Getting the right right: redefining the centre-right in post-communist Europe

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Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this contribution were presented to an informal seminar at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 20 June 2003, and published as a Sussex European Paper. I would like to thank all participants their comments and observations. I would also like to thank Professor George Schöpflin for his thoughtful written comments.

Notes

J. Held (ed.), Right-Wing Politics and Democracy in Eastern Europe (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1993).

T. Hellen, Shaking Hands with the Past: The Origins of the Right in Central Europe (Helsinki: The Finnish Academy of Sciences, 1996).

S. Roper, ‘From Opposition to Government Coalition: Unity and Fragmentation in the Democratic Convention of Romania’, East European Quarterly, Vol.31, No.4 (1998), pp.519–42; M. Wenzel, ‘Solidarity and Akcja Wyborcza “Solidarność”: An Attempt at Reviving the Legend’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol.31, No.2 (1998), pp.139–56; S. Hanley, ‘The New Right in the New Europe? Unravelling The Ideology of “Czech Thatcherism”’, Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol.4, No.2 (1999), pp.163–89; D. Brown, ‘The Development of the Union of Democratic Forces’, paper presented at ‘One Europe or Several?’ programme workshop on Bulgaria, Lucas House, University of Birmingham Conference Park, 15 March 2001; C. Kiss, ‘From Liberalism to Conservatism: The Federation of Young Democrats in Post-Communist Hungary’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol.16, No.3 (2003), pp.739–63.

See K. Chan, ‘Strands of Conservative Politics in Post-Communist Transition: Adapting to Europeanization and Democratization’, in P.G. Lewis (ed.), Party Development and Democratic Change in Post-Communist Europe (London: Frank Cass, 2001), pp.152–78, and M. Vachudová, ‘Right-Wing Parties and Political Outcomes in Eastern Europe’, paper presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting, San Francisco, 2001.

See for example, A. Innes, Czechoslovakia: The Short Goodbye (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001); M. Orenstein, Out of the Red: Building Capitalism and Democracy in Postcommunist Europe (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002).

See for example, Alex Callinicos, The Revenge of History: Marxism and the East European Revolutions (Cambridge: Polity, 1991); P. Gowan, ‘Eastern Europe, Western Power and Neo-Liberalism’, New Left Review, No.21 (1996), pp.129–40; S. Saxonberg, The Fall: A Comparative Study of the End of Communism in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Press, 2001), pp.387–95.

See, for example, A. Gryzmala-Busse, Redeeming the Communist Past: The Transformation of Communist Parties in East Central Europe (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), and A. Bozóki and J.T. Ishiyama (eds.), The Communist Successor Parties of Central and Eastern Europe (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 2002). On the extreme see for example P. Hockenos (ed.), Free to Hate: The Rise of the Right in Post-Communist Eastern Europe (London, Routledge, 1994); L. Cheles (ed.), The Far Right in Western and Eastern Europe (London: Longman, 1986); S. Ramet (ed.), The Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe Since 1989 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 1999); and M. Minkenberg, ‘The Radical Right in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe: Comparative Observations and Interpretations’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol.16, No.2 (2003), pp.335–62.

Such an approach is taken by most of the contributors to R. Eatwell and O'Sullivan (eds.), The Nature of the Right: American and European Politics Since 1789 (London: Pinter, 1989).

F. Wilson (ed.), The European Center-Right at the End of the Twentieth Century (New York: St Martin's Press, 1998).

Wenzel.

This section refers primarily to the work of Chan, ‘Strands of Conservative Politics’; Vachudová; P.G. Lewis, Political Parties in Post-Communist Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 2000).

Hanley, ‘New Right in the New Europe?’.

As Kitschelt notes, such patterns of competition to some extent resembled the threefold division between socialist, liberal and Catholic blocs in West European party systems such as those of Holland and Belgium: H. Kitschelt, ‘The Formation of Party Cleavages in Post-Communist Democracies: Theoretical Propositions’, Party Politics, Vol.1, No.4 (1995), pp.447–72.

N. Sitter and A. Batory, ‘Cleavages, Competition and Coalition Building: Agrarian Parties and the European Question in Western and Eastern Europe’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 43, No. 4 (2004), pp.523–46.

