How ex-Communist left parties reformed and lost

Abstract

In the 1990s, many left-wing parties abandoned their traditional economic policies and adopted more pro-market economic stances. Central and Eastern Europe offers a useful context to explore the impact of these policies on the electoral fortunes of the left-wing parties that adopted them. Although rewarded at first with electoral victories, the adaptation of pro-market positions had a less straightforward impact on the left-wing parties’ electoral fortunes in the long run. CHES data on party positions and ESS survey data on party support show that pro-market left parties obtain reduced support; this effect is particularly pronounced among the economically vulnerable occupational groups. In countries with more pro-market left parties, these groups have a higher propensity to vote for right-wing parties. These findings highlight important parallels between the dynamics of Western and Central and Eastern European party systems.

Keywords:

• Social democracy
• neoliberalism
• populism
• radical right
• realignment

Acknowledgements

This article has strongly profited from comments by Mitchell Orenstein, Kai Arzheimer, Geoffrey Evans, James Tilley, Shery Berman, Tsveta Petrova, Lenka Bustikova, Herbert Kitschelt, Brett Meyer, Milada Vachudova, and the reviewers of West European Politics. I am deeply thankful for all these comments. Any remaining errors are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 ‘Left’ and ‘right’ are understood as the parties’ ideology, as manifested in their names and rhetoric.

2 An alternate way to specify the explanatory variable is to use the commonly employed Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero classification schema: ‘higher-grade professionals’, ‘lower-grade professionals’, ‘routine non-manual employees’, ‘small proprietors with employees’, ‘small proprietors without employees’, ‘skilled manual workers and manual supervisors’, ‘semi- and unskilled manual workers’, ‘agricultural workers’, and ‘farmers and smallholders’ (Erikson et al. 1979; Hendrick 2002). This specification brings very similar results (the estimates are available upon request).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Snegovaya

Maria Snegovaya is a post-doctoral fellow at the Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Virginia Tech, and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. Her articles have been published in the Journal of Democracy, Politics and Governance, Democratization, and Post-Soviet Affairs, among others. [[email protected]]