party systems

VII. Democracies with opportunistic elites and hardly institutionalised party systems

post-communist democracies Political 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

to the members of the honorary parliament in the 19th century. At the beginning of the 1990s, it had to be assumed that the former decision-makers of the socialist party states could hardly be characterised by exceptional qualities. So, was a complete change of elite necessary?

In the 1980s, Stefan Kisielewski, a Polish publicist who has since died, used to provocatively ask his friends from the anti-communist resistance who they thought should occupy the elite positions after communism in order to introduce democracy: after all, doesn’t anyone who has deliberately destroyed a watch know best how to repair its clockwork? Surely it would be inappropriate to assume that only the communists were capable of democratising the Soviet socialist system. Moreover, if they really had the necessary knowledge, this important task should not be left to them alone. However, the opposite assumption, in which only a complete change of elites would guarantee the success of the system transformation, is as wrong as it is naive.

The extent of the necessary change of elites cannot be determined in percentage terms. The communist cadres of Poland and Hungary were, for example, much more open to democracy than the ideologically narrow-minded Czech, Slovak, Soviet, or German party functionaries because of the experiences they had gained with a society critical of the system. Although seized by the “ethos of opportunism” and for the most part morally corrupt, it was precisely these leadership cadres in Poland and Hungary who agreed to peacefully bid farewell to communism. From a pragmatic point of view alone, it would have been a pity to simply get rid of such an - at least partially - competent and adaptable personnel.

However, these were not the considerations that decided whether the (post-) communists were allowed to help replace the broken clockwork. Rather, the profiteers of the old regime simply proved to be indispensable for the system change, thus once again confirming the insight known since Max Weber, that anew system could not manage without the personnel of its predecessor. There simply was no elite that could have replaced the vacant posts that had become available in case of a complete purge of the state apparatus. Even in the new German “Länder,” where the import of elites has reached unprecedented dimensions, the

lack of qualified democratic personnel was obvious.46 The scathing judgement of the “imported” West German experts concerning the competence of their new colleagues in schools, public authorities, at the universities, etc., can be boldly transferred to the elites in the other post-communist countries. Even when it was recognised, the indispensable depoliticisation of the civil service forced its protection from dismissal on political grounds. As a result, whole swarms of former communist bureaucrats were able to breathe a sigh of relief.

The post-communist elite change followed the typical pattern of a system change. In the beginning – in the period of upheaval – the impression was created or deliberately conveyed that ahuge wave of elite change (the “elite rotation” or “elite circulation”) would sweep over the respective country. The best-known representatives of the old system had to leave: the party top circle, parts of the party leadership, and the government. However, as soon as the new people had gotten to the top of the executive and other state apparatuses, they wanted to restore calm in their area of responsibility, and they were prepared to come to terms with both the opponents of the old regime and the back ranks of the communist establishment. The new leaders were usually able to bring their – seldom truly professional – staff with them, while the lower ranks of the bureaucrats had to be completely taken over.

In addition to the “twilight of the gods” at the head of the communist party-state, it was, above all, the founding elections to parliament that helped to create the impression of an enormous elite circulation. The rotation of elites in the executive and the legislatures was indeed extensive, whereby it was almost exclusively people who had not attracted attention politically during the communist era who were accepted into the new governments and elected to the parliaments.

The composition of all freely elected post-communist parliaments indicates that voters were certainly looking for wellknown candidates. However, since they honoured the – albeit often only seeming (Romania, Bulgaria) – distance of the candidates from the old regime, they preferred actors, sportsmen, and

46 See “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, 6.5.1991. Quoted by Hans-Ulrich Derlien, Regime

Change and Personnel Policy. Observations on Political Cleansing and the Integration of

State Functionaries of the GDR into the Civil Service, London, June 1991, p. 54.

– for any change of political system particularly dangerous! – intellectuals over established functionaries.

An important elite segment in the communist party-state was the personnel of the security services. In fact, the only acceptable solution would have been the complete dissolution of these services, which, however, could only be carried out in Germany where the state behind them was also dissolved. Elsewhere, by contrast, attempts were made with varying degrees of zeal to combine structural reform with purges, without sacrificing all the personnel “of security.” Significantly, the post-communist security services were usually more willing to take over the functionaries of communist espionage abroad than those of the former domestic security organs.

