wh y w e l o s t
8
oppose, effectively.” (Vachudová, Anna M., “Integration, Security and Immigration. The Euro-
pean Agendas of Eastern Europe’s Right Wing Parties.” Paper presented at the Conference of
Europeanists, The Council for European Studies, Chicago, 14-16 March 2002, page 1.)
Regardless of the exact results of this endeavor to dominate the right, the ideologies of the right
in the region include a number of common elements: anti-Communism, conservatism (which
may, and indeed often has, included nationalismand populism), economic liberalism (support
for free markets) and in many cases a more-or-less influential element of traditional Western
European Christian democracy. “The ideologies of Eastern and Central Europe’s new center-
right combine both historic discourses and newer ideas imported from Western contexts or
developed locally during the post-communist transformation” (Hanley, page 17).
Thus, to summarize,
“the ‘centre-right’ in the region should be broadly understood as a set of parties seek-
ing
broad
electoral support for programmes
fusing
elements of liberalism (including
neo-liberalism) and varieties of conservatism, which
balance
the demands of post-
communist social transformation, modernization and Europeanization with older
historical identities and ideologies” (Hanley, pages 22-23, italics added).
This is actually a very solid attempt at defining the moderate right – the right with a chance
to rule and to contribute to consolidation of democracy (to contrast it, for example, with
the HZDS in Slovakia, which only had broad appeal and resulting governing potential, but
whose conduct in the mid- to late-1990s was irreconcilably at odds with any non-authori-
tarian version of democratic consolidation). In short, the moderate right is moderate pre-
cisely because it refrains from pursuing radical strategies and agendas aimed at restricted
“sociologically distinct,” determined, intransigent electorates with narrow interests. In-
stead, moderate parties of the right seek to address broad groups of voters with programs
touching the national interest and presenting ‘nation-wide’ visions.
According to Sitter (page 435), there are three basic strategies of opposition in which par-
ties in the region have been engaged. The first is general left-right competition between or
among major parties and blocks (usually post-opposition right versus post-Communist,
reformed left) typified by catch-all appeals and an attempt to compete as government ver-
sus opposition. Secondly, some parties have tried to mobilize pre-Communist identities
(ethnicity, region) or narrower group interests. Characteristically, these parties have been
less successful than the previous group; at best they established a secondary dimension of
competition cutting across the main one. Finally, parties with radical appeals – most fre-
quently radical-leftist, unreformed Communists, or the radical right – established them-
selves on the flanks of the party system, with limited capacity to influence it in a more
decisive way. Needless to say, the main subjects of this study are the parties that make up
the group of largely moderate potential incumbents.
What Has Happened to the Moderate Right
and Why Is It Important to Analyze It?
One obvious reason why Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania and
Slovakia were included in this analysis is the fact of the center-right’s victories in the second
