Electoral Systems and Party System Stability in Post ...€¦ · Electoral Systems and Party System Stability in Post-Communist Europe Sarah Birch Department of Government University

Electoral Systems and Party System Stability in Post-Communist Europe

Sarah BirchDepartment of Government

University of EssexWivenhoe Park

Colchester CO4 3SQUnited Kingdom

[email protected]

Paper prepared for presentation at the 97th annual meeting of the American Political ScienceAssociation, San Francisco, 30 August – 2 September, 2001.

ABSTRACT: This paper analyses the impact of electoral institutions on party system stabilityand change in twelve countries of post-communist Central Europe and the former Soviet Union.It argues that in the post-communist context it is necessary to break party system change downinto two components: volatility and replacement. Volatility, a concept already well developed inthe literature, refers to changes over successive elections in the balance of party support.Replacement is understood as the extent to which new political formations are successful indrawing support. Empirical analysis of these two variables demonstrates that they exhibitdifferent patterns and that they are influenced by separate sets of factors. Electoral institutionvariables are found to have a strong impact on volatility by not replacement, which is influencedinstead by sub-regional location and rates of electoral participation.

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Electoral Systems and Party System Stability in Post-Communist Europe∗

Stability and change in party systems has long fascinated political scientists, but the nature of theresearch questions they have asked has been conditioned by the cases they have taken as theirobjects of study. When we turn our attention to areas of the world that have not been subject tosuch intense scholarly investigation as the established democracies of the ‘West’, we may needto re-think the conceptual tools we use in interpreting and explaining changes in theconfiguration of electoral contenders. The specific aim of this paper is to formulate new ways ofunderstanding party system change and to assess how electoral institutions have affected recentparty system developments in post-communist Europe.1 The focus of the analysis will be on twodistinct aspects of party system dynamics: volatility and replacement. Volatility, a conceptalready well developed in the literature, refers to changes over successive elections in thebalance of party support. But volatility understood in this sense fails adequately to capture thenumerous party foundations, splits, mergers, and name changes characteristic of post-communistpolitics. In this context it is also desirable to deploy the complementary concept of partyreplacement – the extent to which new political formations are successful in drawing electoralsupport.2

Most scholars agree that the development of stable, coherent representative parties whichcan shape and channel popular preferences is crucial to successful democratisation in the wake ofpolitical transition. In the early days of democratisation in Central and Eastern Europe,politicians and citizens alike were often sceptical of the efficacy of parties in contributing torepresentation, given the experience of one-party rule. But in all cases the need for parties soonbecame apparent to a large majority of the political class, and subsequent efforts by politicianshave been directed at attracting votes to their fledgling political organisations. At the same time,parties have begun to establish working relations and patterns of alliance within nationallegislatures. These dual processes have been influenced by numerous contextual factors,including the pre-communist experience, the legacy of the old regime, the pace of socioeconomicchange, institutional choices, and the attributes of specific countries.3

Mobility in the party system has both advantages and disadvantages. As Bartolini andMair (1990) argue, variations in electoral support are the main basis on which party leaders plan

∗ Research for this paper was supported by a generous grant from the Economic and SocialResearch Council (No. L213252021). I would like to thank Marina Popescu and RobertasPogorelis for their research assistance and for sharing with me their expertise on Romania andLithuania respectively. Thanks are also due to Frances Millard for help interpreting the Polishparty system. I take responsibility for any errors of fact or judgement in this paper.1 In the absence of clear criteria for determining the ‘systematicity’ of party configurations, theterm ‘party system’ will be used in this paper to refer to the sum total of parties that areelectorally active in a given country at a given time.2 Similar distinctions have been made or implied by several authors, including Mair, 1997;Toka,1997; Kitschelt et al, 1999; Colton, 2000; and Markowski, 2001, though the concepts aremeasured differently in the present analysis (see below).3 The literature on these processes is abundant, but special mention should be made of severalcomparative volumes, including Pridham and Lewis, 1996; Olson and Norton, 1996; Kitschelt etal, 1999; Lewis, 2000; and 2001.

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strategies. Likewise, rises and falls in partisan support may be taken to indicate that the partysystem is responsive to the changing preferences of voters (Budge, 1982). In the context of rapidsocio-economic change such as that experienced during the period of post-communist economicrestructuring, such adaptability may be a good thing. But turbulence in the party system cannotnecessarily be attributed to variations in electoral preferences alone. On the contrary, there ismuch research indicating that the basic political proclivities of post-communist electorates haveremained relatively stable over the past ten years and that most of the change in post-communistparty systems has been driven instead by élite-level fluidity (e.g. Markowski, 1997; Miller et al,1998; Birch, 2000; King, 2000; Rose et al, 2001).

A consistently high level of party system instability has four main consequences that aredetrimental to democratic consolidation.

1. It reduces accountability – voters cannot ‘throw the rascals out’ if the rascals no longer existas a unified group.

2. It impedes party institutionalisation by decreasing the level of long-term commitment whichpoliticians, activists, and voters have to ‘their’ party.

3. It significantly increases uncertainty, hampering the ability of politicians and voters toengage in strategically-driven co-ordination

4. It raises the stakes of the electoral game. This may have the consequence of weakening thedemocratic commitment of politicians who may seek other ways of feathering their beds soas to insure themselves against possible political loss at the next election.

The successful consolidation of democracy requires enough uncertainty to keep losers in thepolitical game, but not so much that elections become a lottery. Despite the potential benefits offlexibility in the party system, excessive instability undermines the basis for politicalrepresentation. It is likely to be associated with general political and social instability which hasthe potential to generate an authoritarian backlash.4 The conceptualisation and measurement ofparty system change is thus key to an adequate understanding of post-communist politicaltransformation.

This analysis will necessarily build on valuable previous work that has been conductedon post-communist party system development. Yet it will also challenge some of thegeneralisations that have been made about party systems in the region on the basis of a limitedrange of cases. The cluster of states on the Western border of ‘Eastern Europe’ - Poland, theCzech Republic, and Hungary – have, together with Russia, received a disproportionate share ofthe scholarly attention that has been devoted to the study of post-communist parties, despite thefact that they together constitute only a fraction of the 22 states that make up the region. One ofthe objectives of this study is to examine a wider range of states in order to evaluate whetherconclusions that have been drawn from smaller N studies hold more generally. Unfortunately ithas only been possible to include 12 countries in the dataset examined here, for reasons both ofdata availability and depth of knowledge on my part. But the cases are divided evenly between 4 This may be what we are currently observing in Russia, where president Putin enjoysextremely high levels of support across much of the political spectrum for his alleged success inbringing ‘order’ to the violence-plagued country.

