Elections and Electoral Participation in Central and Eastern Europe
Historical Context of Elections
Central and Eastern Europe have a history of elections spanning over a century; however, truly democratic elections are a recent phenomenon, occurring primarily in the last 25 years.
Elections were introduced in the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires in the late 19th century but were indirect and employed weighted suffrages, limiting broad participation.
Post-WWI: Elections of varying quality were held in new and reconfigured Eastern European states. Open electoral competition was limited due to the rise of right-wing authoritarian governments, undermining democratic processes.
Communist-Era Elections
Communist regimes, modeled after the Soviet Union, emerged post-WWII in Central and Southeastern Europe, heavily influencing electoral practices.
Elections were regularly held but were uncompetitive in the Soviet Union and involved non-partisan choice in Yugoslavia, lacking genuine voter choice.
Governed by absolute majority rules in single or multi-member districts, further reducing electoral competition.
Turnout: High, despite not being formally compulsory, due to pressure to participate, except in late-communist Poland, which saw grassroots electoral boycotts as a form of resistance.
Function: Elections served as mobilization devices for indoctrination, monitoring, and manipulation rather than accountability mechanisms, ensuring regime control.
Post-Communist Transition (1989-1991)
Free, fair, and credible elections were attempted, with varying degrees of success, marking a significant shift towards democracy.
Electoral integrity varies greatly in Eastern Europe today, ranging from problematic elections in Belarus to democratic elections in Estonia, reflecting diverse political paths.
Shift Towards Competitive Elections
Introduction of multi-party politics and adoption of electoral systems to foster political party development, essential for democratic consolidation.
Most countries quickly abandoned communist-era absolute majority systems in favor of proportional representation (PR) and mixed systems to ensure broader representation.
"Founding elections" (first elections after transition from communism) became a focus of scholarly analysis, highlighting their critical importance.
Post-transition, Eastern European states entered a new phase of politics that varied significantly by country, influenced by unique historical and political contexts.
Electoral System Characteristics
About three-quarters of Eastern European states adopted proportional representation (PR), enhancing inclusivity.
Closed lists in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia versus open lists in most of the rest of the region, impacting voter influence.
A few mixed systems and one single-member district system in Belarus, demonstrating diverse approaches to electoral design.
Political divergence has substantive implications for political developments and methodological implications for scholars, requiring nuanced analysis.
Opportunities and Challenges for Scholars
Emerging variations across Eastern Europe in political institutions and behaviors provide opportunities for comparative analysis, offering valuable insights.
Growing political heterogeneity within the region presents definitional questions about the core characteristics of the Eastern European political space, posing analytical challenges.
Salient Themes in the Study of Eastern European Elections
Key Question: To what extent do empirical regularities from studies of elections in established democracies apply to Eastern Europe, questioning the universality of existing theories?
Comparative research sought to demonstrate the applicability of existing theories to post-communist states with minor variations, testing their robustness.
Other scholarship emphasized the importance of the communist legacy and the mode of transition in shaping electoral and political developments, highlighting unique regional factors.
Research focused on the impact of communist-era attitudes and cleavages on post-communist voting patterns and the learning process of post-communist voters, exploring behavioral changes.
Democratization Literature
Democratization literature from Southern Europe (1970s) and Latin America (1980s) was initially applied to Eastern Europe, providing initial frameworks.
Some scholars pointed to the limits of applying this literature to post-communist transitions, citing distinct regional characteristics.
Bunce (1995, 2003) argued that the Eastern European experience differed from prior democratizations, necessitating new analytical approaches.
Successful democratizations involved decisive breaks with the communist past, not "pacting" processes that granted concessions to former authoritarian regimes, crucial for genuine reform.
Challenges included combined economic and political transition, precarious state boundaries, and widespread mass involvement, complicating the democratization process.
Distinguishing Features of Post-Communist Electoral Order
Weak party identification and party system fluidity, impacting electoral stability.
Appeal of populism, influencing political discourse and voter behavior.
Importance of electoral institutions in channeling political developments, shaping party systems.
Party Identification
Standard Literature: Party attachment is established early in life and reinforced over time, ensuring stability.
Post-Communist: Weak party identification due to the recent establishment of most parties, causing volatility.
Additional Factor: Post-communist skepticism towards parties due to the coercive role of communist parties, creating distrust.
Anti-party sentiment is higher in Eastern Europe compared to Western Europe (, Fennema and Tillie, 2000; Norris, 2011; Pop- Eleches, 2010; Rose and Mishler, 1998).
