VII. Democracies with opportunistic elites and hardly institutionalised party systems
post-communist democracies
P
olitical elites can be understood to be either the holders of the posts and offices defined as “political� or people to whom political influence is attributed. Although both groups have little or nothing to do with elites in the true sense of the word, i.e. with those people who are particularly efficient in their field or have other exceptional qualities, they are, in contrast to true elites, relatively easy to identify and measure empirically. The post-communist democracies were established in a non-civil society, which could have facilitated the institutionalisation of democracies. Since a weakly structured and differentiated society was neither able to permanently generate impulses for democratisation nor to organise itself against democracy, the behaviour of the elites played a decisive role in the democratisation processes. Where the elites were democratically minded, it had to be assumed that democracy had a future, especially since history has shown profoundly undemocratic societies that have reconciled with democracy. For such a reconciliation to be possible, however, there must be a sufficient number of politically-influential, convinced democrats. In this respect, the question of how many democrats a young democracy actually needs is quite justified. Until democracy is firmly institutionalised, the political elite bears the main responsibility for the success of the system transformation. Those in power need a strong ethos of self-restraint because, by respecting the constitutional rights of the political opposition, they could help the opposition to seize power. It is obvious that the post-communist elites under authoritarianism do not fulfil their responsibility as the democratic consensus. In post-totalitarianism, the parliament can assume great political significance if the political elite proves itself in a way similar
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