University of Sussex
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

Third ways or new ways?: The post-communist left in Central Europe

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 22:26 authored by Dan HoughDan Hough
Communist successor parties in central Europe are not a homogeneous group of political actors. Processes of organisational reform undertaken in the immediate post-1989 period placed them on a programmatic trajectory which has since proven difficult to successfully modify. Parties that centralised power around a small group of elite actors have enjoyed more flexibility in their attempts to maximise votes and remain ideologically broad. Parties that radically democratised by empowering their memberships and/or middle-ranking officials have remained much more ideologically conservative and have tend to be neo-communist in orientation. This has strongly affected not just their positions in national party systems, but also their attitudes and behaviour towards foreign actors/institutions. Some communist successor parties therefore remain side-lined on the anti-capitalist far-left while others have developed into confident, outward-looking centre-left actors while one - the Slovak SDL - imploded on account of its own internal contradictions.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Political Quarterly

ISSN

0032-3179

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Issue

2

Volume

76

Page range

253-263

Pages

11.0

Department affiliated with

  • Politics Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC