) and organizational
(following Bartolini and Mair, 1990: 232, Duverger’s party-membership
ratio is employed here).
When classifying political parties into different party families, Armingeon
and Careja’s (2004) comprehensive typology has been used.
enough, notwithstanding the indicator employed, and contrary to Lipset and Rokkan’s expectations and Bartolini and
Mair’s findings, the general conclusion has been that the
impact cleavage(s) strength may have on the stability of
electoral behaviour has declined much in the past decade,
reaching a ‘no-effect’ point in certain regions (e.g. Africa,
Latin America or Eastern Europe).
Following Bartolini and Mair (1990), I combine each of
the different cleavage dimensions (structural, normative
and organizational) into a single composite index of ‘cleavage strength’,12 before relating it to the different levels of
systemic institutionalization observed in East Central Europe. This is done in Table 7 for each of the cleavages for
which we have complete data (i.e. economic, religious and
post-communist).13
As follows from Table 7, neither of the different cleavages reveals having explanatory power in terms of the
systemic institutionalization ranking. Thus, while Hungary and Poland present fairly close figures in terms of
cleavage strength (in all three cases), they occupy opposite ranks in terms of party system institutionalization.
Similarly, and contrary to previous findings (Grabowska,
2004; McAllister and White, 2007), neither religious nor
post-communist cleavage strength figures explain why the
Czech party system is more institutionalized than its Slovak counterpart. Interestingly enough, and in clear contrast to Bartolini and Mair’s (1990) findings for Western
Europe, my analysis shows no relationship between systemic institutionalization and economic cleavage strength,
confirming to a certain extent Gijsberts and Nieuwbeerta
(2000) or Mateju et al.’s (1999) findings on the nonexistence of a pure ‘class’ cleavage in East Central Europe.
All in all, it could be concluded that cleavage strength
does not exert any impact on the level of party system
institutionalization.
Lipset and Rokkan revisited
The two questions that first arise in our mind in light of
the previous findings are the following: Were Lipset and
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
22
Party Politics 20(1)
Rokkan wrong when stating that party system ‘freezing’/
institutionalization [was] determined by the way cleavages
form and develop? Can sociological explanations to party
system institutionalization travel to post-communist
democracies? According to the previous section, the number, type or strength of cleavages do not exhaust the ways
in which the latter can affect the process of party system
institutionalization in a country. In fact, in my understanding, it is the way different cleavages relate to each other
that really determines the degree to which party systems
may or may not institutionalize.
The roots of such an approach can be traced back to
Simmel (1908 [1955]) and Ross’s (1920) works on the relationship between cross-cutting cleavages and social conflict. In these studies, as well as in Coser’s analysis on
The Functions of Social Conflict (1956), cross-cutting cleavages are considered to diminish the potential for major
social conflict and political unrest by reducing ‘the intensity of individual political feelings’ as well as preventing
the formation of monolithic coalitions or ‘potential conflict
group[s]’ (Rae and Taylor, 1970: 87 f.). On the contrary,
the more the cleavages reinforce one another, the more
intense a conflict in society will become (see Dahrendorf,
1959: 215).
Although Simmel’s idea of ‘cross-cuttingness’ found
further development in the anthropologic field (see Fortes
and Evans-Pritchard, 1940; Gluckman, 1954, etc.), it was
the ‘social pluralist’ school that put forward the argument
that cross-cutting politically relevant cleavages contributed
to reducing social conflict and, therefore, led to more stable
democratic systems (Almond, 1956; Lipset, 1960) in one of
the most widely accepted explanatory hypotheses in political science (Nordlinger, 1972: 93).14
Still, it was not until Dahl’s Political Opposition in Western Democracies, that the party system was incorporated in
the equation. In particular, Dahl considered that crosscutting cleavages would only have an inexorable ‘unifying
effect’ if some of them were less important than others
(Dahl, 1966: 378–381; emphasis in the original). Moreover,
and contrary to the Duvergerian ‘imperative’ associating
two-party systems with political compromise and multiparty
systems with ideological conflict and instability, Dahl maintained that both types of party system could lead to conflict
depending on the distribution of cleavages structures,
namely: while two party systems will lead to moderation and
conciliation only when characterized by cross-cutting cleavage structures with unequal salience, if the contrary is true
(i.e. cumulative or cross-cutting cleavages with equal salience), political conflict and unrest will be the main outcome, independently of the type of party system at hand.
Was it the failure to confirm early hypotheses or the
advent of the Institutional Revolution which left aside all
cultural explanations? The truth is that after Dahl’s classical study, interest in examining the relationship between
cleavage interaction and party system development was
neglected until Randall and Svåsand dealt with the subject
in passing. The very opportunity for party institutionalization provided by exclusive forms of cleavage, above all
religion and ethnicity, could be at odds with the institutionalization of the party system through restricting the possibilities for cross-party competition (2002: 9)
More recently, and in clear contrast to Randall and Svåsand’s theoretical expectations, Tóka and Gosselin (2008)
found no evidence of any direct effect of cleavage crosscuttingness on the process of party system institutionalization itself.15
Bearing in mind all that has been said, and borrowing
from the ‘social pluralist’ and ‘voting behaviour’ literature,
the assumption that ‘cross-pressured’ individuals – voters,
elites, etc. – tend to be weak partisans, I would like to introduce here the idea that when cleavages are cross-cutting16
party systems tend to be weakly institutionalized. The reasons are twofold.
First of all, in systems with cross-cutting cleavages, parties will have difficulty finding ideologically contiguous
partners with which to cooperate, as being close in one
dimension may be accompanied by irreconcilable differences in another. Being forced to interact in a multiplicity
of non-coinciding directions will definitely diminish their
ability to behave in a rather patterned way, making it difficult for the structure of competition to stabilize.
The second possible reason why cross-cutting cleavages
may hinder party system institutionalization is that, being
pulled in different ideological directions, cross-pressured
political parties are characterized by lower partisan attachments (Huber et al., 2005; Lipset and Rokkan, 1967). In
other words, and paraphrasing Green and Shachar (2000:
4), because cross-pressured political parties are ‘caught in
the middle’, pushed one way by a certain ideological issue
and pulled the other way by another, their commitment to a
certain group of ideological parties will be dependent on
the ‘flavour issue’ of the day or on the ‘dominant’ political
faction. In order to see it more clearly, here is an example.
Let us think of a four-party system where two cleavages
– economy and religion – are cross-cutting. Party A and
party B are both secular; the former is economically liberal,
while the latter is socialist. On the other hand, party C and
party D are both religious, but they differ in terms of their
economic views: the latter being statist and the former liberal. In such an ideologically divisive party system, political parties will have difficulty interacting in a stable and
predictable way. First of all, it may even be impossible for
them to interact at all. In such case, especially if neither of
them has an absolute majority, systemic instability – characterized by frequent minority governments and elections –
will be the norm. Still, even if they manage to cooperate,
and supposing that totally ideological enemies will never
colligate, I can distinguish four different ways: A-B, A-C,
B-D and D-C; which can be seven in the event three parties
are necessary to form the government (i.e. A-B-D; A-C-D;
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
23
Casal Bértoa
Table 8. Cleavages, competitive dimensions and party system institutionalization.
No. cleavages
Cleavage interaction
Dimensions of competition
Party system institutionalization
One
Two or more
None
Cumulative
Cross-cutting
Uni-dimensional
High
Very high
Low
Medium
Two
Multi-dimensional
Bi-dimensional
Source: Based on Kitschelt et al. (1999).
B-C-D). The fact that parties opt for one or another will
most probably depend, ceteris paribus, on the most salient
issue at a particular moment (e.g. abortion or religious education in schools would lead to a structure of competition
pitting AB against CD; a tax increase would face AC with
BD; European integration could even open the path to a
ABC vs. D confrontation, etc.) or on the preferences of a
party faction predominant at a certain period (e.g. if liberals
are predominant in C, a coalition between AC is more
likely than AD, and so on).17
Notwithstanding the different sources of alliance formation, the truth is that in systems where cleavages are crosscutting the possibility that a government contains a party
already existing in the previous cabinet will be high (i.e.
partial alternation). Moreover, and although access can be
closed rather quickly (but not necessarily), the governing
formula will remain innovative for some time. In summary,
cross-cutting cleavages not only render the formation of
routinized and predictable coalitions difficult (when
equally salient), but also hinder the stability of existing partisan alliances (when not equally salient). As a result, and
because cross-cutting cleavages make it hard for the emergence of politics structured along the classical left–right
dimensions (Kitschelt, 1992: 27; 1995: 462), party systems
in such countries will need more time to institutionalize (if
ever).18
On the contrary, when cleavages are cumulative (i.e.
reinforcing) the structure of inter-party competition will
be quite stable as parties will be divided by two (or more)
different cleavages along the same ideological line (Huber
et al., 2005: 369). Thus, because in systems with reinforcing cleavages ‘all the politically relevant sources of division lie parallel, [making party] loyalty [within each side of
the cleavage] paramount’ (Evans and Whitefield, 1998:
117), parties will tend to interact only with those other
parties within the same side of the cleavages, rejecting any
cooperation that would lead to them crossing such a line.
