Erhan Buyukakinci. East European Quarterly. Volume 39, Issue 3, Fall 2005.
Introduction
The collapse of communism across the Central and Eastern Europe was one of the final manifestations of a worldwide spread of democratization over a period of twenty years that began with South Europe in 1974, then continued in Latin America in the 1980s and subsequently moved on to Eastern Asia in the late 1980s and 1990s. Political scientists devoted much effort to account for the timing and modalities of the changes of political regimes and the structural conditions and dynamic processes that made possible this “third wave of democratization,” as it is called by S. Huntington. Much of the research in political science is still influenced by an almost exclusive concern with the consolidation of basic parameters of democratic regime in the democracies of Third Wave. The debate on the role of political regimes (parliamentarism or presidentialism) for the development of the new democracies may establish correlations between executive-legislative institutional designs and durability of democratic values, but our work aims here not to discuss the typology of regimes in the new democracies, but to concentrate on the transformation of political discourse within the post-ideological transition process. Within this aspect, the study of the change in the political discourse of the former communist parties during the post-Cold War era will no doubt present the empirical originality of the post-Communist transition. For this purpose, this article focuses on identifying the adaptation process of the communist successor parties during the post-communist transition and seeks to investigate the extent to which their discourse have changed over time, particularly in accordance with the external factors (or systemic variables).
The new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have avoided the rise to power of non-liberal forces and, in spite of widespread cynicism and corruption, there is a growing consensus regarding the desirability of markets, free media, and pluralist institutions. However the situation differs from country to country; the transitions seem to turn out to be more difficult and problematic in the south-eastern part of Europe, especially in Romania and Bulgaria, during the 1990s.
As many observers of democratic transitions have noted, the success of democratization in these countries depends on the promotion of political moderation within the major political parties; here, the former communist parties are playing a vital role in conditioning the scope and the development of politics in these new democracies, with their organizational assets and political discourses in the face of current socioeconomic challenges of post-communist transition since 1989.
Linkage between the Discourses of Foreign Policy and Political Parties: Theoretical Assumptions and Methodological Issues
When political scientists aim to analyse the outcomes of foreign policy within the decision-making process, they often take into account the discourse and decisions of the political powers. Even though the ruling bodies find their legitimacy and ideological sources within the structures and components of their national political culture, the leaders and the political bodies in government give such a direction to the foreign policy outputs of the State, by considering officially its environmental circumstances, but from a different status. The political parties’ activities and discourse on the foreign policy themes are studied within the framework of “societal variables” of Rosenau’s scientific study of foreign policy.
Rosenau and his disciples observe the role of the political parties considered as independent agents of the political culture at the level of societal variables. The political culture comprises the analysis of the traditions, historical perspectives and expectations, perceptions at societal level; within the democratic context, the political parties as structures emerged from the social realities and mosaics try to represent the sensitivity, expectations and interests of the social strata on a legally predefined basis and to develop them into a special “political rhetoric.” Even though the discourses of the political parties in opposition seem to be more independent than those of the ruling parties and could contain radical elements of criticism, Rosenau and his disciple study the structural differences between the parties in power and in opposition with different levels of analysis. The correlation between the political parties as foreign policy makers and the concept of power (government) influences directly the levels of analysis, because the political discourse of a “ruling party” does not reflect only the interests of the social strata that it represents electorally, but also the special interests of the public institutions and the bureaucracy.
Trying to express and to integrate the interests, expectations and objectives of the circles of popular mass or cadre within their political discourse, the political parties should be studied as the independent societal agents of the process of foreign policy-making. However when they arrive the power after elections or other legitimate means, they are defined as governmental actors with their restrained rhetoric, which should be suitable for the survival cause of the State logic within the specific pre-defined institutional norms and traditions. The ruling parties as governmental variables should perceive the foreign policy inputs in an officially restricted environment and use specific channels of information approved by the bureaucratic mechanisms; meanwhile they have the responsibility to represent and to orient the State interests as full decision-makers, by excluding the private expectations of the electorate strata from which they have found the source of their political legitimacy. Within this status, all the private interests and expectations should be left in favour of public objectives and the autonomy of the political discourse and the radical tendencies that it could include become limited by the general conceptions in the State language.
In this work, we will take into consideration the political parties that manage to become governmental actors. Within this context, our study will focus only on the neo-communist parties that were in power. The transformation of their political discourse will be observed in the light of systemic variables, because our problematic concentrates on the reasons of this change in discourse and organization during the post-communist transition era. We ask these following questions in order to guide our problematic: is the liberalization of the political culture influenced by the external factors? Are all the post-communist parties independent within this new period of transformation? What is the change in the communist tones of their political discourses: social-democratization or radicalization? Could the change in party organizations be considered independent from the domestic circumstances? To answer all these questions, we choose as our primary actor the communist successor parties in the CEE geography, but at the beginning we should underline that all the communist successor parties did not adopt such “neo-communist tone” to reform their infrastructures and to win the elections.
During the post-communist transition, the direct links of the political parties with their potential electorate are shaped by their ideological sources within the economic and cultural sub-cultures. The change in parties’ discourse reflects no doubt the process of evolution within the political culture; this trend represents the real aspects of the democratization in the country. On the other side, this change has a very important meaning for the political elites, which find their own legitimacy on the basis of these discourses. Perceived as the main decision-makers at top level, the party elites and leaders define themselves how to draw the limits of these discourses and represent the party’s interests by generalizing the expectations of their members. As the party elites take part in an institutionalized process of decision-making, the party discourse should unavoidably include the governmental arguments and be open to all proposals. With the importance of systemic variables within the post-communist transition period, the elected governments could not act freely in their domestic and foreign policies’ outputs. For the CEE countries, the imposition of Copenhagen criteria for the EU integration could be given as a very spectacular example to explain how the anti-reformist parties could not be totally free in their strategies.
The political regimes, living such process of transition, are always open to systemic influences. In a model of analysis, where each level translates its field of activity with its own means and tries to restructure its own policy inputs and outputs, it is very understandable to accept the interaction between the levels. However, as Rosenau suggests in his theoretical assumptions, the autonomization of each level in its own field of specialization is an unavoidable priority for the independent character of the State-actor whose foreign policy acts will be the matter of analysis. If the State-actor is unlikely to produce independently its own decisions and acts, it could not be studied theoretically for empirical purposes in Rosenau’s work. With the democratization of the political life and the administrative stabilization of the State, each level (system, society, government, bureaucracy, and leaders) will clearly define its own scope of legitimacy and functions and differ in its activities for the foreign policy-making process. In Rosenau’s theoretical conclusion, this differentiation puts into agenda the “foreign policy strategies,” by taking into consideration the degree of influence and frequency of each level during the decision process. As a result, the openness of the political regimes in structural transformation necessitates that each actor should give a relative answer to the systemic expectations, by admitting its own restructuring. Within this aspect, the political elites and leaders in power are confronted with the conditionality to redefine their political environment in order to adapt the State interests into the models of alliance at international level and not to provoke a crisis of legitimacy in domestic politics.
