Party systems in Eastern Europe - what determines the chances of newcomers?

Abstract

"In February 2000 the EU opened accession negotiations with the last of the countries that were to become members in 2004 and 2007 (EU-10). Ten years after the more or less peaceful revolutions these countries had made remarkable progress in the transformation processes towards democracy and market economy. The economies had stabilized and started to grow. In the political sphere party systems as a 'set of parties that interact in patterned ways' had developed. Despite of this apparent consolidation some of the parliamentary elections in the EU-10 in the periods 2000-2003 and 2004-2007 saw landslide victories of complete newcomers. In other cases, however, new parties remained marginal or failed to pass the representation threshold. The following paper aims at investigating why new parties were so successful in some countries/ elections, while failing in others. The background section provides an overview about the existing literature on emergence and success of new parties - in 'old' and 'new' democracies. Independent variables not yet addressed in research are identified. The second part describes frameworks for analysis and develops hypotheses. Operationalization and measurement of the variables is then followed by analysis and discussion of the results." (author's abstract)