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Echoes of Latifundism? Electoral Constituencies of Successor Parties in Post-Communist Countries
Abstract
This article examines patterns of elector support for successor parties in Hungary, Poland, East Germany, and Russia. After consideration of competing hypotheses purporting to explain variance in successor vote, the author proposes a new hypothesis—that regions dominated by latifundism in pre-communist times, and where masses of agricultural proletarians and impoverished peasants experienced the communist period as an era of unprecedented social advancement, show an above-average level of elector support for successor parties. This hypothesis is tested on a regional level in the four country-cases and found to be valid and a more powerful determinate of regional variance in patterns of successor vote than socio-economic status of regions in the post-communist era.
... The article considers the recent re-emergence of populism despite the absence of a coherent left alternative. The anti-neoliberal alternative has come from the nationalist right with the pro-welfare position dominated by politically regressive conservative social forces who aim to arrest welfare cuts and end the austerity associated with Poland's seemingly permanent miring in transition (Lubecki, 2004). The article explores such changes and attempts to critically evaluate the populist turn reflecting on whether or not this is a clear rejection of neoliberalism. ...
... Obviously complex local dynamics are unfolding in the socio-political responses elicited; however, the aim of the article remains focused on the contexts of the populist re-ascendancy, associated with the differentiated development of capitalism in the region under ongoing neoliberalization (see Rupert, 2000). The article considers whether this signals a clear and decisive rejection of neoliberalism despite the absence of a coherent left alternative (Lubecki, 2004). ...
This article considers the re-emergence of populism in Poland. With an all but absent left, the anti-neoliberal position in Poland emerged from the right. The article explores the processes associated with this and critically evaluates the populist turn asking if this is a rejection of neoliberalism or whether recombinant populism is increasingly compatible with contemporary neoliberalism. Despite widespread dissatisfaction with post-communist transition, first through Shock Therapy, second through Europeanization, and more recently through the so-called global financial crisis, former dissidents have been co-opted into the reproduction of neoliberalism. In the absence of a more forceful left response in Poland, the population has proclaimed its outrage with the hardships of post-communism by discovering a captivating message from the populists. The emergence of populist social forces has become one of the mechanisms for the disenfranchised to make sense of the pressures of neoliberalization. Populism, nationalism and neoliberalism can happily co-exist.
... In parallel, those parties captured the state by their local elites (Mungiu-Pippidi 2003), making thus dependency work. By providing those electors from remote, backward rural areas with state aids in cash or in various types of goods (coal or wood for heating during winter time, e.g.), those parties were restating a severe dependency, echoing the latifundism that economically dominated the region before World War I (Lubecki 2004). The regions where agricultural proletarians and impoverished peasants experienced communism as an unprecedented social advancement are those which support stronger the communist successor parties. ...
Democratic transition is a very complex phenomenon. It relies on the outcome of the political competition between key actors during its initial stages, as well as on economic, social, and structural constraints inherited from the previous authoritarian regime. The book compares both series of factors by focusing on citizens’ democratic engagement and on political elites’ behavior. Despite a strong path-dependency to the previous authoritarian structures and low levels of initial democratic resources, citizens made proof of remarkable willingness to support democracy. By street protests, they even pressured political populist elites in power to abandon radical undemocratic regime changes. Romania managed therefore to maintain its European course and to avoid serious democratic backsliding.
... Since half of the Romanian peasants are engaged in subsistence farming, they have been almost entirely 'captured' by local predatory elites, 'gatekeepers' who control resources and therefore local politics (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2003). This kind of 'patronage' or new 'latifundism' are also to be found in other rural and less developed countries, in Southern Italy or in Eastern Europe (Banfield, 1967;Lubecki, 2004). Yet this dependency mechanism is strengthened in Romania by the governmental redistribution mechanisms. ...
... He concluded his study stating that "re-gions where communism built its own order on the pre-communist legacy of bitterness and poverty today show above-average levels of electoral support for the parties symbolically representing the communist system. This framework allows a contextual and historical understanding of regional variance in the successor vote" (luBecki 2004). ...
The main goal of the paper is to discuss various interpretations of the heritage created during the so-called 'partition' of Poland in the 19th century and the ways of its possible reproduction. This goal will be achieved by analyzing patterns of Poland's electoral geography, which is known for its considerable stability. After a discussion of the historical background and a summary of the main patterns of the country's electoral geography, the main types of dominating interpretations of the reproduction of structures, brought about in the Polish space during the period of its partitions in the 19th century, will be discussed. The paper will show how the recent transformation of the Polish political scene, which happened about 2005-2007, affected both the structures of the electoral geography and the dominant ways of its interpretation. As it will be argued, the above mentioned changes have emphasized the role of the East-West differentiation of the Polish space. The rise to prominence of that dimension was also related to the emergence of a number of new interpretations, many of which could be seen as heavily relying on orientalistic stereotypes, including those of the very negative images related to the heritage of the Russian rule. These mainstream interpretations, based on models of opposition between the positive Western "civilization" and the negative Eastern (Russian) "backwardness", will be confronted with what seems to be a more nuanced view on the basic East-West split of the Polish space. The proposed model will be an attempt to apply the theory of different types of capital by Pierre Bourdieu. In particular, Eastern Poland and its heritage of the Austrian and Russian rule will be presented as more cultural-capital oriented, while Western Poland and its heritage of the Prussian rule - as more economic-capital oriented. In this way the paper will propose a new, more general model of analysis of the spatial longue-duree effects.
