The Long-Term Governmental Parties in Post-Communist Democracies

ABSTRACT

Post-communist democracies have been notorious for their under-institutionalized party systems and unstable governments. However, two exceptional cases stand out in the region: Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (LDS) ruled the country for 12 years uninterrupted, and the Estonian Reform Party (RE) was in government for an unbroken 17 years. The article explores the factors that contributed to the success of both parties. The results show that long-term governmental parties may emerge under the conditions of proportional representation (PR) electoral systems and in fragmented and less-institutionalized party systems, if those parties use clever coalition strategies, introduce a politico-ideological hegemony, and rely on their own internal resources in which leadership or organizational capacities are crucial.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost we are grateful to our interviewees: Danica Fink-Hafner, Alenka Krašovec, Bogdan Biščak and the LDS party functionary from Slovenia; Rein Toomla, Erik Moora, Siim Kallas, and Martin Kukk from Estonia. We are also thankful to the anonymous reviewers, whose comments and suggestions were extremely useful in improving the academic quality of the paper. In addition, we acknowledge the contribution made by Ingo Rohlfing, Rein Ruutsoo, Leif Kalev, Mari-Liis Jakobson, and Ott Lumi.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In the current study, CEE countries are defined as the EU new member states in Central and Eastern Europe (acceding 2004, 2007, and 2013). Countries outside the EU are not taken into consideration.

2. The interviews were conducted from spring 2016 to summer 2018. From Estonia, the political scientists Rein Toomla and Erik Moora were interviewed, in addition to the former leader of RE (Siim Kallas) and the party’s secretary-general (Martin Kukk). From Slovenia, the political scientists Danica Fink-Hafner and Alenka Krašovec were interviewed, along with the secretary-general of LDS (Bogdan Biščak) and a prominent party member (who requested to remain anonymous).

3. RE formed two coalitions with the Center Party (2002–2004 and 2005–2007), but this happened before the Bronze Soldier crisis, which made the ethnic cleavage much more accentuated in Estonian politics (Lagerspetz and Vogt 2013).