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Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, enabling systematic comparisons across two keysub-regions.

I Conceptualising and Measuring Party System Instability

The concept of electoral volatility was long understood to explain change in electoralpreferences over time as a result of secular changes in values and social structure.5 But the wayin which the concept is measured confounds mass level variation in preferences and élite-drivenvariation in the objects of choice on offer. Measured in terms of the sum of change in support forindividual parties between one election and the next, electoral volatility is a ‘multi-layered andmulti-dimensional concept’ (Crewe, 1985:8). The overall or aggregate volatility between electiont and election t + 1 is the result of a combination of three factors: (1) changes in party support onthe part of individual voters who vote at both election t and election t + 1; (2) change in thecomposition of the electorate as a result of exits, entries, and variations in abstentionism; (3)changes in the range of parties on offer as a result of party entries, exits, alterations in thecomposition of coalitions, and non-contestation. Most studies of volatility in establisheddemocracies have been primarily concerned with voter behaviour, so they have been mainlyinterested in the first and possibly the second of these factors. They have generally assumed thatthird – the turnover of electoral contenders - is small enough that the standard measures ofvolatility are a good proxy for changing voter behaviour. In other words, the assumption in muchof the literature has been that élite-level change in the supply of parties reflects and is promptedby changes in the demands made by the electorate.6

Whether or not this market model is an accurate reflection of party system developmentin existing democracies, it is not an apt characterisation of party system change in manydemocratising states. Whereas in most established democracies there is a high degree ofcontinuity in the range of political options on offer from one election to the next, emergent partysystems in post-transition countries are often considerably less stable. Most countries in theEastern European region have followed a far more ‘command economy’ style development inwhich the supply of parties has been based primarily on the whim of élites with little reference tothe demands, desires, or preferences of the electorate. Most of the emerging party systems ofCentral and Eastern Europe have been characterised by fluidity, splits, mergers and weak linkswith their corresponding electorates. In this context the turnover of parties - or party replacement- is of substantive interest in its own right, especially when it is thought to form a largecomponent of overall party system instability. A high level of ‘churn’ in the range of parties onoffer at election time can be expected to generate voter disorientation and hamper partyinstitutionalisation. Thus when dealing with party systems that experience much inter-electoralchange in the identities of parties, it is desirable to disentangle volatility within the existing partysystem from the emergence of new parties. Not only will this give greater conceptual clarity tothe measure of volatility, but it will also make it easier to trace the impact of institutional designon electoral outcomes.

5 Thus Mogens Pedersen defines volatility as ‘the net change within the electoral party systemresulting from individual vote transfers’ (1979:3).6 Several writers have, however, noted that party system instability can coexist with stableelectoral preferences (Crewe, 1985; Mair, 1997).

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Unfortunately a number of difficulties arise in attempting to develop two separatemeasures for volatility and replacement. Some of these difficulties are inherent in any measurebased on aggregate electoral results alone. The impossibility of ever measuring individual-levelvolatility on the basis of aggregate results is well known, and though aggregate and individual-level volatility have been found to co-vary in established Western democracies (Crewe andDenver, 1985; Bartolini and Mair, 1990), we cannot assume that this will be the case in othercontexts. Furthermore, a voter who votes for party A at election t may not have had any changein party preference at election t + 1, but s/he will nevertheless be required to change his or herexpressed preference and vote for party B (or C, or some other party) if party A is no longer onthe ballot. But the voter might equally have switched his or her preference and would have votedfor party B even if party A were still available. It is therefore impossible ever to capture the trueamount of switching – forced or voluntary – without recourse to specially-designed comparativesurveys (which do not exist for most of the states under consideration here), nor is it everpossible to know how much aggregate change is due to true variations in party preference orchanges in the choice of parties on offer. But we can develop approximations of volatility amongexisting parties and party replacement by examining trends in the electoral support for differenttypes of party.

Volatility among existing parties can be estimated by calculating the amount of changeobserved within the set of parties (or other groupings that present themselves to voters) thatcontest two consecutive elections. For this purpose we exclude all those parties that did notcontest both elections and sum the differences in the vote shares of the remaining parties. Toobtain the ‘true’ volatility score, it is necessary to divide not by 2 as with the Pedersen Index, butby the sum of the fractional shares of the total vote at each election of the parties which areincluded in the calculations.7 More formally, volatility is defined as:

∑ |ci,t+1 – ci,t|V =

∑ ci,t+1 + ∑ ci,t

where V is volatility, ci,t is the vote share of continuous party i at the first election (t) and ci,t+1 isthe vote share of continuous party i at the second election (t + 1).

If volatility thus defined is a measure of changes in the electoral fortunes of existingplayers in the political game, party replacement can be understood as the degree of penetration ofnew players into the party system. It can be measured as the proportion of the electorate attractedto new political formations, or the sum of the vote shares won by electoral contenders at electiont + 1 that had not contested election t.

It is worth noting that though volatility and replacement both vary from 0 to 100, theyare not directly comparable, given that they are measured in different ways and from differentvote totals. In order to enhance the comparability of the two figures, it is useful to supplementthe volatility score as defined above with the conventional score using 2 as a denominator. This

7 Prior to summing, any votes won by independents are excluded from the total vote and partyvote shares are then recalculated on the basis of the revised denominator.

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second measure provides an approximation of the proportion of the total electorate that switchedvotes among existing parties (see Table 3 below).

These measures are straightforward in theory, but in practice it is necessary to decidewhat constitutes the ‘same’ electoral contender. The formation of entirely new parties presentsno problems, nor does the electoral extinction of an existing party. The problems arise whenparties split, merge, form or leave coalitions, and/or change their names from one election to thenext. As noted above, such changes have been very common in post-communist Europe, so itmakes sense to deal with this problem systematically rather than making ad hoc assumptionsabout the continuity of party identities. From the point of view of the research questionsaddressed in this paper, the crucial criterion is that of institutional continuity, which involvessuch factors as continuity of organisational resources from one election to the next as well asaspects of party identity, most importantly the degree to which voters are aware of the changes ofidentity that ‘their’ party has undergone and are willing to follow ‘their’ party under its newguise. Again this is something that we can not know for certain without detailed (and non-existent) individual-level data. But we can make some educated assumptions as to which partiesand coalitions satisfy criteria of institutional continuity and which do not. The details of thecriteria used to classify parties and other political groupings into continuous and non-continuousare laid out in Appendix 1, together with assumptions made about data from individual countries.

