Similar, but Why Still So Different? Explaining the Patterns of New Party Breakthroughs and Party System Consolidation in Estonia and Latvia

The Estonian and Latvian democracies share many similarities regarding their history (both are former USSR republics regaining independence in 1991), institutional architecture (both use PR electoral systems, are parliamentary republics and unitary states) and socio-demographic backgrounds (both have sizable Russian-speaking minorities and the pronounced ethnic cleavage). However, in the realm of party politics, although both countries have acquired quite fragmented multi-party systems, the patterns of the emergence of new parties, party system consolidation (stabilisation), and party institutionalisation have been strikingly contrasting. According to the database compiled by Casal Bértoa (2022), Latvia is close to the top even in the CEE context by its average number of new party breakthroughs (1992 – 2021), while in Estonia, new parties have been rare, making it one of the most consolidated party systems in CEE. The same patterns are attested regarding electoral volatility and party institutionalisation in which, again, Estonia tends to be the country with the most stable party system and fairly institutionalised parties in the region, while Latvia occupies the opposite place on the pole. The paper seeks the answer to the "way "question when not analysing the destinies of single parties but attempts to understand the underlying causes of the broader contextual phenomenon. While doing so, the paper employs the historical institutionalist framework and its major notions as path-dependence, critical junctures and reproduction mechanisms. So far, historical institutionalism has not been widely and systematically used for party system analysis in CEE, allowing the author to move somewhat to new theoretical grounds and offer new analytical tools for understanding the phenomenon under study. The preliminary results demonstrate that the peculiar patterns of party competition in the very first party system born in the early 1990s (a critical juncture in the context) set in motion the path-dependent developments, which were further strengthened by the two subsequent reproduction mechanisms – the emergence or non-emergence of oligarchs in the 1990s and institutional reforms of party regulations in the 2000s. Those developments resulted in a virtuous cycle for Estonia in which, in the oligarch-free environment (less prone to corruption), where the party regulations have been firmly in place and trust in political parties relatively high, the demand for new parties for every electoral cycle became rather limited. The strict party regulations further complicated the new parties' possibilities to enter the parliament. In contrast, the vicious cycle has been evident in Latvia, in which the very opposite has been true. The paper follows the Most Similar System Design (MSSD) and employs predominately qualitative methods (process tracing). It also seeks to make an important contribution to the field while demonstrating the potential of the historical institutionalist analysis for understanding phenomena like the reoccurring breakthroughs of new parties and party system consolidation, making it usable for exploring other similar cases in the region (e.g., Romania vs Bulgaria, Croatia vs Slovenia). The paper fits thematically the best in Panel 2.