Because a large proportion of parties are organized into
ideological groups of mutually reinforcing loyalties, the
number of ‘volatile’ parties will be low. As a result, cumulative cleavages help to simplify the structure of competition in two different (and separate) blocs of parties,
making the patterns of interaction more predictable and
stable. Think of the example above if parties A and B were
not only secular but socialist, while C and D were both
religious and liberal. In such a case, cumulative pressures
would most probably lead to a ‘left–right’ (A/B vs. C/D,
respectively) type of party competition, typical of many
(institutionalized) Western European party systems.
Following the previous assumptions, and also bearing in
mind the number of cleavages and the dimensions of competition available, party systems could be classified into
four different basic types according to the degree of institutionalization observed (see Table 8).
Thus, as follows from the previous table, party systems in
which the only existing cleavage or two (or more) ‘cumulative’ cleavages create one dimension of competition will
tend to be highly institutionalized. The ‘reinforcing effect’
of the latter will make for the different degree of institutionalization (high and very high, respectively) observed. In
contrast, party systems characterized by ‘cross-cutting cleavages’ will be weakly institutionalized. The level of ‘weak
institutionalization’ will be higher or lower depending on the
number of cleavages and, therefore, competitive dimensions
available.
One final remark is in order before proceeding to the
analysis of cleavage formation/interaction and its implication for party system institutionalization in East Central
Europe. Although it may seem the contrary, this ‘new’
approach is compatible with both Lipset and Rokkan’s
original approach (the so-called ‘freezing’ hypothesis) as
well as with the conclusions of the ‘social pluralist’ school
examined above. First, and contrary to most works using
Lipset and Rokkan’s scheme as a foundation (see section
3), my theory allows not only for different types of cleavages but also for distinct party alternatives to interact: a
party system may institutionalize due to economic/religious and/or ethnic/geographical cleavages, etc. In this
context, neither the number nor the type of cleavage is
important. On the other, it is not the number of cleavages
per se but the way in which such cleavages (be it 2 or 6)
structure party alternatives into two or more different
politico-ideological blocs/camps/groups that really matters
(Bartolini and Mair, 1990; Lipset and Rokkan, 1967; Mair,
2006).
Last, but not least, the approach explained here does not
contradict Lipset (1960) and followers’ statement that
cumulative cleavages lead to political conflict while
cross-cutting cleavages help to resolve the latter. In fact,
my theory departs from the assumption that cumulative
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
24
Party Politics 20(1)
Secular
SZDSZ MSZP
Post-Comm. MSZP SZDSZ
Urban
SZDSZ
Liberal
SZDSZ
MSZP
MSZP
Fidesz
MDF
FKgP MÍEP MDF
Fidesz FKgP
MDF
FKgP MDF
Fidesz
Religious
MÍEP Anti-comm.
FKgP
MÍEP
Fidesz
MÍEP
Rural
Statist
Figure 1. Cleavages and approximate placement of political parties (1995–2009).
Sources: Benoit and Laver (2006), Enyedi (2006), Rohrschneider and Whitefield (2009: 14) and Vachudová (2008).
1993-2000 KSČM
Protectionism
2001-2009 KSČM
ČSSD
SPR/RSČ HSD/SMS
SZ ČSSD
KDU/ČSL
KDU/ČSL
ODA
US/DEU
ODS
Liberalism
ODS
Figure 2. Economic cleavage and approximate placement of political parties.
Sources: Deegan-Krause (2002), Evans and Whitefield (1998), Kitschelt et al. (1999), Markowski (1997) and Saxonberg (2003) until 2000. Benoit and
Laver (2006), Hlousek and Kopeček (2008) and Rohrschneider and Whitefield (2009:13) from 2001.
cleavages create a certain degree of tension between the
two different ideological camps, converting them into ‘irreconcilable’ political enemies. Likewise, I accept that
‘cross-cutting cleavages’ [when not ‘felt with equal intensity’] encourage conciliation’ and compromise (Dahl,
1966: 378; Sartori, 1969; Schattschneider, 1960: 67–68).
In fact, it is the different degree of disagreement created
by cumulative and cross-cutting cleavages that helps to
‘freeze’ party systems in the first place. This is not to say,
however, that too much conflict will not be inimical to
democratic stability, as social pluralists scholars have
maintained.
Cleavage structuration and party system
institutionalization in East Central Europe
Let us now examine how the previous ‘innovative’ analytical framework works in the real world and in the East Central European region in particular.
less nationalist camp’ (Tóka, 2004: 322; see also Enyedi,
2006). Moreover, even when the economic divide (not
cleavage) is introduced into the picture it does not overlap
with the more culturally-like cleavages making the Hungarian structure of competition uni-dimensional: the ‘left’ vs.
the ‘right’. As a result, and mainly from 1994, the structure
of partisan competition has stabilized around two antagonistic camps – the nationalist, anti-communist, clerical
right (Fidesz, MDF, KDNP and FKgP), and the cosmopolitan, post-communist and anti-clerical left (MSZP and
SZDSZ) – which alternate in power in a wholesale manner,
always adopting the same familiar composition while
excluding other (more extreme) parties (e.g. MIÉP). All
in all, and bearing in mind all that has been said, it is possible to conclude that ‘the gradual return to a bipolar
[almost over-institutionalized] system of alliances after
1994 [has to be] interpreted as a natural adaptation, in the
absence of deep cleavages cross-cutting each other’
(Enyedi and Tóka, 2007: 150; see also Tóka, 2004).
Hungary
Czech Republic
Since the very beginning of the transition, and most clearly
after 1994,19 party politics in Hungary has revolved around
cultural rather than economic conflicts (Enyedi, 2006;
Evans, 2006; Kitschelt et al., 1999; Markowski, 1997;
Tóka, 2004; Tóka and Henjak, 2007). Within the first, three
distinct types of cleavage can be distinguished: State vs.
Church, post-communist vs. anti-communist and urban
vs. rural (Körösenyi, 1999a, b).
As follows from Figure 1, these three cleavages present
a cumulative character which allows for the division of the
Hungarian political spectrum into two very antagonistic
(and stable) political camps: ‘a socially conservative, religious, somewhat nationalist, and anti-communist camp
[ . . . ] and [ . . . ] a secular, morally permissive and generally
Contrary to Hungary, the Czech party system has been
characterized since the independence of the country by a
one-dimensional structure of competition revolving around
a unique cleavage: economy (Brokl and Mansfeldová,
2004; Kitschelt et al., 1999: 230; Markowski, 1997). Figure
13 presents the approximate socio-economic orientations
of the Czech political parties along this cleavage in two different periods.
As is evident from Figure 2, economic policy orientations vary from one party to another although, as mentioned
above, the gap between liberal and state-centred socioeconomic orientations puts communist and social democrats (KSČM and ČSSD) on one side and liberal and/or
conservative parties on the other (ODS, ODA, US/DEU),
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
25
Casal Bértoa
Secular
KSČM
Communist KSČM
ČSSD SZ (ODA) ODS (SPR) (US)
(HSD)
KDU/ČSL Religious
ČSSD (HSD) (SPR) SZ (ODA) ODS KDU/ČSL (US) Anti-communist
Figure 3. Religious and post-communist divides and approximate placement of political parties (1993–2009).
Sources: Benoit and Laver (2006), Kitschelt et al. (1999), Markowski (1997) and Saxonberg (2003). Currently defunct political parties are given in
parentheses.
with the Christian democrats (KDU/ČSL) somewhere in
the middle, although a bit closer to the liberal bloc (especially in the first period).
The above-mentioned cleavage structure based on economic considerations has certainly helped the stabilization
of the pattern of partisan interaction into two different
blocs: social protectionists vs. market-liberals. Concretely,
[t]he composition of government coalition has so far been a
perfect embodiment of these bipolar and rather strongly pronounced line [ . . . ] of conflict: the right-of-centre coalition
of the ODS, ODA, KDU/ČSL formed the government in
1992, and again in 1996; the left-of-centre CSSD formed the
(minority) government in 1998 and, together with KDU/ČSL
and US, after the 2002 elections [ . . . ] the 2006 elections have
again seen [ . . . ] a bipolar pattern of competition (Kopecký,
2007: 120–121)
with the ODS, the KDU/ČSL and a new parliamentary
party, the Greens (SZ), forming the government while the
ČSSD and the non-reformed Communist party (KSČM)
remained in opposition.
As can be seen from what has been said, the structure of
inter-party competition in the Czech Republic has been
characterized by the alternation between ODS-liberal
government and ČSSD-social-democratic cabinets. As
Kopecký has also recognized, the only time this pattern was
not absolutely observed was in 2002, when the socialists
formed a coalition government with the centrist KDU/ČSL
and the right-of-centre liberal US (2006: 129). To a lesser
extent, I would add, the coalition formed by PM Topolánek
in 2007, which united ODS, KDU/ČSL with the centre-left
SZ was also weakly consistent in this respect. However, in
this case, the formation of such ideologically diverse coalition was facilitated by the clear ‘anti-communist’ stances of
the SZ, which were not willing to participate in a cabinet
that could rely, even tacitly on Communist support. Moreover, the Green Party ‘modified its profile before the election’ incorporating ‘some liberal economic goals’ which
placed it more on the right (Hloušek and Kopeček, 2008:
532). As a result, the SZ became the party that, together
with the Christian Democrats, came closest to being an
‘economically’ centrist party, giving both the greatest
coalition potential.