When it comes to implemented political programs of a comprehensive “decommunisation” of the elites under post-socialism, Spanish political scientist Carmen González Enriquez rightly distinguishes between the countries that would never have dared a serious decommunization (such as Poland and Hungary), those that would have done just that (the Czech Republic complying with the rule of law and Albania bypassing the law), and those like Romania and Bulgaria, which restricted themselves to spectacular measures of deceiving the public – such as the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu, or the trial against former party leader, Todor Shivkov. If one takes into account the minor impact of Czech decommunisation and the serious legal criticism it has attracted, it must be generalised that nowhere in post-communism has there been a political purge of the communist elites that could be described as systematic and comprehensive.

It is no coincidence that the most important studies on post-communist elite change were published just a few years after the system upheaval. In the Central European countries in which the national consensus about the new system had been achieved, about half of the members of the nomenklatura from 1988 retained their elite status in 1993, although the former members of the nomenklatura usually changed their posts and offices within these five years. They preferred to move to the private economy sector, regardless of which subgroup of the nomenklatura – party, state, mass organisations, state economy, media, or culture – they originally came from. In elite research, this migration is referred to as the “transformation of political

“decommunisation” of the elites

former members of the nomenklatura

capital into economic capital” or the “granting of ownership to the nomenklatura.”

Approximately one-quarter of the nomenklatura of the state pillar in Poland and Hungary maintained its posts until 1993. After all, three other subgroups – the apparatus of the communist party, the economic nomenklatura, and the cultural nomenklatura – have completely disappeared from the highest political positions. Overall, therefore, the elite circulation in both countries was relatively high.

Regardless of the research methodology used, empirical research on elite change in post-communism shows that the reproduction rate of the nomenklatura and nepotism is much higher in post-communist authoritarianisms than in post-totalitarian democracies. However, the figures obtained by empirical social research do not say much more about the degree of elite circulation or reproduction.

The success of democratisation does not depend on the social composition or the discontinuity of the elites, but rather on their willingness to democratise. John Higley and Győrgy Lengyel justifiably spoke in this context of the “ethos of unity in diversity” that underlies the success of the democratic transformation.47 They rightly noted that such an ethos developed in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary; meanwhile, Slovakia (under Vladimir Mečiar), Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia, and Croatia were far removed from it.

In all post-communist authoritarianisms, the effort to oust the political opposition from the political game could be observed from the beginning. Whether it was the (possibly transformed) communists, the “party of power,” or the nationalist and populist forces that did not originate from the communist establishment, those in power always violated the principles of democracy when they used the resources of the state available to them and the weakness of their political opponents to neutralise or even eliminate the political opposition.

The problem of all post-communist elites was their lack of professionalism. This deficit should not be misunderstood as meaning that the functionaries did not have a high standard of

47 John Higley/ Győrgy Lengyel, Elite Configurations after State Socialism, in: John Higley/

Győrgy Lengyel (ed.), Elites after State Socialism. Theories and Analysis, Lanham/Boulder/New York/Oxford 2000, pp. 1–21, p. 19.

education. On the contrary, the post-communist elites are – statistically speaking – no less educated than those in the established Western democracies, which can be most clearly seen from the figures for West and East Germany.

The incompetence of the elites, which was striking at the beginning of the transformation processes, rather arose from the fact that they were operating in a political system they were unfamiliar with and that was still in the development stage. The first years of the system change were, therefore, marked by learning-by-doing that demanded extraordinary adaptability from those affected.

A good decade after the system change, in the post-communist democracies, the elites had proved loyal to the new system throughout. However, despite all the professionalisation, they still showed great competence deficits and susceptibility to corruption. In fact, it is easier for both the new-old political elite and the old-new administrative elite to show loyalty to democracy than to raise their own standards.