V. Tismaneanu and G. Klingman, ‘Romania's First Postcommunist Decade: From Iliescu to Iliescu’, East European Constitutional Review, Vol.10, No.1 (2001); R. Peeva, ‘Electing a Czar: The 2001 Elections and Bulgarian Democracy’, East European Constitutional Review, Vol.10, No.4 (2001), available at ⟨http://www.law.nyu.edu/eecr⟩ (accessed 1 June 2003).

T. Garton Ash, A History of the Present (London: Penguin, 1999), pp.254–74.

I. Zake, ‘The People's Party in Latvia: Neo-Liberalism and the New Politics of Independence’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.18., No.3 (2002), pp.9–31.

See S. Cvijetic, ‘And What Now?’, Central Europe Review, 17 January 2000, online at ⟨http://www.ce-review.org⟩ (accessed 15 May 2003); T. Haughton, ‘HZDS: The Ideology, Organisation and Support Base of Slovakia's Most Successful Party’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol.53, No.5 (2001), pp.745–70; D. Hipkins, Croatia: HDZ Confident of Revival, Balkan Crisis Report, No.322, 8 March 2002, available at ⟨http://www.iwpr.net⟩ (accessed 15 May 2003); and RFE/RL Newsline, 22 and 23 April 2002, Part II.

Indeed, following the disappearance of its social-democratic component from the Slovak parliament in the 2002, many Czech and Slovak commentators now refer to Slovakia's current governing coalition of liberal, Christian Democratic, pro-business parties as ‘right-wing’.

Zake.

See E. Mikkel, Europe and the Estonian Parliamentary Election of March 2003, Opposing Europe Research Network Election Briefing No.12, 2003, available at ⟨http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/SEI/oern/ElectionBriefings/index.html⟩; K. Grunthal, ‘Juhan Parts: From Political Watchdog to Estonia's Prime Minister’, Helsingin Sanomat (Helsinki), on-line international edition, 15 April 2003.

L. Raubisko, ‘Latvia: It's Out With the Old and In With the “New Era”’, Radio Liberty Feature, 5 Oct. 2002, available at ⟨http://www.rfrerl.org/nca/features/2002/10/07102002160412.asp⟩ (accessed 15 May 2003).

See, for example, Lewis, Political Parties; C. Mudde, ‘Another One Bites the Dust: Democracy and Extremism in Eastern Europe’, RFL/RFE Newsline, 10 April 2000, available at ⟨http://www.rferl.org/newsline/2002/04/5-not/not-100402.asp⟩ (accessed 15 May 2003); C. Mudde, ‘In the Name of the Peasantry, the Proletariat, and the People: Populisms in Eastern Europe’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol.15, No.1 (2001), pp.33–53.

These parties also co-operate regionally and have in the past three years attended an annual conference of centre-right parties in Central and Eastern Europe; the last such conference took place on 27–29 September 2002 and adopted a common declaration. See ⟨http://www.zahradil.cz/html/4.html⟩, accessed 10 Feb. 2004.

See Held.

For example, M. Dangerfield, ‘Ideology and Czech Transformation: Neoliberal Rhetoric or Neoliberal Reality?’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol.11, No.3 (1999), pp.436–67.

Callinicos; Gowan.

See J. Szacki, Liberalism After Communism (Budapest: CEU Press, 1995); Hanley, ‘New Right in the New Europe?’; S. Shields, ‘The “Charge of the Right Brigade”: Transnational Social Forces and the Neoliberal Configuration of Poland's Transition’, New Political Economy, Vol.8, No.2 (2003), pp.225–44; G. Eyal, The Origins of Postcommunist Elites: From Prague Spring to Breakup of Czechoslovakia (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

Callinicos; Gowan; Saxonberg, pp.387–95; for a broader critique of neo-Marxist analyses of the decline and the fall of communism see N. Robinson, ‘Marxism, Communism and Post-communism’, in A. Gamble, D. Marsh and T. Tant (eds.), Marxism and Social Science (Basingstoke: Macmillan and Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999), pp.302–19.

