Getting the
Centre-Right Right in Central and Eastern
Europe -
Some Preliminary
Observations and Ideas
Framework
paper presented at an informal seminar on 'The Centre-Right in Central
and Eastern Europe', School of Slavonic and East European Studies,
University College London, 20 June 2003
Introduction
Despite their importance in contemporary
European
politics, parties of the centre right remain a significantly
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.
After initial, but unfounded, concerns that the re-emergence of the
right in
the region might take the form of ultra-nationalism or Peronist
anti-market
populism, (Przeworski 1991; Tismaneanu 1996; for a critique see
Greskovits
1998:1-34), leading to a breakdown
of democracy in the region scholarly
interest rapidly moved elsewhere (1).
The existing literature on the centre-right
in
Eastern and Central Europe is, therefore, small and fragmentary.
Current
published research amounts to an edited collection (Held 1993), one
book length
treatment (Hellen 1996), which largely reviews prospects for
democratisation,
several monographs on national cases (Roper 1998; Wenzel 1998; Hanley
1999;
Brown 2001; Kiss 2003) and two recent papers attempting a comparative
perspective (Chan 2001; Vachudová 2001). A number of
more
general works also discuss the centre-right in the region, often
dealing with
it as a subsidiary theme within accounts of economic transformation
(see for
example, Orenstein 2002). Critical, left-wing scholarship has also
sometimes
focused on East and Central centre-right as the key political vehicle
for the
restoration of capitalism and agent of transnational capital after 1989
(Callinicos 1991; Gowan 1999; Saxonberg 2001: 387-95). The paucity of
literature on the centre-right in post-communist Europe contrasts with
the
voluminous, detailed and often sophisticated comparative literatures on
the
left – usually focused on communist successor parties
- (see for example, Gryzmala-Busse 2002; Ishiyama and Bozóki 2002)
and on the extreme right (Hockenos 1994; Cheles 1995; Ramet 1999;
Minkenberg
2003).
[TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE]
Defining the
Centre-Right
Leaving aside definitions, which view the
Right as a
set of enduring philosophical tenets or inherent psychological
pre-dispositions
(Eatwell and O’Sullivan 1989), the
most coherent accounts of the re-emergence of left and right in East
and
Central Europe have been constructed by scholars working on parties and
party
systems. These stress the historical and cultural specificity of
parties (and
party families) of the ‘right’. However, whereas communist successor
parties
can be easily identified through their organisational continuities with
former
ruling parties, despite their very different political trajectories
since 1989,
parties of right pose considerable problems of definition and
conceptualisation.
Comparativists have identified
three groups of parties
in the region as ‘right-wing’: 1) mainstream centre-right parties with
ties to
West European centre-right, which Vachudová
(2001) terms the ‘moderate
right’ and others subdivide into
traditionalist conservatives and liberal-conservatives (Lewis 2000;
Chan 2001);
2) broad populist-nationalist groupings, which played dominant role in
the
politics of new nation-states, such as Slovakia and Croatia in 1990s - termed the ‘independence right’
by Vachudová (2001);
and 3) former ruling communist
parties, with a ‘chauvino-communist
position’,
combining nationalism, social conservatism and economic populism - termed the ‘communist right’ by Vachudová
(2001) and ‘communist conservatives’ by (Chan 2001).
[TABLE TWO ABOUT HERE]
Moreover, political actors in
states across the region have themselves generated their own national
discourses of ‘rightness’, which represent a further set of definitions
to be
considered. In the Czech Republic, for
example, the Civic Democratic
Party (ODS) of former Prime Minister (and newly elected President), Václav Klaus, defined itself not
only in terms of economic
liberalism and anti-communism, but also as
bringing the ‘tried and tested’ neo-liberal approaches of the Western
right to
a provincial society overly inclined towards collectivism (Hanley
1999). In states such as Hungary
and Poland, by contrast, ‘right-wing’
politics are understood in terms of Christian, conservative-national,
national-populist or radical anti-communist positions, with free market
parties
constituting as a distinct ‘West of centre’, liberal camp (2)
Similar problems are posed by small agrarian parties, which were a
feature of
both the Hungarian and Polish party systems during 1990s, and recently
made important
electoral gains in Croatia, Estonia and Latvia. As the Scandinavian
experience
demonstrates, agrarian formations have the potential to evolve into
ideologically distinct, centre parties (Sitter and Batory 2003
forthcoming). In
Romania and Bulgaria the initial dominance after 1989 of
‘chauvino-communist’
former ruling parties - or groupings that emerged from them - saw the
‘right’
emerge as heterogeneous ‘democratic’ alliances of traditionalist
nationalists,
historic parties, liberals and radical anti-communists (Mason 1998;
Tismaneanu
and Klingman 2001; Peeva 2001). A
similar pattern seems observable in Serbia. However, here the
oppressive nature
of the Milošević regime
and a
historic split between liberals and traditional nationalists
made opposition alliances more unstable and thus lacking even a loose
‘right-wing’ identity (Garton Ash 1999: 254-74).