Eastern European voters have a high propensity to opt for newly established parties, seeking alternatives.
Party volatility in post-communist Europe is generally high by Western European standards, reflecting political flux.
Propensity to protest against incumbents varies based on economic conditions, reform trajectories, civil society organization, and trust in government (Kopecký and Mudde, 2003; March, 2013; Beissinger and Sasse, 2014).
Right-Wing Populist Parties
The attraction of right-wing populist parties in Eastern Europe has been noted by scholars (e.g. Bustikova, 2014; Bustikova and Kitschelt, 2009; Hockenos, 1993; Kopecký and Mudde, 2003; Mudde, 2005; Vachudova, 2008)
Examples include the Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik); the Greater Romania Party, showcasing diverse manifestations.
These parties appeal to those who have suffered economically from globalization (including European integration) and multiculturalism, tapping into grievances.
In Eastern Europe, these "losers from globalization" are often the same people who lost status and economic position during the transition from communism to capitalism, linking economic and social discontent.
Electoral Systems and Consequences
Shift from majority to proportional-representation electoral systems after the post-transitional years to foster inclusivity.
Studies examined early institutional settlements during the transition from communism (Birch, Millard, Williams and Popescu, 2002; Elster, 1996; Elster, Offe and Preuss, 1998), analyzing their impact.
Other studies examined electoral system change over a longer period (Herron, 2009), tracing developments.
Numerous revisions to electoral provisions as emerging democracies sought to fashion electoral institutions fit for their societies, adapting to needs.
Abandonment of pure absolute majority systems was nearly universal; only Belarus retains this electoral system, highlighting its outlier status.
Most states adopted list proportional representation or some type of mixed system (see Table 11.1 ), balancing proportionality.
Some states switched between proportional representation and mixed systems (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine), experimenting with designs.
Others (e.g., Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Estonia) altered features of systems they adopted early on (Bol, Pilet and Riera, 2015; Herron, 2009; Nikolenyi, 2011), refining mechanisms.
There is a tendency to seek an electoral system "sweet spot" that is largely proportional but with thresholds and limited constituency sizes, aiming for optimal balance.
Electoral System Effects
Studies examined the effects of different electoral systems adopted (e.g. Bielasiak, 2002; Birch, 2003; Bochsler, 2010; Herron, 2009; Ishiyama, 1996; Kostadinova, 2002).
Proportional representation (often with high thresholds) fostered party system institutionalization, stabilizing politics.
Plurality systems and components of mixed systems operated differently in the post-communist region, requiring context-specific analysis.
Single-member districts were associated with party system fragmentation due to geographic heterogeneity and lack of nationalized political parties in Russia, Ukraine, and Macedonia, undermining cohesion.
Strong interaction effect between electoral systems and party nationalization (Birch, 2003; Bochsler, 2010; Herron, 2009; Moser, 1999, 2001), shaping party development.
Electoral Participation
Eastern Europe has relatively low electoral participation compared to Western Europe, indicating disengagement.
Post-communist period was accompanied by declines in electoral participation, revealing a trend.
Pressure on citizens to participate in communist civic rituals was great, contrasting with voluntary participation.
Many people wanted to pursue private interests and relax after communism's collapse, reducing civic engagement.
Variations in turnout declines across the region have been analyzed (Birch, 2003; Ceka, 2013; Kostadinova, 2003, 2009; Pacek, Pop- Eleches and Tucker, 2009), exploring explanations.
Decline in rates of participation has been greatest in Romania and Kosovo, and least in Belarus and Montenegro (Table 11.2), identifying regional disparities.
Low turnouts are explained by citizens frustrated with politics withdrawing from the electoral realm, reflecting disillusionment.
Vigorous political competition actually appears to stifle electoral participation in Eastern Europe (Ceka, 2013), presenting a paradox.
Referendums
Referendums first saw widespread use in Eastern Europe during the interwar period, shaping statehood.
Used for state-formation and to resolve territorial disputes (Brady and Kaplan, 1994), playing a crucial role.
In recent years, referendums have been used for confirming sovereign statehood and ratifying European Union accession (Brady and Kalpan, 1994; Tverdova and Anderson, 2004), reinforcing legitimacy.
Typical uses vary by sub-region, reflecting diverse political contexts.
Soviet constitution of 1977 made provision for referendums, though this possibility was not acted on until the late Soviet period, remaining largely theoretical.