While observing the political dimension of the post-communist transition, it is possible to consider the change of the political parties both in theirs infrastructures and in their discourses between two poles: liberalization or radicalization. The liberalizing parties are slipping toward the centre during the post-ideological transformation, while the parties representing the orthodox leanings prefer to adopt the extremist perspectives. Within this aspect, the correlation between the change of discourses of political parties and the systemic variables could be explained as a model of open-closed relationship; as the centre parties have more relaxed tones toward the external dynamics, the conservative structures expose reactionary tendencies against the initiatives from the international system. As a result, this model of correlation could be better observed within the stage of transformation of the discourse of the political parties, which assume executive responsibility in the State apparatus after being elected to govern the country. It is very likely to witness that many actors, efficient with their own capacities in the political system, would not be excluded from the post-ideological transformation process. However, the desire to be included within the power mechanism necessitates unavoidably the transformation of the political discourse according to the systemic realities. Even after the end of the Cold War, the systemic variables (external factors) have showed very well their ambitions to intervene in the transition modalities of the countries in post-socialist researches by proposing technical assistance and financial aids; by this means, they demonstrate that they would not authorize the proper liberalization of the former Eastern bloc’s countries out of their own control. The presentation of special economic means (foreign aid policies, foreign investment movements, foreign trade relations, economic integration opportunities, advantages on customs union, etc.) by the Western countries create certain advantages for the ruling forces which concern directly the social tensions due to the economic liberalization policies, but the imposition of conditionality of the economic assistance modalities on the progress of democratization for the CEE countries made more efficient this logic of control-influence according to the perspectives of Western countries.
The Post-Communist Transition after the Velvet Revolutions and its Implications on the Neo-Communist Parties in Central and Eastern Europe
As it is very likely to find in every work on the post-communist transition in CEE, we can present such a typology of post-ideological transformation: a) the Central European countries with successful democratic experiments where political parties, free media, markets, civil society formations and independent legal structures have developed with positive results; b) the Eastern European countries with protracted and gradualized transitions where the presence of former communists and neo-populists, and the weakness of pluralist forces have prevented the rapid economic, legal and political reforms; c) the quasi-democracies with strong authoritarian potential continuous attempts to control the freedom of information, strong neo-Communist formations and a controlled judiciary system. There is a direct linkage between the typology of democratic transition and the development of party discourses; within the restructuring of the political regime, all the actors of the political culture at national level are no doubt under influence and need to revise their own outputs or to adopt reforms in order to adapt themselves to the expectations of the civil society.
Opting for semi-presidential regimes with their constitutional amendments in the mid-1990s, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania have differed their political and state restructuring from the other countries of CEE from the point of view of the election of presidents by universal suffrage. Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia have preferred to continue the unicameral legislative system, while the remaining states have bicameral systems. Within this diversity of constitutional organs in CEE, the political parties have remained the main sources of the political discourses to guide the State apparatus and the needs of civil society.
Just after the revolutions of 1989, we witness an outbreak of political parties in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) geography. For example, about forty parties had participated to the elections of 1991 in Bulgaria, while twenty-nine parties entered in the Polish Sejm after the 1990 elections. With the exception of the Czech Communist Party (KSCM), all the Communist parties in CEE have decided to change their name. The major part of communist successor parties was reasserting themselves during the first period from 1992 until 1996, while they were in a relative decline between 1996 and 2000. From the late 1990s, it is possible to witness again the ascension of some of them, in parallel with the decline of liberal or neo-conservative parties due to their failure in socio-economic policies.
In this work, we prefer to concentrate only the lower houses of the legislatures, when focusing on the results of legislative elections. The political success or the communist successor parties will be defined within the framework of their percentage of vote and seat shares in the legislative elections. Focusing on lower house elections could be justified for two purposes; first, not all of the emerging constitutional orders in CEE are identical, and secondly, as we have just noted, some of the CEE countries have bicameral systems. This framework of analysis could thus facilitate the comparison of various cases. However, we should underline that some examples have semi-presidential systems, where a relatively powerful and directly elected executive exists like in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria and that the executive power has sought some accommodation with the lower house of parliament. At this point, we should note that the presidential elections do not reflect directly the electoral performance of the political parties, because the impact of individual factors becomes very important from the point of view of voters, who prefer to choose their president as an executive leader, not as a representative of the political parties; here, the electorate attitudes tend to consider mostly the weight of political character of the leaders within the party, not the direct representation of the political party within the political system.
Before analysing the change of communist successor parties in political discourse and structures, we should have a look on their electoral performance during the post-Communist transition era. The following table helps us very well to observe the changing face of the electoral trends towards the communist successor parties for the legislatures.
The Communist Successor Parties Back to Power in the Post-Communist Period: Reasons of Political Success
Western reports on the first pluralist elections at the beginning of the 1990s in Central Europe were headlined as the defeat of the left and the victorious centre-right wing parties also thought that the left was basically dead and had no future in the long run. For them, this represented the end not only of communism, but also of all the left currents. However, this perception was the product of such euphoria over the collapse of communism in CEE; in reality, this assessment was contradicted both in society and in the political life. Taken together with the other left votes in the Hungarian 1990 legislative elections, the overall of the left was well over 20%, and considering the large block of non-voters, it was potentially stronger. In the 1994 elections, the MSzP won the majority and held 54% of the mandates in the parliament, by forming a coalition with the Free Democrats, together holding a 72% majority in the legislature. It is possible to witness the similar trend in Poland where the electorate has voted for the left-wing parties (SLD+PSL) over 20% in the first post-communist elections in 1991 and the SLD-PSL coalition obtained more than 35% of the votes in the 1993 legislative elections.
In comparison with their Central European partners, the communist successor parties in Eastern Europe have showed a different trend of political success, by conserving their electoral popularity just after the Velvet Revolutions and losing the popular support in the midst of 1990s. In Romania, the neo-communists lost the power only between the 1996 and 2000 elections both at legislative and presidential levels; however this situation seems to be different in Bulgaria where the neo-communist kept the power until the 1997 elections and had a declining trend of electoral support at the end of the 1990s.
Most of the literature on the communist successor parties has focused on why these parties made a political comeback in the 1990s. For J. Ishimaya, two explanations could be put forward to answer why the successors of the formerly dominant communist parties have returned to the political scene. The first one, as he labels the “internalist perspective,” contends that the communist successor parties have succeeded because of organizational adaptations in the newly competitive environment. Within this aspect, the nature of the previous regime affected the ability of the communist successor parties to adapt to new political circumstances. As stronger institutions with a longer organizational continuity, the successor parties are likely to have inherited at least some of their predecessors’ membership, organizational networks and material resources together with some pre-existing levels of party identification among particular segments of the electorate.
The second approach, labelled as the “externalist perspective,” holds that the relative political success of these parties has been due to the features of the political environment, particularly the “nostalgia factor” and the structure of competition facing the successor parties. In Ishiyama’s analysis, the internalist perspective holds that the more liberal and internally pluralist the previous communist regime, the more likely that a reform leadership took the control of the party; these reformist leaders have had to adopt the conditions of democratic competition and to impose new infrastructures within their parties. For some authors, the level of tolerance within the previous regimes for the internal competition and of bureaucratic institutionalization explained the success of the parties perceived as the model of “traditional mass party” like the SLD in Poland and the MSzP in Hungary. Some authors suggest that another model of communist successor parties with associations of sympathisers run by a political elite and a professional party apparatus as organizations providing political services to a constituted electoral clientele; for this model, Roper gives the example of PSDR in Romania.