This is not to say that less ideologically homogeneous
coalitions were not more prone to political quarrelling. In
fact, the amount of conflict within the last two governing
coalitions has been the highest among the five different partisan cabinets the country has had in the last twenty years.
This has had important consequences for the process of
party system institutionalization, which has seen itself
stopped by the increasing amount of unstable cooperation/collaboration among the different parties. As a result,
the degree of systemic institutionalization after 2002 has
decreased significantly.
Notwithstanding the latter, the Czech party system has
continued to be among the most institutionalized in Eastern
Europe in general (Casal Bértoa and Enyedi, 2010; Casal
Bértoa and Mair, 2012), and the Visegrad region in particular. As a matter of fact, this has been eased by the rather
cumulative character of the other two ideological ‘divides’
present in Czech politics, namely: post-communism and
religion.
In the Czech Republic, the so-called post-communist
divide separates the non-reformed communist party
(KSČM) from its parliamentary counterparts, making the
former a real political ‘pariah’. Thereby, the Czech structure of partisan competition has always been characterized
by the fringe character of the communist party, systematically excluded from every single government coalition. In
fact, as we have seen before, anti-communist attitudes not
only helped SZ in its travel to the right, but also KDU/ČSL
and US/DEU in their will to cooperate with ČSSD in 2002.
Still, from 2005 onwards, the willingness of the ČSSD to
collaborate and, in case of necessity, ally with the KSČM
has certainly increased, reinforcing the already strong political division between anti-communist Christian democrats
and liberal-conservative parties and socialist/communist
forces.
On the other hand, and as follows from Figure 3, religion
has also played a role in the traditional division between
left and right in Czech lands, even if the religious divide
constitutes only a second dimension in the structure of partisan competition: not only are all parties secular, with the
exception of the KDU/ČSL, but also the latter has tended to
place itself on the left–right dimension (Mateju et al., 1999;
Sitter, 2002; Tóka and Henjak, 2007). Thus, and when we
look at the level of secularity displayed by the different
political forces, we can see that the ideological spread of
the different parties basically coincides with their position
along the post-communist, but also the economic (see Figure 2), axes. In fact, if we leave aside all the parties which
have already disappeared or whose role in the political system is irrelevant, we get a clear picture of the Czech party
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
26
Party Politics 20(1)
1993-2001
2002-2009
Periphery
Periphery
SMK
MK
DÚ
ANO
SDKÚ
SDSS
SDL’
SOP
Smer
Statist
Liberal Statist
Liberal
KDH
KDH
KSS
ZRS
HZDS SNS
Centre
HZDS
SNS
Centre
Figures 4 and 5. Cleavages and approximate placement of political parties (1993–2009).
Sources: Deegan-Krause (2004), Gyárfášová and Krivý (2007), Krno (2005) and Markowski (1997) for the period 1993–1998. For the period 1999–2009,
see Benoit and Laver (2006), Gyárfášová and Krivý (2007), Hloušek and Kopeček (2008), Krivý (2004) and Vachudová (2008).
I have included within the circles all parties with a certain religious background (in terms of both ideology and support). All the other parties are considered to be secular, and some of them even anti-clerical (KSS, ZRS, SDL’, Smer, ANO).
system, where ODS and, to a lesser extent, KDU/ČSL constitute the political right and KSČM and ČSSD form part of
the left bloc, with SZ somewhere in between. Still, the centrist position of KDU/ČSL in economic terms, the only
‘full’ cleavage in the Czech Republic, facilitates possible
centre-right and centre-left coalitions, giving place to a
rather institutionalized two-and-a-half party system.
In conclusion, in light of what has been presented it
seems obvious that among the four Visegrad democracies
studied here the Czech Republic is where the economic
cleavage has been most sharply articulated and where axiological divides (i.e. religious and ‘post-communist’) have
cross-cut less the dominant left–right dimension, in the
electoral arena as well as at the level of elite opinion
(Kitschelt et al., 1999; Markowski, 1997; Vachudová and
Hooghes, 2009).
Slovakia
From the moment of its independence in 1993, the Slovak
party system has been characterized by the presence of two
cleavages (centre–periphery and economy) and one structural divide (religion). However, as Eibl and Chytı́lek have
wisely pointed out, ‘whereas up to 1998 the main axis of
the party competition was determined by [the first], after
2002 it approached [more] a systemic logic based on the
evaluation of socio-economic issues’ (2007: 175; see also
Deegan-Krause, 2004). This difference has significant consequences for interpretation of the relationship between
cleavage development and the structure of partisan competition discussed below.
Figures 4 and 5 display, respectively, the structure of
Slovak cleavages for the two periods signalled above. In
contrast to what we have seen for Hungary and the Czech
Republic, Slovak cleavages (and divides) present a cross-
cutting, rather than a cumulative, character (DeeganKrause, 2002). As a result, four different political and ideological camps can be distinguished: (1) the nationalauthoritarian camp, formed by the nationalist SNS, the
charismatic HZDS and other minor parties (the economically populist ZRS until 1998, and the communist KSS
from 2002); (2) the Christian-liberal camp, made by the
religious KDH – a monothematic party; (3) the socialist
camp, composed by the post-communist SDL’, the socialdemocratic SDSS and the personalistic SOP until the
2000s, when the populist/charismatic Smer-Direction
managed to capitalize on the emerging socio-economic
cleavage and take over the previous three parties, which
finally merged before the last legislative elections in
2006; and (4) the liberal-cosmopolitan camp, characterized by its liberal stances in terms of both economy and
nation-building, and formed by the secular-conservative
SDKÚ, the ethnic SMK and the neoliberal ANO (already
defunct).
The previous picture becomes even more complicated
when we introduce the ever increasing religious divide
(Hloušek and Kopeček, 2008), which, with the exception
of the ferociously secular and anti-clerical socialist camp
and the religious Christian-liberal camp (unified around the
KDH), divides the other two camps into two distinct sides:
secular (ZRS, KSS, ANO and SDKÚ) and pro-Church
(SMK, HZDS and SNS).
With such a bi-dimensional (tri-dimensional at times)
cleavage structure it is not difficult to understand why the
patterns of inter-party competition in Slovakia have been
characterized by the presence of partial alternations
(mainly from 1998), innovative governing formulae and
open access (every single cabinet since 1994 has included
at least one new party – most of them formed just a couple
of months ahead of the elections).
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
27
Casal Bértoa
In particular, with the exception of Mečiar’s 4th cabinet,
every coalition government since 1994 has included political forces from at least two different political camps,
at times even three. This was the case of the 1994 Moravčik’s and 1998 Dzurinda’s ‘rainbow’ cabinets, which
comprised five political parties/groups ranging from the
centre-right to the centre-left of the political spectrum
(Szomolányi, 2004). In fact, each of these two government was so ideologically heterogeneous as to bring
together the conservative DS, with the liberal DÚ (AD and
APR in 1994) and the religious KDH (all of them anticommunists) on the right, and the post-communist SDL’
and the historical social-democrats (SDSS) on the left,
together with the populist SOP, the ethnic SMK and the
environmentalist SZS. Dzurinda’s and Fico’s cabinet in
2002 and 2006, respectively, followed a similar pattern,
although the level of ideological homogeneity increased to
a certain extent. Thus, the former again included Christian
Democrats (KDH) with the Catholic Hungarian SMK (now
itself divided along two different economic trends: liberal
and populist), together with the liberal-secular SDKÚ (DÚ’s
successor) and the neoliberal-anti-clerical ANO. In a similar
vein, the current government also includes parties from two
different camps, namely: the national-authoritarian (with the
religious HZDS and SNS) and the socialist (secular) Smer
(Hloušek and Kopeček, 2008; Rybář, 2006; Szomolányi,
2004). The fact that these parties differed in terms of economy (SDL’ vs. KDH/APR/ADSR; SDL’/SDSS vs. KDH/
DÚ; SMK vs. ANO/SDKÚ), religion (SDL’ vs. KDH;
SDL’/SDSS vs. KDH/SMK; ANO vs. KDH/SMK; Smer
vs. HZDS/SNS), and national identity (SMK vs. KDH; Smer
vs. HZDS and SNS) clearly hindered the stabilization of the
patterns of inter-party competition in Slovakia.
This is not to say, however, that the nationalauthoritarian based government constituted an ideologically homogeneous ‘oasis of peace’. In fact, the parties
forming Mečiar’s cabinets in 1993 and 1994 also quarrel
over economy (ZRS/HZDS vs. SNS) as well as religion
(ZRS vs. HZDS/SNS). However, the fact that they shared
a common view on the way the process of national (in terms
of both identity and institutions) building should develop
certainly helped to make the patterns of partisan interaction
at the beginning of the 1990s more predictable and stable,
although not much stable, than ever afterwards.
All in all, when analysing the process of party system
configuration in Slovakia and its chances of developing
an institutionalized structure of inter-party competition,
it is important to note that the cross-cutting nature of the
Slovak cleavages, boosted by the territorial and sociodemographical heterogeneity of the population, fostered
the formation and development of a bi-dimensional structure of competition characterized by unstable partisan alliances and unpredictable patterns of government formation
(Pridham, 2002; Rybář, 2006; Sitter, 2002; Szomolányi,
2004).
