Coalition Formation and the Regime Divide in New Democracies: East Central Europe

Abstract

The ability to form stable governing coalitions is a basic precondition of effective democracy in multiparty parliamentary systems. Several explanations of the formation of such coalitions by political parties have contributed greatly to understanding how mature democracies function, but they have been less successful for the patterns of coalition formation in the new democracies of East Central Europe after the collapse of the Communist regimes in 1989. Party coalitions in East Central Europe are as diverse as they are puzzling. Some parties have formed stable coalitions between ideologically close allies. For example, the Czech government from 1992 to 1996 was heralded as an example of mature coalition formation and stability and was easily explained by spatial theories of coalition formation. However, parties in other countries, such as Poland, rejected the very idea of such alliances, despite ideological proximity and complementary policy goals. Instead they formed unstable and conflictual coalitions with secondor even third-best alternatives. Finally, in some cases parties from opposite ends of the political spectrum unexpectedly formed alliances, as in Slovakia. Such patterns run counter to the predictions of theories of coalition formation. While no theory claims to predict all cases of coalition formation, they seem unusually weak for the postcommunist countries. There may be a more parsimonious explanation of coalition patterns in the region. The fundamental predictor of coalition formation continues to be the regime divide, the depth and character of the persisting conflict between the successors to the pre-1989 Communist parties and the parties emerging from the Communist-era opposition. The deeper this divide is, the lower the chances are that coalitions will form on the basis of similar policy goals or ideology between the Communist successors and their opposition counterparts. As for coalition formation efforts of the Communist successor parties, even where they have succeeded in moderating their ideology and in radically transforming their image, the regime divide can prevent them from forming coalitions with parties that share their policy preferences. While this cleavage shows signs of waning, the expectation of electoral punishment has prevented policy-convergent coalitions in the region for over a decade. Thus, the peculiarities of postauthoritarian transitions and the constraints they impose on coalition building add to theories of coalition formation.