The nostalgia factor is used for explanation by some scholars of the success of the former communist parties; the argument that the decline of living standards during the transition period made many people yearn for a return to a more secure past, hence increasing the degree of electoral support for the communist successor parties. In the face of the uncertainties generated by the rapid political and economic changes or of the great frustration with the “failures” of the market reform efforts, the electorate has showed some increasing nostalgia and greater political support for the communist successor parties, like in Romania and Bulgaria with the last elections.
For some countries in this geography, the key explanation for the political success of the communist successor parties has been the lack of real competition facing them; from this perspective, their electoral success is due to their organizational characteristics than to the lack of effective competition posed by parties that occupied the same ideological space and many of them constitute such a structural monopoly within the left wing of the political systems in CEE. As the other party structures emerge in the same ideological space, the chance of the communist successor parties to justify the legitimacy of their political discourse decreases, as seen in the case of the KSCM vis-a-vis the CSSD in Czech Republic.
The Organizational Changes in the Communist Successor Parties
The organizations built by the CEE political parties in the early years of the post-communist rule appear to have been shaped far more by the needs of political elites than by the popular interests. On the other side, the end of the communist system has forced the elite forms of party organization on the new structures of political party. Party infrastructures tend to be very lean by Western European standards and do not approach the expectations of all the social models. Within this context, it is possible to witness the moving of the CEE political parties toward small party organizations that favour elite interests over social ones. As the experience of the post-communist rule, where party membership was often a pre-requisite for occupational advantages, was not still forgotten by citizens, this level of political participation became a symbol of political manipulation. As a result, many communist successor parties have lost many members since 1989.
Many researchers have argued that the political formations in CEE are likely to develop as centralized bodies with a low membership base and elite leadership groups that play a predominant role. For example, P. Kopecky notes that the new parties in this geography are likely to develop as formations with loose electoral constituencies, in which a relatively unimportant role is played by the party membership and the dominant role by the party leaders. At the same time, there is such a distinction between the newly established post-transitional parties built up following the collapse of communism in 1989 and the successor parties that are descended from those permitted under communism and have a longer organizational continuity. The latter have much chance to be retained in the political system and are more likely to display a closer resemblance to the mass party model than the new formations.
On the other side, the ability to convert communist party resources into the post-communist ones differs with the organizational advantages in each CEE countries. Some ex-communist parties were well positioned to transform their infrastructure with legitimate opportunities by inheriting organizational assets.
Unlike the other current political parties in CEE, the post-communist parties are not simply the groups of notables of political clubs; they have a long political tradition and an organizational past, as well as an infrastructure that sets them apart from most other political parties on the scene. The success of these parties, especially those in Bulgaria and Romania, is due to the organizational weakness and incoherence of the competitors that the communist successor parties face. Here, the existence of weak competitors explains well why these successor parties have been successful in post-communist transition. On the other hand, the internal organization could become a very great advantage for the success of the former communist parties, as it is the case in Poland and Hungary; strong organizational resources inherited from the past undoubtedly contributed to the success of these parties. For the KSCM as a party with one of the least clientelistic tendency, it is possible to observe such limited political success in the face of strong left-wing competition.
Within the framework of many works on different types of party organizations in the post-communist transition area, one of the main distinctions is made by Kistchelt: “programmatic” and “clientelistic” parties. As Van Biezen analyses in her article, post-communist parties have in general resembled the clientelistic party model more than the programmatic model. She argues that, since the early period of new democracies, the parties focus on organizing the parliamentary and governmental institutions and that this initiative leads the parties to concentrate their activities around the party office, and so they become less sensitive to the societal needs.
When we analyse deeply all the communist successor parties in CEE, we can observe three categories of development in party discourses and infrastructure:
- the successor parties with dogmatic (leftist-retreat) strategies which embrace the Marxist traditions in orthodox meanings, by repudiating the western-capitalist influence and adopting the discourse of anti-system values and anti-market critics (as it is the case in Czech Republic);
- the successor parties with strategies of “pragmatic reform,” attempting to distance itself critically from the dogmatic Marxism and trying to define itself as a “European social democratic party,” but full of technocrats, pragmatists and experts (the Polish and Hungarian examples);
- The successor parties with a mixture of strategies combining the purpose of social democratization and the political nostalgia to mobilise the electoral support (such as the Bulgarian and Romanian neo-communist parties).
The change in political discourse has taken shape between two angles: moving progressively towards social democracy or retreating backwards to communism. This fragmentation could be also analysed with the differentiation of political approaches on economic measures (pro-market and anti-market initiatives). For Ishimaya and Bozoki, the pro-reform and anti-reform discourses include different references, which have progressively developed within the post-communist transition. The pro-reform index is constituted with the references to social democracy, democratic socialism, market economy structures (capitalism, privatization, etc.), while the anti-reform index refers to the controlled economy model, socialist values and communism.
In addition to the reformist indices, Ishimaya and Bozoki develop another source of index, by taking into account the extent to which the parties made reference to national and patriotic themes. For these authors, these themes include any reference to the glorification of the national values, patriotism, protection of the national culture and traditions and national unity (idea of integrity). They also develop a “humanist index,” in which they emphasize the appeal on human rights, international cooperation, the respect and adaptation of the European values; here, it seems that the patriotic vision versus the humanist index symbolizes the divide between the particularism and the universalism.
What is Neo-Communism as Ideology? The Interpretation for Social-Democratization in Political Discourse
For a great number of authors, the relative transformation of communist successor parties into the modern social democratic ones could be identified by the historical features of the social democratic movements in CEE. However we should underline that social democracy in post-communist Europe occupies a prominent position in some countries, but there is about a quantite negligeable in most others, because the social democratic discourses are limited historiographically to Western Europe and to the German-speaking countries of Central Europe. In 1948, with the beginning of the Cold War period, the East European social democracy has ceased to exist and its organizations had been forced to merge with the ruling communist parties and trade unions. Especially in the Central European countries, the social democratic arguments remained present as a set of ideas that found expression in various political currents, from communist revisionism and reformism to anti-communist opposition. For Gerrits, they bridge the pre-communist and post-communist eras; in his work, Gerrits supposed that social democracy has emerged in CEE countries from three different sources:
- the re-founded historical parties of the interwar period;
- the reformist currents in the communistparties;
- the left-wing of opposition and citizens’ movements.
After 1989, pre-communist party formations have failed to become major political actors; it is possible to see the only example of a historical social democratic party, which made a successful reappearance on the political scene in Czech Republic with the CSSD. However, only the reformed communist parties became notable political forces after the Velvet Revolutions, as it is the case in Poland’s SLD and PSL and Hungary’s MSzP. Even though they lost elections after ruling for one term at the mid-1990s, they maintained their electoral popularity. The MSzP won 32.6% of the vote in 1994, 32.9% in 1998 and 42.1% in 2002, however it loss in parliamentary seats was largely due to the country’s complicated electoral system. The SDL received 20.4% of the popular vote in 1993, 27.1% in 1997 and 41% in 2001, while the PSL has showed a changing trend in obtaining the electoral support: 15.4% in 1993, 7.3% in 1997 and 9% in 2001.
