Introduction: Understanding the Politics of the Right in Contemporary East–Central Europe

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Notes

This approach has subsequently been refined to explain differing organizational, political and strategic development of individual parties, specifically communist successor parties. See A. Grzymała-Busse, Redeeming the Communist Past: The Transformation of Communist Parties in East Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); H. Kitschelt, ‘Constraints and Opportunities in the Strategic Conduct of Post-Communist Successor Parties: Regime Legacies as Causal Argument’, in A. Bozoki and J.T. Ishiyama (eds.), The Communist Successor Parties of Central and Eastern Europe (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002), pp.14–40.

The question of what constitutes ‘success’ is itself debatable. Although it depends, in part, on what the parties' actual objectives are, for the purpose of this research we view it as a combination of office seeking and vote maximization (the latter being arguably a prerequisite of the former) for any broad-based party seeking to play a dominant role in a coalition government.

Still more surprisingly, in Bulgaria, despite socio-economic backwardness, a weak liberal tradition and a repressive ‘patrimonial communist’ regime, the main centre-right grouping, the Union of Democratic Forces (SDS), later broadened into a wider grouping the United Democratic Forces (ODS), proved surprisingly effective electorally and organizationally robust throughout the 1990s, before partially disintegrating in 2001. See S.M. Fish and R.S. Brooks, ‘Bulgarian Democracy's Organizational Weapon’, East European Constitutional Review, Vol.9, No.3 (Summer 2000), pp.62–71.

See P. Pierson, ‘Epilogue: From Area Studies to Contextualized Comparisons’, in G. Ekiert and S. Hanson (eds.), Democracy and Capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe: Assessing the Legacy of Communist Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp.353–66.

See Grzymała-Busse.

See, for example, C. Nikolenyi, ‘From Fragmentation Towards Unity: The Center-Right in the Hungarian Party System, 1994–1998’, paper presented at the European Consortium for Political Research General Conference, September 2003; J. Hopkin, Party Formation and Democratic Transition (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), ch.1.

See S. Saxonberg. ‘The Influence of Presidential Systems: Why the Right Is So Weak in Conservative Poland and So Strong in the Egalitarian Czech Republic’, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol.50, No.5 (Sept.–Oct. 2003), pp.22–36.

See A. Panebianco, Political Parties: Organization and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

See G. Eyal, The Origins of Postcommunist Elites: From Prague Spring to Breakup of Czechoslovakia (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).