Meanwhile, in new national
states such as Slovakia and
Croatia, despite the existence of strong nationalist, liberal and
Christian
forces, a self-identifying discourse of the right was largely absent
from party
politics in 1990s. Instead, political competition was polarised around
a single
set of issues relating to national autonomy/national statehood and its
stewardship by Vladimír Mečiar's Movement for Democratic Slovakia
(HZDS)
and Franjo Tudjman’s Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ) (Fisher 2000), what Vachudová terms the ‘independence right’. A
similar pattern can be detected in the Baltic states, where despite not
enjoying
the degree of dominance of HZDS or HDZ conservative nationalists have
tended to
present themselves as champions of recovered national independence
against a
Russophone ‘left’ (Zake 2002).
Interestingly, however since losing power in 1998 and 2000 to broad coalitions of parties with more conventional ideologies of left and right, both HZDS and HDZ have expressed a desire to reinvent themselves as West European-style, Christian Democratic parties (Cvijetic 2000; Haughton 2001; Hipkins 2002; RFE/RL Newsline 22, 23 April 2002). However, Christian Democratic and liberal groupings in the opposition alliances, which displaced them also claim to be on the centre-right and have links with centre-right groupings in Western Europe (3) Moreover, as both Zake’s (2002) study of the neo-liberal People’s Party (TP) in Latvia suggest, new centre-right parties with more conventional programmatic appeals can make significant electoral breakthroughs, partially realigning such party systems away from ethnicity and issues of state-building. Similar trends may be observable in the emergence of the liberal, business-oriented Alliance for the New Citizen (ANO) as a parliamentary force in Slovakia in 2002 and of the conservative NGO-cum-party Res Publica as Estonia’s largest party in 2003 (Grunthal 2003). However, the recent electoral breakthrough in Latvia another technocratically-led, pro-market party, ‘New Era’ led by former central bank President Einars Repse (Raubisko 2003), emphases the instability of such party systems.
As Vachudová notes, while their relationship with pre-communist right-wing traditions varies (see Held 1993), these parties have a common historical and organisational origin in opposition to communist regimes before 1989 or mobilisation against them in 1989-90. They must, therefore, be understood as essentially ‘new’ political forces, shaped by late communism and the subsequent politics of post-communist transformation, rather than a simple throwback to the authoritarian conservatisms and integral nationalisms of the past. At the same time, however, contrary to the assumptions of some writers (Dangerfield 1997; Orenstein 2002), the (neo-)liberal and (neo-conservative identities and ideologies adopted by such forces are more than hasty borrowings from the West or diktats from international financial institutions (Callincos 1991; Gowan 1996) . Even where, as in the case of Poland and the Czech Republic, Western neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologies were consciously imported, this was already being undertaken in 1970s by dissident and technocratic counter elites – usually in response to the failure of reform communism or a means of modernising national political discourses (Szacki 1995; Hanley 1999; Shields 2003). Systematic underestimation of the role of domestic social and political forces in creating the East and Central European centre-right, and consequently its broader legitimacy and appeal, is characteristic of much critical left-wing scholarship on the region (Callinicos 1991; Gowan 1999; Saxonberg 2001: 387-95; for a critique see Robinson 1999; Shields 2003 forthcoming is a partial exception).
The need, in some cases, to consider (social-) liberal and agrarian parties as forces
outside the East Central European centre-right appears a complicating factor, given that both the defence of agricultural interests and economic liberalism are part of the broad centre-right in most West European party systems. To some extent this problem is offset by the limited electoral support of such parties (Lang 2000; Sitter and Batory 2003) and the trend, over time, for them to become aligned with (or absorbed into) broader centre-right or centre-left blocs, Hungary being the clearest example of this tendency. However, we should also note the success of new centrist, liberal groupings in rapidly reoccupying the political space vacated by older, discredited (neo-)liberal groupings. Such newly ascendant liberal centrist parties include the Freedom Union (US) in the Czech Republic, which entered parliament in 1998, or the Civic Platform (PO) in Poland, which did so in 2001. Similarly, while in Hungary the Independent Smallholders (FKGP) have disappeared an electoral force and been absorbed into the dominant centre-right grouping FIDESZ (Fowler 2003), the unstable Polish party system now contains two agrarian parties – the Polish Peasants’ Party (PSL) and the radical-populist protest party, Self-Defence (Szczerbiak 2002). This suggests that patterns of competition that separate the liberals and agrarians from the broader centre-right are more durable than individual parties themselves (see Sitter 2002). Underlying, is arguably a distinct pattern of East and Central European party and party system formation, in which the centre-right, in the absence of a strong class base, lacks the broad appeal and integrative ability of their West European counterparts. In certain respects, this is comparable to the historic pattern of party formation in Scandinavia, where weak, sectorally and regionally divided bourgeoisie produced an array of weak conservative liberal, agrarian and denominational parties, rather than a unified centre-right (see Lubbert 1991; Hancock 1998; Svassand 1998).
