Suchergebnisse

Political parties are central to the process of democratization in east-central Europe. In contrast to the many studies that look at the instability of new parties and party systems, this article focuses on party organizational development. First, a hypothesis is put forward contending that parties in the region are likely to develop as formations with loose electoral constituencies, unimportant membership and a dominant role played by party leaders. Second, this hypothesis is tested on a sample of six parties from the Czech Republic. The analysis shows that certain variations in organizational structure exist, deriving from the distinction between old parties and newly established parties, the former deviating from the hypothesis to a greater extent than the latter.

The Routledge Handbook of East European Politics is an authoritative overview that will help a wide readership develop an understanding of the region in all its political, economic, and social complexity. Including Central Europe, the Baltic republics, South Eastern Europe, and the Western Balkans, as well as all the countries of the former Soviet Union, it is unrivalled in breadth and depth, affording a comprehensive overview of Eastern European politics provided by leading experts in the fields of comparative politics, international relations, and public administration. Through a series of cutting-edge articles, it seeks to explain and understand patterns of Eastern European politics today.The Routledge Handbook of East European Politics will be a key reference point both for advanced-level students developing knowledge about the subject, researchers producing new material in the area, and those interested and working in the fields of East European Politics, Russian Politics, EU Politics, and more broadly in European Politics, Comparative Politics, Democratization Studies, and International Relations

This case study is based on two research projects carried out between 2006 and 2012, the principal aim of which was to shed light on the performance of political parties in contemporary democracies by focusing on one of the neglected aspects of their organizational life: party patronage. Patronage, understood as party political appointments of personnel in state institutions, is a key resource in the hands of the parties to build and maintain their organizations. We started the project(s) by developing a research method that would help us to systematically map and empirically document patterns of party patronage on a comparative basis. This method is principally based on primary data collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with country experts, carried out at the level of different policy areas and types of institutions within each investigated state and then aggregated to the state level. In conducting this research, we had to solve the problems of expert selection, of potential bias of interviews, and of high political sensitivity of the topic. As large part of the project involved cooperation with a team of collaborators, we also had to solve the problems of coordination and calibration of our research.

The volatile and unstable party systems in East Central Europe are associated with the emergence of new parties. However, some such new parties survive and become part of the party system they entered while other newcomers fade away even after they record major electoral success or gain government participation. How can we explain the contrasting fortunes of new parties? What explains their persistence and organizational survival? In this paper, we try to find the answers to these questions by linking the organizational success of new parties to the composition of their elites. We suggest that the similarity in professional and career backgrounds contributes to parties' organizational success by increasing party cohesion, especially at the level of party leadership. We demonstrate our arguments on three new Czech parties – Public A airs (VV), Dawn of Direct Democracy (Dawn) and ANO – with contrasting political and organizational fortunes. Using data on elites' career and political pasts we show that, unlike ANO, VV and Dawn have comparatively more heterogeneous elite circles which, we suggest, make them more vulnerable to internal conflicts.

This paper is based on the concluding chapter of a forthcoming volume reporting the results of a research project that has investigated the principles and practices of party patronage in contemporary European democracies on a systematic cross-national basis. Despite sometimes substantial theoretical interest in this topic in the past, there has been a persistent lack of comparable data with which to gauge its extent, and hence also a persistent shortfall in cross-national empirical research efforts. At the same time, much of the theoretical work in this area has also been limited by virtue of the tendency to link the concept of patronage to exchange politics, thus ignoring its potential relevance as a party organizational resource in contemporary systems of multi-level governance. This project has aimed to fill an important empirical void in the literature on contemporary European polities. It has also aimed to use this new robust empirical evidence to theorize about party patronage within the context of party organisational development and transformation, on the one hand, and political-institutional transformations of modern state, on the other.