See K. Lang, ‘Falling Down: The Decline of Liberalism’, Central Europe Review, Vol.2, No.1 (8 September 2000), available at ⟨http://www.ce-review.org/00/31/lang31.html⟩ (accessed 15 May 2003); Sitter and Batory.

See B. Fowler, ‘Notes on Recent Elections: The Parliamentary Elections in Hungary, April 2002’, Electoral Studies, Vol.22, No.4 (2003), pp.799–807; A. Szczerbiak, ‘Poland's Unexpected Political Earthquake: The September 2001 Parliamentary Election’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.18, No.3 (2002), pp.41–76; C. McManus-Czubinska, W.L. Miller, R. Markowski and J. Wasilewski, ‘The New Polish “Right”?’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.19, No.2 (2003), pp.1–23.

See N. Sitter, ‘When is a Party System? A Systems Perspective on the Development of Competitive Party Systems’, Central European Political Science Review, Vol.3, No.1 (2002), pp.75–97.

See G. Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); see also M.D. Hancock, ‘Sweden's Nonsocialist Parties: What Difference Do They Make?’, in Wilson, pp.171–98; L. Svasand, ‘The Center Right Parties in Norwegian Politics: Between Reformist Labor and Radical Progress’, in Wilson, pp.225–46.

S.M. Lipset and S. Rokkan (eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross National Perspectives (New York: Free Press, 1967).

See H. Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994); P Taggart, ‘New Populist Parties in Western Europe’, West European Politics, Vol.18, No.1 (1995), pp.34–51; H. Kitschelt and A. McCann, The Radical Right: A Comparative Analysis (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997).

Mudde, ‘Another One Bites the Dust’.

H. Rogger and E. Weber (eds.), The European Right: A Historical Profile (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966); H.J. Wolff and J.K. Hoensch, Catholics, The State and the Radical Right 1919–1945 (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1987); N. Blinkhorn (ed.), Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in Twentieth Century Europe (London: Unwin Hyman, 2000).

See Szczerbiak; McManus-Czubińska et al.

This idea is implicit in M. Minkenberg, ‘The Radical Right in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe: Comparative Observations and Interpretations’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol.16, No.2 (2003), pp.335–62; see also G. Schöpflin, ‘New-Old Hungary: A Contested Transformation’, East European Perspectives, Vol.4, No.10 (2002), 15 May, available at ⟨http://www.rferl.org/eepreport/2002/05/10–150502.html⟩ (accessed 24 Jan. 2004).

For example, V. Cable, The World's New Fissures (London: Demos, 1993), or I. Christie, ‘Three Visions of Politics Europe in the Millennial World’, OpenDemocracy.net, 30 May 2002, at ⟨http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3–55-386.jsp⟩ (accessed 20 Jan. 2004). Fowler's discussion of the ‘neo-liberalisation’ of post-communist social democratic parties in Hungary and Poland in this collection provides a provocative illustration of this thesis.

For example, A. Innes, ‘Party Competition in Post-communist Europe: The Great Electoral Lottery’, Comparative Politics, Vol.35, No.1 (2002), pp.85–104.

See K. Williams, A. Szczerbiak and B. Fowler, Explaining Lustration in Eastern Europe: A ‘Post-Communist Politics’ Approach, Sussex European Institute Working Paper No.62, March 2003.

For an example of this perspective in its Hungarian variant by a Budapest-based British sympathizer of Fidesz, see J. Sunley, ‘Old Ideas for New Elites: Hungary and the Politics of Permanent Transition’, OpenDemocracy.net, 12 June 2002 (accessed 1 June 2003).

See S.M. Fish and R. Brooks, ‘Bulgarian Democracy's Organizational Weapon’, East European Constitutional Review, Vol.9, No.3 (2000), pp.63–70.

D. Edgar, ‘The Free or the Good’, in R. Levitas (ed.), The Ideology of the New Right (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), pp.55–79.

See Szczerbiak. As Wenzel notes, the fact that even Catholic-national groups in Poland were able to unite only on the basis of the symbolic identity of the Solidarity movement, rather than any forward-looking programmatic or ideology, indicates deeper problems.

