Slicing, Dicing and Dividing: Systems, Sub-Systems and the Patterns of Party Politics in Central and Eastern Europe

Despite a common communist experience for four decades and facing similar challenges in the post-communist years, there has been a wide variation in the degree and timing of change across the region. Although these party systems appear chaotic we argue that there are patterns which can not only be discerned but explained. As our previous work has shown the traction of frameworks used to explain the development of party politics in CEE linked to legacies, the exit from communism and EU accession have limited explanatory punch. Indeed, the motors and brakes of party politics in CEE are more contemporary and endogenous. Should we, therefore, also throw cleavages into the explanatory dustbin of history? Cleavages, however, can contribute to our understanding of the patterns of party politics in CEE, but two amendments and one major change of conceptual frame are required. Firstly, a more flexible understanding of cleavages is required, incorporating an appreciation of change and the role of agency in cleavage formation. Secondly, two of the driving forces of politics in CEE in the 21st century: corruption and novelty, have been largely neglected in cleavage-based accounts. This paper's main contribution, however, is to argue that too much attention has been focused at the systemic level. We maintain that not only would cleavage-based accounts benefit from examining the component parts of the party systems (i.e. the parties themselves), but that we can better understand the development of party politics across the region by identifying and explaining the dynamics of party sub-systems. We find an increasingly pervasive pattern of stable, older parties and a subsystem of newer and less stable parties engaged in accelerating party-level cycles of birth, death and replacement. Cleavages and cleavage-like divides are not only important contributions to explaining why these sub-systems emerge, but also why they (may) endure.