It has been argued that the structure of political competition in Central and Eastern Europe was different from that in Western Europe in the early 1990ies. While in Western Europe parties position themselves on an axis between a left-libertarian and a right-authoritarian pole, in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) parties are located on an axis between a left-authoritarian and a right-libertarian pole. First empirical evidence based on the Chapel Hill Survey Series shows that today in some countries in CEE the left-right axis is still following the Eastern European pattern. In the theoretical section, we theorize the effects of legacies, democratic institutions and European integration on the transformation respectively the stability of the structure of party competition in CEE. Empirically, the article presents a case study of the structure of the Hungarian party competition based on a content analysis of Hungarian newspapers.
