Maria Spirova

‘Jobs for the Boys’? Patterns of Party Patronage in Post-Communist Europe

This article examines the patterns of party patronage in post-communist Europe and provides an explanation for the varying practices observed by stressing the institutional legacies of the past. Drawing on the distinction between different types of communist regimes, it formulates three hypotheses concerning the extent, underlying motivations and intra-party control of patronage which guide the empirical analysis. It then clarifies the key concepts and discusses the methodology and data used in the article. Further, the three hypotheses are probed with data collected in a large expert survey in Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In accordance with the hypotheses, these three countries are found to differ in the pervasiveness of patronage within the state institutions, in the reasons why party politicians engage in patronage practices and, to a lesser degree, in the intra-party mechanisms of controlling and distributing patronage. It is argued that this variation can be, at least partially, attributed to the nature of the communist regimes in the countries under study.

Political Parties in Bulgaria Organizational Trends in Comparative Perspective

Trends in the organizational development of Bulgarian political parties are discussed in this article. Original data are presented on several indicators of party organization and compared to data on East-Central European parties reported elsewhere. An explanation for the somewhat higher level of organizational development of Bulgarian parties is given and the article concludes with an examination of the impact stronger organization has had on the Bulgarian parties and party system.

Party patronage in contemporary democracies: results from an expert survey in 22 countries from five regions

This Research Note presents a new dataset of party patronage in 22 countries from five regions. The data was collected using the same methodology to compare patterns of patronage within countries, across countries and across world regions that are usually studied separately. The Note addresses three research questions that are at the centre of debates on party patronage, which is understood as the power of political parties to make appointments to the public and semi-public sector: the scope of patronage, the underlying motivations and the criteria on the basis of which appointees are selected. The exploration of the dataset shows that party patronage is, to a different degree, widespread across all regions. The data further shows differences between policy areas, types of institutions such as government ministries, agencies and state-owned enterprises, and higher, middle and lower ranks of the bureaucracy. It is demonstrated that the political control of policy making and implementation is the most common motivation for making political appointments. However, in countries with a large scope of patronage, appointments serve the purpose of both political control and rewarding supporters in exchange for votes and services. Finally, the data shows that parties prefer to select appointees who are characterised by political and personal loyalty as well as professional competence.

Europarties and party development in EU-candidate states: The case of Bulgaria

Abstract This article examines the direct impact of Europarties on domestic party development, taking the case of Bulgaria when it was a European Union (EU) candidate country. It combines arguments from party theory and the Europeanisation literature and focuses on the overlap of these two fields of study and it investigates the direct impact of Europarties on the choice of electoral strategies made by political parties in candidate states. The study begins by proposing an analytical model that explains the electoral behaviour of political parties based on traditional propositions in comparative party studies. Then it proposes to view international impact as an additional constraint on that behaviour. The main argument is that, in certain situations, Europarties have intervened in domestic party politics and have played a role in the decision of parties to choose certain electoral strategies. It is suggested therefore, that viewing party electoral behaviour purely from the perspective of domestic politics would not only be misleading, but would also lead us to expect behaviour that might not have been a possible alternative for the parties at a given point in time.

Parliamentary Opposition in Post-Communist Democracies: Power of the Powerless

This article charts the development of parliamentary opposition in post-communist Eastern Europe in the context of the changing nature of executive–legislative relations. We first review the existing literature on opposition in post-communist Europe. The second part of the article presents an analytical framework of different modes of executive–legislative interactions. Empirical analysis then demonstrates the practical relevance of these modes in post-communist political systems and their consequences for the position of the parliamentary opposition. We draw our empirical material from three countries of the region: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Hungary. We demonstrate that political parties have become the principal source of parliamentary opposition in these countries. However, we also highlight the crucial link between party stability and the ability of the opposition to influence the policy-making process.

The European Dimension of Minority Political Representation Bulgaria and Romania Compared

The political integration of ethnic minorities is one of the most challenging tasks facing the countries of post-communist Europe. The roads to their political representation in the mainstream political process are numerous and diverse. The EU accession of the Central and East European countries has expanded the scope of the political participation of minorities by adding an electoral process at the regional level: the elections for members of the European Parliament. This article presents a comparative study of the ways in which EU-level electoral processes affect the scope and quality of minority representation on the example of the participation of ethnic political parties in Bulgaria and Romania in the 2007 and 2009 electoral cycles of the European Parliament.

European integration and minority politics: ethnic parties at the EP elections

This article examines the behaviour of ethnic parties and their electorates in four new EU member states at the 2009 European Parliament (EP) elections. Building on earlier arguments from within the literature on Europeanisation, the propositions of this article are that the ethnic minority parties are more EU-enthusiastic than the mainstream political parties; that they treat the EP elections both as a more important arena of political contestation than do the mainstream political parties and as equally important to national elections; and that they will use the elections as an opportunity to further their minority-specific agendas. Using the EuroManifesto and the Voter Studies of the 2009 European Elections Study this article tests these propositions and finds support for the first two, but only limited support for the third one.

Corruption and Democracy the "Color Revolutions" in Georgia and Ukraine

The ”Color Revolutions” in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004) used extra- parliamentary means to challenge the results of fraudulent elections and to bring about the end of semi-authoritarian rule in the two countries. Corruption played an important role in prompting these events and became one of the major grievances of the forces of change in the two countries. Currently, although various problems of democratic governance remain in both countries, no return to the times of Shevardnadze and Kuchma is possible. However, according to the Freedom House/Nations in Transit (NiT) reports, corruption continues to be rampant in Ukraine, while it appears to be tamed in Georgia. These developments present some interesting puzzles about the links between corruption and democratization and democracy and corruption. The purpose of this essay is two-fold. First, it analyzes the role of corruption and other rent-seeking behavior for the fall of the Shevardnadze and Kuchma regimes in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Second, it examines the trends in corruption in Georgia and Ukraine since then, and seeks an explanation for these differential outcomes in the nature of party development and party competition in the two countries.

Party regulation and the conditioning of small political parties: evidence from Bulgaria

Since the fall of communism and the transition to democracy all East-European states have transitioned to multiparty democracies. However, the legal frameworks within which parties function differ substantially among countries. Some countries embrace diversity without posing obstacles to mobilisation on ethnic grounds, for example, while others prohibit the establishment and existence of parties of ethnic ideology. Here, we study how Bulgarian parties are regulated through the Party Law, the Electoral Law and the Constitution. In particular, we look at the requirements for setting up of political parties and the type, quantity and allocation mechanisms of public funding and trace the effect that these and other factors have had on the development of the current party system. Empirically, we examine the fate of small political parties. Our main conclusion is that the introduction of institutions such as an electoral deposit, considerably decrease the number of minor political parties.

Parties between thresholds: state subsidies and party behaviour in post-communist democracies

Much has been written about what makes political parties form, persist, change and die. One factor often brought into this discussion is the availability of resources in general and of state financing of political parties in particular. However, an empirical link at the aggregate level is difficult to establish because of various issues of conceptualization, operationalization and measurement. Working at the party level and taking into consideration that state funding provides important resources that make running in elections and achieving a party’s electoral target more likely, this article provides empirical support for the claim that parties who (anticipate to be or) are being funded by the state have a higher chance of forming and surviving in an independent format in the party system. Based on a comparison of 14 post-communist party systems, the main conclusion of the article is that the survival rate for such parties exceeds the survival rate for the non-publicly funded ones in almost all cases. A second, novel and more particular, finding is that parties who find themselves outside parliament, but above the payout threshold, display higher survival rates than parties who are below it.