... Among the general theories put forward for identifying the most important political cleavages in Central and Eastern Europe societies since the 1990s [Kitschelt 1992;Ost 1993;Reisinger et al. 1994;Evans, Whitefield 1993;Whitefield 2002;Duch, Palmer 2002;Roberts 2003;Guérin et al. 2004;Lubecki 2004] the theory of geopolitical cleavage has been dominant. In most studies by Polish electoral geographers [Zarycki, Nowak 2000;Zarycki 2002;Kowalski 2003] the geopolitical cleavage is predominant among the basic politicalterritorial cleavages in the state's political system. ...
The political system in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe countries started to develop due to a geopolitical cleavage. Pro-Western and pro-Soviet geopolitical orientations split society into two major parts. An impact of the geopolitical cleavage as the main cleavage to the state's political system has never been tested in a geographical sense in Lithuania. This paper tests the hypothesis that geopolitical orientation was the main political-territorial cleavage in Lithuania from 1990 to 2004. The territorial cleavage in electoral geography is revealed in the country's regional structure. In this regard, the regional structure of geopolitical orientation divides Lithuania into three separate regions. Geopolitical regional structure is compared with the regional structure of political preferences in the main direct elections in Lithuania. The second round of presidential elections when voters must choose between two candidates reveals the essential political-territorial divide in Lithuania.
... With regard to the third structural factorthe urban/ rural cleavagewe do not expect any clear generational differences. Post-communist countries have a particularly high level of social disadvantage in rural areas (Shucksmith et al., 2009), which translates into political behavior and determines party preferences (Lubecki, 2004;Jasiewicz, 2009). As this social gap between urban and rural areas has not diminished in the last twenty years of transformation, we expect that the urban/rural divide will play a comparable role in structuring party preferences for all generations of voters. ...
In this paper we study differences between generations in the degree to which long-term and short-term factors affect party preferences in established and consolidating European democracies. Scholarly literature has shown that younger cohorts in Western Europe are less likely to be guided by social class, religion and left/right than older cohorts. Little is known, however, about the extent to which such differences exist for the effects of short-term factors. Similarly, inter-generational differences in the effects of long- and short-term factors in post-communist countries have remained largely unexplored. Based on the European Election Study 2009, we show differences between generations that are compatible with de-alignment of younger generations along traditional cleavages. Yet, we also see an increased importance of attitudes towards immigration among the younger generations, which could signal a form of re-alignment.
... 5 In interrogating the international aspects of the populist revival in Poland, the article considers whether these recent changes signal a clear and decisive rejection of neoliberalism, despite the absence of a coherent left alternative, and a coherent attempt at a counter-hegemonic project, considering how an anti-neoliberal alternative has come from the nationalist right and the pro-welfare position is dominated by politically regressive conservative social forces who have aimed to arrest welfare cuts and end the austerity associated with Poland's seemingly permanent miring in endless forms of reform. 6 The article explores these changes by asking whether these changes are better understood in terms of the relationship to specific attempts to critically evaluate the populist turn by asking whether or not this signals a clear and decisive rejection of neoliberalism, or whether it is better understood in terms of the relationship to specific conjunctural projects for the reorientation of the reproduction of capitalist social relations in ECE. The argument unfolds in four sections. ...
This article interrogates the social impact of neoliberalisation and the counter-hegemonic forces this has engendered by exploring Poland's recent populist turn. It rejects methodologically nationalist attempts to isolate events in Poland from wider processes of structural change and the accompanying realignment within the global capitalist economy, analysing the implications of a number of alternative and counter-hegemonic projects to the neoliberal mainstream. The article considers whether the populist turn signals a decisive rejection of neoliberalism, despite the absence of a coherent left alternative and the fact that the anti-neoliberal alternative has come from the nationalist right, dominated by politically regressive conservative social forces who have aimed to arrest welfare cuts and end the austerity associated with Poland's seemingly endless forms of reform. While no clear anti-neoliberal strategy exists, pragmatic responses have occurred but within the structurally delimited environs of state intervention. Utilising a Gramscian critical political economy the article shows how populist counter-hegemonic forces have been co-opted and are best understood in terms of the relationship to specific conjunctural projects for the reorientation of the reproduction of capitalist social relations. The conclusion reflects on the potential for a progressive politics of a renewed Polish left to emerge.