The all-Union referendum on the future of the Soviet Union in March 1991 was the first significant opportunity for Soviet citizens to express their views in this type of electoral exercise, marking a pivotal moment.
Independence referendums took place in nine of the fifteen Soviet republics at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union later that same year, legitimizing sovereignty.
During the post-Soviet period, referendums have been employed in all of the Soviet successor states, varying in purpose.
In states such as Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine they have served to extend the terms of presidents and to push through controversial constitutional reforms (Herron, 2009: chap. 7; Qvortrup, 2002: 90–91), raising concerns about manipulation.
The most controversial such event in recent times has undoubtedly been the referendum on the future of Crimea that Russian occupying forces held on Ukrainian territory in 2014, lacking legitimacy.
The Baltic republics and Moldova have employed referendums for more democratic purposes, in contrast.
Lithuania was the most enthusiastic user of this tool, holding eight referendums during the 1992–2008 period, according to Herron (2009), showcasing democratic engagement.
Yugoslavia witnessed a ‘parade of referendums’ on sovereignty starting in 1990, according to Kaplan and Brady (Brady and Kaplan, 1994: 207), marking disintegration.
Since the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995, the use of referendums has been more restrained, reflecting stability efforts.
Central European states have used referendums to decide a variety of policy issues, as well as changes to constitutions, electoral laws, and citizenship rights, shaping governance.
Low turnouts in some referendums have stymied this type of poll as a mechanism for making decisions, including a 1990 referendum in Hungary on the direct election of the president in which only 14 per cent voted, highlighting limitations.
Diversity in Post-Communist Electoral Studies
The field is diverse in terms of the objects of study and theoretical perspectives, enriching analysis.
New and Emerging Themes
The study of elections in Eastern Europe remains an important topic, offering insights into political dynamics.
The considerable political variety now evident in the region means that Eastern Europe constitutes an excellent natural laboratory in which to study the impact of different factors on political trajectories, providing rich data.
The role of elections in paths of democratic and authoritarian development remains an under-explored topic, warranting further research.
Elections can be seen both as an independent and a dependent variable, exhibiting complex effects.
Elections can serve the ends of authoritarianism (Gandhi and Lust- Okar, 2009; Gandhi and Przeworski, 2007; Geddes, 2006; Lust- Okar, 2009), manipulating outcomes.
Competing claims to legitimacy and challenges to those claims have led to numerous pre-term elections in the Eastern European region, as well as to referendums designed to resolve fundamental issues of state identity and the direction to be taken by state-building initiatives, responding to crises.
Now that there are twenty-five years’ worth of electoral data, there is considerable scope for detailed longitudinal analyses that might tease out the role of electoral politics in the dynamics of post-communist political change, enabling comprehensive studies.
Electoral Integrity Studies
Eastern Europe lends itself to scholarly investigation in the emerging field of electoral integrity studies, addressing crucial issues.
Electoral integrity is a topic that has come to the fore in the past decade due largely to renewed interest by the international community in election observation and electoral assistance as tools of democratization, gaining importance.
Studies point to the role of electoral system design in facilitating abuse, and in particular to the higher degree of electoral malpractice under single-member district electoral systems in this region (Birch, 2007; Herron, 2009), highlighting flaws.
Other studies have noted high levels of electoral abuse in special voting facilities such as those found in hospitals, prisons, ships, and so forth (Herron, 2009), identifying vulnerable areas.
Scholars have also pointed to the role of fraud as a signaling mechanism among elites keen to demonstrate their power to manipulate the population (Myagkov, Ordeshook and Shakin, 2009; Simpser, 2013), exposing strategies.
Color Revolutions
The study of electoral malpractice in Eastern Europe received a boost from the series of ‘colour revolutions’ that ripped across the region in the early years of the twenty-first century, prompting scrutiny.
The ‘Bulldozer revolution’ in Serbia, the ‘Rose revolution’ in Georgia, and the ‘Orange revolution’ in Ukraine were all triggered by electoral fraud, demonstrating impact.
In these cases, fraud served to heighten awareness of authoritarianism and ultimately to bring about moves towards greater democracy, catalyzing change.
In other states, however, electoral malpractice has persisted for extended periods of time, helping ‘competitive authoritarian’ regimes in Belarus and Russia to control their populations, enabling control.
The Russian case has been subject to the most intensive scrutiny in the literature, attracting interest.