Poland
In contrast to the most institutionalized East Central European party systems (i.e. Hungarian and Czech) the Polish
party system has been characterized since the very beginning
by a multi-dimensional space of inter-party competition
revolving around two different type cleavages: cultural/
axiological (religious and post-communist) and economic
(Grzybowski and Mikuli, 2004; Kitschelt et al., 1999;
Markowski, 2007a; Szczerbiak, 2006; Tworzecki, 2003).
As Jasiewicz has recently remarked, ‘the salience of these
two [types], as well as their cross-cutting configuration in
the political spectrum, has been well documented in
_
empirical studies (Markowski and Tóka, 1993; Zukowski,
1994; Jasiewicz, 1995, 1998; Kitschelt et al., 1999)’
(2007: 88, the emphasis is mine). Similarly, he was the
first scholar to point out that on the basis of these two different cleavage types it was possible to structure the Polish party system into four different politico-ideological
fields:
The combination of relatively strong support of secularism/
universalism and a free-market/free-enterprise orientation may
be described as the liberal-democratic field [ . . . ] The combination of pro-market attitudes and high religiosity (with the
emphasis on Christian values and economic nationalism)
brings about the conservative field (usually in a Christiandemocratic version) [ . . . ] Support for state interventionism
combined with religiosity/particularism gives the populist
field [ . . . ] State interventionism combined with secularism
may be identified as the socialist field [ . . . ]. (2007: 88 f.,
emphasis in the original; see also Markowski, 1995 and
Szczerbiak, 2006)
Figures 6 to 11 locate the most important political forces
– and, in any case, all the parliamentarian parties – within
the four above-mentioned fields along a bi-dimensional
axis built on the basis of the two primary dimensions of partisan interaction, namely: religion (most salient until 2001)
and economy (extraordinarily relevant ever after). The
post-communist cleavage is also indicated, so that parties
with a non-negative perception of the communist regime
and contrary to the adoption of ‘justice-distributive’ measures like lustration or de-communization are grouped
together.20 Moreover, and because Polish political parties
have more often than not come and gone after every election, it has been necessary to portrait the position of the different parties within the cultural–economic axis along each
of the different legislative periods.
As shown in the figures below, religion cuts across
the economic cleavage dividing both the economically
interventionist ‘left’ and the pro-liberal-market ‘right’. In
a similar vein, the post-communist cleavage separates the
so-called ‘successor parties’ (SLD and PSL) from the
post-Solidarity parties, which can be found in all but in
the socialist field. Moreover, the latter cleavage cuts across
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
28
Party Politics 20(1)
1991-1993
Secular
SLD
1993-1997
Secular
PPPP
SLD
UD
UP
SO
SP
KPN
Statist
UD
KPN
PSL
PL
KLD
KLD
Liberal Statist
PSL
Liberal
BBWR
PC
‘S’
PC
‘S’
ZChN
ZChN
Religious
Religious
1997-2001
Secular
SLD
2001-2005
Secular
UP
UP
SLD
UW
UW
PO
Statist
Liberal Statist
PSL
Liberal
SO
PSL
PiS
AWS
AWS-P
LPR
ROP
Religious
Religious
2005-2007
Secular
2007-2009
Secular
UP
SLD
PD
LiD
SdPL
PO
PO
Statist SO
Liberal Statist
Liberal
PSL
PSL
PiS
SO
LPR
PiS
LPR
Religious
Religious
Figures 6 to 11. Cleavages and approximate placement of political parties (1991–2009).
Sources: I have included within the circles all parties with a certain post-communist background. All the other parties are considered to be anticommunist (mostly post-Solidarity). From the 1991-1997 period, Kitschelt et al. (1999), Markowski (2006a), Wesołowski (1996) and Zarycki (2000). Masłyk
and Kocór (2000), Wiatr (2000) and Zarycki (2000) for 1997-2001. For 2001-2005, see Castle and Taras (2002), Markowski (2006b), Rohrschneider and
Whitefield (2009: 16), Vachudová (2008) and Wiatr (2004). For the final period (i.e. 2005-2009), Benoit and Laver (2006) and Markowski (2007b).
individual political parties like UP or UW/PD (see figures).
Finally, and although not reflected in the figures presented
above, the post-communist cleavage also cross-cuts its
economic counterpart, separating all those bitter anticommunist post-Solidarity parties (e.g. PC, AWS, PiS,
LPR) from all those anti-communist forces, also stemming from the Solidarity movement, which adopt a more
pragmatic approach to their relationship with both PSL and
SLD (e.g. UW/PD or PO). As a result, both post-communist
and religious cleavages clearly overlap each other, but only
at the right side of the political spectrum. In this sense, the
higher the level of religiosity among the pro-market
camp,21 the lower the chances a political party will collaborate – not even ally – with the post-communist forces.22
Bearing in mind all that has been said, it is clear that the
social protectionist camp (socialists þ populists) differs
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
29
Casal Bértoa
Table 9. Cleavage cross-cuttingness and party system institutionalization.
Country
Type of
cross-cuttingness
Hungary
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Poland
Religious-regional
Economic-religious
Ethnic-economic
Religious-economic
Cross-cutting score
Selway (2009)
Benoit and Laver (2006)
PSI
0.83
0.87
0.89
0.90
0.33
0.88
0.90
0.97
2.5
1.4
0.3
–4.2
Using the Benoit and Laver (2006) dataset, I have calculated the degree of cleavage cross-cuttingness in each of the political systems under study by
locating the ‘relevant’ political parties within the dimensional space of each country and obtaining the R2 of the line of fit. The main logic behind such
analysis is that the higher the latter will be, the lower the degree of cross-cuttingness.
from the pro-market camp (liberals þ conservatives) in
terms of economy; the secular camp (socialists þ liberals)
from the religious camp (populists þ conservatives) in
terms of religiosity; and the post-communist successor parties (SLD and PSL) from all the other parties in terms of
‘nostalgia’ for the previous (communist) regime. At the
same time, the socialist field (mainly SLD and UP) differs
from the populist field in terms of religiosity (all), but also
in terms of ‘nostalgia’ (all but the PSL); the liberal field
(mainly UW/PD and PO) disagrees with the conservative
parties in the degree of religiosity and anti-communism.
As a result, parties have found it very difficult to establish
stable governmental coalitions and/or electoral alliances.
As a rule, cabinets have been short-termed and the only one
to endure the entire legislature (SLD-PSL from 1993 up to
1997) was characterized by its quarrels, rather than by its
agreements. Moreover, and as explained elsewhere (Casal
Bértoa, 2011), not even one of the coalition governments
in Poland managed to unite all parties from the same political field23 – in the majority of cases not even two parties
from the same political field (the only exceptions are
Suchowska’s 7-party cabinet – if not then, when?, and Kaczynski’s controversial three-party coalition, where LPR
and Samoobrona allied together with PiS).
In sum, with such an ideologically heterogeneous and
dogmatically complex political panorama, it is hardly surprising that the level of party system institutionalization in
Poland has remained the lowest among the four countries
examined here.
Cleavage cross-cuttingness: Does it make
a difference?
If the most important conclusion following from the previous analysis is that it is the cleavage structure in a country
that determines the degree of institutionalization of its party
system, the next question should be: can the degree to
which cleavages cross-cut hint at the level of institutionalization a party system is able to achieve?
Table 9 shows the degree of cross-cuttingness for the
two most important ‘cleavage’ dimensions – for which data
are available – in each of the countries analysed here.24 As
follows from the table, cleavage cross-cuttingness and
party system institutionalization are highly related,25 providing an explanation for the different degrees of institutionalization observed in the four East Central European party
systems. Moreover, and what is more striking, the difference in the degree of cross-cuttingness among the countries
and the level of party system institutionalization almost
perfectly associate (see also Casal Bértoa, 2010: appendix
B). For all these reasons, it is possible to complement my
previous conclusions with the more specific statement that
the higher the level of cleavage cross-cuttingness, the lower
the institutionalization of a party system will be.
Conclusion
In this article, and following the steps of the sociological
approach initiated by Lipset and Rokkan’s (1967) seminal
work, I have tried to examine how a nation’s cleavage
structure affects the process of party system institutionalization. Using Bartolini and Mair’s (1990) rather strict concept of ‘cleavage’, and distinguishing three main cleavages
in Hungary and Poland, two in Slovakia and one in the
Czech Republic, I have presented the most important scholarly theories linking both cleavage formation and development with party system institutionalization. An in-depth
analysis of the first three most important hypotheses led
to the watertight conclusion that neither the number nor the
type nor the strength of a cleavage is associated with the
degree of party system institutionalization in East Central
Europe.
As a result, and building on Dahl’s original idea that
both cleavage and party system structuring are deeply
entangled, I decided to pursue an analysis of the consequences different modes of cleavage formation and development may have for stabilization of the patterns of
partisan competition. The idea is that when cleavages are
cross-cutting, parties will find it difficult to identify ideologically contiguous partners with which to cooperate, as
being close in one dimension may be accompanied by irreconcilable differences in another. On the contrary, when
cleavages are cumulative (i.e. coinciding), parties will tend
to interact only with other parties on the same side of the
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
30
Party Politics 20(1)
cleavage, rejecting any cooperation that would lead them to
cross such a line. In this context one-dimensional cleavage
configurations are considered to have a similar effect,
although to a lesser degree, than the latter.