The “professionalism” of the communist cadre administration was based on quite different conditions and knowledge than those that guaranteed the reasonably smooth functioning of the constitutional state. This can be best seen in the course of reunification in the former German Democratic Republic. In several circumstances, it became obvious that its administrators were characterised by nothing other than “politicised incompetence.”48

In the new German “Länder,” it was at least possible to start the training courses for GDR staff to be held in West Germany as late as May 1990. “The judgement on the level of qualification of East German personnel ... [was] devastating and ... [ranged] from 0 to minus 10 on the qualification scale, as one practitioner put it.”49 On the other hand, financial incentives were used to persuade a veritable army of Western professionals to take over the leading positions in East Germany. These measures have contributed significantly to the professionalisation of those areas of the public service and the economy most affected by incompetence, although they have undoubtedly contributed to the further incapacitation of the population in the new German “Länder.” The following lamentation expresses both of these facts:

48 Derlien, op. cit., pp. 42 ff. 49 Ibid. p. 48.

massive import of West German elites Only 20% of the management personnel in the companies privatised by the Treuhand [office tasked with privatisation of state-owned companies] come from East Germany... The reason for this is that the possibility of accumulating financial capital, which is differentiated between East and West, has not been sufficient in the past... There are only a few East German politicians in top positions of the parties... The evaluation of academic personnel has drastically reduced the number of qualified personnel available for new appointments in East Germany. West German scientists, in particular, benefited from new appointments and the additional establishment of chairs at universities and colleges. The [following] example should be mentioned here...: Of the 38 chairs … in sociology which were filled at the end of 1993, 33 professors came from West Germany and only five from East Germany, whereby the latter were all appointed to C-3 professorships only... The same phenomena can be found in the administrative area. For example, in January 1993, of the 258 judges at the labour courts, 143 were from West Germany and only 72 from East Germany, 43 were so-called loan officers from West Germany.50

“You don’t pour the dirty water out of the bucket if you don’t have clean water,” Konrad Adenauer is said to have stated this in reference to the many former National Socialists and followers of the Nazi regime in the political class of the young Federal Republic. The new German “Länder” have been supplied with entire cisterns of clean water, which the population often complained about as flooding. Apparently, the massive import of West German elites facilitated the rise of newcomers in East Germany, because, as studies have shown, the rotation of elites in the new German “Länder” was quite large compared to the other post-communist democracies.

In the other post-communist states, the best that could be hoped for regarding elite imports was the return of emigrants from the West. Although there are isolated spectacular careers of re-emigrants in every post-communist country (had it been imaginable that Bulgaria’s tsar, who had been in exile for decades, would resurrect as Prime Minister Simeon Sakskoburggotski?), no cartels of re-emigrants were formed among the elites of the post-communist countries.

50 Heike Solga, Der Elitenimport nach Ostdeutschland. Transformationstypen und

Veränderungen in der Elitenrekrutierung, in: Martin Diewald/ Karl Ulrich Meier (ed.),

Zwischenbilanz der Wiedervereinigung. Strukturwandel und Mobilität im Transformationsprozess, Opladen 1996, pp. 89–109, p. 104.

During the first transformation years the (post-)communists are massively represented in the informal decision-making structures of the state and the society, which gives rise to the fact that they are repeatedly equated with the “power of the old nomenklatura.”In fact, however, one can only speak of affinity in this context. As mentioned above, considerable segments of the nomenklatura went to the economic sector. Unlike under communism, who the members of the former nomenklatura support depends not on ideological sentiment but on the current constellation of interests. This emancipation from the party of a nomenklatura that has transformed itself into either proprietors or the administrative staff of the post-communist state represents one of the most important developments that has often been overlooked but decisively marks the dismantling of totalitarian structures.

As far as professionalisation is concerned, it is only taking place slowly. Institutional measures force a gradual change in attitudes and patterns of behaviour within the bureaucracy, most of which originated under communism. “Pragmatism” and “professionalism” are keywords with which the members of the post-communist elite prefer to characterise themselves. Although “opportunism” and “adaptation” reflect the facts more accurately, there is no reason to question the undoubtedly progressive professionalisation of the elites. In post-totalitarian democracies, where the new legal norms have to be learned and applied, this professionalisation accompanies the process of getting used to the rules of the constitutional state.

The political elites, in particular, have learned very quickly to base their decisions on current opinion polls, which is why they usually get along very well with the current generation of politicians in the established democracies. The ease with which formerly fighting atheists can pretend to be believers, etatists can appear as liberals, and populists can pretend to be statesmen, is a result of hard work. The new professionalism, however,is also expressed in a less spectacular way in the newly acquired ability to deal objectively with complex issues. The salutary ideas that “everything will be better” are laboriously but consistently pushed to the – broad – edge of populism.