... Breskiy proposes to take into consideration that division Europe into -East‖ and -West‖ is relatively new. 10 Earlier, Latvia's election behavior was to be explained by a kind of -anti-East‖ (meaning, anti-Russian, but also anti-Soviet) tendencies. 11 Birch asserts that -historical experience‖ is one of the hypotheses (-regional economic conditions‖ is another New cleavages appear, while the regional factor still remains. ...
This article examines electoral behavior in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine). The main aim is to analyze electoral behavior in particular sub-national territories in order to discover differences and common trends in the countries examined. The article discusses interconnections between socio-economic, ethnic, and cultural characteristics of particular sub-national territories and the attitudes of their inhabitants expressed in voting results and opinion polls. The factor of post-World War II immigration (historic immigration) seems to still determine regional culture (including political preferences) in all the countries under consideration. The specific details of electoral behavior are analyzed using quantitative method. This method helps to examine the results of parliamentary and presidential elections and EU accession referenda of 2003. Correlations between independent and dependent variables repeated in a number of measurements show certain tendencies within each examined country. The totality of such tendencies demonstrates common trends of electoral behavior in post-communist space.
... Although they continued to work the same land in state-owned farms, poor peasants benefited from unprecedented upwards social mobility, including large-scale education and political co-option into the state and party apparatus. The breakdown of the communist welfare state and its social and economic consequences inclined those peasants to strongly support communist successor parties (Lubecki 2004). In Romania, inhabitants of poor rural counties, less educated and less politically competent, still depend upon local authorities for various kinds of assistance and redistribution policies. ...
The economic growth that has occurred in post-communist Romania has polarised society and greatly increased existing inequalities. The aim of this paper is to investigate regional disparities, to underline the role of governmental mechanisms in smoothing out territorial inequalities, and to examine the possible effects of regional economic disparities on the performance of regional administrations in delivering public services, in the light of the new regionalisation debate. The conclusion is that Romanian counties' institutional performance does not completely correlate with regional wealth; but regional disparities and the mechanisms used to smooth out inequalities have to be taken into account in the public debate concerning further decentralisation.
... It was replaced by a coalition of the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS), itself a coalition of (1997) direct attention to the context of transitional democracies and demonstrate that beliefs about whether the communists or liberal reformers were to blame for the poor economic conditions in the 1993 Polish parliamentary elections are strongly related to vote choice in the election of that year. For additional aggregate-level studies of economic voting in Poland, see Gibson and Cielecka, 1995; Bell, 1997; Lubecki, 2004. right and right-of-center parties drawing on the legacy of the anti-communist solidarity movement, and the Freedom Union (UW), which was the descendent of the parties most closely associated with the original implementation of Poland's economic reforms. ...
Using survey data from three Polish parliamentary elections, we provide the first systematic micro-level test contrasting a standard incumbency-based model of economic voting with a transitional economic voting model in the post-communist context. To do so, we introduce a novel temporal component to micro-level studies of economic voting that supplements standard short-term retrospective economic evaluations (e.g., “do you feel the economy has improved in the past 12 months?”) with longer “transitional” retrospective economic evaluations (e.g., “do you feel the economy has improved since the collapse of communism?”). Our analyses reveal a nuanced picture suggesting multiple paths for economic influences on voting in Poland. We find evidence consistent with the standard incumbency-based approach, but only for the specific set of evaluations to which the theory is most appropriately applied: short-term retrospective economic evaluations and the vote for incumbent parties. By contrast, the transitional model is strongly supported by evidence that evaluations of changes in economic conditions since the collapse of communism (“long-term economic evaluations”) have an effect on the vote for a range of parties. We demonstrate as well that these results are robust to model specification and generational effects.
... Thus reformist leadership and trade-unions were central to the success of the successor parties. Lubecki (2004) showed that in the Polish regions, where large landed estates dominated in pre-communist times, the successor party enjoyed above-average levels of electoral support. This is a path-dependent argument similar to the legacy argument, but its causal force rests on the type of property structure in a specific region before the establishment of the Communist regimes. ...
The paper provides an explanation for the emergence, consolidation, and decline of the Moldovan Communists’ Party (PCRM). Drawing on the literature on successor parties and examining the Moldovan case, the author identifies the main factors that influenced the success of the Moldovan successor party. Tracing the adaptation strategy of the Moldovan successor party, he finds confirming evidence for five of the enabling factors already mentioned in the theoretical literature on successor parties: the economic situation, the weakness of the opponents, the electoral laws, the fragmentation of the political spectrum, and the legacy of the old regime. However, the author also identified seven additional explanatory factors at work in the Moldovan case: the foreign support for certain political parties, separatism, the appeal to the ethnic minorities, the alliance-building capacity, the reliance on the Soviet notion of the Moldovan identity, the state-building process, and the control over a significant portion of the media. It is due to these seven additional factors that the successor party in Moldova managed to consolidate and expand its constituency. Its decline is best explained by the authoritarian style of its leader. This paper aims at expanding the universe of cases on which the previous theories were constructed.