II Explaining Party System Change in Post-Communist Europe

The majority of Eastern European states have what Peter Mair describes as ‘open’ party systemsin which patterns of competition are not well established and parties do not have stable supportbases (Mair, 1997). A number of scholars have noted the high volatility levels in post-communistEurope in comparison with average rates in Western European countries (Cotta, 1996; Rose et al,1998:118-19; Olson, 1998; Mair, 1997; Lewis, 2000). In a survey of party system developmentin Western Europe between 1885 and 1985, Bartolini and Mair find that the average volatilityover this period was 9.1 (Bartolini and Mair, 1990:148). The highest scores were 32.1 inGermany between 1919 and 1920, followed by 31.1 in France 1902-6 (1990: Appendix 2). Inpost-communist Europe the average volatility in the decade following the communist collapsewas 18.3 – measured in terms of the total vote. Levels have been as high as 43.8, and there havebeen three cases of scores over 30 (Romania 1990-1992, Moldova 1994-1998, and Lithuania1996-2000). In only three cases has volatility as a proportion of the total vote been lower than theWestern European average – the Czech Republic 1990-1992 and 1996-1998, and Slovakia 1990-1992. There have also been extremely high levels of electoral replacement in some countries. InMoldova not one of the parties elected in 1994 was re-elected in 1998. And in Latvia the twolargest parties in 1995 between them polled only 3.35 per cent of the vote four years later (seeTables 3 and 4 below). These patterns indicate that party system change in post-communistEurope has more in common with patterns observed in other democratising regions such as LatinAmerica than they do with their Western neighbours.8

These high levels of instability can be explained by aspects of the post-communisttransition process. Firstly, the lack of a ‘usable’ pre-existing party systems in most countries inthe region has meant that politicians have had effectively to form party systems from scratch, at 8 In Latin America electoral volatility has reached levels similar to those found in Eastern Europe(Mainwaring and Scully, 1995:8). See also Coppedge, 1998:559; Roberts and Wibbels, 1999.

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the same time civil society has been severely under-developed and voter identification withparties has generally been low (Wyman et al, 1995:546; Miller et al, 1998:170). Secondly, rapidsocio-structural change has accompanied economic change, resulting in significant shifts in theobjective interests of large sections of the electorate over the course of the past decade.

Institutional choices can also be expected to affect levels of electoral instability, thoughthe precise relationship may be complex. There is a long debate as to whether the shape of theparty system ‘causes’ given electoral systems to be adopted or whether those electoral systemscause the party system to take the shape it does (see Cox, 1997 for an overview). Most wouldagree that there is an element of both in many cases, but it is worth noting that if a givenconfiguration of parties brings about a change in the electoral system, it is precisely becausethose parties anticipate the effects which electoral institutions will have on future developmentsin electoral system design. There is therefore no question that electoral systems do have effects –though they are not always those intended by their authors; the question is the degree to whichthe causal relationship is reciprocal (Cox, 1997; Moser, 2001; Birch, forthcoming).

When we examine the impact of electoral institutions on variations in votes won, we areconcerned with what Duverger termed the ‘psychological’ effect of electoral systems as opposedto the ‘mechanical’ variations induced by the aggregation of votes into seats under differentconversion formulae (Duverger, 1959). Electoral systems have implicit in them psychological orstrategic incentives both for voters and politicians which are linked to the likelihood of successof electoral options under different rules. If voters want to avoid ‘wasting’ their votes, they willopt for parties or coalitions that have a reasonable chance of winning seat. Office-seekingpoliticians, for their part, have an incentive to group together into electoral formations that havethe best chance of promoting them to positions of power. Duverger’s main thesis – which hasbeen validated empirically on numerous occasions since – was that a high threshold of successwould generate consolidation in the party system, as only relatively large parties would beelectorally viable. Majority or plurality systems in single-member constituencies generally entaila high threshold of success, because only the top contender in each constituency wins the oneand only seat. Likewise, high formal thresholds at constituency or, more commonly, nationallevel impose restrictions which should also decrease the vote share of small parties. We wouldexpect to see volatility dampened under such systems because voters will be wary of opting forelectoral alternatives that have little chance of winning and with fewer potential objects ofchoice, there ought to be less switching.9

There are also reasons for believing that electoral systems should influence volatilityindirectly due to the effect they have on party system size The number of parties that compete forelections has been found to be positively associated with electoral volatility (Pedersen, 1979;Crewe, 1985; Bartolini and Mair, 1990), and it is well known that the electoral system is one ofthe main determinants of the number of parties that compete in elections (e.g. Rae, 1971;Taagepera and Shugart, 1989; Cox, 1997). Fewer parties in the system mean fewer alternativesthat might appeal to voters at given points in the ideological spectrum, whereas a greater numberof parties means more parties that are proximal to voters in ideological space, so more optionsthat each individual voter might be attracted to (Pedersen, 1979; Crewe, 1985). We would thus 9 Bartolini and Mair (1990) find that the opposite has been true throughout large portions of thehistory of Western European party competition, a result they explain with reference to themagnification in vote switching which results from tactical voting under systems with smallconstituencies and high thresholds. But the differences they find are small enough andinconsistent enough over time to warrant caution in interpreting them.

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expect the electoral system to influence volatility indirectly via the number of parties itencourages to compete; restrictive systems with small constituencies or high formal thresholds asthe national level can be expected to discourage parties from competing and thereby reducevolatility.

We should also anticipate party volatility in response to changes in the electoral system,which will either open up new avenues of possible success or restrict the chances for victory; intheir study of Western European party systems, Bartolini and Mair (1990) find that electoralsystem change is one of the most powerful determinants of volatility, and there is little reason tobelieve that it should not have an equally great effect on the post-communist context.

It is also worth considering the role of presidentialism in affecting the outcome ofparliamentary elections. If parliamentary office is a lesser goal for politicians than the presidency– which it will surely be in any system with a directly-elected executive presidency – thenpopular politicians may use political parties primarily as vehicles to launch a bid for thepresidency. Previous work has found that two-round presidential electoral systems – which areuniversal among the presidential democracies of Central and Eastern Europe – have the effect offragmenting the party system by encouraging popular politicians to form separate politicalorganisations in their efforts to jockey for a place in the second round (Shugart and Carey, 1992;Jones, 1995). A final electorally-related factor which may be related to volatility is electoralparticipation, which Bartolini and Mair (1990) find to be positively associated with volatility inWestern Europe.