A further issue of definition is that of delineating the centre-right from the extreme right. In West European party systems, although the nature of the extreme right is disputed, this distinction seems empirically and conceptually clear. Most West European centre-right parties draw on the historic cleavages identified by Lipset and Rokkan (1967) and on the experience of post-1945 re-democratisation. Extreme right, ‘new populist’ parties, by contrast, emerged only in the 1970s in response to cultural and social shifts in advanced capitalist societies (Betz 1994; Taggart 1995; Kitschelt and McGann 1995). It is, therefore, possible to define the extreme right in terms of a family of parties with its own distinct origins and characteristics (see Mudde 2000).
In post-communist, East and Central Europe, it has been suggested, the distinction between the centre-right and the far-right is conceptually considerably less clear. This reflects both the legacy of the integral nationalism, authoritarian conservatism and collaboration with fascism that historically defined the right in many states of the region (Rogger and Weber 1966; Wolff and Hoensch 1987; Blinkhorn 1990) and the fact that both centre-right and extreme- right are products of post-1989 democratisation. In many cases, however, it appears possible to make a clear empirical distinction, identifying the centre-right by its larger and broader electorate (generally in the range of 20-45%), status as a (potential) participant in government and membership in European groupings of mainstream conservative and Christian Democratic parties. However, in Poland, where the dominant centre-right grouping, Solidarity Election Action (AWS) collapsed as an electoral force in 2001, to be effectively replaced by number of new conservative/Christian parties with a more radical rhetoric of protest and medium-sized electorates of around 10% (Szczcerbiak 2002), such empirical yardsticks seem difficult to apply. One possible conceptualisation is to view the centre-right as seeking to reconcile liberal-capitalist modernisation with traditional moral values and specific local and national identities, and the extreme right as seeking alternatives to such modernisation (Minkelberg 2003; see also Schopflin 2003).
Most influential comparative
frameworks explain the
re-emergence of centre-right parties (and indeed parties generally) and
national variations in the composition of the centre-right in terms of
broad
structural-historical factors. These include pre-communist levels of
modernity
(Kitschelt 1995, 2002; Kitschelt et al 1999); cultural/historical
cleavages
rooted in both the pre-communist and communist eras (Chan 2001; see
also
Schopflin 1994 and Janos 1994), newer divisions between
‘winners and losers’ in post-communist
transformation (Kitschelt 1992); modes of transition and patterns of
regime
change (Vachudová 2001a; see also Vachudová and Snyder 1997).
Kitschelt, for example, argues
that the incomplete
nature of social modernisation in pre-communist Hungary and Poland and
the
coercive nature of their subsequent modernisation under communism led
to the
conservation of populist, ruralist and conservative discourses and
debates.
These constituted a cultural and ideological reservoir for
reconstituting the
right after 1989, but preserved the historical division with liberals
committed
to free markets and lifestyle pluralism.
Moreover, the lack of social support for communism in such
semi-modern
societies, Kitschelt argues, created weak ‘national-accomodationist’
ruling
parties, whose successors to initiate and embraced economic reform
after 1989,
blurring the socio-economic dimension of left-right competition.
The free market,
liberal-conservative character of
the Czech right, by contrast, is explained by the pre-communist social
modernity of the Czech Lands, which left traditional sectors
intellectually and
socially marginal, but produced an authoritarian
'bureaucratic-authoritarian'
form of communism that was averse to any element of market reform. In
Bulgaria
and Romania, Kitschelt suggests extremely low levels of pre-communist
modernity
created clientelistic 'patrimonial communist' ruling parties, able to
dominate
both the transition from communism in 1989 and the early post- politics
through
the use of nationalism and economic populism. Faced with strong
ex-communist
elites, centre-right groupings in these states therefore fuse
pro-market
stances with militant anti-communism, in many ways resembling broad
opposition
coalitions elsewhere in the region that briefly mobilised against
communist
regimes in 1989-90, but then fragmented. This regime legacies approach
has
subsequently been refined to explain differing organisational,
political and
strategic development of individual parties, specifically communist
successor
parties (Gryzmala-Busse 2002; Kitschelt 2002).