RFE/RL Newsline, Part II, 25 and 29 April, 20 May 2003.

See R.A. Hall, ‘Nationalism in Late Communist Eastern Europe: Comparing the Role of Diaspora Politics in Hungary and Serbia’, Parts 1–3, East European Perspectives, Vol.5, Nos. 5, 7 and 9 (2003), 5 March, 2 April and 30 April 2003, available at ⟨http://www.rferl.org/eepreport⟩ (accessed 15 May 2003). This tendency may also have been obscured both by the ideological breadth of opposition initiatives and by the fact that many prominent liberal opposition intellectuals, such as Jacek Kuroń and Janos Kis, came to liberalism via reform communist or radical-left positions.

Kiss; I am grateful to Brigid Fowler for numerous helpful discussions concerning some of these points.

See K. Williams, ‘National Myths in the New Czech Liberalism’, in G. Hosking and G. Schöpflin (eds.), Myths and Nationhood (London: Hurst, 1997), pp.132–40; Hanley, ‘New Right in the New Europe?’.

S. Hanley, ‘Europe and the Czech Parliamentary Elections of June 2002’, Opposing Europe Research Network Election Briefing No.5, July 2002, available at ⟨http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/SEI/oern/ElectionBriefings/index.html⟩ (accessed 1 Aug. 2003).

Ibid.

Orbán and Fidesz supported calls for the cancellation of the decrees.

For example, J. Rupnik, ‘The Other Central Europe’, East European Constitutional Review, Vol.11, No.1–2 (Winter–Spring 2002), available at ⟨http://www.law.nyu.edu/eecrvol111num1–2/special/rupnik.html⟩, and J. Pehe, ‘Back to Instability in Prague’, Prague Post, 27 March, online edition.

See M. Perrault and I. Hall, ‘The Re-Austrianisation of Central Europe? Assessing the Potential of the “New” Far Right after Haider’, Central Europe Review, 1 April 2000, available at ⟨http://www.ce-review.org/00/13/essay13.html⟩ (accessed 1 June 2003); Vachudová.

Betz; Taggart.

See R. Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); A. Giddens, Runaway World: How Globalisation is Reshaping Our Lives (London: Profile, 2002).

See A. Bieler, Globalisation and Enlargement of the European Union: Austrian and Swedish Social Forces in the Struggle Over Membership, Warwick Studies in Globalisation (London: Routledge, 2000).

However, as Zake suggests, particularly in small states with open economies, globalization and Europeanization can open opportunities for new parties of the right or centre-right, by creating new social constitutencies with an interest-maximizing integration into the global economy.

P. Taggart and A. Szczerbiak, ‘Contemporary Euroscepticism in the Party Systems of the European Union Candidate States of Central and Eastern Europe’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.43, No.1 (2004), pp.1–27; see also P. Kopecký and C. Mudde, ‘The Two Sides of Euroscepticism: Party Positions on European Integration in East Central Europe’, European Union Politics, Vol.3, No.3 (2002), pp.297–326.

RFE/RL Newsline, Part II, 21 and 24 March and 6 May 2003.

A. Mungiu-Pippidi and S. Ionita ‘Interpreting an Electoral Setback: Romania 2000’, East European Constitutional Review, Vol.10, No.1 (2001), at ⟨http://www.law.nyu.edu/eecr/vol10num1/features/interpreting.html⟩ (accessed 12 June 2004).

Szcerbiak; Hanley, ‘Europe and the Czech Parliamentary Elections’; Fowler.

‘Fidesz Facelift Aims to Broaden Appeal’, Budapest Sun, 6 Feb. 2003, and RFE/RL Newsline, Part II, 7 Feb., 15 and 24 April and 19 May 2003.

P. Nečas, ‘Základní teze k budoucímu směřování ODS’, 2 December 2002, available at ⟨http://www.ods.cz⟩ (accessed 15 May 2003).

Given the pressures of Europeanization and globalization, however, it seems unlikely that centre-left governments in the region will have the resources or the opportunities to pursue projects of national welfare capitalism.

Mudde, ‘Another One Bites the Dust’.