Political Parties After Communism: Developments in East-Central Europe and Political Parties in New Democracies: Party Organization in Southern and East-Central Europe

Abstract

Political Parties After Communism: Developments in East-Central Europe. By Tomáš Kostelecký. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002. 240p. $25.95.Political Parties in New Democracies: Party Organization in Southern and East-Central Europe. By Ingrid van Biezen. New York: Palgrave, 2003. 256p. $69.95.Much previous work on political parties and party systems in new democracies has examined them as a means to democratic consolidation and regime stability. Two new studies seek to give finer-grain comparative analysis of party development in the relatively successful new democracies of Southern and East Central Europe. Tomáš Kostelecký's Political Parties After Communism aims to give a broad overview of the development of party politics in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Kostelecký first outlines the historical evolution of parties in the four cases from the midnineteenth century until the collapse of communism and then gives a detailed survey of the development of parties and electoral politics between 1989 and 2002. Subsequent chapters take a more thematic approach, reviewing and synthesizing a range of research to assess the impact of political culture, historical legacies, social cleavages, and the institutional “rules of the game” on party development. A concluding chapter weights these different factors and seeks to highlight broader trends across the region. These are then contrasted with current patterns of party development in Western Europe.