Vachudová, by
contrast, downplays the differences identified by Kitschelt between the
conservative and neo-liberal centre-right in Hungary, Poland and the
Czech
Republic, regarding both as 'moderate right'. She attributes the
emergence of
the as 'moderate right' to existence of strong organized opposition
groups
under communism, which, she claims, furnished both the intellectual
basis and
the alternative elites required to found such parties, preempting the
emergence
of a 'communist right' (2001: 14 - 15). Conversely she attributes the
weakness
of the moderate right in states such as Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and
Croatia
to the weakness of such opposition. This, she suggests, allowed former
ruling
parties or extreme nationalists to
emerge as the dominant political forces in and after the transition by,
in
part, appropriating the national discourse and themes of the
traditional
pre-communist right.
Such structural-historical
analysis paints a broadly
convincing
picture in explaining the pattern of
left-right competition. However, it does little to account for the strength of centre-right parties in
individual states, which can often appear anomalous. For example,
despite the
existence of deep rooted cleavages in Poland dividing a large
Catholic-nationalist constituency from secular Poles – as a well as a
marked
urban-rural divide – centre-right forces have remained organisationally
weak,
politically divided and beset with seemingly insoluble collective
action
problems (Kaminski 2003). In the Czech Republic, by contrast, contrary
to the
expectations of commentators, who saw the weakness of authoritarian
nationalism, political Catholicism and aristocratic conservatism in the
Czech
lands as suggesting markedly social-liberal course after 1989 (see, for
example, Glenny 1990: 48-9), a powerful and durable, neo-liberal
‘Thatcherite’
centre-right emerged (Hanley 1999). Still more suprisingly, in
Bulgaria,
despite socio-economic backwardness, a weak liberal tradition and a
repressive
‘patrimonial communist’ regime, the main centre-right grouping, the
Union of
Democratic Forces (SDS) – later broadened into a wider grouping the
United
Democratic Forces (ODS) – proved suprisingly electorally effective and
organisationally robust throughout the 1990s (Fish 2000).
Like many accounts of party
formation in Western Europe
(see Kalyvas 1996), structural-historical approaches largely avoid
consideration of the strategies and interaction of political actors,
the
uncertainty of outcomes and the problems of political organisation.
Even
Vachudová's (2001a) comparative analysis, which relates the type of
‘right’
that emerges after 1989 to the strength of organised opposition under
communism, views the nature of this opposition merely as a product of
communist
regime types. (5) Similarly,
she, somewhat implausibly views the success of centre-right parties
after 1989
as conditioned by adaptation of post-communist successor parties. (6)
However, despite their clear intellectual, personal and organisational
origins
in opposition movements before 1989, literature with an institutional
focus has
tended to treat centre-right parties in East and Central Europe as
elite
creations with few real links to the past (see Hanley 2001 for a
review).
It therefore seems that
the re-emergence of the centre-right in post-communist Central and East
Europe
may only be fully understood by
considering the strategies of
counter-elites outside (or marginal to) the communist party-state
facing the
crisis of late socialism and the subsequent challenges of
post-communist
transformation. Such counter-elites include both ‘dissidents’
within
independent social and political movements and technocrats within
official
structures, as well as other actors mobilised during regime change.
Particular
attention may need to be paid to their crafting of new political
parties and
new ideologies in the immediate aftermath of the transition from
communism and
the way(s) in which newly divisive issues such as economic reform,
decommunisation and state building were framed and managed by them.
This may
help explain
some of the national variation in the strength and solidity of the
centre-right
in the region that structural-historical approaches do little to
address.
Historically, the emergence of the political
Right
in Western Europe and North and South America was associated the rise
of
distinct property-owning classes and a bourgeois civil society linked
to the
development of capitalism (Lipset and Rokkan 1967; Middlebrook 2000).
The same
is true of the re-emergence of the Right in new or restored democracies
such as
West Germany, Italy and France after 1945 or Spain after 1975 (Wilson
1998).
However, in East Central European countries the emergence of an
organised
political Right after 1989 largely preceded
the laying of social bases and the
‘transition to capitalism’. Moreover, in one case, that of
Poland, the
right has a substantial working class base, having largely emerged
through the
Solidarity movement (Wenzel 1998).
As radical political economists
have noted (see, for
example Shields 2003 forthcoming) the East European area
studies and democratisation literatures have generally avoided direct
consideration of the link between party development and
class formation in post-communist Europe.
Instead, it has relied largely on survey and polling data, or used
spatial
models of party positions, where certain sectors are said to correspond
to the
programmatic demands of certain social groups (Kitschelt et al 1999)
(7)
Differences between
the party leanings of transition
‘winners’ and ‘losers’ with differing on market locations have often
been
termed ‘cleavages’ by structural-historical analysts of party system
development in East and Central Europe (Kitschelt 1995; Kitschelt et al
1999).