After a thorough analysis of the distinct cleavage configurations in the different East Central European countries,
the main conclusion needs to be that the process of party
system institutionalization is hindered when a country’s
cleavages cross-cut and fostered when coinciding (i.e. cumulating). Moreover, the degree to which cleavages cross-cut
with each other exerts an unquestionable influence on the
level to which party systems institutionalize: the lower the
cross-cuttingness, the higher the institutionalization.
For all this, I can conclude with Whitefield stating that
‘[a]lthough parties and politicians have come and gone
[ . . . t]he term cleavage, [ . . . continues] to be meaningful
for post-communist societies’, as the way they structure
helps to ‘define the behavior of politically relevant [ . . . ]
actors’ (2002: 195). Hence, party system institutionalization does appear to be determined, to an enormous degree,
by the way cleavages form, develop and, overall, configure.
Funding
This research was completed while I was a ‘MAEC-AECI’
funded PhD candidate at the European University Institute.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Acknowledgements
This article is dedicated to the memory of my mentor, Peter Mair
(R.I.P. 1951–2011).
Previous versions of this article were presented at the 3rd ECPR
General Conference in Dublin (August 2010) and at the IPSAECPR Joint Conference in Sao Paulo (February 2011). I thank
participants at these conferences, especially Simon Bornschier
(Universities of Zurich and St. Gallen, Switzerland), as well as
three anonymous reviewers for useful comments. I am also grateful to Kevin Deegan-Krause (Wayne State University, USA) and
Zsolt Enyedi (Central European University, Hungary) for sharing
their expertise with me regarding cleavage salience and issue
dimensionality. The usual disclaimers apply.
10.
11.
Notes
1. However, this is not to deny the fact that other institutional
variables (e.g. electoral system or the type of regime) may
contribute to explaining the different degree of institutionalization observed in East Central European party systems
(Casal Bértoa, 2011).
2. Lipset and Rokkan alone are to blame as they avoided any
explicit definition of the term. In fact, and despite Zuckerman’s (1975) laudable effort to interpret Lipset and Rokkan’s
will, the truth is that the latter authors even used different
terms (e.g. ‘contrasts’, ‘divides’, ‘conflicts’, oppositions’ . . . )
as synonyms (see Meisel, 1974: 6; Randall, 2001).
3. Interestingly enough, and as Mair (2006: 373) himself has
recently pointed out, such efforts at qualification have not
resolved the existing conceptual confusion as there is almost
nothing in a so-called ‘political’ or ‘social’ cleavage that
12.
13.
differs from a political conflict or a structural divide,
respectively.
This is not to say that, when appropriate, I will refer and
address other conceptualizations of the notion: namely
‘social’ or ‘political’ cleavages, depending on whether only
the structural or the normative element is present. In this context, ‘political’ cleavages, ‘issue dimensions’ and/or ideological ‘divides’ are used indistinctly.
For previous applications of Mair’s framework in a similar
context, see Müller-Rommel (2005), O’Dwyer (2006), Rybář
(2004) or Toole (2000).
Ministerial volatility is computed by adding the net change in
the percentage of ‘ministers’ (including the prime minister),
rather than ministries or portfolios gained and lost by each
party in the cabinet from one government to the next, and
then dividing by 2.
Lijphart defines ‘issue dimensions’ in terms of ‘differences
[derived or not from social divisions] between rather than
within parties’ (1984: 128).
In contrast to Lijphart’s approach, political cleavages are
operationalized here using the ideological vote-share of parties distributed in a two-dimensional political space based
on economic and ethnic issues.
The ‘effective’ number of electoral parties is calculated
according to the following formula: ENEP¼1/Svi, where vi
is the proportion of seats/votes of the ith party (Laakso and
Taagepera, 1979). Here, I use the ENEP rather than the ‘effective’ number of parliamentary parties (ENPP), as the latter may
well also be influenced by other factors, mainly the electoral
system (Duverger, 1954). Still, none of my findings would
have been changed by the use of such a ‘legislative’ indicator.
When dealing with electoral fragmentation scores, similar
conclusions can be made but for the number of ‘full’ cleavages, whose explanatory power is a bit higher.
Notwithstanding Kitschelt et al.’s thorough work (1999), the
only empirical study of the above-cited relationship is Birnir’s
(2007a, b) analysis of the relationship between ethnicity and
electoral politics in new democracies. Using a nested research
design, the author confirmed Evans and Whitefield’s hypotheses when finding that, far more than religious cleavages,
‘identity that is expressed through ethnic parties [ . . . ] jumpstarts party system stabilization’ (2007a: 602–603).
For each cleavage, the composite index represents the sum
of the three dimensions in standardized form (or z-scores).
Cronbach’s alpha for the different indexes is rather high
(always higher than 0.70 but in one case: three-dimensional
composite economic index), a relatively respectable figure
given that the scale consists of three items only (inter-item
correlation was always between 0.56 and 0.75, with the sole
exception of the economic cleavage, in any of the two versions, three- or two- dimensional).
The fact that data for the ethnic and urban/rural cleavage are
unavailable does not undermine the findings, as these two
cleavages are only present in one (Slovakia and Hungary,
respectively) of the four countries (see section 3).
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
31
Casal Bértoa
14. In addition to the studies explaining political conflict or democratic stability, Simmel’s ‘cross-pressure’ theories are echoed
within the ‘voting behaviour’ literature (Berelson et al., 1954;
Lazarsfeld et al., 1944; Tingsten, 1937). Very briefly, the main
idea was that ‘cross-pressured’ individuals tended to become
politically indifferent. Consequently, they might withdraw
from voting, change their vote intention, decide for whom to
vote at the last minute, ‘feel a reduced sense of partisanship’,
etc. (Rae and Taylor, 1970: 86; Lane, 1959: 197–203).
15. As far as I am concerned, this is the only empirical work
attempting to link both variables.
16. Building on Rae and Taylor’s (1969: 537) definition, I consider
cross-cutting cleavages all those that divide the political spectrum
in such a way that two political parties share a common ideological direction while differing on a second one. On the contrary,
cumulative cleavages are those that divide the political spectrum
in two distinct camps, each one characterized by the presence of
at least two completely different ideological preferences.
17. In this context, cross-cutting cleavages could also hinder the process of party institutionalization, facilitating the splits of different factions and the creation of new political groups and parties.
18. Note, however, that the example is theoretical, as it is difficult
for new party systems to remain with the same parties all the
time.
19. As the majority of scholars have recognized (Enyedi and
Tóka, 2007; Körösenyi, 1999a, b; Markus, 1998), and as one
of the reviewers has accurately pointed out, cleavages in Hungary took their current structure only in 1994. Enyedi (2005)
contains the most detailed account to date on how agency can
influence the way cleavages structure in a country.
20. It is important to note here that, in clear contrast to the separation
of Slovak religious parties, the grouping of post-communist parties is only indicative and does not present the exact distance
other ‘post-Solidarity’ may have to the previous group.
21. In contrast to the word ‘field’, I use the notion of ‘camp’ to
indicate the sum of two fields (on the basis of economy or
religion or ‘communist nostalgia’). As a result, ‘camp’ has
a stronger connotation than ‘field’.
22. A clear example of what has been said is the electoral collaboration of PD with SLD within LiD, or the formation of a
coalition government between PO and PSL. In contrast, and
despite intensive talks at the beginning of 2006, PiS did not
manage to agree on stable governmental cooperation with PSL.
23. The only exception was AWS (2000–2001) and PiS (2005–
2006) minority governments, which, on the other hand,
required the parliamentary support of political forces from
other different ideological fields (ROP in 2000 or Samoobrona and LPR in 2005).
24. For example, and due to the lack of reliable data, I could not
compare the degree of cross-cuttingness between religiosity
and post-Communism in Hungary.
25. No other comparison attempted (i.e. economic-religious,
economic-ethnic, economic-regional, religious-ethnic, religiousregional, ethnic-regional) achieved such a high degree of
coincidence.
References
Alesina A, Devleeschauwer A, Easterly W, Kurlat S and Wacziarg
R (2003) Fractionalization. Journal of Economic Growth 8(2).
Alford RA (1963) Party and Society: The Anglo American
Democracies. Chicago, IL: Rand-MacNally, pp. 155–194.
Almond G (1956) Comparative political systems. Journal of Politics 18(3): 391–409.
Amorim Neto O and Cox GW (1997) Electoral institutions, cleavage structures, and the number of parties. American Journal
of Political Science 41: 149–174.
Armingeon K and Careja R (2004) Comparative Political Data
Set for 28 Post- Communist Countries, 1989–2004. Available
at: http://www.ipw.unibe.ch/content/team/klaus_armingeon/
comparative_political_data_sets/index_ger.html (accessed July
2010).
Bakke E and Sitter N (2005) Patterns of stability. Party competition and strategy in Central Europe since 1989. Party Politics
11(2): 243–263.
Bartolini S and Mair P (1990) Identity, Competition, and Electoral Availability: The Stabilization of European Electorates
1885–1985. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Benoit K and Laver M (2006) Party Policy in Modern Democracies. London: Routledge.