... The evidence on how the losers in democratic transitions affect support of post-communist parties is more limited when we examine our results in the context of other studies. Harper (2000), Colton (2000), Tworzecki (2003) and Lubecki (2004) also find only isolated support for the claim that losers of transitions, in this case older cohorts in Hungary and Bulgaria and unemployed in the Czech Republic, support post-communist parties. 19 Results on the role of education are particularly ambiguous. ...
In this paper, we examine the changing bases of support for the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the former ruling Communist party of East Germany that has emerged as a consistent force in united Germany's party system. We draw on theories positing a dynamic relationship between individuals and their social environment to hypothesize about the changing effects of factors for PDS support over time and test our assertions using survey data from the 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2004 German Social Survey (ALLBUS). The dynamic influence of four factors identified as instrumental to the PDS’ electoral success among eastern Germans—being a “loser of unification”, economic and political evaluations, eastern German identity, and ideology—are examined. Our findings indicate that ideology is consistently the strongest indicator of PDS support in all years while the effects of sociotropic economic and political evaluations start strong but diminish over time. Contrary to many expectations, PDS supporters are neither the losers of unification nor do they exhibit a stronger eastern identity than other eastern Germans. We discuss the implications of these findings for the future of the PDS, especially given its recent merger in 2005, and for understanding the electoral support of other post-communist parties in Eastern Europe.
The recent political transformations issued by political elites in Romania, following the accession to the EU, may represent more than serious concerns for political efficiency and accountability. Despite their initial claims to reshape state institutions and to increase the economic performance and despite number of legitimate transformations already in place, power elites seemed more to have gotten rid of any ideological burden and looked to favorable mechanisms of consolidating in power. This article highlights elites' willingness to control the political system and their subsequent shift from legitimate political changes to more personal attempts to bend rules in order to consolidate on power. With no vigorous civil society, a weakened mass-media due to regional economic crisis, and still inchoate political parties, the article shows how democratic institutions and neutral and independent bodies in Romania found themselves under political elites' siege for tight political control. This political behavior, recently labeled as 'political hooliganism', may undermine democratic consolidation and help paving the way for more radical and authoritarian political movements.
‘Democratic consolidation’—in the theoretical framework of transitology—was a successful concept for almost two decades. Research funds are concentrated around a catchword—it used to be ‘totalitarianism’ and in the future will be most likely ‘terrorism’.
Though much criticized, especially for its inability of spending
European subsidies, the current regional administration in Romania remained unchanged until the communist times. The sudden rush in totally reshaping the regional administration in 2011 triggered an intense debate on the matter. Though brief, it shed light on political constraints operating when it comes to reshape regional design. Whereas official arguments pointed at a severe European conditionality, electoral calculations seem to be at stake. Yet the decisive opposition to the project by the Hungarian party in government unravels a more profound conditionality, namely ethnic balance, related to the political geography of Transylvania.
This article is devoted to the comparative analysis of principles and factors of relationships of successor parties, trade unions, and state in the post-communist countries. The analyzed period covers the cases of Russia and East Central Europe (Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia) from 1989 to 2004, from the beginning of the post-communist changes to the accession to the European Union. The relationships between successor parties, trade unions, and state are presented on three levels depending on the institutional links between them: (1) institutional design arena; (2) electoral arena; and (3) social dialogue arena.
The conceptualisation of sustainability is one of the main tasks in multidisciplinary research. The methodology of the assessment of sustainability for political environment is presented in this paper. The structure of the methodology includes several steps to achieve the theoretical fullness. Political environment is conceivable as one of the main environments in the theory of balanced social field. According to the sense of balanced social field, there are distinguished nine antinomies in the political environment. Each antinomy is revealed by categories of political sustainability. The sustainability of political environment mostly is measured in electoral data. The electoral method is preferable because of its simplicity and universality for evaluation of political sustainability. Suggested theory is illustrated by the example of geopolitical sustainability patterns in Lithuania.
In recent decades we have witnessed the rise of extreme right-wing parties in many polities across Eastern and Western Europe. Considering how different the two regions are in terms of economic, social, and institutional development, as well as their latest historical experiences and types of political regime, raises an important question. Is the rise of rightist parties in these two regions connected in some way, or are these in fact two separate regional trends, with distinct causes and their simultaneous occurrence is simply coincidental? I argue that this it is not a mere coincidence. Notwithstanding all the substantial differences between the two cases, we can trace similar processes of economic change, that have had analogous social consequences, which are further reflected in similarities at the attitudinal level of the core partisan constituencies. Finally, these similarities in the distribution of attitudes have political consequences that are mirrored in comparable patterns of party competition. I demonstrate this by analyzing the politics two of the most successful right wing parties in Europe - the Greater Romania Party and the French National Front.
