Petr Kopecký

The State and the Parties Public Funding, Public Regulation and Rent-Seeking in Contemporary Democracies

This article focuses on the relationship between political parties and the state. We propose an analytical framework distinguishing between three different dimensions of the party-state linkage: the dependence of parties on the state, the management of parties by the state and the control of the state by parties. We provide a cross-national empirical analysis of the relationship between parties and the state in contemporary liberal democracies. Our analysis underscores the considerable importance of the state for political parties in general. It also highlights important differences between old and new democracies, as well as important regional differences in terms of the nature of the relationship between parties and the state in the recently established democracies. We argue that these different types of linkages are highly relevant for party system development and the nature of democracy.

Developing Party Organizations in East-Central Europe What Type of Party is Likely to Emerge?

Political parties are central to the process of democratization in east-central Europe. In contrast to the many studies that look at the instability of new parties and party systems, this article focuses on party organizational development. First, a hypothesis is put forward contending that parties in the region are likely to develop as formations with loose electoral constituencies, unimportant membership and a dominant role played by party leaders. Second, this hypothesis is tested on a sample of six parties from the Czech Republic. The analysis shows that certain variations in organizational structure exist, deriving from the distinction between old parties and newly established parties, the former deviating from the hypothesis to a greater extent than the latter.

Party Patronage in Contemporary Europe

Party patronage is generally associated with social, economic and political underdevelopment, and is hence seen as largely irrelevant in the context of contemporary European politics. In this article, we argue to the contrary, proposing that patronage reappears on the stage of European politics as a critical organizational and governmental resource employed by political parties to enhance their standing as semi-state agencies of government. In order to illustrate our main contention, we first define party patronage, disentangling it from other notions of political particularism that are often used synonymously in the literature. Second, we provide a brief overview of the literature on the past and present of patronage practices in Europe, arguing that rather than declining, patronage is still likely to be a relevant feature of contemporary party politics in Europe. Finally, we analyse the role of party patronage in the light of recent developments in several European countries, identifying three distinct patterns of patronage practices in the region.

‘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 Competition and Party Patronage: Public Appointments in Ghana and South Africa

State exploitation by political parties is one of the key problems of new democracies. This article looks at party patronage as one of the ways through which political parties exploit the state. It focuses on two new African democracies – Ghana and South Africa – and using the data from an original expert survey explores party appointments across a wide range of state institutions. It also uses these data to illustrate some of the theoretical issues related to the existence of patronage practices. In particular, the article probes into a widespread claim that robust party competition constrains politicians and hence limits patronage politics. Contrary to those theoretical expectations, the article finds that patronage in new democracies is not necessarily higher in a less competitive party system. The article then considers factors other than party competition that might explain this unexpected empirical outcome; it also suggests a theoretical argument positing compatibility between high levels of patronage and robust political competition.

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.

The cartel party and the state: Party-state linkages in European democracies

This article focuses on the nature and strength of the relationship between political parties and the state. Expanding on the analytical framework we developed earlier (van Biezen and Kopecký, 2007), we identify three different dimensions of the party–state linkage: the dependence of parties on the state, the management of parties by the state, and the capture of the state by parties. We provide an updated cross-national empirical analysis of the relationship between political parties and the state in contemporary European democracies, building on two recently developed datasets on party regulation and party patronage. Our analysis underscores the considerable importance of the state for political parties in general, but also highlights important differences between the older democracies, and the more recently established democracies that emerged in the third wave of democratization. We show that the different dimensions of the party–state linkage do not necessarily work in the same direction, which suggests that the assumption of a close relationship between parties and the state ultimately undermining the democratic legitimacy of political parties requires some qualification.

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.

Against the odds : deviant cases of democratization

Economic development and diffusion effects appear to exert substantial influence on the success of democratization. However, large-N quantitative studies also show that there are some ‘outliers’, or ‘deviant’ cases, which do not fit the general pattern and cannot be explained by existing theories and models. It appears that deviant cases of democratization include Costa Rica and India (since the 1940s), Botswana (since the 1960s) and Benin and Mongolia (since the 1990s). This introduction focuses on important conceptual, theoretical, and methodological problems involved when studying them. We first look at the highly contested concept of democracy and place ‘deviant democracies’ in the framework of a minimal definition of democracy and transition waves. We also provide a working definition for two other highly contested concepts – democratic transition and democratic consolidation. We then go on to briefly review existing general theories of democratization. By doing so, we lay the ground for specifying more precisely the level of ‘deviancy’ of our cases, and offer potential explanations for their unusually successful process of democratization. Finally, we outline the nested mixed method, the logic of which we follow in this special issue.

East European politics

Welcome to Volume 28, Issue 1, the first under the new title, East European Politics. As the new editors of what was, until December 2011, the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, we wish to use this short editorial to outline the rationale for the new title, to elaborate on the revised aims and scope, and to define more clearly how we see this highly regarded journal developing and expanding in the future. We have inherited a long-established and reputable journal, published by a leading publisher, with an impressive reach across Europe and the USA. It is on these legacies that we base our strategies for taking the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics forward to its next stage of development. We want to capture, and in some cases recapture, areas of scholarly research so as to locate the newly titled journal at the core of comparative political science research on the post-communist states of Europe and the former Soviet Union. We represent a generation of scholars who avidly read and later published in the journal; our purpose as editors is to ensure that the current and next generation of scholars form an even stronger and sustainable association with what we hope will become the leading outlet and source of reference for analysis of political developments in Eastern Europe. The Journal of Communist Studies was founded in 1984 by a group of scholars (Michael Waller, Richard Gillespie, Ron Hill, David Goodman, David Bell, and Michael Williams) with a shared intellectual interest in communist political systems, successors to an editorial team that had produced Documents in communist affairs (published in the early 1980s by Butterworths) and other publications dealing with the communist movement. In 1992, and Transition Politics was added to the title to reflect changing realities. Although conceived as a distinctly European publication, the journal was, from the outset, international in scope, aiming at an international readership and welcoming contributions from the whole world. It had no ideological bias: it was neither anti-communist nor an apologist, but rather it took communism seriously as a subject of scholarly study, rather than as essentially a rival and hostile political ideology and system. While the journal set out to reflect the growing complexity of the communist world and movements, in the 1980s, its focus was on the ‘core’ countries and parties that had historically been part of the world of the Comintern. Ruling parties and systems formed the central focus of interest, but the wider communist movement was always regarded by the editorial team as a distinctive feature of the journal’s scope. The primary emphasis was on politics, but history, sociology, non-technical economics, biography, and comparative studies also featured. Following the change of title in 1992, the scope both widened, to embrace regime change and democratisation, and in practice also narrowed, to concentrate somewhat more on political analysis. Indeed, the volumes published under the revised title included excellent analyses of the politics and political science of the new democracies, several of which are now considered to be seminal works. East European Politics will publish articles on the government, politics, and international relations of the countries in the post-communist region. In terms of what we seek to publish, our aim is clear: original scholarship on political developments in individual countries, together with cross-country comparative analyses and studies of the relations between post-communist regions and other parts of the world, including internationally based organisations. In geographical terms, we seek to cover the entire post-communist region, including East Central Europe, the