Berelson BR, Lazarsfeld PF and McPhee WN (1954) Voting. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bielasiak J (2002) The institutionalization of electoral and party
systems in postcommunist states. Comparative Politics
34(2): 189–210.
Birnir JK (2007a) Divergence in diversity? The dissimilar effects
of cleavages on electoral politics in new democracies. American Journal of Political Science 51(3): 602–619.
Birnir JK (2007b) Ethnicity and Electoral Politics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bozóki A and Ishiyama JT (2002) The Communist Successor Parties of Central and Eastern Europe. Armonk, NY: M. E.
Sharpe, Inc.
Brokl L and Mansfeldová Z (2004) The Czech Republic. In: Berglund S, Ekman J and Aarebrot FH (eds) The Handbook of
Political Change in Eastern Europe. Northampton, MA:
Edward Elgar.
Casal Bértoa F (2010) The simpler, the better! Sources of party
system institutionalization in ‘third wave’ Europe. Presented
at the 2nd ECPR Graduate Conference, Dublin, 30 August to
1 September.
Casal Bértoa F (2011) Sources of Party System Institutionalization in New Democracies. Lessons from East Central Europe.
EUI Working Paper Series, n. 1.
Casal Bértoa F and Enyedi Z (2010) Party System Closure: Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Validation. DISC
Working Paper Series, n. 11.
Casal Bértoa F and Mair P (2012) Party system institutionalization across time: Post-Communist Europe in comparative perspective. In: Müller-Rommel F and Keman H (eds) Party
Government in the New Europe. London: Routledge.
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
32
Party Politics 20(1)
Castle M and Taras R (2002) Democracy in Poland. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press.
Coser L (1956) The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: Free
Press.
Cox GW (1997) Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination
in the World’s Electoral Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Dahl RA (1966) Political Oppositions in Western Democracies.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Dahrendorf R (1959) Class and Conflict in Industrial Society.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Dalton R (2004) Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices:
The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial
Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Deegan-Krause K (2002) Once More unto the Breach: The Politics of Cleavage in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Paper
presented at APSA Annual Meeting, (Boston).
Deegan-Krause K (2004) Slovakia. In: Berglund S, Ekman J and
Aarebrot FH (eds) The Handbook of Political Change in Eastern Europe. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Devine JA and Stearns JM (1985) Class, party and electoral
mobilization: A reappraisal of the British experience. Social
Science Quarterly 66: 91–104.
Duverger M (1954) Political Parties: Their Organization and
Activities in the Modern State. London.
Eibl O and Chytı́lek R (2007) Conclusion. In: Hloušek V and Chytı́lek R (eds) Parliamentary Elections and Party Landscape in
the Visegrad Group Countries. Brno: CDK (Democracy and
Culture Studies Centre).
Elster J, Offe C and Preuss UK (1998) Institutional Design in
Post-Communist Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Enyedi Z (2005) The role of agency in cleavage formation. European Journal of Political Research 44: 697–720.
Enyedi Z (2006) The survival of the fittest: Party system concentration in Hungary. In: Jungerstam-Mulders S (ed.) PostCommunist EU Member States. Aldershot.
Enyedi Z (2008) The social and attitudinal basis of political parties:
Cleavage politics revisited. European Review 16(3): 287–304.
Enyedi Z and Tóka G (2007) The only game in town: Party politics in Hungary. In: Webb P and White S (eds) Party Politics
in New Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Evans GA (2006) The social bases of political divisions in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Annual Review of Sociology 32:
245–270.
Evans GA and Whitefield S (1993) Identifying the bases of party
competition in Eastern Europe. British Journal of Political
Science 23(4): 521–548.
Evans GA and Whitefield S (1998) The structuring of political
cleavages in post-communist societies: The case of the Czech
Republic and Slovakia. Political Studies 46: 115–139.
Evans GA and Whitefield S (2000) Explaining the formation of
electoral cleavages in post-communist democracies. In: Klingemann H-D, Mochmann E and Newton K (eds) Elections in Central and Eastern Europe: The First Wave. Berlin: Ed. Sigma.
Flanagan SC (1980) Value cleavages, economic cleavages and the
Japanese voter. American Journal of Political Science 24:
177–206.
Fortes M and Evans-Pritschard (1940) African Political Systems.
London: Oxford University Press.
Franklin M, Mackie T and Valen H (1992) Electoral Change:
Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in
Western Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gallagher M (2010) Electoral Systems. Available at: http://www.
tcd.ie/Political_Science/staff/michael_gallagher/ElSystems/
Docts/ElectionIndices.pdf/ (accessed August 2010).
Gijsberts M and Nieuwbeerta P (2000) Class cleavages in party
preferences in the new democracies in Eastern Europe: A comparison with Western democracies. European Societies 2(4):
397–430.
Gluckman M (1954) Political institutions. In: Evans-Pritchard EE
(ed.) The Institutions of Primitive Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
Grabowska M (2004) Podzial postkomunistyczny: Spoleczne podstawy w Polsce po 1989 roku. Warsaw: Scholar.
Green DP and Shachar R (2000) Habit formation and political
behaviour: Evidence of consuetude in voter turnout. British
Journal of Political Science 30: 561–573.
Grzybowski M and Mikuli P (2004) Poland. In: Berglund S,
Ekman J and Aarebrot FH (eds) The Handbook of Political
Change in Eastern Europe. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Grzymała-Busse A (2002) Redeeming the Communist Past: the
Regeneration of Communist Parties in East Central Europe.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gyárfášová O and Krivý V (2007) Electoral Behavior-Persistent
Volatilityor Clear Sign of Consolidation? The Case of Slovakia. In: Hloušek V and Chytı́lek R (eds) Parliamentary Elections and Party Landscape in the Visegrad Group Countries.
Brno: CDK (Democracy and Culture Studies Centre).
Henderson K (2002) Slovakia: The Escape from Invisibility. London: Routledge.
Hloušek V and Kopecěk L (2008) Cleavages in the contemporary Czech and Slovak politics: Between persistence and
change. East European Politics and Societies 22(3):
518–552.
Horowitz S and Browne E (2005) Sources of post-communist
party system consolidation. Party Politics.11(6): 689–706.
Huber JD, Kernell G and Leoni EL (2005) Institutional context,
cognitive resources and party attachments across democracies.
Political Analysis 13(4): 365–386.
Inglehart R (1984) The changing structure of political cleavages
in Western society. In: Dalton RJ, Flanagan SC and Beck
PA (eds) Electoral Change in Advanced Industrian Democracies. Realignment or Dealignment? Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Inglehart R and Welzel C (2005) Modernization, Cultural Change
and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Ishiyama J (2003) Electoral systems, ethnic fragmentation and
party system volatility in sub-Saharan African countries.
Northeast African Studies 10(2): 203–220.
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
33
Casal Bértoa
Jasiewicz K (2007) Poland: Party system by default. In: Webb P
and White S (eds) Party Politics in New Democracies. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Kitschelt H (1992) The formation of party systems in East Central
Europe. Politics and Society 20(1): 7–50.
Kitschelt H (1995) Formation of party cleavages in postcommunist democracies. Party Politics 1(4): 447–472.
Kitschelt H (2001) Divergent paths of post-communist democracies. In: Diamond L and Gunther R (eds) Political Parties
and Democracy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Kitschelt H, Mansfeldová Z, Markowski R and Tóka G (1999)
Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation
and Inter-Party Cooperation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Knutsen O and Scarborough E (1995) Cleavage politics. In: van
Deth JW and Scarborough E (eds) The Impact of Values.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kopecký P (2006) The rise of the power monopoly: Political parties in the Czech Republic. In: Jungerstam-Mulders S (ed.)
Post-Communist EU Member States: Parties and Party Systems. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Kopecký P (2007) Building party government: Political parties in
the Czech and Slovak Republics. In: Webb P and White S (eds)
Party Politics in New Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Körösenyi A (1999a) Cleavages and party system in Hungary. In:
Enyedi Z and Tóka G (eds) The 1994 Elections to the Hungarian National Assembly. Sigma, Berlin.
Körösenyi A (1999b) Government and Politics in Hungary. Budapest: Central European University Press-Osiris.
Kostelecký T (2002) Political Parties after Communism: Developments in East Central Europe. Washington, D.C. and Baltimore,
MD: Woodrow Wilson Centre/Johns Hopkins University.
Krivý V (2004) Supporters of political parties: Status, identities, and lines of division. In: Gyárfášová O and Mesežnikov G (eds) Party Government in Slovakia: Experience
and Perspectives. Bratislava: Institute for Public Affairs,
pp. 127–155.
Krno S (2005) Slovakia. In: Migalski M (ed.) Parties and Party
Systems in Central and Eastern Europe. Sosnowiec: Wy_zsza
Szkoła Zarzădzania i Marketingu.
Laakso M and Taagepera R (1979) ‘Effective’ number of parties.
A measure with application to West Europe. Comparative
Political Studies 12(1): 3–27.
Ladrech R (forthcoming) (Shallow) Europeanization and party
system instability in post-communist states: How changing
constraints undermine the development of stable partisan linkages. In: Lewis PG and Markowski R (eds) Europeanising
Party Politics? Comparative Perspectives on Central and
Eastern Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Lane RE (1959) Political Life. New York: Free Press.
