wh y w e l o s t
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prevented in Hungary by Orbán, who chose instead to keep the party and the nation con-
stantly busy by offering them a vision of a complex overhaul both in terms of organization
and ideology (see Lánczi’s chapter for an informative account of this topic). This strategy
proved successful, but backfired in many other respects.
Looking for factors within party internal life other than party organizations proper leads
us to factional disunity and personal infighting. In Lithuania, strong personality-related
factors played a role in both Conservative successes and failures. The movement suffered
from factionalism and personal intrigue. This contributed greatly to an overall political
incoherence which included, for example, the inability to defy new challengers on the
right, namely President Adamkus and the Liberal Union, and a lack of capacity to solve
the problems in the policy area. In Romania, for example, three “political” center-right
prime ministers and two caretaker ones held power over the course of one four-year term
– not because of policy differences, but because of personality conflicts and factional and
personal jockeying for power.
Non-Communication and Ineffective Attempts to Communicate
Finally, it is rather difficult to approach the tribulations of center-right ruling parties and
coalitions in their
communication with society,
as this is a complex problem related to both
governments and individual parties. It also may be a result or joint effect of various causes
already tackled in this text.
For example, constant and well publicized quarreling among parties and politicians while
the right was in power often persuaded the public that elected officials cared more about
their own standing than the needs of the electorate. Generally speaking, this was certainly
part of a flawed communication strategy, but its real reasons may have rested in organiza-
tional disunity, irreconcilable ideological differences, or in struggles over (corrupt) alloca-
tion of resources, rather than in just a simple lack of communication skills.
In general, ruling center-right parties in their communication strategies faced several di-
lemmas: to communicate pro-actively or to respond on questions from the opposition,
media and society? What to do when negative coverage dominates the press, overshadow-
ing government achievements? Defend its actions? Point out achievements? Go negative
about the political opponents? Try to subjugate the public media that were under control
of the cabinet and parliament?
Solutions to these dilemmas were often influenced by the party leadership or government
members’ competence, self-assurance, or enthusiasm for reform, but also by the disheart-
ening impact of reforms and the resulting public anger, not to mention the sheer arro-
gance and the loss of touch with reality regarding the feelings of the population or their
own party grassroots. Typical failed solutions of the communication-related dilemma
were bad and misguided campaigns, but in the most egregious cases, a refusal to com-
municate at all.
Center-right politicians offen failed to pro-actively articulate and communicate a mes-
sage to the public on what they were doing and why, allowing their critics to set the tone
of public debate. The reasons for this may have been disheartened attitudes when politi-
cians realized the reforms they had introduced would not bring benefits before the next
