Parties and electoral choices in east-central europe

In this chapter the performances of four east-central European party systems are compared with regard to the ‘meaningfulness of electoral choice’ that they offer to the voters. This is attempted by analysing several survey-based indicators of patterns in east-central European electoral behaviour. The aim is not so much the testing of well-established hypotheses about the circumstances facilitating the rapid structuration and consolidation of party space in newly established democracies—which do not abound—but description and inductive speculation about possible explanations. In view of the number of indicators that are utilised and the number of parties operating in the four countries, most of the statistical evidence that will be referred to cannot possibly be reproduced here: interested readers can, however, find them in the original conference paper version of this chapter. ¹ Since the compilation of that body of evidence quite a number of the parties mentioned in this chapter have experienced mergers, splits, or major changes in their electoral strength. The reason why only occasional reference will be made to these developments is that those patterns of electoral behaviour that are discussed here seem to prevail in more recent survey data too.