Lawson K, Rommele A and Karasimeonov G (eds) (1999) Cleavages,
Parties and Voters: Studies from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic,
Hungary, Poland, and Romania. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Lazarsfeld PF, Berelson B and Graudet H (1944) The People’s
Choice. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lijphart A (1984) Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Lijphart A (1999) Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms
and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven, CT and
London: Yale University Press.
Lindberg SI (2007) Institutionalization of party systems? Stability
and fluidity among legislative parties in Africa’s democracies.
Government and Opposition 42(2): 215–241.
Lipset SM (1960) Political Man. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Lipset SM and Rokkan S (1967) Cleavage structures, party systems and voter alignments: An introduction. In: Lipset SM and
Rokkan S (eds) Party Systems and Voter Alignments. New
York: Free Press.
Madrid R (2005) Ethnic cleavages and electoral volatility in Latin
America. Comparative Politics 38(1): 1–20.
Mainwaring S (1998) Party systems in the third wave. Journal of
Democracy 9(3): 67–81.
Mainwaring S and Scully T (1995) Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Mainwaring S and Zocco E (2007) Political sequences and the stabilization of inter-party competition. Party Politics 13(2):
155–178.
Mair P (1997) Party System Change. Approaches and Interpretations. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Mair P (2001) The freezing hypothesis: An evaluation. In: Karvonen L and Kuhnle S (eds) Party Systems and Voter Alignments
Revisited. London: Routledge.
Mair P (2006) Party system change. In: Katz RS and Crotty W
(eds) Handbook of Political Parties. London: Sage.
Mair P (2007) Party systems and alternation in government,
1950–2000: Innovation and institutionalization. In: Gloppen
S and Rakner L (eds) Globalisation and Democratisation:
Challenges for Political Parties Bergen: Fagbokforlaget.
Maor M (1997) Political Parties and Party Systems: Comparative
Approaches. London: Routledge.
Markowski R (1995) Political Competition and Ideological
Dimensions in Central Eastern Europe. Working Paper no.
257. Glasgow: Centre for the Study of Public Policy.
Markowski R (1997) Political parties and ideological spaces in
East Central Europe. Communist and Post-Communist Studies
30(3): 221–254.
Markowski R (2006a) Political parties, spaces of competition and
emerging cleavages in Poland in the early 1990s. In: Jasiewicz
K and Markowski R (eds) Did Poland Have Founding Elections? The 1991–1993 Elections to the Sejm. Berling: Sigma.
Markowski R (2006b) The Polish elections of 2005: Pure chaos or
restructuring of the party system? West European Politics
29(4): 814–832.
Markowski R (2007a) System Partyjny. In: Kolarska-Bobińska L,
Kucharczyk J and Zbieranek J (eds) Demokracja w Polsce
2005–2007. Warzawa: Instytut Spraw Publicznych.
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
34
Party Politics 20(1)
Markowski R (2007b) The 2007 Polish parliamentary election:
Some structuring, still a lot of chaos. West European Politics
31(5): 1055–1068.
Markus GG (1998 Party politics, party system and the dynamics
of political cleavages in Hungary. Final Report to NATIP.
Masłyk T and Marcin Kocór M (2000) The political beliefs of
Poles and their party affiliation. An expression of sociopolitical cleavages? In: Kubiak H and Wiatr J (eds) Between
Animosity and Utility: Political Parties and their Matrix. Warsaw: Scholar.
Mateju P, Rehakova B and Evans GA (1999) The politics of interests and class realignment in the Czech Republic, 1992–1996.
In: Evans GA (ed.) The End of Class Politics? Class Voting in
Comparative Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McAllister I and White S (2007) Political parties and democratic
consolidation in post-communist Europe. Party Politics 13(2):
197–216.
Meisel J (1974) Cleavages, Parties and Values in Canada. London: Sage.
Morlino L (1998) Democracy between Consolidation and Crisis:
Parties, Groups, and Citizens in Southern Europe. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Müller-Rommel F (2005) Parteienwettbewerb in Mittelosteuropäischen Demokratien: Zum Zusammnhang von Strukturen
der Regierungsbildung und Stabilität von Parteisystemen.
Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 36(3): 666–679.
Nordlinger E (1972) Conflict regulation in divided societies. Harvard Studies in International Affairs, n. 29. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
O’Dwyer C (2006) Runaway State-building: Patronage Politics
and Democratic Development. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Offe C (1991) Capitalism by democratic design? Facing the triple
transition in East Central Europe. Social Research 58:
865–892.
Pappi F (1984) The West German party system. West European
Politics 7: 7–26.
Pedersen MN (1979) The dynamics of European party systems:
Changing patterns of electoral volatility. European Journal
of Political Research 7: 1–26.
Powell BG (1982) Contemporary Democracies: Participation,
Stability and Violence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Pridham G (2002) Coalition behaviour in new democracies of
Central and Eastern Europe: The case of Slovakia. Journal
of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 18(2): 75–102.
Przeworski A and Sprague J (1977) A History of Western European Socialism. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the
APSA, Washington D.C.
Rae DW and Taylor M (1970) The Analysis of Political Cleavages. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Randall V (2001) Party systems and voter alignment in the new
democracies of the Third World. In: Karvonen L and Kuhnle
S (eds) Party Systems and Voter Alignments Revisited. London: Routledge.
Randall V and Svåsand L (2002) Party institutionalization in new
democracies. Party Politics 8(1): 5–29.
Roberts KM and Wibbels E (1999) Party systems and electoral
volatility in Latin America: A test of economic, institutional,
and structural explanations. American Political Science Review
93(3): 575–590.
Rohrschneider R and Whitefield S (2009) Understanding cleavages in party systems: Issue position and issue salience in
13 post-communist democracies. Comparative Political Studies 42(2): 280–313.
Ross EA (1920) The Principles of Sociology. New York.
Rybář M (2004) Party politics and changing patterns of party
competition in Slovakia. In: Gyárfášova O and Mesežnikov
G (eds) Party Government in Slovakia: Experience and Perspectives. Bratislava: Institute of Public Affairs.
Rybář M (2006) Old parties and new: Changing patterns of party
politics in Slovakia. In: Jungerstam-Mulders S (ed.) PostCommunist EU Member States: Parties and Party Systems.
Aldershot: Ashgate.
Sartori G (1969) From the sociology of politics to political sociology. In: Lipset SM (ed.) Politics and the Social Sciences.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sartori G (1976) Parties and Party Systems. A Framework
for Analysis, Volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saxonberg S (2003) The Czech Republic before the New Millennium: Politics, Parties and Gender. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schattschneider EE (1960) The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s
View of Democracy in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston.
Selway J (2009) Constitutions, Cross-cutting Cleavages and
Coordination: The Political Economy of Health and Education
Provision in Developing Democracies. PhD Dissertation. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Sikk A (2005) How unstable? Volatility and the genuinely new
parties in Eastern Europe. European Journal of Political
Research 44: 391–412.
Simmel G (1908 [1955]) Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations. Glencoe.
Sitter N (2002) Party strategy and party system change in Europe
east and west. Perspectives on European Politics and Society
3(3): 425–451.
Spirova M (2007) Political Parties in Post-communist Societies: Formation, Persistence and Change. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stoll H (2008) Social cleavages and the number of parties: How
the measures you choose affect the answers you get. Comparative Political Studies 41(11): 1439–1465.
Szczerbiak A (2001) Poles Together? The Emergence and Development of Political Parties in Post-communist Poland. Budapest: Central European University Press.
Szomolányi S (2004) Slovakia: From a difficult case of transition to
a consolidated Central European democracy. In: Hayashi T (ed.)
Democracy and Market Economics in Central and Eastern Europe: Are New Institutions Being Consolidated? Japan: Slavic
Research Centre, Hokkaido University.
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
35
Casal Bértoa
Szczerbiak A (2006) Power without love? Patterns of party politics in post-1989 Poland. In: Jungerstam-Mulders S (ed.) PostCommunist EU Member States. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Taagepera R and Grofman B (1985) Rethinking Duverger’s law:
Predicting the effective number of parties in plurality and PR
systems – parties minus issues equals one. European Journal
of Political Research 13: 341–352.
Tavits M (2005) The development of stable party support: Electoral dynamics in post-communist Europe. American Journal
of Political Science 49(2): 283–298.
Taylor M and Rae DW (1969) An analysis of cross-cutting
between political cleavages. Comparative Politics 1: 534–577.
Tingsten H (1937) Political Behaviour: Studies in Election Statistics. London: King.
Tóka G (1998) Party appeals and voter loyalty in new democracies. Political Studies 46: 589–610.
Tóka G (2004) Hungary. In: Berglund S, Ekman J and Aarebrot
FH (eds) The Handbook of Political Change in Eastern Europe. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Tóka G and Gosselin A (2008) The Impact of Cleavages on Political Participation and Electoral Volatility. Paper presented at
the Canadian Political Science Association Annual Conference, Vancouver, 4–6 June.
Tóka G and Henjak A (2007) Party systems and voting behaviour in
the Visegrad countries 15 years after transition. In: Šaradı́n P
and Bradová E (eds) Visegrad Votes: Parliamentary Elections
2004–2005. Olomouc: Palacky University Press.
Toole J (2000) Government formation and party system stabilization in East Central Europe. Party Politics 6(4): 441–461.