However, despite some impressive pioneering research (Szelenyi,
Eyal and Townsley 1999), given the bias in the
literature towards elite-centred approaches (Bozóki 2002), there
has, in fact, been little theoretically grounded,
empirical work on how class formation, elite (trans)formation and party
formation in the region have interacted (8)
As Zake (2002) suggests, a greater focus on socio-economic
transformation and
class formation – conceived in terms of globalisation and
Europeanisation,
rather than discrete national economies – could move the comparative
politics
of East and Central Europe beyond the regime-legacy approaches, that
predominated
in the 1990s, but are now increasingly losing their explanatory power
(9)
Ideology plays an important role in both framing political action and giving cohesion and identity to political organisations. This is, arguably, particularly the case in periods of far reaching social and political change, such as post-communist transformation, when structural determinants may be weaker, levels of uncertainty higher and political identities less well defined. The ideologies of East and Central Europe’s new centre-right(s) combine both historic discourses and newer ideas imported from Western contexts or developed locally during post-communist transformation. These ideologies can broadly be broken down into three key strands: anti-communism, conservatism (including for the purpose of this discussion nationalism and populism) and (neo-)liberalism.
Anti-communism is one of the few ideological
tenets
shared almost without exception across the diverse East Central
European
centre-right. Calls for radical decommunisation -
often linked to vaguer aspiration of speeding up reform through
decisive action - were among the most characteristic demands of
emergent
right-wing forces in Eastern and Central Europe in the early 1990s. In many states in the region decommunisation
was also a key issue promoting differentiation in broad anti-regime
coalitions
and prompting the foundation of political parties, including parties of
the
centre-right. Centre-right parties have subsequently been among the
keenest
advocates of lustration procedures intended to screen those holding
high public
office for past collaboration with communist security apparatus (and in
some
cases to debar them) (Williams, Szczerbiak and Fowler 2003). At a
deeper level,
however, anti-communism has been used by many centre-right parties to
frame
left-left competition, which is depicted as a continuation of the
struggle for
regime change (‘thick’ or ‘permanent’ transition, (10)
struggle against ‘Third Ways’). Centre-left opponents are thus viewed
as
continuing communist ideology in an attenuated form, ensuring the
dominance of
elites drawn from nomenklatura
structures, or themselves personifying links with the communist past.
At the
same time, however, decommunisation has been a divisive issue within the emergent centre-right in the
region, given the conflicting imperatives of historical justice and
broader
socio-economic reform. Although in most cases traditional liberal or
conservative agendas won out over the demands of small, vocal groups of
radical
anti-communists, in at least one instance - that of the Union of
Democratic
Forces (SDS) in Bulgaria – the division proved crippling for much of
the early
1990s (Fish 1999).
A further ideological faultline is that
between
liberals – including both the established civic-minded intelligentsia
and
neo-liberals influenced by Western economic and public choice theory –
and
conservatives, usually committed to of moral order rooted in
traditional
discourse of the Nation (or the People) as a historic community. Most
large,
established centre-right parties in Western Europe combine (neo-) these
conflicting elements both in their ideologies and in the range of
sub-groups
and factions represented within them. As many observers, have, however,
noted
there is, especially at times of marked political and social change,
often a
tension between the two (Edgar 1986). The relationship between liberal
and
conservative ideas - and liberal and
conservatives actors - can therefore be seen as highly significant for
the
consolidation and development of East and Central Europe’s
centre-right. This
is particularly the case, given that in a number of states in the
region, there
is historic cleavage between liberal and conservative-national
(national-populist)
camps, which appears to have weakened non-socialist forces. In Poland,
for
example, the coalition government formed in 1997 between the liberal
Freedom
Union (UW) and the larger, conservative-national Solidarity Election
Action
(AWS) bloc proved fraught and collapsed in 2000, ultimately resulting
in the
electoral demise of both parties (Szczerbiak 2002) (11) Similar,
although less acute, tensions are currently emerging in Slovakia’a
governing centre-right coalition between the liberal, pro-business
Alliance for
the New Citizen (ANO) and the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) over
proposed
changes to the country’s abortion law (RFE/RL
Newsline Part II, 25, 29 April and 20 May 2003).
Nevertheless, such divisions, however historical or structural in origin, cannot be regarded as set in stone. As Hall (2003a, 2003b, 2003c) notes, where such cleavages were ultimately reflected in post-1989 party systems, even under late communism there were often observable, if and often abortive, attempts at intellectual rapprochement between liberals and conservative-nationals (or national-populists). These usually entailed liberals rethinking their earlier rejection of the importance of historic questions relating to the nation (12). This tendency can be seen to have resumed in the mid-1990s in the growing nationalisation of key (neo)liberal forces in the region. In Hungary, the disintegration of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), the main political vehicle of the national-populists and winner of the first post-communist multi-party elections, after a difficult period in office, created important opportunities for realignment. These opportunities were taken by the Federation of Young Democrats (FIDESZ) – under the leadership of Viktor Orbán. Originally an anti-communist youth party considered to be in the liberal camp, FIDESZ was successfully repositioned by Orbán in 1994-5 as a right-wing formation, combining aspects of its earlier liberalism and anti-communism with the traditional nation- and family-centred agenda of the national populists (Kiss 2003) (13) The resultant FIDESZ – Hungarian Civic Party (FIDESZ-MPP) is the dominant party of the Hungarian right, having successful drawn in Christian, rural and nationalist electorates of smaller parties is, and, in electoral terms, the strongest centre-right party in the region.