While observing the changes of the infrastructures within the communist successor parties, it is possible to argue that the social democratic tendencies were developed from two perspectives: revisionism and reformism; these phenomena include in themselves the influences of the idea of democratic socialism in CEE. For many ex-communists, “revisionism” was a product of “destalinization” and this represents a radical change within the party’s political discourse, by rejecting the universal pretensions of Marxism-Leninism after stressing the ethical and moralistic dimensions of communism. The existence of revisionist tendencies could be studied within the Hungarian case in 1956; the gradual changes by the governments since the late 1960s reinforced with the Kadar reforms opened up the way to economic decentralization, limited market orientation, Western contacts, increased living standards and reduced political tensions. Within the communist successor parties, there are many discussions on the revision of communist ideas and practices; by accepting the unreformability of the old communist system, most revisionists moved beyond the notion of many West European social democrats that “communism was able to reform: change through rapprochement.”
When revisionism remained largely limited to the sphere of ideas, reformism was presented as a political action. In terns of ideology and political cadres, reformism seemed the most obvious element of continuity between the former communist rule and the post-communist currents. More technocratic in their approach, the reformists focused on the modernization of communism through rationalization of its political and economic functioning. For Gerrits, the reformism remained practically limited to the countries of Central Europe.
In their work, Ishiyama and Bozoki categorize the MSzP, the SDL, the PSDR and the SLD with their programs concentrated on reform themes and the KSCM and the BSP which have showed anti-reform themes appearing in their programs. On the other hand, although both the PDSR and the MSzP emphasize the reform themes most frequently, the former refers the national themes far more than does the latter. The authors add that the PSDR has pursued nationalist, socialist and populist strategies and the MSzP has adopted a modernizationist and contemporary social democratic understandings, while the KSCM has still the orthodox communist strategy.
The political image of the party insists that, since its foundation in 1989, it has been basically “social democratic,” but that there were deficiencies in organization and decision-making which had not disappeared entirely by 1998, and that now is the time to finalize the transition to a “modern left party.” There are differences among the European social democratic parties and it seems that the MSzP leadership aimed to benefit from the European left parties’ experiences. In fact, the MSzP could not be called a “new party,” but under the pressure of the right-conservative politicians, new strategies should replace the old arguments to break out the direction. The key objective is here the broad integration of the often conflicting interests of most social classes: the intelligentsia, the blue-collar strata, the young people and women.
The success of the redefinition of the left depends on the internal procedures and the infrastructure of the party organization. As for many left parties, the real problem for the MSzP seems to be the “vertical hierarchical subordination,” meaning as the decision-making process implemented by the party leadership excluding the lower levels. However this reasoning of restriction seems to be understandable because the ground rules need to be reformed during the post-Communist transition era and the political cadre should be adapted to the real objectives of the market economy rules. Within this context, according to Racz’s critics, the socialist reform aspirations in the MSzP are empirically limited by two restraining factors: resistance by internal reactionary forces and economic policies, which totally depend on external factors. The different factions within the MSzP agree that a new oppositional status should be adopted as a new political rhetoric with substantial reforms and a new political image. With these steps, the MSzP won the largest single party votes in 1998 and in 2002, but it remains weaker than the combined right forces. For Racz, the socialist renaissance with social democratic tons in Hungary would depend in long run not only on the internal development of the party, but equally on external circumstances, especially on the Fidesz-CP-led coalition’s performance and public acceptance.
In the late 1990s, the dominant world trend is a centrist approach by both the right and left parties, and the divisions are becoming blurred. On the Hungarian political stage, some characteristics stand out as being in sharp contrast. On the basis of empirical data, the MSzP is the real modernization party, better suited for European integration policy; ideologically the party is rooted in the internationalist principles of the Socialist International and the Stockholm declaration. Like in the European ones, the Hungarian socialists seem to include the tolerance of different views; they are more free from anti-Semitism, less nationalistic, have a democratic party structure and represent the policy of historical reconciliation toward the neighbouring countries with Hungarian minorities.
Similarly to other social democratic parties in Western Europe, one of the key objectives is to win the support of the young generations. Since the founding of the party in 1989, the bulk of membership was middle aged and older and new members included only a minority of younger people. At the electorate level, higher age and higher income in themselves correlate with choosing the MSzP, which means that the generations that have made career under Communism are behind the MSzP. Apart from the generational question, the “left cause” needs to be reconstructed within the context of social expectations and discussed in a wide context with the trade unions and civil society associations; the centre-right parties could succeed in giving from themselves a new image closer to civil society and capture voters, who deserted the left cause, by campaigning on populist platforms.
The Case Study for Pro-Reform Party Structure in Post-Communist Transition: Hungary’s MSzP and the Legacy from the Old Regime
Founded in October 1989 as the successor to the MSzMP (Hungarian Socialist Workers Party), the MSzP has proven to be one of the most electorally successful among the communist successor parties in the geography of post-Communist transition; it became the governing party in 1994, by sharing the power with the liberals, although it obtained the majority within the Parliament. Even with the electoral defeat in 1998 and in 2002, the MSzP received the largest proportion of the popular vote and remained the largest single party in the Hungarian legislature. The key to MSzP success has been its ability to adapt itself to the changing political circumstances and the demands of electoral competition.
For many analysts, the psychological shock of neo-liberal transformation from reform communism to market economy played an important role for the electoral triumph of the left; it is very understandable that the political pendulum swung back to the left in anticipation of a slower gradual transition. Even though the victory was very certain for the socialists, the party president G. Horn called the social reconciliation and rapprochement, by inviting the Free Democrats to form a coalition as a political alliance to carry out the bitter task of economic stabilization and to strengthen the legitimation of its power.
However the socialists had to pay highly the price of the economic policies by losing the 1998 elections to the new centre-right coalition. They have lost the power, but they remained the strongest party and found themselves in the paradoxical situation of “victory in defeat.” For some authors, the failure in the 1998 elections resulted from the disagreements between the MSzP and its challenger Fidesz (AYD-CP) on economic issues; this gave advantages to the right wing parties that combined their powers to form a coalition government.
It is possible the same electoral image after the 2002 legislative elections with the MSzP increasing its vote at popular level, but with the same destiny of “victory in defeat” due to the obtaining of majority by the right wing parties within the parliament because of the electoral system. As a consequence, it is possible to suggest the three-way division of society between the liberals, the conservative and the left parties. After the 1998 elections, the shifting of liberal parties toward the conservative category necessitated the projection of a “new centre forces organization,” but the Hungarian politics seem to be categorically withdrawn towards the right and left poles with the accentuation of political discourse on national elements.