Criticisms of East European Electoral Studies
The allegation that Western-derived theories are not necessarily relevant in the post-communist sphere, questioning applicability.
The universalist propensity of much contemporary comparative political analysis has in the sphere of post-communist studies encountered the rather different research trajectory of traditional area studies specialists, highlighting divisions.
Area studies specialists tend to question whether the theoretical apparatus of comparative political science is well-suited to the study of elections in Eastern Europe, raising doubts.
Criticisms they make of such endeavors often point to the assumptions that subtend such intellectual projects, such as the common subjective understanding of elections across democratic states and emerging democracies, and voting that takes place on the basis of sincere preferences, rather than being guided by clientelistic ties and vote-buying or other considerations not directly linked to voters’ ‘genuine’ preferences for parties, challenging premises.
It may also be problematic to assume that elections have the same meaning to citizens in the post-communist region as they have in the established democracies of the West (Pammett and DeBardeleben, 1996; Birch, 2011), identifying disparities.
Another potentially problematic characteristic of much of the Eastern European electoral studies literature is the assumption of geographically defined ‘regions’ (Chen and Sil, 2007; King, 2000), challenging categorizations.
‘Eastern Europe’ itself is a concept that is potentially less relevant than it was twenty-five years ago, now that there has been such divergence in trajectories of post-communist political development, questioning relevance.
The neat East-West dichotomy is no longer necessarily applicable; elections in those states that have joined the European Union are in many respects more similar to elections held in older EU member states than they are to elections held in, for example, Russia or Belarus (van der Brug et al., 2008; Birch, 2011), blurring lines.
Also potentially problematic is the tendency of scholars to group states together into sub-regional categories such as ‘Baltic republics’, former Soviet states’, and ‘former Yugoslav states’, introducing complexities.
Although it is clear from a number of important and valuable studies of path dependency in the region that the legacy of communist regime type and mode of transition loomed large in the political developments of the early post-communist years (Bunce, 2003; Grzymała-Busse, 2002; Kitschelt et al., 1999), these paths have by now been punctuated with many post-communist developments, and the relevance of such categories is no longer so clear, needing reassessment.
This is especially true now that new institutional legacies have formed, such as that of European Union accession and membership, adding layers.
Introduction to Voters and Parties in Eastern Europe
Voters and parties of Eastern Europe are different from those of Western Europe, the differences are smaller than they were at the beginning of post-communism, converging but distinctive.
The East and West have converged towards new patterns that do not conform to past experiences of political parties in the West or to Western expectations of the East, evolving comparisons.
Western Standard Model of Party Politics
In the second half of the twentieth century, an era of political stability in Western Europe coincided with the rise of a new generation of scholars and new research tools to produce an unprecedented number of landmark studies on political parties, fueling scholarship.
Much of this scholarship became incorporated into what might be termed a “Western standard model” of party politics in consolidated democracies, establishing norms.
In line with Western European patterns of the 1960s and 1970s, this model makes a series of implicit prescriptions for the health of democracy, including low to moderate fragmentation of the party system, stable programmatic positions of parties relative to one another, and a nearly fixed roster of major parties and inter-party alliances, setting benchmarks.
The Western standard model also prescribed a strong linkage between parties and voters, built on low voter volatility, party preferences shaped by programmatic offerings on the most salient issues, stable party roots in society, and a relatively coherent socio-demographic identity and group consciousness among party voters (Bartolini and Mair 1990; Kitschelt 1992; Lipset and Rokkan 1967; Mair 1989; Pedersen 1979; Sartori 1976), defining components.
Party Politics in Eastern Europe in the Early 1990s
Party politics in Eastern Europe was as far removed from this model as possible, diverging significantly.
The region’s politics featured constant party entry and exit, lack of stability in party attachments, a weak role of standard socio-demographic categories in shaping party choice, continuous emergence of new issues (and new combinations of issues), and fundamental instability in the ideological and demographic profile of most parties, highlighting turbulence.
Current State of Eastern European Party Politics
Eastern Europe appears much less deviant on some of these indicators: Most countries in the region have settled down into competition over relatively recognisable political issues among a reasonable number of political parties, most of which maintain at least some connection to particular demographic groups, stabilizing gradually.
In many ways, however, the East has remained quite different from the Western standard model: the issues and issue combinations are often different than in Western Europe; the frequent entry and exit of parties continues as do the unexpected combinations within government coalitions; and electoral behaviour is characterised by the marginal impact of social class and by an amount of vote switching that is unknown in established democracies, sustaining distinctions.
