Party Politics ↔ Democracy Are they linked?

1. Party Politics ↔ DemocracyAre they linked? Electoral Politics in new European democracies Wednesday, June 27, 2007 Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Timm Beichelt Referee: Maarten Geuzendam Maartenbg@hotmail.com

2. Structure • Klaus von Beyme • Beichelt (2001) • Short look at Hoffman • Hypotheses • References

3. Von Beyme 1 • 1. Incubation of a party system : institutional preconditions • Consolidation of state borders • Decisive for the way in which the question of national identity was being dealt with when building the state institutions • The choice of a government system • Presidential, semi-presidential, parliamentary →strongly dependends on the regime change took place, and the characteristics of the preceding regime. • The choice of the electoral system • A major factor according to Lijphart/Duverger/Sartori and Hoffman (2005) Beichelt (2001: 257) slightly nuances this • Majoritarian systems ten to be less consolidating than proportional ones – says Von Beyme

4. Von Beyme 2 • 2. Consolidation of a party systems: preconditions • 1. Minimum of extremism (polarisation) (pull to the center) • Concensus in handling politics by democratic means →democracy ‚the only game in town‘ (Linz /Stephan) • 2. Clear ‚cleavage structure‘: → Assumption based on the ‚3rd democratic wave‘ (Huntington), not necessarily the case with the 4th wave, • → Slovenia: high fragmentation but few fundamental points of conflict • 3. Clear division of labour between politics and social movements→ Example of the opposite: Russia nowadays, Romania early 90‘s.

5. Von Beyme 3 • 4. Decrease of factionalism within parties. → strongly dependent on the party system: factionalism less likel in pluralist systems • 5. Stabilised volatility: predictability in voter behaviour • →demented by later scholars such as Beichelt: volatility not necessarily a destabilising factor but an inevitable occurence in stabilising the system • 6. Coalition building potential→availability of alternative choices beyond the ruling parties to vote for, and to build coalitions with: the presence of a meaningfull opposition.Assumption based on the availability on ‚more than two-party systems‘

6. Von Beyme 4 • Von Beyme concludes: • Political parties still play a pivotal spill in CE Europe • Regime conflicts pose the biggest thread to the consolidation of democracy. Unanimous agreement on the ‚rules of the game‘ • Professionalisation‘ of party politics results in politics increasingly being made in parliament, not on the street or party organisations. → ‘Entideologisierung’ of the 4th wave democracies • →similar trend can be observed in the ‚old democracies‘ as a result of a continuing ‚Politikverdrossenheit‘

7. Beichelt1 • Factor 1: The influence of electoral systems on democratic consolidation • The character of parties making up a system, of greater importance for consolidation than an electoral system • ‚System effectiveness vs. citizen participation‘ (Dahl 1994) • High overrepresentation of bigger parties results in increased ability to construct coalitions. • Limited overrepresentation (proportionality) negatively affects coalition building. • Adaptation to threshold differs in ech country. → led to party concentration in Poland, yet an increased number of ‚lost votes in Russia. →Effects too diverse to be analytically usefull

8. Beichelt 2 • Factor 2: Fragmentation of party systems • Fragmentation does not have an influence on the extend of democratic consolidation → EE, LV, SLO in eastern Europe. Common ground among the members to form a polity. • Fragmentation hard to measure without distinguishing ‘effective parties’ from other parties. • Fragmentation not necessarily problematic as long as there is exists a consensus about the fundamentals of the political system,

9. Beichelt 3 5.7 Pluralism in Party systems (Beichelt 2001: p. 263)

10. Beichelt 4 • Factor 3: polarisation of party systems • Heterogeneity increases chance of conflicts (moral/religious) in a society, and the risk of polarisation. • Four party categories and their polarising potential • Religious parties → low • Minority parties (ethnic / linguistic) → high • Nationalist parties (in christian-orthodox countries related to the 1rst category: RU, GR, MK, BG) → small ones high, big ones low • Unreformed (post-communist) successor parties →high

11. Form. democratic regimes Transition regimes Minimal democratic regime Party systems: marginalized polarising forces Lithuania, Poland Slovenia, Hungary Party systems with polarising potential Estonia Latvia Czech Republic Doubt Bulgaria, Moldova Dominant polarising forces Macedonia, Romania Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine Beichelt 5 Potential for polarisation and democratic consolidation in party systems Source: Beichelt 2001, page 287.