Previous research gives us less material with which to make predictions about whatinfluences party replacement. But we would also expect the electoral systems to have directeffects on replacement under conditions of high uncertainty such as obtain in post-communistcountries. Supporters of major parties (which will in most cases be in a majority) have anincentive to stick with parties whose seat-winning ability has been proven rather than gravitatingto new or small political organisations, and the number of ‘trustworthy’ parties will be smaller insystems with high electoral formal or natural thresholds. With high thresholds we wouldanticipate a more pronounced learning curve as parties come to appreciate their electoral strength(or lack thereof) and react accordingly by merging with other parties or dropping out of thegame. The electoral prize of the presidency may also provide an incentive for hopefuls to formnew parties to increase their chance of success in the presidential race. Finally, electoralparticipation may be of relevance: in as much as new parties succeed in mobilising previouslyinactive sectors of the electorate, we would expect to find an association between high turnoutand high levels of party replacement.

III Analysis

Twelve countries are included in the present study: the six Central European states of Bulgaria,the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, and the six former Soviet statesof Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine. The dataset on which the analysisis based comprises vote totals from elections to lower or only chambers of national parliaments.The transitional elections held in Poland in 1989 and in the Soviet republics in 1990 are notincluded as they were not fully competitive and/or not conducted on a clear multi-party basis.10

10 The dataset is also restricted to national-level results, which is a further reason for excludingthe 1990 Soviet republican elections. Though the Baltic states had by this time all made moves

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The 1990 and 1992 Czechoslovak elections to the Chamber of the People in the FederalAssembly are divided into Czech and Slovak components and treated as separate elections (amove justified by the fact that the two parts of the Federation had distinct party systems withvery little overlap in the identities of contenders). Finally, the Bulgarian Constituent Assemblyelections of 1990 are included, given that the resultant assembly functioned as a parliament.

Elections during the communist period were in most cases conducted in single-memberconstituencies according to an absolute majority rule. With the fall of communism, virtually allthe states in the region changed either to proportional representation or mixed systems with astrong PR element. Ukraine was the only case among the 12 states analysed here to retain thesingle-member majority system into the post-communist period, before finally shedding it infavour of a mixed system for the 1994 elections (see Table 1). Mixed systems in the region aremostly of the parallel sort (as in Japan) rather than the compensatory type (as in Germany). Theexception is the complex Hungarian system which is partially compensatory. Another relevantfeature of electoral system design is the formal threshold of exclusion found in most PR systems.Thresholds tend to be relatively high in post-communist Europe; the average national thresholdfor single parties is 4.33 in this dataset of 39 PR elections. This most likely reflects a perceivedneed to consolidate the large party systems around a core of political groups (Birch, 2001).

In theory it would be desirable to combine threshold and constituency size into aconsolidated measure of the ‘effective threshold’ (Taagepera and Shugart, 1989; Lijphart, 1994;Taagepera, 1998) rather than two separate variables for the formal threshold and the ‘natural’threshold induced by small constituency size. Unfortunately the latter is too difficult to estimatein the Eastern European context because the large numbers of candidates that contest elections.This, combined with regional limitation in the electoral reach of many parties means thatelections in single-member constituencies can be won on miniscule percentages of the nationalvote. For example, the Common Cause movement in Russia won a seat in 1995 on the basis ofonly 0.24 per cent of the national vote, and this was not an isolated case; nine of the 21 partiesthat won single-member seats in this election won them on less than one per cent of the vote.Even when there is a formal threshold at the constituency level – as in absolute majorityelections - the lack of results from all constituencies in second-round races (due to first-roundswins) makes it necessary to base the statistical analysis on first-round vote data to which thethreshold does not apply. Under these circumstances is makes sense to consider constituencyformat and formal thresholds as separate variables (though, as we will see, they have similareffects).

- Table 1 about here -

By mid-2001 almost all the countries in the dataset had held at least three elections andthe only laggard, Ukraine, is due to hold its third post-Soviet parliamentary election in March2002. Three countries – the Czech republic, Romania, and Slovakia – have held four elections,and Bulgaria five. The first elections in the Central European countries were all held in 1990with the exception of Poland, and they were in most cases dominated by anti-communist frontparties or movements. The elections themselves were used as a means of validating the rejectionof communism. In the former Soviet countries, by contrast, first elections were held somewhat toward reasserting their sovereignty, they were still effectively under Soviet occupation at thetime of these elections.

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later after independence and the concomitant dismantling of the communist system had beenachieved by other means. This meant that popular front organisations were generally lessprominent in the first electoral events. But regardless of their role in the trajectories of transition,these ‘founding’ elections gave most parties their first clear indication of the extent of thepopular support they could command. The lessons learned from these inaugural polls were thenused to craft new party strategies.

The first feature of post-communist electoral competition that even the most casualobserver will note is the large number of options available to voters. An average of 28.2 partiesor coalitions have contested the 40 elections from 12 countries included in this dataset (see Table2). This translates into a total of 454 partisan contenders in the first post-transition elections and472 such organisations in the second elections. By comparison, it has been estimated that 200parties contested elections in 13 Western European countries in the period between 1945 and1977 (Pedersen, 1979:5). In other words, more than twice as many political organisations viedfor votes in Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of the Cold War as in three decades ofWestern European electoral competition during the immediate post-Second World War period.Of interest is how this large number of parties is related to inter-electoral change.


We would expect change in the size of the party system to be high between the first andthe second elections as anti-communist front organisations split and the resultant splinters testedthe electoral waters. We would also expect it to be high between the second and the thirdelections as the reality of the constraints of electoral system began to be felt and consolidationtook place. This much is clear from the data presented in Table 2 on the absolute number ofparties that contested the first three post-communist elections. In most cases there is a risebetween the first and second elections followed by a decline in contenders between the secondand third electoral events. The most noteworthy exception to this general pattern is Poland whereSolidarity had already fragmented following the transitional elections of 1989 and a remarkable111 parties and political groupings contested the 1991 elections.11 It is also of interest to note thedifference in party activity between the Central European and former Soviet states; there have,on average, been half again as many electoral contestants in the former as in the latter. In somecases this is accounted for by country-specific anomalies. The case of the Polish 1991 electionshas already been noted, and the consistently high figures in Romania can be explained withreference to the financial and political incentives for party formation embedded in the legalframework, especially as regards ethnic minority parties.12 But the Bulgarian and Hungarianfigures are also above the FSU mean, as is the mean for Poland even when the 1991 elections areexcluded. This is not the place to examine the determinants of the number of parties that enter anelectoral contest, as this would require separate treatment, but the difference between the twosub-regions may have to do with the fact that personalities loom large and parties have are in 11 Latvia and Estonia also witnessed declines in the number of contenders between the first andthe second election most likely also because the transitional election of 1990 had provided aninitial testing ground. In Bulgaria the expansion of the party system did not take place until 1994,after the new institutional arrangements had been put in place.12 In Romania there are reserved seats for minorities and a far lower formal threshold, whichgenerates a proliferation of minority parties (and arguably a proliferation of self-identified ethnicminorities).