The weakness and instability of the early years of party politics in Eastern Europe have now become apparent on all continents, including even North America and Western Europe, spreading effects.
The experiences of Eastern European political systems are useful in answering this question and have developed a relevance far beyond their own region boundaries, providing insights.
#Parties Within Party Systems
Individual parties cannot be understood outside the context of their competitors. In many Eastern European countries, that context evolved relatively quickly into systems with a reasonably compact and relatively stable array of programmatic offerings, but in some countries the roster of parties making those offerings continued to change, sometimes abruptly, necessitating analysis.
#Party System Fragmentation: Towards a Happy Medium
The number and relative sizes of political parties are the most visible and observable aspects of party systems, offering key indicators.
In the standard model, systems raise concerns when the number of effective parties falls below two or rises above five or six, setting parameters.
After the collapse of communism, the number and relative sizes of political parties changed rapidly, shifting dynamics.
In some cases, the binary oppositions between Communist Party successors and democratic initiatives shattered into fragments, but even in the most extreme cases the number of viable competitors soon returned to a reasonable number, stabilizing eventually.
The mean number of parties had declined to levels indistinguishable from those of Western Europe, both hovering around 4.0, converging statistically.
In the late 2000s, Eastern European levels fell narrowly below those of Western Europe, whose party system sizes have shown a slight upward trend, indicating shifts.
Differentiation Within Eastern Europe
Among the Eastern European countries that acceded to the European Union in 2004 – those in the Baltics and Central Europe – party system sizes were a full point higher (among the Baltic states it was higher still), varying by region.
In most of the other countries in the region, however, the fragmentation levels were lower, diversifying patterns.
Ethnic complexity clearly plays a role in explaining some cases of fragmentation – Bosnia and Herzegovina may be better understood as assembly of two or three formally distinct party systems – and some studies suggest that electoral rules (especially high electoral thresholds) play a discernible role, complexifying factors.
The range of values within the sub-region and the significant changes within countries over time, some rising and some falling, resist easy explanation based purely on historic traditions or socio-economic development, requiring nuances.
Measures of the effective number of parties do adjust for party weight, it is also necessary to look at the relative sizes of parties, providing holistic assessments.
Single-Party Majorities
Single-party majorities were relatively rare in the region, and except in Montenegro in the 2000s and Hungary in the 2010s (and Russia during a period when the country had arguably ceased being a democracy), these rarely endured beyond a single term, limiting dominance.
One party-dominated governments often undermined institutional accountability, particularly in countries such as Montenegro, Russia, and post-2010 Hungary, posing challenges.
Building on the “party system closure” approach of Mair (1997), recent research (Casal Bértoa 2013; Enyedi and Casal Bértoa 2013) finds that the institutionalisation of coalition patterns is lower in Eastern Europe than in the West, due to the frequency of changes in coalition partners and relative ease with which newcomers participate in the government- building process, impeding cohesion.
At the same time, the fact that some Eastern European countries (Albania, Montenegro, Hungary, Georgia, and Macedonia) have developed relatively closed systems indicates that it may actually be easier for parties to close ranks in the governmental arena than to stabilise their electorates (Enyedi 2016), presenting paradoxes.
Party System Ideological Patterns: New Configurations and Different Dimensions
Ideology and programme played a consistent role in shaping the positions of and interactions within Eastern European party systems, though not to the same extent or in the same way as in the West, showcasing influence.
Eastern European parties have less clearly defined policy profiles than their Western counterparts (Schmitt, van der Eijk and Wessels 2013; Wessels and Schmitt 2012), creating ambiguities.
Factor analysis of both expert surveys detected a strong dimension of competition regarding economic distribution and the role of the state in the economy (this divide appears in particularly robust form in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Lithuania), highlighting priorities.
In most countries, an additional factor emerged on questions of cultural norms and lifestyle, shaping agendas.
The cultural conflicts in the region differ in important ways from those in the West with more emphasis on conflict over nation, religious norms, and authoritarian traditional practices, and less on post-materialist questions of environment, gender, and sexuality, establishing context.
Western European parties tend to combine free-market attitudes with cultural conservatism, whereas a preference for government intervention in the economy in Eastern Europe tends to coincide with a more restrictive view of cultural freedoms, stronger opposition to European integration, and more restrictive attitudes towards immigration, diverging alignments.
