5
Foreword
Partisan Desire for Power and the Virtues
of Alternation: The Reasons for this Study
T
he purpose for conducting this study is very simple and reflects the experience
of the International Republican Institute (IRI) in the region. From 1996 to 1998,
pro-reform, pro-Western and generally center-right parties and coalitions won a
series of elections around Central and Eastern Europe. In Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania,
Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, center-right forces defeated post-Commu-
nist and national populist parties and formed new governments. All of these promised to
implement long-delayed economic and political reforms and accelerate the dual processes
of integration into the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO). Most of them demonstrated solid progress toward these goals. By the next cycle
of elections (2000 to 2002), however, six of the seven were out of power, and in several
cases (Romania, Poland and Lithuania) the center-right parties themselves were essen-
tially destroyed.
When IRI launched its Regional Program for Central and Eastern Europe in the summer of
1999, our partners were often busy incumbents flying to center-right summits on govern-
mental aircraft. Just a couple of years later we worked with them as with representatives of
the opposition at best; at worst, some of our former partners fell into political oblivion.
While there is no reason
per se
to lament failures of specific parties as something necessarily
fatal to the progress of the center-right project in the region, it is important for us to un-
derstand the factors that led to these failures. Political scientists and journalists sometimes
use the term ‘pendulum swing’ to describe a massive and uniform pattern of incumbency
change across a region, as if this pendulum effect had the power of destiny and were not sup-
ported by definable causes. Our approach, however, is based on the assumption that causes
were definable and can serve as lessons for other parties in similar situations.
We are fully aware that from the point of view of democratic theory there is a strong argu-
ment in favor of alternation of power and its healthy impact on democratic consolidation.