Although the elites bear the responsibility for the transformation, they also represent a product of their societies. For

mixture of popular ideologies understandable reasons, it is especially the political class that finds it difficult to stand out completely from the standards of dominating political culture. Even if there are politicians who attach more importance to democracy and the rule of law than is common in their society, they very rarely take action against dominant attitudes if it seems risky for their careers.

From their totalitarian past, parts of the elite brought with them a fondness for ideologies, so that many former communist functionaries mutated into aggressive nationalists after the collapse of their system. This was often welcomed with enthusiasm by the former subjects of the socialist state, whose national feelings had always been hurt in the old system.

The mixture of popular ideologies – harsh nationalist rhetoric, shallow opportunist liberalism, nostalgic socialism – and opportunism of the elites is dangerous. Where it dominates the political elite, the transformation gets into the greatest difficulties, which is compounded by the fact that national history is of great political importance in the first years of the system transformation. The dangers related to the deficits of the elites are minimised or put into perspective if political parties can be built up that decently fulfil the function of recruiting elites. However, the establishment of such parties has proven to be perhaps the most difficult task of post-communist democratisation. There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, the post-communist geographical area is huge, culturally heterogeneous, and developed differently both economically and socially. It, therefore, contains different traditions of parties and party systems. The first parties in Central and North-Eastern Europe were founded as early as the 19th century, and before the Second World War, there was both universal suffrage as well as party systems operating in pluralistic societies. These Western traditions are contrasted with the majority of South-Eastern Europe and – above all – Eastern Europe, where the era of pluralistic party systems and democratic elections only began with the collapse of communism.

Secondly, the mental consequences of decades of living under a communist system that continuously undermined the political organisation of society make it difficult to form parties.

Thirdly, new cleavages (dividing lines) are constantly emerging in the social sphere, which political parties may

position themselves along. At the beginning of the transformation processes, these lines were based on axiological opposites (e.g. communists versus anti-communists) rather than “materially dominated” conflicts of interest. This has changed with the increasingly complex stratification of society.

Fourthly, the legacy of the communist party system is receding in so far as the question of the origin of the respective party hardly plays a role in politics anymore.

Three decades after the fall of communism, however, the difficulties have diminished. The behaviour, tactics and strategy of political actors have always been the factors that influence parties and party systems. While the political process was unpredictable at the beginning of the system transformation, the political actors have meanwhile accumulated knowledge about their society that they can use to specifically solicit support.

At the beginning of the 1990s, it was understandable that the political parties in post-communism were called “protoparties,” “pseudo-parties,” or “quasi-parties.”51 Given the breath-taking pace of post-totalitarian party formation, it was difficult to speak of “party systems” at that time. Thus, it was more than justified to use terms like “party situation” or “floating party systems.”52 Even today, party systems are often only weakly anchored in post-communist societies. Over the years, the parties have become more or less institutionalised and “unsteady” party systems have established.

The scheme “new political forces  protoparties  young political parties  floating party systems  unsteady party systems” is, however, only transferable to those states that were not dissolved but rather reorganised as a result of the collapse of communism, such as Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, etc. Where, in turn, states disappeared, such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the GDR, the already legalised parties had to embark on a second attempt to establish themselves in the framework of the new state structure. In the Federal Republic of Germany that was expanded by the dissolved GDR, for

51 Klaus von Beyme, Systemwechsel in Osteuropa, Frankfurt am Main 1994 (2. Edition), p. 279. 52 Gert-Joachim Glaeßner, Demokratie nach dem Ende des Kommunismus. Regimewechsel, Transition und Demokratisierung im Postkommunismus, Opladen 1994, p. 252, and n.A., “Partii v social’no-političeskom prostranstve sovremennoj Rossii,”, Analyze of the

Council of Foreign and Defence Policy, Moskva 1993, p. 6.

example, the youngest parties of the GDR did not survive. The situation was similar in the post-Soviet states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and the successor states of communist Yugoslavia.

At the beginning of every system transformation, there were: the executive, the communist party, parliament, ideologies, and the omnipresent weak state. The executive branch decided on political measures. The parliamentary factions, and the governing parties in general, served as an extension of the executive everywhere. In the systems developing into democracies, parliaments have nevertheless been able to assert themselves.