Similarly, in the Czech Republic, for much of
the
1990s Václav Klaus’s governing Civic Democratic Party (ODS)
presented
itself as a neo-liberal party inspired by the British and US New Right,
albeit
with a nationalist subtext stressing the congruence of the Czech
character and
the free market (Williams 1995; Hanley 1999). As such, it explicitly
rejected
traditional Czech political thought, including its conservative,
liberal and
nationalist strands, both as provincial, collectivist, messanistic and
irrelevant to contemporary society. However, after losing office in
November
1997 and being outpolled by the centre-left in elections in 1998, the
party –
still under the leadership of Klaus – realigned itself, moving away
from a
stress on free markets towards a more nationalistic stance stressing
the need
to defend Czech national interests. This, in part, represented an
intensification and elaboration of the party’s eurosceptic stance (see
below),
but was also notable for its revival of the nationalist paradigm,
juxtaposing
the interests of the Czech nation to those of Germany and the
German-speaking
world. This was made explicit by the party’s resolute defence of the
legal
status of the ‘Beneš Decrees‘ -
post-war emergency
measures expelling Czechoslovakia’s 2.5 million ethnic German
population and
some ethnic Hungarians. Many Austria and German politicians, as well as
much of
the Czech liberal intelligentsia, considered that the Decrees should be
repealed or modified before Czech EU entry. However, ODS dismissed such
claims
as a threat to Czech statehood. In
its 2002 programme, the Civic Democrats also took
up new, socially conservative themes such as the need to restrict
immigration
(Hanley 2002b).
The Czech case is interesting and potentially
significant, because, unlike in Hungary, in the Czech lands there is no
deep
historical divide between a commitment to liberalism and a commitment
to
nationalism and ‘national’ values. There was apparently no strong
electoral
incentive for Klaus and his party to adopt a more traditionally
nationalist
inflection. Indeed, is arguable it may even have lost them support
(Hanley
2002b). Many journalistic commentators have suggested, that the revival
of
historic issues such as the Beneš Decrees by right-wing politicians in
the
Czech Republic, Germany, Austria and Hungary (14)
marked a return to regional traditions of petty chauvinism and populist
nationalism (Rupnik 2002; Pehe 2003).
However, beyond the electoral opportunism of certain politicians and
parties,
they gave little explanation has to why such a revival might be taking
place.
Others have identified the beginnings of a Central European form of
‘alpine
populism’ seen in Northern Italy, Switzerland and Austria during 1990s
based
the defence of small, provincial, relatively prosperous societies
against
migration from poorer neighbouring states (Hall and Perrault 2000;
Vachudová 2001).
However, ‘alpine populists’ such as Italy’s Northern League or
Austria’s
Freedom Party were protest parties, which successfully preyed upon
established
centre-right parties in long-standing clientelistic or cartel-like
arrangements
(Betz 1994; Taggart 1995), rather than key players in national party
systems
like the Czech ODS or Hungary’s FIDESZ.
Many centre-right parties in
Western Europe
emerged on the basis of cleavages associated with classical
socio-economic
modernization and national state formation. Centre-right parties in
post-communist East and Central Europe have, by contrast, formed
against a
background of social, cultural and technological changes that can
broadly be
termed ‘post-modernisation’, many of
which call into question the importance the national state (Inglehart
1997; Giddens
2002). Of these globalisation and the
related process of European integration (Bieler 2000) are by far the most significant.
These processes not only they
aggravate historical
sensitivities in a region where the formation of national states was
historically
belated, contested or incomplete, but pose particular challenge to many
parties
of centre-right in the region (15)
Although few centre-right formations are actively opposed to EU
membership,
early comparative research on party-based euroscepticism has
highlighted a
tendency for them to be more eurosceptic than their counterparts in
Western
Europe (Taggart and Szczerbiak 2002; see also Kopecký and Mudde 2002). Many dislike the far-reaching
transferal and
restriction of national sovereignty required by EU membership; the
bureaucratic
centralisation and likely power of large West European states (in
particular,
Germany) in an enlarged EU; the marginalisation of local businesses and
elites;
and the erosion of national and local identities under the competitive
pressures of the Single Market. Parties, with strong free market
commitments,
such as the Czech Civic Democrats (ODS) have also argued that the EU is
over-regulated and ‘socialist’ or ‘collectivist’ in its economic
thinking.