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general been less accepted and respected in many of the former Soviet countries than they are inCentral Europe (Wyman et al, 1995; Rose and Haerpfer, 1996).13


Turning now to volatility, this measure also exhibits a decline over time (though thepaucity of data on fourth and subsequent elections makes generalisation difficult beyond the firsttwo data points). Yet the geographic distribution is the reverse of that for the number of parties.Not only was volatility significantly higher in the FSU states but it has also declined less overtime in these countries than it has in Central Europe (see Table 3). We find that, as predicted,variations in the level of support among continuous partisan contenders is in almost all caseslower in the single-member components of mixed systems than in their PR counterparts. Russia1995-1999 is the only exception (though it is worth noting that the volatility between theUkrainian single-member elections of 1994 and the single-member component of the mixedsystem used in 1998 is considerably lower than the FSU average, despite the change of system).This provides some evidence to support the theory that PR should increase volatility more thanelections in single-member constituencies, though one must be cautious of makinggeneralisations on the basis of the two parts of a mixed system, as there are well-knowinteraction effects between voting patterns (Moser, 1997; Montgomery, 1999; Birch, 2000;Shugart and Wattenberg, 2000). Unfortunately there are no instances of volatility in a pure SMsystem in this dataset that would make it possible to isolate the specific influences of mixedsystems on party system change in single-member constituencies.

The relationship between volatility and formal thresholds is less clear from the datapresented in Table 3; the highest volatility measure - that for the 1990 and 1992 Romanianelections – is associated with the lowest average threshold (1.5, as there was no threshold in thefirst election and a threshold of three per cent two years later), but overall there is no statisticallysignificant bivariate correlation between the two variables. Nor is there a significant associationbetween volatility and the change of threshold between two elections.

Data for the replacement index are presented in Table 4. The popularity of new partieshas exhibited a decline in tandem with both the number of parties in general and the volatility ofsupport for existing parties. We would expect party replacement to be linked to volatility, asmore votes for new political formations will in most cases translate into fewer votes for thosepartisan contenders that are continuous from one election to the next. Indeed there is acorrelation of .476 (significant at .005) between the volatility and replacement scores (though nosignificant association between the replacement score and the average number of parties thatcontested the two elections).

As with volatility, we find that party replacement is considerably (and significantly)higher in the former Soviet Union than it is in Central Europe. New parties and groupings informer Soviet republics have attracted nearly half the vote on average during the post-1991period, and the proportion of the vote they have won has declined only moderately over time.This pattern may be self-reinforcing as political entrepreneurs recognise the potential gains to behad in the electoral market by founding a new party and therefore leave existing parties in largeenough numbers that voters have fewer familiar options to choose from and are more likely tovote for something new. This high level of replacement undoubtedly reflects the generally high 13 The institutional factors that affect entry are in all likelihood those associated with nominationprocedures and campaign finance regulation (see Cox, 1997; Lewis, 1998).

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availability of post-Soviet electorates. But it can also be taken as an indication of the extent towhich politics in the former Soviet states revolves around individual politicians rather thanaround instituitonalised parties.

- Table 4 about here –

The relationship between electoral institutions and party replacement is less clear. Withinmixed systems, there were higher levels of party replacement in Hungary in the single-memberconstituency voting than in the PR component. In Lithuania and Russia the situation was mixed;in Lithuania replacement was higher on the PR ballot at the first time point and higher on the SMballot at the second, whereas in Russia the reverse was true. This, combined with the lack of anysignificant correlation between the replacement index and the formal threshold, makes it difficultto generalise as to the effects of electoral system variables on party replacement.

Interestingly, there was little evidence that high levels of instability at election t waslinked with high levels of instability at election t + 1. Although there is clear continuity in somecountries, overall there are no significant correlations between levels of electoral instability atsuccessive elections. Country-specific dimensions of change were evidently of less importance inthe early post-transition phase than factors linked to the transition itself. Over time me may wellbegin to see country-level factors become more prominent, but the limited data on fourth andfifth elections provide scant material on which to base generalisations. Rather it makes sense toanalyse the relevant impact on party system change of the variables already examined. Table 5presents the results of OLS regressions used to model both volatility and replacement.

-- Table 5 about here --

The single-member and PR components of mixed systems are entered separately in theseequations to test for electoral system effects, and as suggested by the preceding discussion, boththe electoral system type (single-member or PR) and the level of the formal threshold hadsignificant negative influences on volatility. Once these factors are controlled for, the number ofpartisan contenders had a positive effect, but of lesser magnitude. This latter finding is at oddswith the experience in Western democracies where, as noted above, a large number of parties islinked with greater volatility. This suggests that the effect of the number of parties on volatilitymay be curvilinear; when there is a relatively compact party system, the addition of new partiesincreases volatility, whereas when there is a very large number of parties, voters may be sodisoriented with the range of choices on offer and it may be so costly to acquire information onall the parties that they may tend to stick with what they know.14

Two slightly different models of volatility are presented in Table 5. The first model(Volatility I) includes two dummy variables: one for the institution of the directly-electedexecutive president and the other for having been part of the Soviet Union. Neither variablereaches statistical significance, although the president variable falls just short, being significantat .055. When the regional dummy is excluded from the equation, as is done in the second model 14 Another possible explanation is that the model of ideological space which subtends thehypothesis that party N will be associated with volatility is not as relevant in the post-communistcontext where the ideological position of many parties may be poorly defined (at least in the eyesof the electorate), and where factors such as party leader popularity and clientelism may play amore important role than ideological proximity.

12

(Volatility II), the presence of a directly-elected executive president has, as expected, a modestpositive impact on electoral volatility. Also of interest are the variables that are not significant(and were therefore excluded from the final models presented here in the interests of parsimonyand conservation of degrees of freedom). These include major changes in the party system (seeTables 3 and 4 for details) as well as changes in the level of the electoral threshold; a dummy formixed electoral systems was also not found to be associated with volatility. Two additionalvariables that were tested but failed to reach significance in the volatility model were partyreplacement and average turnout.15

The model for party replacement, presented in the final column of Table 5, indicates thatentirely different factors are involved in support for new parties from those factors linked withvolatility. Contrary to expectations, none of the institutional variables was significantlyassociated with replacement, nor was the number of partisan contenders. By contrast, averageturnout and location in the former Soviet Union had moderate positive effects. This accords withour predictions and what we know about electoral participation generally; the solid core of theelectorate that turns out to vote faithfully at every election also tends to be most loyal to theirchosen parties, so it stands to reason that more extensive participation should be linked to agreater propensity to defect from existing political groups.16

Higher levels of party replacement in the former Soviet states may well reflect the factthat the Soviet Union was more patrimonial than most of its Central European satellites. Apatrimonial legacy can be expected to translate into personalistic relations between voters andpoliticians during the post-communist period (Kitschelt, 1995). In many post-Soviet statespersonalism undermines the institutional continuity of parties, because support comes to bebased on allegiance to or admiration for an individual rather than with the party as arepresentative of specific interests or a given ideology. Under these conditions individual leadershave the power to bring their supporters with them if they defect to a different party or opt toform their own political association. Thus any leader who becomes popular – or perceives thats/he is popular - has an incentive to ‘trade up’ so as to be part of a more powerful political groupor to have a larger role in the group of which s/he is part. In a comparative study of the threeBaltic states, Pettai and Kreuzer (2001) find that candidate replacement – the proportion ofcandidates on party lists at election t + 1 who were not candidates at election t – averaged aboutthree quarters of the total corpus. This puts instability of electoral results in context. Averagerates of electoral-level party replacement hovering around the fifty per cent mark may seem high,but the voters in this case are actually more constant than the political organisations they arevoting for. As the most important measures of party strength, elections are engines of both partysystem consolidation and division. On the one hand they encourage existing parties to cometogether so as to make a concerted appeal to as large a sector of the public as possible; on theother hand they also promote the emergence of new contenders on the basis of perceived changesof popularity since the previous election.

15 Variables were also introduced for the length of time between elections (defined both in termsof numbers of months and the natural logarithm of the number of months) as well as for theproportion of votes won by independents. In no case was any of these variables significant.16 The remainder of the variables which failed to reach statistical significance in the model forvolatility also failed to do so in the model for replacement.

13

IV Conclusion

Party system instability in post-communist Europe appears to be the effect of a combination ofinfluences, including institutional design, specific features of sub-regions within the post-communist area, and factors such as electoral participation and the number of contenders. All inall, the diversity of influences on inter-electoral volatility and party replacement in post-communist Europe confirm the desirability of separating these two aspects of party systeminstability. Separating the two variables also yields some interesting findings that challengeprevious generalisations about variations in party system development across the region. Oncewe control for institutional variables, we find that the former Soviet countries have levels ofvolatility that are not significantly higher than those found in Central Europe. The distinctivenessof the FSU lies rather in the success rates of new parties there. Also of note is that fact that partyproliferation per se is not a cause of volatility; on the contrary, multivariate analysis shows thereto be a negative association between the two variables.

It must be emphasised that this paper represents only the beginning of an attempt toassess the factors that impinge on party system stability and change in post-communist Europe.The analysis presented here has mainly been concerned with how electoral system design affectsthe stability of party systems. Further research is needed to investigate the relationship betweenchanges in voters’ political views and changes in the party system. The concept of ‘blockvolatility’ (Bartolini and Mair, 1990) may well make it possible to disentangle changes in partyinstitutions from changes in the ideological proclivities of the electorate. Such an undertakingrepresents the logical next step in the analysis initiated here. Preliminary evidence from a limitednumber of countries suggests considerable variability among them between the relativeimportance of total volatility and bock volatility (Kitschelt et al, 1999:400-1; Markowski, 2001);such analyses could fruitfully be expanded to incorporate the wider range of countries examinedhere. Further work is also needed to determine the role of such factors as entry criteria andcampaign finance regulations in affecting the number of contenders, as well as possible directeffects of these factors on party replacement and volatility.

However preliminary these findings, they do accord with studies of party systemvolatility in other parts of the democratising world, notably Latin America, where Roberts andWibbels (1999) found that institutional factors play by far the largest role in determining levelsof volatility. When more comparative analysis is done on party systems elsewhere, we may welldiscover that Western European party system stability is the exception rather than the rule.Unlike in Western Europe where parties are known for their ability to adapt to change and absorbsuccessive generations of voters (Bartolini and Mair 1990; Donovan and Broughton, 2001), mostparty systems in post-communist Europe are ‘uncoupled’ (Lawson, 1999) or ‘floating’ (Rose etal, 2001). They respond more to élite-level changes in configurations of alliances than to shifts inthe electoral ‘base’, and in many states individual politicians rather than political partiesconstitute the basic building blocks of politics. Yet this does not necessarily imply that politicalcompetition in post-Communist Europe lacks the systematicity we generally ascribe to Westernparty configurations; it simply suggests that such systematicity does not reside where we mostoften look for it – in stable patterns of electoral competition between institutionalised politicalorganisations. The challenge for students of post-communist politics is to discover just how thesesystems do work and where their regularities lie.

14

Table 1: Institutional Characteristics of 12 Central and Eastern European States

Country Electoral System Type National Threshold (forsingle parties)

Bulgaria Mixed (1990), PR 4%Czech Republic PR 5%Estonia PR 5%Hungary Mixed (semi-

compensatory)4% (1990), 5%

Latvia PR 4%Lithuania Mixed (parallel) 4% (1992), 5%Moldova PR 4% (1994 & ’98), 6%Poland PR 0 (1991), 5%Romania PR 0% (1990), 3% (1992 &

’96), 5%Russia Mixed (parallel) 5%Slovakia PR 5%Ukraine Mixed (parallel) 4%

Sources: See Appendix 2.

15

Table 2: The Number of Partisan Contenders

Central Europe Former Soviet UnionCountry and Election

YearNumber of

PartisanContenders

Country and ElectionYear

Number ofPartisan

ContendersBulgaria - PR 1990 ~38 Estonia 1992 17Bulgaria 1991 38 Estonia 1995 16Bulgaria 1994 48 Estonia 1999 12Bulgaria 1997 39 Estonian mean 15.00Bulgaria 2001 14+ Latvia 1993 23Bulgarian mean 35.4+ Latvia 1995 19Czech Republic 1990 16 Latvia 1998 21Czech Republic 1992 21 Latvian mean 21.00Czech Republic 1996 20 Lithuania - PR 1992 17Czech Republic 1998 18 Lithuania - SM 1992 26Czech mean 18.75 Lithuania - PR 1996 24Hungary - PR 1990 19 Lithuania - SM 1996 28Hungary - SM 1990 28 Lithuania - PR 2000 15Hungary - PR 1994 19 Lithuania - SM 2000 28Hungary - SM 1994 35 Lithuanian mean 23.00Hungary - PR 1998 15 Moldova 1994 13Hungary - SM 1998 26 Moldova 1998 15Hungarian mean 23.67 Moldova 2001 17Poland 1991 111 Moldovan mean 15.00Poland 1993 35 Russia – PR 1993 13Poland 1997 21 Russia – SM 1993 13Polish mean 55.67 Russia – PR 1995 43Romania 1990 71 Russia – SM 1995 43Romania 1992 79 Russia – PR 1999 26Romania 1996 64 Russia – SM 1999 27Romania 2000 68 Russian mean 27.50Romanian mean 70.50 Ukraine – SM 1994 32Slovakia 1990 17 Ukraine - PR 1998 30Slovakia 1992 22 Ukraine - SM 1998 35Slovakia 1994 17 Ukrainian mean 32.33Slovakia 1998 17Slovak mean 18.25

Mean of CE states 34.00 Mean of FSU states 22.31

Sources: Appendix 2.