Its separation from the former MSzMP’s philosophical base was not complete, but the new party has had an experienced leadership and a nationwide organization. The MSzP claimed to be the heir to progressive thinking and reform communism with the objective of democratic socialism; by seeking integration into the western parties’ organizations, especially with its application for membership status in the Socialist International, the party leadership aimed to adopt the Western social democracy discourse in order to increase its popularity in the society. After the 1990 elections, the socialists held their second congress, which settled the identity of the party by distancing itself from the old MSzMP ideology. From now on, the focus was on a “social democratic orientation,” which opened the way later to potential cooperation with the liberal parties. With this change in its own political discourse, the MSzP managed to present itself as the only viable counterweight to the right wing parties.
For many authors, the success in ability to adapt itself to post-Communist process is derived in part from the legacy of the previous regime, especially the Kadarist period. As A. Agh indicates, the MSzP was unique in the communist world in that it emerged “before the collapse of the state socialism” and not after it, unlike all the other ones renamed and afterwards “reformed parties” of the post-Communist world. The party has benefited from this advantage, because the nature of the system in Hungary prior to the collapse of state socialism gave rise to the emergence of a large “Europeanized reform intelligentsia” as well as a mass base within the old MSzMP. As a result, the successor MSzP found itself well-stocked with individual leaders at both the national level and in the regions who were endowed with organizational skills and political expertise. As a result of this early organizational transformation, the MSzP was also the first of the communist parties to transform itself into a party of the modern European left wing.
It is not only the organizational legacy of the past communist regime that explains the success of the MSzP. At this point, it would be reasonable to quote that the nature of the past regime has produced a relatively stable and moderately fragmented post-communist part system; however it does not produce a social democratic alternatives within the political system. It is very understandable why the MSzP has already become a social democratic party, and hence monopolized the left wing of the party spectrum very early on. Without great competition within the party and with the organizational and personal advantages bequeathed by the most liberal of the CEE communist systems, it is little wonder that the MSzP has proved to be the one of the most successful of the communist successor parties with its well-established intra-party democratic procedures.
It is possible to quote the links between the MSzP and the trade unions which underline the weight of the party interests on the sensitivity towards the socio-economic themes. The decentralized structure of the party has given a very important advantage for the dynamic evolution of the political rhetorics based on regional realities.
At the September 1998 congress, Horn had to confront many critics against the economic strategy of his government and renounced all his functions, by saving his parliamentary mandate; the congress elected the former foreign minister L. Kovacs to the party presidency. The critics were concentrated on the failure of the economic program (known as Bokros plan) to deliver fair and socially acceptable results, the attacks against the ideal of “welfare state” by subservience to the new paradigms to reduce the welfare programs and the stabilization-modernization burdens; the abandonment of social democratic principles and the failure of the Horn leadership to successfully interact with the citizen and to explain the severity of the economic crisis.
The 1998 party congress undertook the first steps to put a new team to manage the party reform under L. Kovacs’ leadership; other new and younger people were elected to the sub-division leaderships. In the process of transition, the social-democratic platform appears to be the more influential within the party and they severely criticized the Horn period and prepared proposals for the re-invention of the MSzP. Similarly to other social democratic parties in Europe, one of the main objectives was to win the support of the younger generation. To succeed in re-obtaining the trust of young generation, middle strata and the improvised classes in society, closer alliances to the trade unions and civil society were also proposed. On the other side, the use of populist campaigns by the Fidesz and its allies has also limited the socialists to explain their cause.
Different in some respects from other countries, the Hungarian party structure during the 1990s was characterized by a relative stability. There is no doubt that the party structures closely mirror the main trends in the political culture. In the broader perspective, the degree of intra-party democracy is of very important significance. The full membership of the MSzP in the Socialist International in 1996 has also proved the largely positive image of the party on the international scene. For some authors, the MSzP is a somewhat loose alliance of different views; the existence of many factions such as the social democratic alliance, the socialist and leftist factions seemed to reinforce the democratic structures of the party with the appearance of new generations of political elites.
On the other side, it is possible to compare the infrastructure types of the Hungarian parties; for some analysts, the Fidesz is shown to have an elite infrastructure, while the MSzP has a bureaucratic one. This quality of MSzP is in many ways a legacy of its communist past; here, it is very important to indicate the role of the “late Kadar technocracy.” Having exercised a forty year monopoly over party politics in Hungary, the MSzMP, predecessor of the MSzP, entered the transition period with a very sophisticated infrastructure that included both a well-developed office network and a very large membership, which were released after the formal dissolution in 1989. In 1994, the composition of the party elites was changed with the departures of the former communist members to the other small parties in opposition. The older nomenklatura members began to fade away gradually and were replaced by a younger reform generation who were largely educated under the party-state; however the late Kadar elite was more career-oriented technocratic than ideologically zealous.
Neo-Communist Parties and Electoral Success in Poland: The SLD and the PSL
In Poland, a stable, democratic, multi-party political system has evolved during the last half-decade and major improvements have been made in the development of democratic political and legal institutional structures. The comeback of the communist successor parties in power did not create any popular shock, because they both have profited by their legacy and their good image from the old regime, which led to the nostalgia factor for the people whose standards of living were deteriorated under the shock therapy reforms. The Polish communist successor parties comprise the organizational heirs of the former communist party and its erstwhile agrarian ally: the Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewichy Demokratycnznej—SLD) and the Polish Peasant Party (Polskle Stronnictwo Ludowe—PSL). Both successor parties were direct beneficiaries of a substantial organizational inheritance. The PSL was the only party, with a significant rural base and the SLD, while mainly urban in character, also had an organizational network in towns. This relative superiority was rooted in organizational legacies that they inherited from their predecessors, the PZPR and its satellite ZSL.
The political left was voted into power in free national elections in Poland in September 1993. In Poland, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), dominated by the Social Democratic Party (SdRP), the successor of the Communist Party, won a plurality in the elections, garnering 20.4% of the popular vote, compared with 11.9% in 1991. The SLD forged a parliamentary and governmental partnership with the left-centrist Polish Peasant Party (PSL), a former communist satellite party that won 15% of the votes. The SLD’s coalition with the PSL was not a harmonious one and it was beset by presidential obstructionism under L. Walesa.
In the 1995 presidential elections, A. Kwasniewski was the leader and unchallenged candidate of the SLD and considered as the leading strategist behind the transformation of the neo-communists into the social democrats, but the other political parties revealed their basic weakness throughout the campaign and Watesa’s unpopularity left no figure around which the Solidarity-led parties could unite. On the other side, there was little difference between the main candidates’ programmatic aims of continuing the reforms and accession to NATO and the EU. Kwasniewski associated with secular humanistic values in his speeches and also benefited from the welfare-orientation of SLD-PSL coalition, by convincing the electorate that he could reject the old-style communist authoritarian practices. In November 1995 elections, Kwasniewski could win the majority at the second ballot with 51.7% of the votes. He repeated his electoral success in the 2000 elections with a decisive victory on the first ballot, but being nominally a non-party candidate and benefiting greatly from the full support of the SLD leadership and party apparatus.
