Sickles into roses: The successor parties and democratic consolidation in post‐communist politics

Abstract

In recent years much attention has been paid to the political resurgence of the former communist parties, as well as to their recent electoral declines. This article investigates how the communist successor parties have contributed to the process of democratic consolidation in new democracies (or not). It addresses three questions: (1) To what extent have the communist successor parties drawn their electorate, and especially the ‘losers’ of the transition, into acceptance of the democratic rules of the game; (2) Are the supporters of more electorally successful communist successor parties more likely to embrace democracy than supporters of less successful successor parties; (3) Does the level of support for democracy among supporters of the communist successor parties vary across different organizational types of parties? It was found that the degree to which a communist successor party appears to have a positive impact on democratic consolidation depends on the kind of party it has become and whether that party enjoyed some degree of success early on in the democratic transition.