Post-Communist EU Member States, Parties and Party Systems by Susanne Jungerstam-Mulders (review)

Abstract

l68 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 2OO9 rather than seeking to replicate or copy Western models, and this clearly appealed also to Civilizationists. Tsygannkov concludes his book by arguing that Putin's Great Power Pragmatism has been farmore successful than the approaches taken by his immediate predecessors in providing positive outcomes in the four realms noted above. A final chapter summarizes the findings of the book and offers some 'lessons' both forRussia and the West. An excellent book. Political Science Peter Shearman Universityof Melbourne Jungerstam-Mulders, Susanne (ed.). Post-Communist EU Member States,Parties and PartySystems. Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2006. xiii + 257 pp. Figures. Tables. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. ?50.00. Thanks to its association with a central organ of the Communist state, the very word party was shunned by some of the leading political actors in the heady days of 1989-1991. Indeed, a number of key political groupings were labelled movements or forums eschewing use of the 'p'word. Nonetheless, as the states of Central and Eastern Europe began to tackle the challenges of post-Communism these broad-based anti-regime groupings soon fractured and were pushed to the edge of the political stage by newly created political parties. Nearly two decades after the 1989 revolutions and following accession into theEU, what is the state of party politics inCentral and Eastern Europe? How are parties organized? What are themajor dividing lines of politics? Moreover, how does party politics in the new EU Member states compare and contrast to themore established democracies in Western Europe? To address these questions Susanne Jungerstam-Mulders has assembled an impressive team of scholars, blending together both more established academ ics such as Zsolt Enyedi and Aleks Szczerbiak with rising stars such asMarek Rybaf. Sandwiched between a region-wide introduction and conclusion, Post-Communist EU Member States,Parties and Party Systemscontains a series of country chapters devoted to each of the 2004 EU entrants fromCentral and Eastern Europe. The volume highlights some strikingdifferences across the region.Whereas in Latvia, for instance, almost every election has been marked by a new party emerging from almost nowhere to claim a significant slice of the vote only todisintegrate tovirtually nothing by the time of the subsequent election, the story of party politics inHungary since 1989 can largely be told with reference to the names of just seven parties. Nonetheless, there are also striking similarities. Parties across the region tend to be anchored weakly in society. Indeed, weak linksbetween parties and their electorates appear to be a key factor in explaining high electoral volatility, party instability and low turnout.Moreover, in a book devoted to new EU Member States it isnotice able that in all of these cases European integration has not been a major issue divide, largely because the overwhelming majority of significant political parties agreed on the goal of entry. 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...