12. Beichelt 6 • Polarisation - continued • Engaging minority groupings neutralises the polarising potential of such groupings. → Example: Macedonia with its Albanian minority and Bulgaria with the party of the Turkish minority. • → On the other hand: the political rights being withheld to the Russian minority in the Baltics might have been a key to the rapid consolidation, especially Estonia • The existence of regime conflicts in a political system is a major destabilising factor for young democracies. → less so in SLO/ Baltics: old party elites left behind in the former capitals Belgrade / Moscow paved the way for a fresh, new start (tabula rasa).

13. Cleavage attitude towards the old regime Party system type Extend of polarisation in the party system Formally democratic regimes Ended regime conflict Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary Social-liberal party systems Latvia, PolandCzech Republic, Slovenia, Hungary System with marginalized forces: LT/PL/ SLO/ HU Party systems with polarising potential: EE/LT/CZ Transition regimes Continuing regime conflict Bulgaria, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania Post-communist system Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova Systems with dominant polarising forces: BG/MK/MD/RO Minimally dem. regimes Russia, (Slovakia), Ukraine Russia, Ukraine Russia, Ukraine, (Slovakia) Beichelt 7 Relevant aspects for the consolidation of party systems Source: Beichelt (2001) page 292.

14. Amanda Hoffman 2005 • : • Hoffman questions whether there exists an ideal number of parties for a properly functioning democracy. • Concludes: • The choice of the electoral system is a major factor for the consolidation of a political system • Countries with proportional representation show more democratic characteristics than majority systems • Responsiveness bigger in two-party systems than in multi-party systems →small differences between the parties more easily result in a change of

15. Calculating democracy – Hoffman’s method Expanded multiple regression analysis of POLITY IV scores on independent variables. (Hoffman 2005: page 238)

16. Hypotheses • The direct influence of a party system on the stabilisation of democracy is doubtable and strongly depends on 3rd variables such as the homogeneity of a society and the face of social disparities. • Beichelt (2001) p. 279: „Die gemeinsame Identifizierung konfligierender Parteien mit einem Gemeinwesen ist eine Grundlage für die Entwicklung konfliktentschärfender Institutionen des Parteiensystems“. • The bigger the incongruence between rulers and ruled, the harder a rapid consolidation system will be. Homogenous polities(ethnically/ culturally/ socio-politically) with minimally polarised party systems as a rule have the fewest troubles in consolidating democracy.

17. References BEICHELT, Timm (2001): Demokratische Konsolidierung im postsozialistischen Europa. Die Rolle der politischen Institutionen. Opladen: Leske + Budrich. P. 241-293. BEYME, Klaus von (1997): Parteien im Prozess der demokratischen Konsolidierung. In: Wolfgang Merkel / Eberhard Sandschneider (Hrsg.): Systemwechsel 3. Parteien im Transfomationsprozeß. Opladen: Leske + Budrich. BEYME, Klaus von (1994): Systemwechsel in Osteuropa. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag. HOFFMAN, Amanda L. (2005): Political parties, electoral systems and democracy: a cross national analysis. In: European Journal of Political Research 44. P. 231-242. HUNTINGTON, Samuel (1991): How countries democraticse. In: Political Science Quarterly 106/4. Pages 579-616. KITSCHELT, Herbert (1995): Die Entwicklung post-sozialistischer Parteisysteme. Vergleichende Perspektive. In: Wollmann/Wiesenthal/Bönkes (1995): Transformation sozialistischer Gesellschaften. Am Ende des Anfangs. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. KITSCHELT, Herbert (1995): Formation of party cleavages in post-communist democracies. Theoretical propositions. In: Party Politics Vol. 1. No. 4. Pages 447-472. KÖLLNER, Patrick (2004): Faktionalismus in politischen Parteien: Charakteristika, Funktionen und Ursachen innerparteilicher Gruppen. Deutsches Übersee-Institut. http://www.giga-hamburg.de/content/publikationen/archiv/duei_arbeitspapiere/ap_16_0402.pdf (17.06.2007)  STOJAROVÁ, Vĕra / Šedo, Jakub (2007): Political Parties in Central and Eastern Europe. In Search of Consolidation. IDEAhttp://www.idea.int/publications/pp_c_and_e_europe/index.cfm (17.06.2007)