Between these neo-communist parties, the PSL seems to be the largest Polish party in pure numerical terms, claiming nearly 200.000 members in 2000. For Szczerbiak, the PSL and the SLD bore a closer resemblance to “mass party model” in terms of relatively higher levels of membership. It was formed in May 1990 as the organizational successor to the former communist satellite United Peasant Party (ZSL). The party leaders attempt to draw on the historical traditions of the Polish (prewar) agrarian-populist movement which dated from the end of the nineteenth century and had provided the main political opposition to the Communists during the post-war years. The PSL won the second largest number of seats and was the junior coalition partner in the 1993-1997 parliament. In this coalition government, the PSL leader W. Pawlak was awarded as Prime minister between October 1993 and March 1995. After the September elections in 1997, it was reduced to being the fourth largest grouping in the Sejm with its share of the vote halved to 7.3%, while it took back its electorate in the 2001 elections by obtaining 9% of the votes. The party remained the key player and strong contender for the mantle of the third force in the Polish politics with its neo-agrarian ideology. During the first half of the 1990s, the PSL was criticized to be a centralized and leader-dominated party under Pawlak’s direction; this criticism was replaced with many discussions to re-orient the party’s political discourse under the leadership of J. Kalinowski within the adaptation process. In spite of the church’s strong influence in Polish rural communities, it is not surprising that religion does not play a more central role in the PSL’s party programs, however this lack could be explained by the close relationship between the Catholic Church and the larger landowners, while the peasant movement has supported left-wing tendencies, which have rejected the neo-liberal visions and defended for increasing the role of the State. With this vision, the PSL is defined as one of the most state-oriented parties in post-communist Poland.
From the point of view of membership, the second largest party is the SLD with 90.000 members by the beginning of 2000. Until is transformed itself into a single political party in April 1999, the SLD could be considered as an electoral coalition comprising around 30 parties, trade unions and social organizations that had enjoyed patronage during the communist era. However, it was dominated by the Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland (SdRP) that was formed as the direct organizational successor to the communist Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) at its congress in January 1990. The SLD also included the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ) that had been closely linked to the previous regime. A large proportion of SdRP-SLD members, strongly identified with the pre-1989 regime, had a clear personal interest in opposing “decommunization” in its widest sense and supported some aspects of the communist rule; this gave the party a relatively well-defined pool of potential recruits. It is estimated that approximately half of the SdRP members were formerly in the PZPR. The SLD’s leaders mostly come from the youngest generation of elites who began their careers within the old communist party; thanks to their past positions, the ex-communist elites often had an edge over their non-communist counterparts in terms of knowledge, skills, and personal contacts.
The SLD was the largest grouping and senior government coalition partner during the 1993-1997 parliament, although it was reduced to second place in September 1997 in spite of increasing its share of vote. In June 1999, the SdRP was absorbed into the SLD providing most of the leadership of the new party. In the September 2001 elections, the SLD has triumphed by obtaining the 41% of the popular vote, although the populists and the ultra-conservative parties have become a worryingly large minority within the Sejm. An ex-apparatchik, the current Prime minister and leader of the SLD, L. Miller has exposed pro-market, pro-EU and pro-NATO statements during his electoral campaigns.
The Backward Transformation of Neo-Communism in Romania and Bulgaria
Studies of the relations which have developed between the external factors and CEE since 1989 often pay only limited attention to Romania and Bulgaria, this can be explained by the fact that these two countries have never been among the front runners for post-communist transition and integration with the Western institutions; equally they have not been regarded as the strong partisans of integration with the international system.
In Romania and Bulgaria, the new leaders in the communist successor parties with their friendly pluralist tones had the advantage of not facing any organized opposition. Not surprisingly, the first free elections held in 1990 in these countries showed the victory of ex-communists, but they were not ready to transform their discourse and perspectives into the new realities of the post-Cold War international order.
The results of the 2000 national elections in Romania were a clear triumph for the Party of Social Democracy PSDR and an equally clear defeat for the Democratic Convention of Romania CDR from the centre-right wing. Though the great optimism after the CDR victories in parliamentary and presidential election in 1996, Romania’s economic performance was even less than that of Bulgaria in post-communist transition. In 2000, the electorate clearly rejected the centre-right parties in favour of the leftist PSDR and the extremists of the Greater Romania Party PRM. The results of 2000 elections have brought back to power I. Iliescu and his Party of Social Democracy, which would be renamed in June 2001 as the Social Democratic Party of Romania, by expressing such opposition to radical reforms. Exit polls indicated that, while the PSDR continued to be popular among peasantry, adults over 65 and in rural areas, the CDR was successful with the country’s growing entrepreneurial class and some of the working class voters.
In Bulgaria, unlike its ex-communist counterparts in Poland and Hungary, the Bulgarian Socialist Party could not decide quickly to transform itself into a modern socialist party just after the 1989 revolutions. After changing the name of the party as socialist in 1990, the BSP leaders have shown their unwillingness to opt for radical market reforms or to expand political pluralism, even though they were elected to govern the country in 1990. After their decline from power in 1991, the leadership of the party was changed with new names. Zh. Videnov’s youthful leadership was an advantage for the Socialists who managed to win the 1994 elections, but the Socialists came into office with a program based squarely on orthodox leftist policies which put the national economy fall apart in late 1996. The changes of presidential and governmental powers in favour of centre-right wing parties in 1996 and in 1997 gave advantages to Bulgaria with favourable reports from the EU.
Within the BSP organizations, there were many discussions on the reformist tendencies; the BSP ideologues claimed until the 1997 elections that their discourse represented a viable alternative to capitalism. During this period, the BSP was one of the few neo-communist parties in CEE to be pro-Russian, not directly for the Yeltsin administration, but for the friendly relations with the Russian Communist Party.
The victory of G. Prvanov in the November 2001 presidential elections was a great surprise for many people; a historian before entering politics, he belongs to the young social democratic wing of the BSP. He succeeded Videnov as party leader, when the latter’s government collapsed in 1996. After being elected, Prvanov stated that he was committed to continue the policy of Euro-Atlantic integration and promised to pay more attention on social problems, such as minority questions.
The Legacy of Communist Parties after the Velvet Divorce in the Czech and Slovak lands: Examples of Orthodox Party Structures in Post-Communism
As a unique example of “communist” party during the post-communist transition, the Czech and Moravian Communist Party (Komunisticka Strana Cech a Morava—KSCM) in Czech Republic involves the successor party by embracing its Marxist traditions, rejecting the free market approaches, repudiating western influence, and adopting the status of an anti-system opposition party. Today, the party elites continue to attack the “bourgeois democracy” and “capitalist exploitation,” although it is the only opposition party in the parliament that had remained free of government responsibility for previous twelve years and free to reap the fruits of public discontent.
Its predecessor, the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSC) captured power as a mass political party, using its extensive organizational networks and a large membership to mobilize voters. Unlike the other communist parties in CEE, the KSC has insisted on its “working class” character until the very end, by maintaining that “bolshevization” was a fully relevant and timely party goal on the basis of “ideological responsibility.” In fact, after the reformist initiatives with the Prague Spring, the party provided no reformist elites and adopted a more conservative discourse than the bureaucratic authoritarianism; (as a result, the Czech Communist Party elites were ideologically hidebound and eventually unable to keep up with the transition waves of 1989. On their side, the Slovak communists, in having to cede almost all their authority to Prague, lost prestige in their own territories and became an instrument of the Czech leadership. As a result, while the Czech party elites were not only unable to adopt a reformist discourse of change, but also incapable to transform the party and to adapt to democratic traditions and values. Not surprisingly, the Slovak communist elites were more successful in adapting to democracy after 1989 and becoming accepted political actors.