Tworzecki H (2003) Learning to Choose: Electoral Politics in
East-Central Europe. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Vaduchová M (2008) Tempered by the EU? Political parties and
party systems before and after accession. Journal of European
Public Policy 15(6): 871–879.
Vaduchová M and Hooghes L (2009) Post-communist politics in a
magnetic field: How transition and EU accession structure
party competition on European integration. Comparative European Politics 7(2): 179–212.
Wesołowski W (1996) The formation of political parties in postcommunist Poland. In: Pridham Lewis PG (eds) Stabilizing
Fragile Democracies. Comparing New Party Systems in
Southern and Eastern Europe. New York: Routledge.
Whitefield S (2002) Political cleavages and post-communist
politics. Annual Review of Political Science 5: 181–200.
Whitefield S and Rohrschneider R (2009) Representational
consistency: Stability and change in political cleavages in
Central and Eastern Europe. Politics and Policy 37(4):
667–690.
Wiatr J (2000) Lasting cleavages and the changing party system in
Poland: 1989–1999. In: Kubiak H and Wiatr J (eds) Between Animosity and Utility: Political Parties and their Matrix. Warsaw:
Scholar.
Wiatr J (2004) Narodziny i Przemiany Systemu Wielopartyjnego.
In: Wiatr J et al. (eds) Demokracja Polska: 1989–2003. Warsaw: Scholar.
_
Zarycki
T (2000) Politics in the periphery: The interpretation of
political cleavages in Poland in their historical and international context. Europe–Asia Studies 52(5): 851–873.
_
Zarycki
T and Nowak A (2000) Hidden dimensions: The stability
and structure of regional political cleavages in Poland. Communist and Post-communist Studies 33(3): 331–354.
Zieliński J (2002) Translating social cleavages into party systems:
The significance of new democracies. World Politics 54:
184–211.
Zuckerman A (1975) Political cleavage: A conceptual and theoretical analysis. British Journal of Political Science (5): 231–248.
Appendix A
‘Political’ cleavages in East Central Europe[1]
Similarly to what has been observed in the most consolidated Western European democracies, the two most important dimensions of partisan conflict in East Central
European party systems have a socio-economic and religious character (McAllister and White, 2007). Notwithstanding the former general statement, it is important to
note here, however, that, in relation to the former, Table
A below assigns ‘medium’ ratings only to Hungary which,
during Kadar’s ‘goulash communism’ (1966–1988), had
the most liberalized economic system within the Soviet
bloc. This obviously helped political elites to adopt a gradual approach to economic reform during the 1990s, and
consequently diminished the level of political conflict on
the issue. In a similar vein, religious conflict did not
achieve high quotas in those countries where, on the one
hand, the religious population has been lower (e.g. the
Czech Republic) and where, on the other, the Catholic
Church was marginalized during communism (e.g. Slovakia), playing also a smaller role after the democratic transition (Kostelecký, 2002: 96–103).
In general, when the four ratings for these two issues are
added up – with an H counted as 1.0 and an M as 0.5 – the
total is 3.5 and 3.0, respectively, as indicated in the bottom
line of Table A. This total score for the above-cited dimensions is more than twice as high as the total score for any
other dimension (with the exception of post-communism).
Furthermore, the socio-economic and religious dimensions
are also the only ones present to a significant extent in all
four East Central European party systems.
Differences between post-communist successor and opposition parties constitute the second most important issue
dimension. Interestingly enough, such differences can be
found in the two countries where democratic transition was
negotiated, allowing Communist leaders not only to maintain a certain control over the transition, but to conserve
their property and the remaining economic assets (Bozóki
and Ishiyama, 2002). This obviously made it difficult to
resolve former nomenklatura’s ‘debts with the past’, allowing also the successor parties to keep a core of electoral
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014
36
Party Politics 20(1)
Table A. ‘Issue dimensions’ in four East Central European party systems (1990–2009).
Country
Socioeconomic
Religious
Cultural–
ethnic
Urban–
rural
Regime
support
Foreign
policy
Postcommunism
No. of
dimensions
M
H
H
M
–
–
H
–
–
–
–
–
H
–
3.5
1.5
H
H
3.5
M
H
3.0
H
–
1.0
–
–
1.0
M
–
0.5
M
M
1.0
–
H
2.0
3.5
3.5
Hungary
Czech
Republic
Slovakia
Poland
Total
Source: Benoit and Laver (2006), Deegan-Krause (2004), Enyedi and Tóka (2007), Jasiewicz (2007), Mansfeldová (2004) and Whitefield and Rohrschneider (2009: 675).
support which helped them to recover power quickly (the
so-called ‘Velvet Restoration’ took place in Poland in
1993 and just one year later in Hungary) and stop the
ongoing process of de-communization and/or lustration
(Grabowska, 2004). As a result, conflicts over the past in
these two countries reached great importance, while in the
lands of former Czechoslovakia were kept to a minimum.
Cultural–ethnic and urban–rural conflicts have been
possible only in those countries were an ethnic minority
(Slovakia) or a rather large agricultural population has
been present (Hungary). Surprising is the case of
Poland, where, despite having the highest percentage
of farmers among the four, the urban–rural divide has
been embedded within the more general economic con_
flict (see Zarycki
and Nowak, 2000). Similarly, the
regime-support dimension has appeared in the only
country where nationalistic forces have held fairly stable
support for some time (Slovakia). Here, the salience of
the issue passed from very high in 1994–1998 to very
low in 2006–2009, thereby, the ‘medium’ score.
Interestingly enough, the so-called ‘foreign policy’ dimension (perhaps, also, Lijphart’s most controversial dimension)
could only be found in Poland and Slovakia, mainly as a result
of the process of European integration (Ladrech, forthcoming). In both Hungary and the Czech Republic, no major party
(except for the marginalized KSČM) raised its voice against
joining NATO and/or the EU.
Appendix B
List of acronyms
Czech Republic: CˇSSD ¼ Czech Social Democratic Party;
DEU ¼ Democratic Union; HSD – SMS ¼ Movement for
Self-Governing Democracy – Society for Moravia and
Silesia; KDU/CˇSL ¼ Christian and Democratic Union/Czechoslovak People;s Party; KSCˇM ¼ Communist Party of
Bohemia and Moravia; ODA ¼ Civic Democratic Alliance;
ODS ¼ Civic Democratic Party; SPR-RSCˇ ¼ Association
for the Republic-Czech Republican Party; SZ ¼ Green
Party; US ¼ Freedom Union.
Hungary: Fidesz ¼ Federation of Young Democrats;
FKgP ¼ Independent Party of Smallholders; KDNP ¼
Christian Democratic People’s Party; MDF ¼ Hungarian
Democratic Forum; MIE´P ¼ Hungarian Justice and Life
Party; MSZP ¼ Hungarian Socialist Party; SZDSZ ¼ Alliance of Free Democrats.
Poland: AWS ¼ Solidarity Electoral Action; AWS-P ¼ Solidarity Electoral Action-Right; BBWR ¼ Non-Partisan
Bloc in Support of Reforms; KLD ¼ Liberal Democratic
Congress; KPN ¼ Confederation for an Independent
Poland; LiD ¼ Left and Democrats; LPR ¼ League of Polish Families; PC ¼ Centre Alliance; PiS ¼ Law and Justice; PL ¼ Peasant Alliance; PO ¼ Civic Platform;
PPPP ¼ Polish Beer-Lovers’ Party; PSL ¼ Polish Peasant
Party; ROP ¼ Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland;
‘S’ ¼ Solidarity; SdPL ¼ Social Democracy of Poland;
SLD ¼ Democratic Left Alliance; SO ¼ Self-Defence of
the Republic of Poland; SP ¼ Labour Solidarity; UD ¼
Democratic Union; UP ¼ Union of Labour; UW/PD ¼
Freedom Union/Democratic Party (democraci.pl); ZChN
¼ Christian National Union.
Slovakia: AD ¼ Alliance of Democrats; ANO ¼ Alliance
of the New Citizen; APR ¼ Alternative of Political Realism; DS ¼ Democratic Party; DU´ ¼ Democratic Union;
KDH ¼ Christian Democratic Movement; KSS ¼ Communist Party of Slovakia; HZDS ¼ Movement for a Democratic Slovakia;; MK ¼ Hungarian Coalition; SDK ¼
Slovak Democratic Coalition; SDKU´ ¼ Slovak Democratic
and Christian Union; SDL’ ¼ Party of the Democratic Left;
SDSS ¼ Social Democratic Party in Slovakia; Smer ¼
Direction; SMK ¼ Hungarian Coalition; SNS ¼ Slovak
National Party; SOP ¼ Party of Civic Understanding; ZRS
¼ Association of Workers of Slovakia.
Author biography
Fernando Casal Bértoa is currently a Post-doctoral Fellow at the
University of Leiden. He studied Law and Political Science at the
University of Pamplona and the University of Salamanca, respectively. After specializing in Eastern and Central European Studies
(Jagiellonian University), he obtained his PhD at the European
University Institute (Florence). His work has been published or
is forthcoming in various edited volumes as well as in the Hungarian Political Science Review or Government and Opposition.
Downloaded from ppq.sagepub.com at University of Nottingham on February 3, 2014