This article gauges how plausible deep historical explanations are in accounting for the emergence of particular types of parties in post-communist Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Generating and testing hypotheses from the centuries-long historical logic of Lipset and Rokkan’s model of cleavage and party development, it finds that the historical foundations of post-communist parties may be deeper than most analyses assume and that the influence of the communist era may be less than is often believed. While a full understanding of the emergence of post-communist party types requires both historical and non-historical explanations, historical ones should not be underestimated.
The introduction of an open market economy in East Germany was accompanied by massive deindustrialisation and double‐digit unemployment rates. Thus, the dissatisfaction with the new institutional order as it is exhibited by a considerable minority is attributed to the shocks imposed by the economic and monetary union of July 1990. On closer inspection, however, post‐unification dissatisfaction (PUD) does not appear to be of a predominately economic nature. Alternative explanatory approaches to PUD are discussed: the expectation frustration hypothesis that relates PUD to the all too high expectations formed at the outset of unification; the treatment‐response thesis focusing on the experiences with West German paternalism and self‐interests; and the ‘socialist legacy’ approach. Statements about relative ‘political’ gains and losses from unification show that older generations are more often dissatisfied with the outcomes of system change than younger ones. This relates to both the probable experience of discrimination after unification and the survival of socialist values and aspirations.
Two specialists on the electoral geography of post-Soviet Russia examine the results of the second national 1995 parliamentary election and the June and July 1996 presidential elections in the Russian Federation. The scale of analysis is the rayon level, based on a data set of roughly 300 rayons drawn from nine representative oblasts across the country. The data permit urban-rural and regional patterns in electoral behavior to be elucidated with greater precision. Although urban and rural effects are pronounced, the analysis reveals the importance of many other local contextual factors less amenable to quantification. Journal of Economic Literature. Classification Numbers H10, O10, R10. 1 figure, 7 tables, 24 references.
Two specialists on the electoral geography of post-Soviet Russia analyze the spatial patterns emerging from the parliamentary election held in December 1995. In addition to detailed description of the geographical aspect of the party-preference vote, comparisons are made with the previous election in December 1993. Regression analysis is undertaken to relate the results across Russia's 89 regions to underlying demographic and economic factors thought to influence voting behavior. 13 figures, 6 tables, 28 references.
The contemporary world lacks an institutionally creative ideology. In this milieu democracy will not appear just because it is needed or desired. Instead, we are likely to see anemic polities that mix weak authoritarianism with weak democracy in unnamed, novel, and even bizarre ways.
A prominent Western authority on economic affairs in the former Soviet Union examines major dimensions of Russia's industrial transformation since 1991, focusing on changes in production volume, structure, and organization (e.g., property ownership). An initial section analyzes the dynamics of output, employment, and investment in major industrial branches and presents estimates of factor productivity, followed by an assessment of organizational change (e.g., privatization, joint-venture activity). Coverage then focuses on regional differences in industrial transformation as reflected in such indices as growth in number of enterprises, public-private shares of ownership, and growth in number of foreign-participant firms. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L60, L70, O40, O50. 7 tables, 56 references.
A prominent American Sovietologist and specialist on Russian government and politics examines the 1996 presidential election in European Russia and correlates regional voting patterns with attitudes toward economic reform, the West, and the disintegration of the USSR. The study presents the results of a March 1997 survey, which incorporated 3,800 responses from young adults aged 17 to 33 in the oblasts and 13,000-16,000 responses from high school students in republic capitals. It identifies and explains differences in voting patterns in ethnic versus non-ethnic territorial units, noting anomalous shifts in voting between the first and second rounds. Also presented and analyzed are young people's attitudes toward the principal candidates as well as economic issues. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, I31, O52. 31 tables, 19 references.
A noted American specialist on the social structures of Soviet-type and postSoviet systems reviews the altered status of blue-collar workers in the economy of the Russian Federation. The paper covers changes in branch and socio-occupational differentials, the impact of the pay arrears problem, unemployment, and labor militancy. A central question is whether Russia's workers have fared as poorly as have most other categories of the population, given inhibitions on large-scale release of redundant labor in uncompetitive industries.
The German PDS has applied a nationalist veneer over a diverse, contradictory conception of socialism. "Socialism" has become a synonym for East German "national" pride as well as an expression of resentment against West Germans and West German political parties.
Most analyses of the consequences of the December 1993 elections have focused on the State Duma that was elected and its likely role in the Russian political process at the national level. The purpose of this study is to go beyond the more obvious impact of the elections to examine underlying patterns and tendencies that could be significant for Russia's future as a federal, multiethnic state. Data on voting for the parliament by party list permit for the first time a systematic, multidimensional comparison of political tendencies in Russia's regions.