Eastern Europe also exhibits more variation than the West in the specific country patterns. Bakker, Jolly and Polk (2012) argue that unlike other countries in the region, Slovenia, Estonia, and Latvia more closely resemble the Western pattern combining markets and conservatism, and that Slovakia shows no alignment between the two dimensions, exhibiting country-specific variations.
Left-right orientation is less helpful for understanding policy positions in the East, largely because the economic and the cultural dimensions diverge. Consequently, the RILE index used to analyse party programmes produce less valid results in the East (Mölder 2013), limiting analysis.
There is also a discrepancy between the content of the ideological orientations and the labels used to denote political actors. Parties that elsewhere would claim to be libertarian or classical liberal may accept in Eastern Europe the “left-wing” label due to their relatively cosmopolitan and modernist approach to family values or religious norms, blurring classifications.
In the most Eastern part of the region, on the other hand, a reference to socialism or communism in the name or ideology of a party often implies an anti-globalisation and anti-Western approach, the suspicion of capitalist market economy and organisational links with post-communist political forces, reflecting ideologies.
Additional Issue Positions That Shape Politics
Communism: It continues to divide parties, even though no significant political actors advocate the restoration of the communist regime, lingering legacy.
Ethnicity and nationalism:
Ethnic differences obey a logic different from questions about economic or cultural regulation, impacting political dynamics.
In countries where distinct ethnic groups are fairly evenly matched in size, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina or Ukraine, these issues quickly emerge to dominate political competition, highlighting significance
In better covered countries, such as Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia, as well as the Baltics, ethno-linguistic minorities tend to constitute a smaller fraction of the voting population. These latter countries, furthermore, often experience a two-level effect that does not register easily: the majority-minority opposition is complemented by a more subtle but equal conflict that occurs among majority political representatives who may differ among themselves in a more symmetric conflict over how to deal with the minority. These intertwined dimensions interact in complex ways with other issues, complex dynamics.
Ethnic parties also differ in their availability for forming coalitions, shaping power.
In some countries in the region such as Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania, ethnic minority parties have emerged as pro–status quo forces which take centrist positions on nearly all issues except minority rights questions and promote minority interests by a willingness to bargain in other areas, adapting strategies.
The opposite pattern prevails in countries such as Latvia and Montenegro, where a large part of the legislature is excluded from the government-building process due to its association with the identities and interests of minorities and of large, neighbouring states (Russia and Serbia, respectively), limiting inclusion.
Democracy: In many Eastern European countries, competition has emerged between parties regarding their willingness to set aside the basic principles of democratic competition, posing threats,.
Corruption: The question of corruption dominates political debate in many Eastern European countries but poses a difficult classification challenge, because it seems to lack ideological or programmatic characteristics, presenting hurdles.
The issue dimensions listed can thoroughly reshape a country’s politics when they emerge in parallel with other configurations described earlier. The ethnic dimension has shaped political competition, particularly in Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the corruption dimension has recently produced major shifts in the governing balance of Czech Republic and Slovenia, demonstrating power.
Party System Change: Ongoing Instability of Party System Components
Observers have expressed wonder and concern at the high degree of electoral volatility in the region and the proliferation of party splits, mergers, deaths, and births (Tóka 1998; Tavits 2008; Sikk 2012), highlighting churn.
Recent work confirms numerous other studies showing high rates of volatility in Central and Eastern Europe, a level more than three times higher than in Western Europe and twice as high as the average rate in the newer democracies of Southern Europe, quantifying turbulence.
From the post-communist decade to today, observers have expressed wonder and concern at the high degree of electoral volatility in the region and the proliferation of party splits, mergers, deaths, and births, reiterating concerns.
Measures of the role of new parties in volatility and the average age of parties in the party system show consistent patterns: the occasional breakthroughs of new parties at the expense of older ones, the constant churn among new parties frequently replaced by newer parties, and the relatively stable performance of more established parties, evolving scenarios.
Most relevant reasons for the overall instability are the ones that were identified already at the beginning of the democratic era: fragile organisational structures, weak (or non-existent) inherited party loyalties, the shallow embeddedness of parties in civic organisations, media-oriented (and now social media–oriented) politics, and fuzzy class identities, pinpointing causes.
Disappointment with economic performance and corruption scandals have triggered the collapse of many major parties in the region and new parties have proven capable of taking advantage of loose, flexible structures, celebrity candidates, fuzzy identities, and corruption-related grievances to gain election, reflecting dynamics.
