ABSTRACT
Despite their importance in contemporary European politics, parties of the centre-right remain an under-researched area. This is particularly the case of the mainstream right in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, where centre-right parties in almost all countries held office for significant periods in the years following 1989 (see Table 1.1). The existing literature on the centreright in Eastern and Central Europe is, therefore, small and fragmentary. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, discussion of the re-emergence of the right centred on concerns that it would take the form of ultra-nationalism or Peronist anti-market populism leading to a possible breakdown of democracy in the region (Andor: 1991; Przeworski 1991; Tismaneanu 1996). However, when such predictions proved erroneous (for a critique see Greskovits 1998: 1-34), scholarly interest rapidly moved elsewhere.
