Party Governments in Central and Eastern Europe: Challenging Conventional Wisdom

Abstract

More than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall most countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have established parliamentary democracies and joined the European Union. Nevertheless, party governments in the region remain apparently distinct from those in ‘old’ EU members. Specific features of CEE governments include, inter alia, many new parties entering cabinet, a high number of minority and oversized cabinets, and a comparatively low degree of duration. Although coalition politics has been most prominent in the comparative literature on Western Europe, relevant studies on CEE are still quite scarce. However, extant analyses tend to reveal that standard theories designed for party governments in established democracies are not equally applicable to CEE. In order to provide more powerful explanations, they have to be augmented by context-specific factors and/or their mechanisms have to be substantially revised. In this way, the comparative study of CEE governments may also enhance the conventional wisdom about the formation, functioning and duration of party coalitions. This panel aims to explore in what way(s) party governments in CEE challenge conventional wisdom and how the relevant empirical findings may contribute to the advancement of general coalition theory. More specifically, it seeks to attract papers that: focus on (a) the impact of policy preferences of political parties on government formation and/or survival; (b) on the impact on contextual and constitutional features like the power of the president on patterns of coalition politics; and (c) on the degree of intra-party conflict and programmatic diversity within parties in CEE states and their impact on government formation and portfolio allocation within coalition governments.

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