The KSCM was formed first as a territorial organizational unit of the KSC in March 1990 to act as the Czech counterpart to the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) within the federalized KSC, which terminated its activities in 1992; it became the successor to the KSC in 1992 as a consequence of the disintegration of the KSC. For many authors, the KSCM embodies an unreformed, “fossilised” Central European communist part operating under an unchanged name, and in the respective context of Czech politics, a case of an anti-system or extremist political force. According to these interpretations, the party also represents a political formation with its sub-cultural character, by excluding the idea of transformation in its own political discourse and by differentiating itself from other neo-communist formations in CEE. At the beginning of the 1990s, after living a long process of conflict on the name of the party, the change in the programmatic identity was in the agenda of the party members; the political discussions were hold between the neo-Stalinist positions and the democratic socialism purposes. The Party Congress in 1995 approved the programmatic objectives were clearly anti-capitalist and the party’s methodology was consistently Marxist. According to the Political Declaration of 1995, the ideal of communist society was the KSCM’s long-term objective and these purposes are often repeated in all the party conferences until 1999. The party still benefits from an important number of members in order to preserve its institutional legacy and structural differences, however the party elites did not agree with the democratic transformation of the party in parallel with the post-communist process and opted for the continuity of conservative altitudes.
A strong link between the KSCM’s anti-system orientation and its policies can be seen in its own foreign policy positions. A favourite issue used by the KSCM in its role as an anti-system party is the membership of the Czech Republic in NATO. The Communists are the only relevant party today to reject the NATO membership for ideological reasons and to have steadily called for the suspension and eventual cancellation of the Czech Republic’s membership in this organization. The other issue of foreign policy, that KSCM develops in exclusionist logic, is on the EU integration; the party criticizes the idea of European integration by calling it as “economic annexation” and “unilateral dependence” of the Czech Republic on the EU. At this point, the party adopts a quasi-nationalist rhetoric as a defender of national interests.
In Czech Republic, it is possible to find moderate tones of leftist currents in the Czech Social Democratic Party CSSD, which became the greatest political formation in the left-wing and has been in power since 1998. Adopting a reformist discourse, it obtained the chance to attract the interests of the electorate who prefer to move away from the anti-Westernism of the Communists. These tendencies also prove the accumulation of the electorate attitudes at the centre and the development of the political culture in stabilized conditions.
On their part, the Slovaks witnessed the appearance of two main political formations after the fragmentation of the KSC at federal levels; in February 1991, the Slovak counterparts of the KSC opened up the discussions on the future of communist movement in Slovakia, however these researches did not seem to find good answers because of the increase of populist leanings within the country. The party elites of the Slovak branch of the KSC decided to revive the old KSS at the beginning of the post-communist period; some party members did not agree with the conservation of communist elements during this new era and created the Democratic Left Party (SDL) in 1991 to underline the social democratic tones. The latter has obtained a significant support from the voters in all the legislative elections during the 1990s and entered in the large coalition government (Slovak Democratic Coalition) under Dzurinda after the 1998 elections. During this period, the SDL has concentrated its discourse on the criticism against the Party of Magyar Coalition, by defending the unitary status of the Slovak State. The political cooperation with the Christian democrats against Meciar’s political cult and the statist elements in its discourse seem to have great costs for the SDL leaders, because the party showed a dramatic decline in its votes in the 2002 elections and could not be represented within the Parliament.
The Neo-Communists and the Foreign Policy Positions
The western institutions have been a very important means for all the CEE countries in search for integration into the international system after 1989. While Hungary and Poland signed the association agreements with the EC in 1991, the other CEE countries have signed progressively these contracts in order to fasten the rapprochement of their foreign policy outputs with the Europeans. At this point, it is very important to underline that the applications for membership to the European integration were made mostly by the governments dominated with the neo-communist formations, with the only exceptions with the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Even though there existed great differences between the socioeconomic data of the CEE countries during the post-communist era, the discourse on the integration with the Western institutions became a “state policy” for all the CEE governments. This perception of “state policy” should be perceived as the most important part of the transformation strategies relating to the post-communist transition; it also represents the internal dimension of the Western support for all the countries on the way of liberalization and market economy after 1989. Within the stage of adaptation into the norms of the international system, the steps for the democratization of political culture should be taken in parallel with the economic reforms and this process of change has led to the institutional searches for attracting the interests of Western contributors on the national markets and for obtaining the political legitimacy to implement reform strategies at national level. At this point, it is very important to observe the support of the great part of communist successor parties in CEE for the initiatives of integration into the Western institutions. The purposes of integration could be analysed in two main perspectives: a) regional security concerns, which have necessitated the CEE countries’ membership to NATO; b) economic and political expectations toward the EU integration. For some authors, the West is seen as pressuring CEE governments to introduce reforms to reflect Western models (from the points of view of minority and migration issues), before they join the EU and NATO; in the Madrid Summit in July 1998, NATO leaders invited the three Central European states with best performances to join the organization; all the rest of the CEE countries will be integrated within NATO in May 2004. On their part, the CEE populations seem to support with high percentage the strategies of joining the EU and NATO, but the local interests differ from country to country. However it is very interesting to witness the change in rhetoric in political leaders (like Kwasniewski, Prvanov, Iliescu, etc.) defending the “national cause for total integration within the West.”
In Hungary, it is possible to underline the positive steps the socialist-liberal coalition took for the foreign policy outputs after the 1993 elections; by attracting the Western capital investment and prevailing the public order and the rule of law, the Horn government made excellent progress in the direction of the EU and NATO integration. The sensitive issues of the Hungarians abroad were handled in a qualitatively new way compared with the former regime: a historical reconciliation with the neighbouring states advocated by the government was partly successful, and Romania responded favourably, while Meciar’s Slovakia was negative. In 1997, the completion of the basic treaty with Romania and the new Constantinescu era created new opportunities in the geopolitical perspectives and for the development of bilateral relations; in 1996, under the pressure of the Western countries, the Hungarian government concluded a treaty of understanding, collaboration, and good neighbour-liness with Romania. This treaty has stated that neither side has any territorial claims against the other, thereby affirming for all Hungarian recognition of the permanent loss of Transylvania to Romania. This treaty also included a statement on minority rights endorsed by the Council of Europe that had required Romania to bring an end to discrimination against its Hungarian populations. After the signature of this treaty, an era of rapprochement has seemed to begin between two countries, as L. Kovacs, foreign minister in Horn’s government, expressed Hungary’s support of Romania’s membership in the EU and NATO, during his official visit in Bucharest.