My aim in this paper is to summarise the findings of a three-year project on regional patterns of economic change in post-communist Russia. Sadly, we cannot after three years cross our hearts and say that we now understand every-thing about what drives economic change in every Russian region. That would be a tall order in any country, large or small. But we do believe we have learnt something useful. Before embarking on a description of our findings, I shall offer answers to three preliminary questions. Why study this subject? What are the issues we have addressed? What methods have we used? The subject of regional patterns of change matters because post-commu-nist economic change plays out differently in different regions of a country; and regional differences in adaptation both shed light on the micro-economics of post-communist change and feed back to macro-economic adjustment in the country as a whole. And these considerations loom particularly large in Russia. It is not merely that differences in average real incomes across Russia's 78 provinces (oblasts, krais and republics) increased in 1992-98 -though the y did. There were large regional differences in real income under communism. 1 It is above all that central planning has gone, and much economic decision-making is now territorially devolved. Economic activities in Sakhalin, Kemerovo or Tiumen' are still affected by macro-economic policies made in Moscow and, in some cases, by decisions made in company head offices in the capital. But they are also now driven by the decisions of local households, firms and politicians, in ways that were largely absent in the communist era. They are also directly influenced by foreign firms and movements in foreign markets. Under com-munism such influences were either modified or completely blocked out by the central planners. This change began before communism collapsed. In the summer of 1990 there was a trade war going on between the city of Moscow and the surrounding regions. A system of so-called vizitochki (literally "visiting cards") had been * The author acknowledges support received for the present work from the ESRC (grant R000236398) and the European Union's Intas programme. 1 This was partly because of great differences in the availability of goods in the shops. A Muscovite could buy a great many things that a resident of Kuibyshev (now Samara) with the same income could not. In general, the change from shortage to rationing by price makes the comparison of real incomes between communist times and the present impos-sible.
For those convinced that "shock therapy' represented the best, or only viable, approach to building healthy economies in post-communist societies, the comprehensive victory of the two main post-communist forces - the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and the Polish Peasant Party (PSL) - in gaining over two-thirds of the seats in both the lower house (the Sejm) and the upper house (the Senate) in the 1993 Polish parliamentary election appeared both disappointing and worrying. The objectives of this article are: by means of a statistical analysis of the geographical variation in results between electoral districts, to assess the extent to which economic factors - particularly privatisation, economic growth and the level of umemployment - influenced the Polish election result; and to make some rought extrapolative "what if' predictions regarding whether more favourable trends in unemployment and economic growth, or more rapid privatisation, would have helped to increase the relative vote for the main "pro-reform' parties compared with the post-communist parties and the two other "anti-reform' parties gaining seats. -from Authors
A general characterisation of the main dimensions of political competition is provided, and the ideological factors which discriminate voters' choice of party are analysed. The Hungarian party system is shown to be structured mainly by issues or social liberalism, prejudice and attitudes towards the position of Hungarians abroad. Distributive questions along with nationalism comprise a secondary dimension of voters' party choice. The next section shows that church attendance is the strongest predictor of party preference. The final section uses recall information to examine the development of the Hungarian party system and to evaluate claims about shifts in party support between 1990 and 1994. The analysis does not support the view advanced by many commentators that Socialist failure in 1990 was the result of high abstentions among those ideologically close to the party, nor does it find evidence that because the Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF) drew its support from this social group in 1990, it was disproportionately likely to see its support drift to the Socialists in 1994. The strong showing of the Hungarian Socialist Party in 1994 was the result of its ideological appeal to voters from across the spectrum of political parties and social groups. Considerable movement among voters at the individual level, is found which belies the appearance of general stability in party support in the aggregate. -from Authors
Spatial-structural regression models are fitted for the votes of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and for the combined vote of the Communist Party of Russia and the Agrarian Party in the parliamentary elections of 1993 and 1995. Analysis of the regression-model results indicates that sets of explanatory socioeconomic variables, as well as their relative importance in explanation of the anti-reform vote, vary widely across the country. More specifically, the paper documents an emerging European/Asian dichotomization of Russia's electoral geography, and assesses the increasingly important role of region in the democratization process as the spatial impress of the economic transformation of the country becomes more evident. 3 figures, 2 tables, 64 references. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, J18, O50.
This article explores associations between participation and party voting and a number of socio-economic variables observed at the voivodship level in Poland's 1993 Sejm elections. It further identifies similarities and differences between the impact of those factors in the 1991 and 1993 elections. The regression estimates indicate that 1993 was not a “reproduction” of 1991. In the most recent election, increases in voting participation accounted for the great upsurge in support for parties of the left, while socio-economic factors were of lesser significance. Moreover, a geographical political cleavage, not previously identified in other voting studies, had an important influence on both participation and party voting.
The Berlin election of October 1995 produced very different results in the eastern and western halves of the city, and although the end result was a continuation of the Grand Coalition, it was the PDS and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen who stole the limelight once the votes were counted. This article attempts to account for the performance of the parties in each half of the city and considers the political consequences for them. It concludes by considering what the election can tell us about the public mood in Berlin and about political trends in the Federal Republic in general. What emerges is a ‘wall in the ballot box’, a practical manifestation of die Mauer im Kopf which clearly continues to exist five years after the first all‐German election.
