Puzzles of Party Politics

Abstract

Scholars seeking to explain the patterns of party politics in Central Europe since 1989 have drawn on accounts that stress the role of cleavages, economic performance, legacies, populism, and European Union accession and membership. Although they offer insights, these accounts in themselves do not provide a compelling explanation. More attention needs to be focused on individual parties and the choices they make, and the raw materials at their disposal. New parties make much of their newness, while their success is also fuelled by appeals of celebrity and promises of anti-corruption. Existing accounts of party formation and breakthrough, however, overlook the increasingly strong institutional links between party birth and party death. A more nuanced understanding of today’s party politics must also attend to the role of time, both diachronically and synchronically, in shaping the organizational choices made by parties and the appeals they use to win voter support.