Hungary’s relations with Slovakia could not show positive signs until the fall of Meciar’s government from power. The presence of Hungarian minority groups in Slovakia, the status of the small minority of Slovak-speaking people living in northern Hungary and the legal problems on the opening of the hydro-electric dam and power plant at Gabrcikovo on the Danube river constituted the agenda of the foreign policy with Bratislava for socialist-liberal coalition, but the rapprochement process could be available only with Meciar’s departure from power in 1998, when the Hungarian socialists were no longer in power.
In Poland, the political discourse supporting the strategy of integration with the West has been mostly pronounced by the elected presidents; for this purpose, it is possible to observe this theme in Kwasniewski’s presidential statements and electoral speeches, attaching a great interest on the integration with the Western institutions. The adoption of social-liberal synthesis as political discourse among the neo-communists in Poland has created no doubt many discussions at the political elites’ level, but this could be studied as a structural change of the political “cadre” by their liaison with private sector or by their educational career in the Western countries.
On the other side, the neo-communists’ tendencies to shifting towards the centrist approaches could be explained as for attracting the public opinion’s support on the Westernist perspectives in face of the anti-integrationist discourses of nationalist and ultra-catholic formations. The SDL leaders are very well aware of the advantages of being in power, while Poland achieves progressively the integration process with NATO and the EU; by this means, the Western support is considered to guarantee both the political success of the ruling parties and the stabilization of internal dynamics with westernizing values.
From the point of view of the Hungarian socialists, it is possible to consider more progressist foreign policy rhetoric than the right-wing parties in power since 1997. The MSzP has concentrated its critics against the Orban governments to act very slowly in the adaptation policies for the EU integration. In the domestic debates, the neo-communist leaders often underline that the positive steps approved by the progress reports of the EU Commission were taken by their governments, however if we compare the foreign policy proposals of the main parties in their electoral programs for the 2002 elections, it is possible to observe great similarities in their discourses towards the relations with the Western institutions. It is very important to underline at this point that the completion the accession process for Hungary in 2004 will give a great advantage and prestige for the right-conservative parties in power after the 2002 elections.
In the Bulgarian and Romanian cases, unlike the quasi-liberal neo-communist leaders in Hungary and Poland, we have the neo-communist leaders who, at the beginning of the 1990s, were not anti-European, but have many concerns on leaving their ideological traditions and political advantages and implementing the reform policies for post-communist transition, by asking many questions on the utility of the integration with the Western institutions. Romania has been the first country to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace program in 1995; it was also the third ex-communist state to apply for the EU membership, by submitting its application in June 1995, but this was more a reaction to the emerging dynamics of the eastern enlargement and a desire not to be omitted from any accession process under development. This forced position has arguably changed since 1996, after the coming to power of the centre-right wing parties, which defined at last the EU membership and the accession to NATO as the main goals of the Romanian foreign policy. On the other side, the perspectives of regional policies gave the Romanian governments the chance to cooperate for peaceful resolutions in the Balkans, with the signature of the Pact of Stability in South-eastern Europe in 1995.
The neo-communist leaders, who obtained again the presidential power (and the government in Romania) at the end of the 1990s in Romania and Bulgaria, understood well the necessity to admit the transformation of their political discourse, in order not to risk the process of integration with the West, by rejecting the political alliance and governmental coalition with the nationalist parties in ascension. In particular, in Romania, the PSDR leaders rejected the proposal of composing a coalition government with the ultra-nationalist Great Romania’s Party (antiSemitist, anti-Magyar and anti-Tsigane) after the 2000 elections. On the other side, it very likely to observe the change of rhetoric in I. Iliescu’s statements on NATO and the EU integration, which have become more intolerant to the nationalist and statist elements within the state policies. At the end of the 1990s, the signature of the agreements on good neighbourhood by the Romanian governments, especially with Hungary, and the new initiatives to promote the minority rights in the country have proven the changing trends of the PSDR’s political discourse on national issues, notably after the right-wing governments’ departure from power.
Since 1989, the Bulgarian foreign policy has undergone basic shifts whenever power has changed hands at home. In general, the BSP governments have focused on good relations with Russia, while their UDF counterparts have taken a pro-Western line and worked on qualifying for the EU and NATO membership. After 1997, the Bulgarian foreign policy became solidly Western-aligned and the country has become more active in international and regional organizations in order to alleviate its security concerns and to promote its chances for NATO membership.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that CEE democracies are undergoing a process of learning, both on the part of politicians as well as that of voters. This process takes place within a rather tumultuous environment of macroeconomic stabilization and micro-economic institutional reform policies. Important lessons about the CEE transitions can be learned from the neo-communists’ return to political dominance. First, the popular memory appears short about the negative aspects of the communist period and many citizens have developed an apparent “nostalgia” about its benefits, such as social welfare and basic economic security. Second, for the overwhelming majority of the population, economic concerns override political considerations. Third, many voters saw through the negative electoral campaigns of the centre-right parties; such tactics proved counterproductive as the electorate understood smearing the neo-communists sidestepped the real issues and concealed vague programs. Finally, voters are perceived a great part of the post-communist leaders to be lacking of highly valued expertise and professionalism.
The state of democracy in CEE at the beginning of the twenty-first century is still ambivalent. The region looks more democratic than at any previous time in its history. Almost invariably the countries of Central Europe have showed the best results in terms of democratization and economic reforms. Obviously, Central Europe has benefited from its geographical proximity to the economically most dynamic western part of the continent; the level of socio-economic development has been generally higher than in the other areas of communist Europe and their communist regimes were more technocratic and less ideologically rooted. While the post-communist transition showed a more negotiated, gradual transfer of power, it also revealed a more convincing and radical break with the authoritarian past. The democratization of the communist successor parties has been a significant element in the post-communist transition and the stabilization of democracy. Stable and relatively prosperous post-communist democracies have showed strong and viable social democratic parties like in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
The role of international influences and international actors, especially the EU and NATO, in the CEE democracy-building process has been enormous. Political conditionality as incorporated into the EU’s screening process stipulated what steps to be undertaken at each stage to meet standards of a consolidated democracy. The magnetism of a united Europe has played a decisive role in preventing anti-democratic forces taking the lead and subverting the democratic institutions. The signing of the treaties of good neighbourhood between many of the CEE countries, the institutionalization of political guarantees for minorities are directly related to the pressure exerted by the EU and its affiliated organisms on political elites of the new democracies. Even though these challenges will take time to deal with, the important fact is that the new political elites have unanimously accepted the inevitability of integrative process with liberal formations in world affairs and seem increasingly inclined to come to terms with the implications of globalizing processes.
The international environment in Europe looks favourable to the evolving role of the neo-communists in CEE. In this geography, the left is partly tied to the images of the former ruling communists and thus austerity measures undermine the left and reinforce the populist and conservatives forces. In addition to the problems of the new market economy and privatization stakes, post-communist societies are faced to the accelerating pressures created by the technological modernization where the left parties seem to have chance with their social democratic philosophy articulated on political arguments such as social peace, solidarity, social justice and prosperity. By considering a serious change in the party apparatus and democracy in decision-making hierarchy, it would be no doubt that the emergence of a new generation of contemporary leaders could answer the needs of contemporary citizens on the way of globalization and integration with the Western values.