Already by mid-1990s, some broad
centre-right groupings
such as the national-populist Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) and the
Romania
Democratic Convention (CD) (Mungiu-Pippidi and Ionita 2001)
had experienced
electoral and organisational
disintegration. 2001-2
saw the electoral failure of centre right parties in Poland, Hungary,
the Czech
Republic and Bulgaria. In the three Central European cases, social
democratic
parties outpolled their main centre-right rivals and formed centre-left
coalition with smaller agrarian or liberal parties (Szcerbiak 2002;
Hanley
2002b; Henderson 2002; Fowler 2003a) In the fourth, Bulgaria, the 2001
elections saw both the incumbent Union of Democratic Forces (SDS) and
the
Bulgarian Socialists swept aside by the National Movement - Simeon II
(NDSV), an ad hoc
reform movement headed by Simeon
Simeon Saxecoburgottski, the former king, who
spent the
communist period living abroad as an exile. In two of this cases – that
of
Poland’s AWS and Bulgaria’s SDS – electoral defeat was also accompanied
by
partial or total party collapse. The re-election of Slovakia’s
centre-right
coalition was an exception to this trend, although, as noted above,
this may be
explained as a continuation of the pattern of competition – broad
coalitions
mobilising against a dominant nationalist party – characteristic of
some new
national states in the region.
In all four states where the centre-right was
defeated, far-reaching discussions are now under way about the nature
and
future of the right in the region. While in Poland the issue seems one
of the
right seeking basic programmatic and organisational cohesion, elsewhere
discussion has focused on broadening
the centre-right’s electoral appeal and acquiring a deeper level of
social
implantation - a strategy often
depicted by its advocates as a move towards to the West European
Christian
Democratic model. In the wake of its election defeat Hungary’s FIDESZ,
for
example, has sought to reinvent itself as ‘civic movement from below’ - connected to sympathisers in local
communities through a network of ‘civic circles’ -
which would be open to right-wing voters of small, weakened or
defunct Christian, agrarian and extreme right parties. Accordingly, it
has
renamed itself FIDESZ – Hungarian Civic Alliance (FIDESZ -
MPSZ) and wishes, according to its leader
Viktor Orbán, to become a ‘People’s Party’ on the West
European
(Christian-Democratic) model (Budapest
Sun 2003; RFE/RL Newsline Part II, 7 February, 15,
24 April and 19 May 2003).
Similar ideas have been circulating since at least the mid-1990s in the
Czech
Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and were most recently championed by the
unsuccessful leadership contender Petr Nečas (Nečas
2002; see also
Hanley 1999, 2002a).
Although the importance of electoral cycles
should
not be underestimated, it may also be necessary to consider whether
there are
underlying factors behind the recent decline of the East Central
European
centre right. It is, for example,
possible that the origins of many centre-right parties as engines of
regime
change leave them vulnerable to ideological exhaustion and crises of
party
identity, as the fundamental institutional and political choices of
post-communist transformation recede in importance as issues. It might
also be
the case that the social structure of East and Central European states
and in
particular distributions of transition ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ – is now
making
it difficult to sustain strong centre-right parties in the region,
leaving
nationalist mobilisation, euroscepticism and anti-communism as (generally unsuccessful) default
strategies. In this respect, the
underlying parallel with the Scandinavian experience – a structurally
weak and
divided centre-right with a limited support base – may be instructive
(16) Alternatively, there may be broader factors at work affecting not
only the
mainstream right in the region, but also the far right which has
suffered a
parallel, but much more precipitate decline (Mudde 2002). Still more
broadly,
one could speculate that the problems of the East and Central European
centre
right may be part of a broader political malaise affecting the
mainstream right
across many Western democracies rooted in globalisation, cultural
shifts and
the adaptive capacities of the centre-left.
