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“post-communist parties have been free to adopt a range of party strategies, some more
successful than others” (Sitter, page 426). “Hence the argument that the development
of party systems is driven by party strategy, within parameters set by cleavages, institu-
tions, voting patterns and party organization, and that conditions of post-communism
place far fewer constraints on party leadership than was the case in early Twentieth
Century Western Europe” (Sitter, page 429).
Similarly, in Anna Vachudová’s understanding,
“political parties, though unshaped and untested, rapidly became the vehicles for
democratic government in societies where social cleavages were relatively un-
formed. Political parties did not need to build strong links to society in order to
be legitimate, and what cleavages did exist could be safely ignored as politics was
structured on the cut and thrust of elite competition and of electoral campaigns
fought in the media.” (Vachudová, Anna M., “Integration, Security and Immigra-
tion. The European Agendas of Eastern Europe’s Right Wing Parties.” Paper pre-
sented at the Conference of Europeanists, The Council for European Studies, Chi-
cago, 14-16 March 2002, page 3).
To sum up the argument, in post-Communist polities we encounter
“parties that operate under less constraining parameters, and are freer to experi-
ment with different types of strategies. Somewhat paradoxically, this happened at
the same time as actual policy choices were constrained by the overwhelming con-
sensus in favor of West European liberal democracy and free markets, which meant
operating within International Monetary Fund (IMF) guidelines and designing
public policy compatible with the European Union’s
Acquis Communautaire
.
Party
strategy therefore became the key factor shaping the development and stabilisation of
party systems
(Sitter, page 434, italics added).”
This conclusion takes this perspective on the analysis of the development and perfor-
mance of parties on the center right in the seven countries under examination.
II. Political Outcomes Leading to
the Establishment and Victories
of the Center Right.
In the foreword to this publication, we provided a few convenient definitional character-
istics of the center right in Central and Eastern Europe offered by Hanley. In line with the
view that party strategies are decisive for stabilization of the party system, this chapter
continues with a logical elaboration – an account of how the right was defined in indi-
vidual countries and by whom. As we have seen, such struggles for dominance on the
right took place in almost all countries and yielded results affecting the configuration of
entire party systems. The relationship of the right towards “non-right” actors has become,
naturally, the crucial aspect of these configurations.