16

Table 3: Volatility Scores

Country First-SecondElection

Second-ThirdElection

Third-FourthElection

Fourth-FifthElection

Central EuropeBulgaria - PR 10.94 (9.68 )∆ 20.92 (9.95) 25.10 (21.98) 33.07 (21.63)Czech Republic 19.56 (6.91) 19.11 (16.11) 8.56 (7.62)Hungary – PR

ballot24.98 (23.87) 30.69 (29.39)

Hungary – SMballot*

26.79 (25.10) 23.43 (22.30)

Poland 24.26 (17.86) ∆ 13.21 (12.26)Romania 56.52 (43.83) 16.34 (13.99) 30.88 (16.59)Slovakia 16.17 (8.55) 14.21 (12.77) 17.13 (9.42)Mean CE** 25.56 (18.55) 18.48 (15.16) [20.42 (13.90)]

FSUEstonia 23.14 (13.20) 23.74 (12.08)Latvia 41.71 (25.67) 48.58 (22.99)Lithuania – PR

ballot41.49 (20.36) 42.72 (36.74)

Lithuania – SMballot

36.14 (24.35) 35.77 (28.16) ∆

Moldova 78.17 (32.06) 33.98 (22.45)Russia – PR

ballot35.86 (24.51) 24.00 (12.77)

Russia – SMballot

30.22 (19.45) 30.79 (16.57)

Ukraine - SM 19.71 (16.83) ∆

Mean FSU** 39.10 (22.02) 34.59 (20.9`3)

Mean** 32.33 (20.29) 25.80 (17.78) [20.42 (13.00)]

NB: Figures in brackets represent volatility as a proportion of the total vote. A ∆ indicates thatthere was a major change of electoral system between the two elections included in thecalculations; see Appendix 1 for an overview of these changes and for further notes oncalculations.

* Joint FIDESZ-MPP + MDF candidates are counted together with FIDESZ-MPP, whereas jointMDF + FIDESZ-MPP candidates are counted together with the MDF.** Figures for mixed systems are averaged so that each state is counted once.


17

Table 4: Party Replacement Scores

Country First-SecondElection

Second-ThirdElection

Third-FourthElection

Fourth-FifthElection

Central EuropeBulgaria - PR 58.09∆ 55.63 12.34 56.22Czech Republic 61.44 8.07 11.13Hungary – PR

ballot5.64 2.22

Hungary – SMballot*

7.90 4.95

Poland 26.11∆ 10.88Romania 41.77 14.69 32.89Slovakia 52.00 22.77 50.70Mean CE** 41.03 19.27 [26.77]

FSUEstonia 44.38 40.97Latvia 48.77 63.44Lithuania – PR

ballot61.27 22.80

Lithuania – SMballot

44.48 32.81∆

Moldova 91.55 36.45Russia – PR

ballot45.63 57.66

Russia – SMballot

45.72 45.23

Ukraine - SM 25.70∆

Mean FSU** 51.49 44.02

Mean** 46.26 31.65 [26.77]

NB: A ∆ indicates that there was a major change of electoral system between the two electionsincluded in the calculations; see Appendix 1 for an overview of these changes and for furthernotes on calculations.

* Joint FIDESZ-MPP + MDF candidates are counted together with FIDESZ-MPP, whereas jointMDF + FIDESZ-MPP candidates are counted together with the MDF.** Figures for mixed systems are averaged so that each state is counted once.


18

Table 5: OLS Regression Models

Variable Volatility I Volatility II Replacement

Electoral System(dummy forsingle-membersystem)

-2.732*** -2.903***

Threshold -2.815*** -3.037***Number of partisan

contenders-.994*** -1.249***

Directly-electedexecutivepresident

.345 .541***

Location in the FSU .290 .681***Turnout .448**

N = 32Adjusted R2 .599 .573 .414

NB: Coefficients are standardised betas.

* = p < .05; ** = p < .01; *** = p < .001

19

Appendix 1: Notes on Methods and Assumptions used in Calculations

System changes: Bulgaria switched from a mixed to a fully PR system after the 1990 ConstituentAssembly elections; Ukraine switched from a single-member to a mixed system between 1994and 1998. Prior to the 2000 elections Lithuania switched from absolute to relative majority forelections to the single-member seats of its mixed system; Poland introduced a threshold of xxxfollowing the 1991 elections. Calculations of indeces of party system change are based on themost comparable figures; thus the PR component of the Bulgarian 1990 mixed system is used tocalculate volatility figures for the 1990-1991 elections (given that a fully PR system was used in1991), whereas the single-member component of the Ukrainian 1998 mixed system is used incalculating volatility between the 1994 and 1998 election (given that a fully single-membersystem was employed in 1994).

In absolute majority systems in two rounds (the single-member races in Hungary and Lithuania1992 and 1996, as well as the Ukrainian election of 1994), results from the first round areemployed in calculating volatility, given that the first round is the only one in which all seatswere contested.

Independent candidates were discarded from the vote totals and percentages were recalculatedon the basis of the remaining votes.

Decision rules used to determine the continuity of parties between elections:

Coalition partners will be considered to have retained their identity, meaning that the parties thatmake up the coalition will be considered to have contested two consecutive elections, if theycontested the first election as separate parties and the second election as a coalition, or viceversa. In this case the votes of the relevant parties will be added together in both elections.

In the case of mergers: Mergers that result in a party which contains the original names(substantially unchanged, in the sense that they are still identifiable) of the parties which mergedwill be treated like a coalition, as continuity of identity is indicated by this name. Mergers thatinvolve party A absorbing party B, such that the resulting political organisation retains the nameof party A and party B’s name is lost entirely, will be treated as the extinction of party B (andparty A will be considered to have maintained continuity of identity). Mergers that result in thecreation of a new party with a new name substantially different from that of either of itscomponent parts will be considered to be a new party, and the parties that merged to form it willbe considered extinct.

