wh y w e l o s t
140
and should form electoral coalitions as needed. The result of this clash was a withdrawal of
KDH from SDK and separation of the unification wing in the new SDKÚ. The most recent
“offspring” of the Slovak center-right is ANO, a party which came into existence campaign-
ing on an anti-establishment appeal, not sparing the ruling right and its political conduct
from criticism, as well as on professions of economic and lifestyle liberalism.
Thus in the second half of the 1990s, all party systems involved in this study possessed
an incipient or somewhat consolidated moderate right, either in the form of a large party
(Hungary, Lithuania, Macedonia) or as a more-or-less formalized loose structure or coali-
tion-like arrangements of various parties (Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Slovakia). These
options on the right defined themselves in some cases in mutual struggles and in a contest
with the moderate left (Hungary, Lithuania, Poland), the dominant post-Communist left
(Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia), or national-populists (Slovakia).
As their rivals failed to deliver and discredited themselves, the right came to power in a se-
ries of elections between 1996 and 1998. Although the center-right parties used their time
in office for introducing various reform programs, ultimately, with the single exception
of Slovakia, they failed to be reelected. Right-of-center politics went through a decline in
terms of organization, policy and often also of ideology. Rather than relying on explana-
tions based on destiny, this chapter tries to summarize genuine reasons for this decline.
III. “COMPARATIVE DEFEATS:” STRUCTURAL
CONSTRAINTS AND STRATEGIC SHORTCOMINGS
When addressing the reasons for the decline of the right in post-Communist Europe after
1998 apart from impact of natural electoral cycles, Hanley suggests that
“it is possible, for example, that the origins of many centre-right parties as engines
of regime change leave them
vulnerable to ideological exhaustion
and crises of party
identity, as the fundamental institutional and political choices of post-communist
transformation recede in importance. It may also be the case that the social structure
of Eastern and Central European states – and, in particular,
distributions of transition
‘winners’ and ‘losers’
– is now making it difficult to sustain strong centre-right parties
in the region, leaving nationalistmobilization, Euroskepticismand anti-Communism
as generally unsuccessful default strategies…Alternatively, there may be broader fac-
tors at work affecting not only the mainstream Right in the region, but also the far
Right which has suffered a parallel, but much more precipitate, decline. Still more
broadly, one could speculate that the problems of the Eastern and Central European
centre-right may be part of a
broader political malaise
affecting the mainstreamRight
across many Western democracies rooted in globalization, cultural shifts and the
adaptive capacities of the centre-left
.” (Hanley, page 22, italics added.)
Many of these external or environmental reasons were mentioned by our authors as well,
but overall their accounts focus more on causes related to strategy, agency and choices
made by center-right parties. Illustratively, Sebastian Lăzăroiu offers five possible explana-
tions of failure of the Romanian right in the 2000 elections: the impact of painful reforms,
incompetence in government, high expectations by voters, conspiracy on the left and the