Voters in Party Systems
Relationship between voters and parties has three tightly interrelated but conceptually distinct aspects: the relationship of voters’ choices to their past preferences, their current political attitudes, and their socio-demographic positions.
Voter Loyalty: Stable and Unstable Electorates
Even shifts among existing parties are several times more common than in the West (Mainwaring et al. 2016), quantifying disparities.
Party identification is also a less powerful predictor of electoral choice (Schmitt and Scheuer 2012), weakening predictor.
Roberts (2008) found that voters in Eastern Europe are exceptionally sensitive to variations in economic results, exhibiting responsiveness.
Also undermines habitual voting because new parties in power are unlikely to maintain a reputation for purity, impacting consistency.
Exit polls give some evidence for the paradoxical emergence of a relatively stable core of unstable voters who alternate between not voting, voting for new parties, and voting for even newer parties (Haughton and Deegan-Krause 2015), revealing contradictions.
Give evidence that next to segments characterised by habitual volatility, there are other groups which remain committed over time to one preferred party, and some new parties even manage to convert their novelty-seeking electorates into loyalists, showing persistence.
In the East this beneficial mechanism is overshadowed by the potential of party identification to facilitate ideological radicalism (Enyedi and Todosijević 2009), amplifying extremes.
Voter Attitudes: Stable Issue Preferences in Unstable Systems
Electoral behaviour is more idiosyncratic in Eastern Europe than in the West (Van der Brug, Franklin, Popescu and Tóka 2009), and voters have more difficulty identifying the position of parties (Kritzinger and McElroy 2012), showing diversity.
lack of clarity in the programmatic profile of parties often advantages the most radical forces, the only ones that appear to voters as transparent and predictable (Ezrow, Tavits and Homola 2014), favoring extremes.
The positions of the region’s voters map quite closely onto the positions of the parties they voted for,
There is even more issue voting in East Central Europe than in the West (De Vries and Tillman 2011), enhancing significance.
Voter Demographics: Ethnicity, Religion, and Location Instead of Class
Most studies find a relatively small but still statistically significant relationship between these characteristics, policy preferences (such as redistribution or cultural norms), and party choice.
Stronger more strongly linked to religion, urban-rural divide, or class than in Southern Europe.
Ethnicity plays a particularly strong role in shaping political choice (Whitefield 2002).
Religiosity also has an impact but mainly in predominantly Roman Catholic societies such as Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia; in the Protestant countries of the Baltics and many Orthodox countries in the former Soviet Union and southern Balkans, religion has less structuring power.
Since Eastern Europe is largely based on family memories and on the related diverging interpretations of history, Applying high standards for “cleavage” would lead us to ignore many of the region’s most important divisions, while relaxing the expectations of group closure and group symmetry allows closer consideration of the broader array of divisions that shape party politics.
Conclusion: Eastern European Party Systems, Voters and the Future of Parties Everywhere
The declining relevance of traditional class divides (eroded in the West, weakly established in the East), the emergence of sovereignty and corruption as major issues that can reshape entire party systems, and the rise of a large societal segment that appears not only unanchored but perhaps even unanchorable,
Scholarship on Eastern Europe has more than simply demonstrate the similarities and differences between East and West. It has gone further to produce new insights and conceptual tools that have enriched the study of parties by clarifying phenomena that have not (yet) been integrated into models of party systems and voting behavior
In conjunction with the literature on Latin America, published research on Eastern European political parties has also helped to refine the concept of institutionalisation, revealing differences between institutionalisation at the party- level and at the party- system level, and demonstrating that electoral volatility does not always serve as a stable proxy for institutionalisation
Turbulence in Eastern Europe’s party politics has also produced new tools that can better account for splits and mergers, for changes of name, personnel and programme, and for the differences between volatility that is intra- system or extra- system and mass- driven or elite- driven (Rose and Munro 2003; Powell and Tucker 2013).
The study of the parties and voters in Eastern Europe does not yet possess a well- integrated narrative comparable to the one provided by Lipset and Rokkan and others for Western Europe.
The strengths of these approaches can help improve our understanding of Eastern Europe, especially if they reflect the existing strengths of scholarship on the region including sensitivity to historical and cultural differences, and acute awareness of the key role played by political actors.
The impossibility of producing a single homogeneous framework for all countries in the region should not, on the other hand, hold back from theorising about the most fundamental conflict lines that divide the