Most communist parties indeed went through a difficult time in the first years after the system change. They lost most of their members at that time and had to cope with the justified accusations that they bore the main responsibility for the state of their countries. It is well known that they renounced their absolute claim to power for the sake of survival and suffered, in part, humiliating defeats in the founding elections. Some communist parties were even banned or declared criminal organisations, which in some cases meant the loss of their immense party assets. However, this “gloomy” picture is far from complete.

The almost unimaginable loss of members of the communist or post-communist parties did not change the fact that their competitors had even fewer members. After all, the former state parties only lost their “outer parties,” i.e. those members who had mostly possessed the party book solely for pragmatic reasons anyway.

Even the loss of Marxist doctrine was usually coped with quite well, because what is called “party ethos” in party research (its traditions, habits, and feelings) is at least as important for any party ideology as the official doctrine. The “ethos of opportunism” inherent in most members of the communist parties could easily be transferred to the new system.

The communist and post-communist parties lost neither their organisation nor their ability to mobilise, which they had acquired during the decades of Soviet socialism. Moreover, valuable relations with the state administration and the economy have not disappeared. In most cases, it was also possible to save party assets. All in all, the communists and their successors have little reason to complain when they compare their situation with that of their competitors.

In no post-totalitarian democracy are the successor parties to the communists generally excluded from forming a government. Ironically, it was the Lithuanians and Poles, the main destroyers of communism in the Soviet Union and Central Europe, who in 1992 and 1993 were the first ones to bring the former communists (who had been transformed into a social democratic party) back to power through democratic elections. Other post-communist democracies repeated this process, albeit with country-specific modifications. In the Czech Republic, for example, the long absence of the Czech and Moravian Communist Party from the government contributed to the popularity and dogmatisation of the party. The new social democratic party then opened up to the former communists, which contributed significantly to its election success in 1998.

In principle, the communist parties and their successors were in a better position than the political movements that had challenged the communist state parties in the last years of the ancien régime. Even if these challengers – e.g. the Ukrainian “Rukh,” the Lithuanian “Sąjūdis,” the “New Forum” in the GDR, and the “Movement for Civic Freedom” in Czechoslovakia – had at times possessed an astonishing power of mobilisation, they drowned in the political waters. In the history of their countries, they held their ground as temporary movements whose emergence and decline can only be explained by the collapse of the communist regime.

The only exception in this context is the giant “Solidarność,” however, which could have been expected to become the strongest political party in its country. No sooner had communism disappeared than “Solidarność” turned out to be what it was: a “multi-point movement” – national, political, religious, trade union, and cultural – of astonishing diversity. It at least proved possible to transfer its trade union organisation into the new pluralist system. As a political movement, though, the “Election Union Solidarność” failed in the election disaster of 2001.

The leaders of the new parties tried to impose ideologies on their creations that were not allowed or could not have a social anchorage in both the totalitarian and the young post-totalitarian reality. It was often assumed with a boldness bordering on naivety that there was a social need for conservative, Christian democratic, liberal, nationalist, fascist, and social democratic parties everywhere. Because of their ideological character, most of

the parties that emerged “out of their minds “ at the time met the famous definition formulated by Edmund Burke: “[a] party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest upon some particular principle in which they all agreed.”53 The topicality of this quotation from 1770 in the 1990s once again illustrated how far totalitarianism has set back the political organisation of society.

However, most ideological parties have not been able to survive an election period, although some of them have been successful. With their entry into parliament, even those party politicians who had until then been less well known were able to distinguish themselves, receiving diets, subsidies for election campaign costs, and paid offices for members of parliament from the state. These funds could now be used for party work – in part misused – because most parties were so poor that only entering into parliament meant the temporary end of existential concerns about the livelihood of their most important functionaries and activists.