On 5 May 1996, a narrow majority of voters in Berlin voted in favour of a merger between Berlin and Brandenburg, while a decisive majority in Brandenburg voted against, causing the initiative to fail. In this article the principal arguments put forward by the leading advocates and opponents of the merger are examined. Then the results in East and West Berlin and Brandenburg are analysed in turn in an attempt to identify the primary factors which appear to have determined voting. What emerges is that subjective factors played a greater role than the objective arguments of politicians, producing a result which suggests that deep divisions continue to exist in Germany today.
Geographic distributions of economic activity and regional patterns of socioeconomic well-being have changed within the German Democratic Republic during the postwar era, but the changes have not radically altered the regional economic structure of the nation and have not resulted in a substantial reduction of all regional inequalities. The historic concentration of industry in the South and regional inequalities, particularly in the availability of quality consumer goods and housing, persist in the G.D.R. despite the desire of the government to industrialize the North and promote regional equity. National planners have been faced with problems resulting from the conflict of regional planning goals with the goals of national economic planning. Spatially concentrated economic growth has been promoted in order to conserve scarce capital and to utilize domestic natural resources. Industrial location, labor force, and settlement policies have supported the achievement of national economic goals, often at the expense of regional equity.
FOLLOWING THE 1989-90 SYSTEMIC TRANSFORMATION in Central and Eastern Europe, 'second-generation' elections have now been held in most post-communist stateswith varying results. In Lithuania and Poland politicians with their roots in the former communist parties regained power in 1993. In Hungary the first democratic coalition government was relatively stable, completing its constitutional mandate for 1990-94, but significant political fermentation became increasingly visible. The 1994 elections replaced the ruling coalition with a socialist majority in a landslide with potentially far-reaching regional consequences. The objective of the present study is the analysis of the Hungarian second-generation elections and the assessment of the projected future trajectory of the new political constellation. The genealogy of post-communist pluralism Hungary has led the process of transformation in the communist commonwealth since the 1956 revolution. The 1968 economic reforms, unique in scope at that time, and the gradual liberalisation in the 1970s exposed Hungary to the risk of Soviet pressure for greater conformity. However, Janos Kadair's political acumen made it possible for the regime to go to the potential limits, yet avoid major danger. Amidst the growing political restlessness of Central and Eastern Europe in the early 1980s, the 1985 Hungarian elections represented a qualitative change: voters were able to nominate/ elect candidates of their own choosing, something without precedent in marxist-leninist states.' The new parliament, whose membership remained predominantly communist, exhibited independence from the beginning, gradually evolving into a legislature which became a willing partner in the opposition's struggle to bring about a systemic change.2 With the removal of the Kadair entourage from power in 1988, the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (HSWP)3 moved-partly under pressure from the nascent opposition groups-to surrender monolithic power and accept a pluralist system-a historic first in Eastern Europe. Subsequently the opposition groups and the ruling party concluded a compromise legalising parties: Parliament passed the new electoral law in autumn 1989, and scheduled national elections for March 1990.4 These elections, with the exception of the special East German case, were the first pluralist elections in Central and Eastern Europe. This resulted in the ascendancy of the centre-right political forces and the formation of a coalition government led by the
The political re-emergence of post-communist successor parties in several nations of East-Central Europe raises the theoretical question of their role in the ongoing democratization process. This paper examines the electoral revival of successor parties in Poland, Hungary, and eastern Germany, in contrast first to the failure of the new competing social democratic parties in these nations, and then to the failure of the successor parties in the Czech and Slovak republics. Through an analysis of the reasons for successful adaptation, the successor parties are found to fulfill several positive roles in democratization under stressful circumstances.
Germany's PDS " ; Mitchell Orenstein A Genealogy of Communist Successor Parties in East-Central Europe and the Determinants of Their Success
- Olsen
Olsen, " Germany's PDS " ; Mitchell Orenstein, " A Genealogy of Communist Successor Parties in East-Central Europe and the Determinants of Their Success, " East European Politics and Societies 12:3(Fall 1998): 489.
Political Geog-Echoes of Latifundism? 22
- John O Loughlin
- Michael Shin
John O'Loughlin, Michael Shin, and Paul Talbot, " Political Geog-Echoes of Latifundism? 22. See György Enyedi, Hungary: An Economic Geography (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1976);
Population Redistribution in the USSR
- Robert Lewis
Robert Lewis and Richard Rowland, Population Redistribution in the USSR (New York: Praeger, 1979);
Regional Change in the German Democratic Republic Annals of the Association of Spatial Inequality in Poland 1945-1981 " (master's thesis
- William Berentsen
William Berentsen, " Regional Change in the German Democratic Republic, " Annals of the Association of American Geographers 71:1(March 1981): 50-66; and Paul Burns, " Spatial Inequality in Poland 1945-1981 " (master's thesis, Kansas State University, 1985).