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Table
1: Key Centre-Right Parties in Selected States in C and E Europe
|
Country |
Parties |
%
vote (last
national election) |
Incumbent |
International
affiliation |
|
Bulgaria |
Union of
Democratic Forces (SDS) |
18.2% - 2001 |
No |
EPP/EDU |
|
Czech
Republic |
Civic
Democratic Party (ODS) |
24.5% - 2002 |
No |
EPP/EDU |
|
Estonia |
Union for the
Republic – Res Publica (RP) Estonian
Reform Party (ER) |
24.6% - 2003 17.7% - 2003 |
Yes Yes |
EPP ELDR |
|
Hungary |
Fidesz-Hungarian
Civic Party (Fidesz – MPP) |
41.1% - 2002 |
No |
EPP/EDU |
|
Latvia |
New Era (JL) Latvia’s First
Party (LPP) People’s Party (TP) Fatherland and
Freedom (TB/LNKK) |
23.9% - 2002 9.6%
- 2002 16.7 % – 2002 5.4
% - 2002 |
Yes Yes No Yes |
EPP EPP EPP EPP |
|
Lithuania |
Homeland Union - Lithuanian Conservatives (TS) Lithuanian
Liberal Union (LLS) New Union -
Social Liberals (NS) |
8.6% - 2000 17.3% - 2000 9.6% - 2000 |
|
EDU ELDR ELDR |
|
Poland |
Solidarity
Electoral Action of the Right (AWSP) Law and
Justice (PiS) League of
Polish Families (LPR) Civic Platform
(PO) |
5.6
% - 2001 9.5%
- 2001 7.8%
- 2001 12.7 % - 2001 |
No No No No |
EPP EPP ? EPP |
Romania
|
National
Liberal Party (PNL) Romanian
Democratic Convention 2000 (CD) |
6.9% - 2000 5.0% - 2000 |
No No |
ELDR ? |
|
Slovakia |
Christian
Democratic Movement of Slovakia (KDH) Slovak
Democratic and Christian Union (SDKU) Alliance for
the New Citizen (ANO) |
8.3%
- 2002 15.1% - 2002 8.0% |
Yes Yes Yes |
EDU/EPP EPP ? |
|
Slovenia |
Liberal
Democracy of Slovenia (LDS) Slovenian
People’s Party (SLS) SocialDemocratic
Pty of Slovenia (SDS) New
Slovenia-Christian People’s Party (NSI) |
36.3% – 2000 9.6% - 2000
15.9% - 2000 8.6% - 20000 |
Yes Yes No No |
ELDR EDU/EPP EPP EPP |
Table 2: Typologies of
‘Right-wing’ Parties in Post-Communist Europe
Vachudova
(2001)
|
“Communist
Right” |
“Moderate Right”
|
“Independence
Right” |
|
|
Chan
(2001) |
“Communist-Conservatives” |
“Traditional
Conservatives” |
“Liberal
Conservatives” |
- |
|
Lewis
(2000) |
“Post-Communist” |
“Conservative” |
“Liberal-Conservative” |
“Nationalist” |
Hungary
|
|
Hungarian Democratic Forum (1990 – 94) FIDESZ – Hungarian Civic Party* |
|
none |
|
Poland |
|
Solidarity Election Action(1996 – 2001) |
|
|
|
Czech Republic |
|
|
Civic Democratic
Party (ODS) |
|
|
Slovakia |
|
|
|
Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) |
|
Croatia |
|
|
|
Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) |
Serbia
|
Serbian Socialist Party (SPS) |
|
|
|
|
Romania |
Social Democracy of Romania (PSDR) |
|
Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR)** |
|
|
Bulgaria |
Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) |
|
Union of Democratic Forces (SDS)** |
|
|
Russia |
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
(KPRF) |
|
|
|
*Categorised by Lewis as
Liberal-conservative
**Lewis (2001)
(4) These parties also co-operate regionally and have in the last three years attended an annual conference of Center Right Parties in Central and Eastern Europe. The last such conference took place on 27 – 29 September 2002 and adopted a common declaration. See http://www.zahradil.cz/html/4.html
(5) Her analysis is also sometimes sweeping in its labelling of opposition movements as ‘strong’ or ‘weak. For example, 'strong' opposition networks in communist Poland were of a very different scale and nature from 'strong' (in fact, small and isolated) opposition groupings in Czechoslovakia, which were scarcely stronger than the 'weak' opposition in Slovakia. Equally, while Croatia may have been the 'Silent Republic' after 1972 its 'weak' opposition networks were vastly more significant than the 'weak' (indeed, non-existent) opposition in Romania.
(6) However,
in the early 1990s even subsequently successful successor parties such
as those
in Hungary and Poland were politically marginal and electorally
unpopular and
were themselves arguably still adapting to the unexpected course of the
collapse of communism.
(7) Other
studies focus on the interaction of
democracy and economic reform (see, for example, Orenstein 2002)
(11) As Wenzel
(1998) notes the fact that even Catholic-national groups in Poland were
only able
to unite on the basis of the symbolic identity of the Solidarity
movement,
rather than any forward-looking programmatic or ideology indicates
deeper
problems.
(12) This
tendency was also arguably obscured both by the ideological breadth of
opposition initiatives and by the fact many prominent liberal
opposition
intellectuals, such as Jacek Kuroń
and Janos Kis came to liberalism via reform communist or
radical-left
positions.
(13) I am
grateful to Brigid Fowler for a helpful discussion concerning some of
these
points, personal communication (e-mail) April 2003.
(16) Given the
pressures of Europeanisation and globalisation, however, it seems
unlikely that
centre-left governments in the region will have the resources or the
opportunities to pursue projects of national welfare capitalism