In the case of splits: If the resultant parties both (all) acquire new names following the split, theywill be considered new parties and the party which spawned them will be treated as extinct. If, asis most commonly the case, a splinter group breaks away from an existing party and forms a newparty, the new party will be treated as such, and the remaining rump party will normally betreated as being continuous with the party as it was before the split. If a party splits and bothfactions claim ownership of the original name, then the decision of the judicial and/or other body

20

which adjudicates in the dispute will be observed, and the party which loses the right to theoriginal name will be considered a new party.17

If a party is grouped with different coalition partners from one election to the next, continuity isnot assumed, as such shifting coalitions indicate lack of consistent identifiability.

In the case of name changes: Parties that change their name without experiencing either a split ora merger will be considered to have maintained continuity.

In some cases individual parties will have experienced a number of the above identity changes,either simultaneously or over time. Where possible, the above rules will be applied toconsecutive changes. When there is possible ambiguity as to how the schema has been applied inpractice, this will be indicated in the form of notes.

No attempt is made to make a clear distinction between parties, coalitions, and other types ofelectoral contender (with the exception of independents which are excluded, as indicated in note7 above).

Notes on individual countries: cases which cannot be determined unambiguously according tothe above rules and exceptions

Bulgaria:

Between 1990 and 1997 there were three main forces in Bulgarian electoral politics: theBulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the Union of Democratic Forces (SDS) and the Movement forRights and Freedoms (DPS). In 1997 each of these parties formed a coalition with other smallerparties that had previously part of different coalitions. Nevertheless, the continuity of the threemain parties will be assumed.

The Czech Republic:

The Left Bloc of 1992 is assumed to be continuous with the Communist Party of Bohemia andMoravia (KSCM) in 1996 (not the Left Bloc party).

Estonia:

The Left Alternative in 1992 is considered to be continuous with the Justice Alliance in 1995.

17 It may at first seem inconsistent that continuity is attributed to parties that merge but not tothose that split. But upon reflection, this is reasonable, If a party splits there is bound to be lesscontinuity of organisational resources as the resultant splinter organisations will mostly have toestablish new branches, publications, etc, whereas mergers allow for the consolidation ofexisting resources. Moreover, party supporters will find it easier to follow their party if it mergeswith another one than they will if it splits, in which case they will have to decide which group itsupports.

21

Secure Home in 1992 is considered to be continuous with the Coalition Party-Rural Union(KMU) in 1995.

The Popular Front in 1992 is considered to be continuous with the Estonian Centre Party + theEstonian Entrepreneurs’ Party (EEE) in 1995

Our Home is Estonia (MKE) in 1995 is considered to be continuous with the Russian Party inEstonia (VEE) in 1999.

Hungary:

The Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP) in 1990 is considered to be continuous withthe Hungarian Workers’ Party (MP) in 1994.

Latvia:

The United List of the Latvian Farmer’s Union (LZS), Latvian Christian Democratic Union(LKDS), and Latgale Democratic Party in 1995 is considered to be continuous with the LatvianFarmer’s Union (LZS) + the Latvian Christian Democratic Union (LKDS) in 1993.

The coalition of the Latvian National Conservative Party and the Latvian Green Party in 1995 isconsidered to be continuous with the Latvian National Independence Movement (LNNK) + theGreen List (ZS) of 1993

Moldova:

The Alliance of Democratic Forces Electoral Bloc (AFD) in 1998 is considered to be continuouswith the National Liberal Party (PNL) in 2001.

The Electoral Bloc for a Democratic and Prosperous Moldova (PMDP) in 1998 is considered tobe continuous with the Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) in 2001.

Poland:

Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) in 1997 is considered to be continuous with Solidarity +Fatherland + the Coalition for the Republic + the Non-Party Reform Bloc + the Confederationfor an Independent Poland + the Centre Alliance + the Peasant Alliance

The Union of Political Realism (UPR) in 1993 is considered to be continuous with the Union ofthe Right of the Republic in 1997.

Slovakia:

22

The Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) in 1992 is considered to be continuous withthe Movement for a Democratic Slovakia and Peasants’ Party of Slovakia (HZDS + RSS) in1994

The Common Choice block in 1994 is considered to be a coalition of the SDL, the SDSS and theSZS

The DS in 1994 is considered to be continuous with the DS + the ODU

Romania:

The Democratic National Salvation Front (FDSN) is considered to be continuous with theRomanian Party of Social Democracy (PDRS) in 1996.

Russia:

Russia’s Choice (VR) in 1993 is considered to be continuous with Russia’s Democratic Choice –United Democrats (DVR-OD) in 1995.

The Congress of Russian Communities (KRO) in 1995 is considered to be continuous with theCongress of Russian Communities (KOR) + Movement of Yuri Boldyrev in 1999

The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) in 1995 is considered to be continuous with theZhirinovski Block in 1999.

Ukraine:

The Ukrainian Christian Democratic Party (UkhDP) in 1994 is considered to be continuous withthe Forward Ukraine! block in 1998

23

Appendix 2: Data Sources

Data on electoral results and electoral system design are taken from the Database on Central andEastern European Elections: Results and Legislation at www.essex.ac.uk/elections.

Data on parties are taken from the following sources:

Szajkowski, Bogdan, Political Parties of Eastern Europe, Russia and the Successor States,Harlow: Longman, 1994.

Alan Day, Richard German and John Campbell (eds)., Political Parties of the World, London:Cartermill, 1996.

Richard Rose, Neil Munro and Tom Mackie, Elections in Central and Eastern Europe Since1990, Strathclyde: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, 1998.

‘Notes on Recent Elections’ section of Electoral Studies, various issues.

These general sources were in some cases supplemented by sources listed in the bibliographyand for individual countries by the following:

Estonia:

Vello Pettai and Marcus Kreuzer, ‘Party Politics in the Baltic States: Social Bases andInstitutional Context’, East European Politics and Societies 13.1 (1999) 148-89.

Latvia:


Lithuania:


Poland:

Frances Millard, Polish Politics and Society, New York and London: Routledge, 1999.

Russia:

Yu. K. Abramov and T. Yu. Golovin (eds.), Politicheskie partii I dvizhennya Rossii 1998:yezhogodnik, Moscow: Press Ltd., 1998.

24

O. K. Zastrozhnoi (ed.), Obshcherossiiskie izbiratel’nye ob”edineniya: nakanune vyborovdeputatov Gosudarstvennoi Dumy Federal’novo Sobraniya Rossiiskoi Federatsii tret’evo sozyva:spravochnik, Moscow: Ves’ Mir, 1999.

Grigorii V. Golosov, ‘Political Parties in the 1993-1996 Elections’ in Vladimir Gel’man andGrigorii V. Golosov (eds.), Elections in Russia, 1993-1996: Analyses, Documents and Data,Berlin: Sigma, 1999.

Ukraine:

Politychni partiï Ukraïny, Kiev: KIS, 1998.

25

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