It is particularly important for the party’s success to identify its electoral clientele and to win their loyalty across the country if possible – a difficult task that cannot be accomplished with good organisation at the local level alone. A little bit of luck that helps the party to reach the voters seems indispensable. However, if one looks at the variable careers of politicians in post-communism, it becomes clear that this luck had to be earned in the parliamentary opposition as well, since oppositional work offers the opportunity to cultivate the party’s image. The fact that this opportunity was sometimes not taken advantage of is evidence of the lack of professionalism of many political newcomers. Instead, they continue to make irresponsible promises to win votes. Once in power, they tend to form alliances with informal networks and replace their former ideological orientation with the ethos of opportunism. If they manage to persevere in the opposition for a long time, they have the chance – like the Hungarian FIDESZ (Hungarian Citizen’s Association) and the Polish PiS (Right and Justice) – to transform themselves into parties with a party spirit, whose members or supporters represent a solid and

53 Edmund Burke, On Government, Politics and Society, B.W. Hill (ed.), Fontana 1975, p.113.

relatively stable cross-section of the population; in other words, into catch-all parties.

Every voter knows that the political signs (names and programmes) of the parties may vary, while the politicians remain the same. The general frustration with the unfulfilled electoral promises is little affected as most of the promises are so unreal that they simply could not be kept. This frustration makes the losers of the transformation, in particular, especially receptive to populist slogans. The circle is complete when opportunists who claim to be “liberal” or “social democratic” or “European” exploit this receptiveness politically.

Finally, for the sake of order, the types of parties in post-communist democracies mentioned above are listed here:  The successor parties to the communist party and the bloc parties. The successors of the communists can either be parties that have shed the legacy of the communist ideology or parties that continue to cultivate it.  The parties that emerged from the anti-communist movements at the end of the socialist system. They now exist only sporadically, and only where the role of these collective movements in the destruction of totalitarianism was so significant that their myth was able to make its mark on social consciousness. Although these parties still have a certain mobilising power, it was not possible to transform them into catch-all parties.  Ideological parties. Their founders wanted to enforce certain ideologies and political programs that were forbidden in the communist era. Ideological parties emerged either from the protoparties of the communist era, as

“historical” parties (forbidden under communist rule), or as newly created ones. If they remained in power for a long time, they transformed into components of cartels inspired by the ethos of opportunism. If they managed to endure in opposition for a long time, they could turn into catch-all parties.  The populist protest parties. They establish themselves

“thanks” to the social problems of the system transformation. The critique of elites, blanket questioning of the transformation process, and unconventional methods of political debate are inherent in their agenda. They are ephemerides.

The obvious unsteady institutionalisation of party systems weakens post-communist democracies, which were once welded together by a practised democratic consensus. This consensus began to crumble after the implementation of reforms. The artificial marginalisation of the political opposition by the ruling parties and their associated civil servants and media cartels reached dangerous levels. The new political parties that were constantly emerging did not always seek support in society, but rather within the aforementioned networks, which made it extremely difficult to firmly institutionalise the party systems.

In addition, the weak traditions of their own statehood and the rule of law favoured an opportunistic and “pally” understanding of politics on the part of the party elites that hardly goes beyond private interests and delays the development of a participatory political culture. Unfortunately, many politicians among the former reformers turned out to be representatives of this spirit which in the long run may undermine the foundations of a representative democracy.

The stratification of post-totalitarian society changed dramatically over the decades and the formation of a middle class was awaited for a long time. Thus, the conditions of the emergence of new catch-all parties in post-totalitarian democracies were bad for a long time as well.

Where there are free elections, the stability of the party systems depends on election results, because, above all, the presence in parliament secures the financial conditions for political work. The parties begin to fulfil the functions typical of constitutional democracies: determination of objectives, articulation and aggregation of interests, political mobilisation, and socialisation of citizens, as well as recruitment of the political elite. However, everywhere in communism, the miserable condition of the of the party’s spirit and the ideational state of the parties that hardly do any ideological work, jeopardise the consolidation of the party systems.

Recommended literature

Derlien, Hans-Ulrich, Regime Change and Personnel Policy. Observations on Political Cleansing and the Integration of State Functionaries of the GDR into the Civil Service, London, June 1991.

Higley, John/ Győrgy Lengyel (ed.), Elites after State Socialism. Theories and Analysis, Lanham/Boulder/New York/Oxford 2000.

Solga, Heike, Der Elitenimport nach Ostdeutschland. Transformationstypen und Veränderungen in der Elitenrekrutierung, in: Martin Diewald/ Karl Ulrich Meier (ed.), Zwischenbilanz der Wiedervereinigung. Strukturwandel und Mobilität im Transformationsprozess, Opladen 1996, pp.89–109.