Two Decades On: How Institutionalized are the Post-Communist Party Systems?

Abstract

In a paper published soon after the transition to democracy in East Central Europe, it was suggested that post-communist party systems were expected to be characterized by an unstable and unpredictable structure of competition (Mair 1996). Returning to that original hypothesis, this paper attempts to make a first systematic mapping of the patterns of inter-party competition which have characterised post-communist party systems over the past two decades. Because the main arena of inter-party competition (or cooperation) is the competition for government, we analyse here the way in which government is contested by the various political parties, and how such patterns of interaction vary both over time and across fifteen different post-communist polities. This allows us to derive a much clearer sense of the differences between party systems.