Kevin Deegan-Krause

The 2010 Czech and Slovak Parliamentary Elections: Red Cards to the 'Winners'

2010 elections produced a significant change in government, and highlighted elements of stability and instability in party politics. Parties that had been permanent fixtures on the political scene for two decades fell below the threshold while newly emerged parties not only entered parliament, but went straight into government. The elections ushered in new governing coalitions of the centre-right, but in each case it was a left-leaning party that won the largest share of votes in their respective countries, ensuring that the ‘winners’ of the elections emerged as ‘losers’. Yet, although there were similarities in the elections, there were also notable differences. While in Slovakia the election was in some senses a referendum on the government in power, the existence of a caretaker, technocratic government in the Czech Republic meant no party was the incumbent. Commentators were quick to label the results ‘earthquakes’, particularly in the Czech Republic where four resignations by party leaders on election night certainly made the elections feel dramatic, although a closer look indicates that whilst the political tectonic plates moved, the tremors were on a par with the norm for postcommunist Europe.

Hurricane Season Systems of Instability in Central and East European Party Politics

The seemingly random triumph and demise of new political parties in Central and Eastern Europe actually represent a durable subsystem with relevance for party systems around the world. This article supplements existing research on volatility with new measures of party age distribution that reveal clear patterns of disruption, turnover and restabilization. These patterns emerge from stable and coherent party subsystems that follow a simple model based on three dynamics: losses by established parties, rapid gains by uncorrupted newcomers, and equally rapid newcomer losses to even newer parties. Confirmed both by electoral evidence and computer simulations, this model offers insight into the endurance of these subsystems, particularly since the very mechanisms that generate new parties’ success can preclude their ability to survive in subsequent elections. Central and Eastern European party systems offer a laboratory for understanding trends in party system volatility that are emerging in Western Europe and across the globe.

Uniting the Enemy: Politics and the Convergence of Nationalisms in Slovakia

Although aggregate popular support for particular nationalisms in Slovakia showed little change during the 1990s, relationships between nationalisms changed significantly. This article uses categories of nationalism derived from the relational typologies of Brubaker and Hechter to analyze surveys of postcommunist Slovak public opinion and demonstrate that popular nationalisms against Czechs, Hungarians, the West, and nonnationalist Slovaks bore little relationship to one another at the time of Slovakia’s independence but converged over time. With the encouragement of nationalist political elites, a large share of the Slovak population became convinced that Slovakia faced threats from all sides and that the country’s enemies were actually working together to undermine its sovereignty. The example of Slovakia thus provides an important case study for understanding how the complex and interactions between distinct nationalisms creates opportunities for the influence of political leadership.

Political data in 2013

Although countries had succeeded by 2013 in putting economic crisis behind them, others continued to struggle with austerity, high unemployment and cumbersome debt. While the economy remained a dominant theme of the year, it was certainly not the only one. Some countries turned their attention to cultural issues such as gay marriage and women’s rights, while others tried to tackle the endemic problem of corruption. There was a new round of scandals, and a growing indication of widespread disillusionment with politics. In several countries, voters rejected seasoned politicians in favour of nonpartisan experts, and in some countries, frustration with politics spilled over into violence. On the international scene, the credibility of the Eurozone remained weakened by a series of bail-outs, the crisis in Syria created domestic tensions concerning refugees, and the documents leaked by Edward Snowden about the United States National Security Agency turned into an international diplomatic row.

Limits of regulation: party law and finance in Slovakia 1990–2012

This article, a detailed analysis of the content of the legislation on political parties in postcommunist Slovakia, constitutes one part of a broad-based attempt to discover the extent to which changes in the patterns of party regulation have affected party system formation and development. In Slovakia the answer is “not much”, but the process by which this answer emerges can help explain broader patterns. Party organisational and finance regulation in Slovakia made its impact felt only in relatively minor ways at the margins of political conflict, but the rules proved in some contexts to be more than simply party-created reifications of existing practice.

Surviving the Storm: Factors Determining Party Survival in Central and Eastern Europe

This article is part of the special cluster titled Parties and Democratic Linkage in Post-Communist Europe, guest edited by Lori Thorlakson, and will be published in the August 2018 issue of EEPS Political parties in Central and Eastern Europe come and go quite rapidly, giving the region a reputation for electoral chaos, but amid the change, some parties survive for many electoral cycles. A brief examination of the party systems in the region shows a high rate of party collapse but also indicates the robustness of certain parties in the face of crisis. Closer comparisons of the collapsed and surviving parties indicates a significant role for three factors: organization on the ground, a clear position on an enduring issue dimension, and ability to change party leadership. The finding is particularly important for explaining the dynamics of Central and East European party systems because the same characteristics that contribute to longevity are found in lower levels among new parties in the region. Only a small subset of new parties have made choices that would contribute to long-term survival, and such cases are largely confined to those with strong ties to previous long-surviving parties.