The New Germany Ewa Marczyn! ska-Witczak and Wojciech Michalski, Przestrzenne i czasowe zróz³ nicowanie warunków z³ ycia ludnosci w Polsce (ñód: Centralny UrzaÔ d Planowania, 1996); Bert Van Selm Economic Performance in Russia's Regions
- See Alun
See Alun Jones, The New Germany (New York: John Wiley, 1994), Ewa Marczyn! ska-Witczak and Wojciech Michalski, Przestrzenne i czasowe zróz³ nicowanie warunków z³ ycia ludnosci w Polsce (ñód: Centralny UrzaÔ d Planowania, 1996); Bert Van Selm, " Economic Performance in Russia's Regions, " Europe-Asia Studies 50:4(1998): 603-18; and Klára Major and József Nemes Nagy, " Jövevelemegyen Lötkenségek, " Statisztiali Szemle 77:6( June 1999): 397-421.
see Figure 1) In pre-communist times, most of this region (with the exception of Szabolcs) was a zone of incipient industrial development, rural poverty, and left-wing labor militancy
- Zemplén
- Nógrád
- Heves
Zemplén, Nógrád, Heves, and Szabolcs (see Figure 1). In pre-communist times, most of this region (with the exception of Szabolcs) was a zone of incipient industrial development, rural poverty, and left-wing labor militancy.
Politics of Socialist, 177-79; and Jarosz, Polityka wÂadz
- See Korbon
See Korbon! ski, Politics of Socialist, 177-79; and Jarosz, Polityka wÂadz, 107-16.
Ideological Divisions and Party-Building Prospects in Post-Soviet Russia
- William Reisinger
- Arthur Miller
- Vicky Hesli
and Cleavages in the Russian Parliamentary Elections," Post-Soviet Geography and
Economics 37:6(1996): 355-85; and William Reisinger, Arthur Miller, and Vicky Hesli, "Ideological Divisions and Party-Building Prospects in Post-Soviet Russia," in Elections and Voter
in Post-Communist Russia, ed. Matthew Wyman, Stephen White, and Sarah Oates
(Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1998), 147-51.
Germany's Party of Democratic Socialism
- See Wiesenthal
See Wiesenthal, "Post-Unification Dissatisfaction," 12-15, 21-27; and Patton, "Germany's
Party of Democratic Socialism," 513.
Poland's Old Guard Lures Rural Voters
- Anne See
- Applebaum
See Anne Applebaum, "Poland's Old Guard Lures Rural Voters," Financial Times, 20 September 1993.
359-70, 406; Ioffe and Nefedova, Continuity and Change in Rural Russia
- See Lewis
See Lewis and Rowland, Population Redistribution, 16, 72, 200, 225, 359-70, 406; Ioffe and
Nefedova, Continuity and Change in Rural Russia, 201-2.
Ziblatt and Orenstein emphasize fundamental differences between Hungarian and Polish successor parties that refashioned their identities as "European" social democratic parties of "experts and pragmatists," as contrary to the PDS and the KPRF that pursued neo-Marxist strategies of
- Mitchell Orenstein
and Mitchell Orenstein, "A Genealogy of Communist
Successor Parties in East-Central Europe and the Determinants of Their Success," East European Politics and Societies 12:3(Fall 1998): 472-99. Ziblatt and Orenstein emphasize fundamental differences between Hungarian and Polish successor parties that refashioned their
identities as "European" social democratic parties of "experts and pragmatists," as contrary
to the PDS and the KPRF that pursued neo-Marxist strategies of "leftist retreat" or "patrioticnationalism," respectively.
Two Paths of Change," 99; and Orenstein
- See Ziblatt
See Ziblatt, "Two Paths of Change," 99; and Orenstein, "A Genealogy," 496-99.
Russia's Communists at the Crossroads
- Joan See
- Valerii Urban
- Solovei
See Joan Urban and Valerii Solovei, Russia's Communists at the Crossroads (Boulder, CO:
Westview, 1997), 187.
Political Geographies"
- Shin O'loughlin
- Talbot Reisinger
O'Loughlin, Shin, and Talbot, "Political Geographies"; and Reisinger, Miller, and Hesli, "Ideological Divisions," 147-51.
Two Paths of Change? How Former Communist Parties Remade Themselves after Communism's Collapse
- Daniel Ziblatt
See various articles, especially Daniel Ziblatt, "Two Paths of Change? How Former Communist Parties Remade Themselves after Communism's Collapse," in Communist Successor
Parties in Post-Communist Politics, ed. John Ishiyama (Huntington, NY: Nova Science Publishing, 1999), 71-99;
RzaÔ dzi baÔ dzie lewica" in Rzeczpospolita
- See Ziblatt
See Ziblatt, "Two Paths of Change," 99; and Orenstein, "A Genealogy," 496-99.
87. For 2001 Polish elections, see Kazimierz Groblewski, "RzaÔ dzi baÔ dzie lewica" in
Rzeczpospolita, 24 September 2001, www.rzeczpospolita.pl/dodatki/wybory01. For Hun-