Learning from the West? Policy Transfer and Programmatic Change in the Communist Successor Parties of Eastern and Central Europe by D. Hough , W. E. Paterson , J. Sloam (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 169 Much of the interestingdiscussion in the book centres on the issueswhich divide and animate politics. In contrast tomany of the predictions made by comparative political scientists in the mid-1990s that socio-economic issues would come to dominate, they have turned out to have been secondary to a historical-cultural divide. Indeed, in Poland, Hungary and many other states in the region theCommunist past appears to remain at the heart of political divisions. In the Lithuanian case, for instance, Ramonaite asserts that the 'main explanatory factor of voting behaviour' is 'thevoters' evaluation of the Soviet past' (p. 77).Nonetheless, Kopecky's contribution highlights the salience of socio-economic issues in Czech party politics. Although not explicitly mentioned by the contributors, the explanation for the difference between the Czech Republic on the one hand and Poland and Hungary on the othermay have much to do with the countries' different exits fromCommunism. This last point highlights the biggest weakness of the volume. Despite the impressive array of analysis and data in the country-chapters there is a lack of comparative analysis seeking to explain how and why individual cases are similar or different to others. Rybaf, for example, raises some fascinating points about old and new parties in Slovakia showing how they are not just organized differently,but have also developed contrasting strategies,with the former concentrating on party building and the latteron vote seeking.He sees this outcome as the result of genetic rather than developmental factors. But towhat extent is the Slovak case unique? Do the old and new parties in the Baltic States, for instance, resemble or differ from their counterparts in Slovakia? The book contains much of the raw material for comparative analysis, but largely leaves itup to the reader to undertake the comparative analysis him/herself. Nevertheless, itwould be churlish to dwell too much on this criticism. Containing a cornucopia of useful data and analysis, the publication of Post-Communist EU Member States,Parties and Party Systems is very much to be welcomed. Centre for Russian andEast European Studies T. Haughton European Research Institute, Universityof Birmingham Hough, D., Paterson, W. E. and Sloam, J. (eds). Learning from the West? Policy Transfer and Programmatic Change in theCommunistSuccessorParties ofEastern and CentralEurope. Routledge, London and New York, 2006. 176 pp. Tables. Notes. Index. ?65.00. Communist successor parties (CSPs) are among themost widely studied groups of actors in the region of East Central Europe. Learning from the West? is an attempt to enrich further the existing scholarship by studying the program matic development of these parties in a broader framework that also accom modates concepts from policy transfer literature, and includes examination of external actors, primarily the established West European social democratic parties and the transnational party organizations. 170 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 2OO9 The main aim of the volume is to establish where CSPs gained inspiration for their programmatic renewal and how the domestic opportunity structure influenced the adoption of external inspiration by the CSPs. The introduc tory chapters delineate the conceptual and methodological design of the volume. While Hough reviews the concept of policy transfer,Paterson and Sloam make a strong case for a qualitative analysis of party programmes that is,as they argue, better suited for analysis of short-termchanges in the policy programmes than party manifesto content analysis. Two other contributions elucidate the role of international factors in the post-Communist transition and describe stances of various CSPs towards the European integration. Country studies comply to a large extentwith the conceptual and analytical framework of the volume. Reliance on elite interviews is, however, perhaps too excessive in the chapter on the Slovak SDE. This chapter mentions two potentially important findings that unfortunately remain unexplored: The claim that the Socialist International prevented the unification of the traditional and the Communist successor left in early 1990s, and that the Austrian Social Democrats had the strongest influence on the programmatic evolution of the SDE. Both claims are potentially very important for assessing the role of external forces but remain unsupported by other relevant sources. Of major West European social democratic parties, it was theGerman SPD thatbecame themajor source of policy transferfor theCSPs, due to its inter est...