Throwing out the Bums: Protest Voting and Unorthodox Parties after Communism

Abstract

The electoral rise of unorthodox parties (UOPs) in recent East European elections raises some puzzling questions about electoral dynamics in new democracies. Why did the power alternation of the mid-1990s not result in party-system consolidation, as suggested by some earlier studies, but instead give way to a much more chaotic environment in which established mainstream political parties lost considerable ground to new political formations based on personalist and populist appeals? Why did this reversal in Eastern Europe happen during a period of economic recovery, remarkable Western integration progress, and a broad acceptance of electoral democracy as the only game in town? This article suggests that these electoral dynamics can be explained by focusing on the interaction between protest voting and election sequence. While protest voting to punish unpopular incumbents has been a widespread but understudied practice since the collapse of communism, the beneficiaries of these protest votes have changed in recent elections. Whereas in the first two generations of postcommunist elections, disgruntled voters could opt for untried mainstream alternatives, in third-generation elections (defined as elections taking place after at least two different ideological camps have governed in the postcommunist period) voters had fewer untried mainstream alternatives, and therefore opted in greater number for unorthodox parties. This explanation receives strong empirical support from statistical tests using aggregate data from seventy-six parliamentary elections in fourteen East European countries from 1990 to 2006, survey evidence from twelve postcommunist elections from 1996 to 2004, and a survey experiment in Bulgaria in 2008.

Cleavages, Protest or Voting for Hope? The Rise of Centrist Populist Parties in the Czech Republic

“…The term CPP has been used to capture the unusual identity of these new political parties based solely on populist appeals. In his analysis of party politics in post‐communist Europe, Grigore Pop‐Eleches () defined new/centrist populism as one of the four types of unorthodox parties. New/centrist populist parties do not present a radical ideology.…”

“…Their programmes are based on the claim that they fight the corrupt elite and pursue the interests of the people, promising to enhance living standards. As Pop‐Eleches states (: 231), “such parties are almost completely unencumbered by ideological constraints and are therefore free to tell the voters what they want to hear” . Similarly, Peter Učeň () used the term centrist populism to describe political parties that entered the Slovak parliament in the 1998 and 2002 general elections.…”

Patterns of party change in Central and Eastern Europe, 1990–2015

“…Furthermore, party competition based on ideological grounds has emerged (Kitschelt et al, 1999;Rohrschneider and Whitefield, 2012;Rovny and Polk, 2015) and at least some parties established relatively strong party organizations (Gherghina, 2014;Ibenskas, 2014a;Tavits, 2013). On the other hand, the strength of membership organizations remains weaker in Central and Eastern Europe than in Western Europe (Van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke, 2012), the level of party organizational change is higher (Marinova, 2015), and all countries in the region continue to experience high levels of new party entry, including the emergence of centrist parties with fuzzy ideologies (Bågenholm, 2013;Hanley and Sikk, 2014;Pop-Eleches, 2010;Sikk, 2012).…”

Explaining the Oil Advantage: Effects of Natural Resource Wealth on Incumbent Reelection in Iran

“…The first mayoral and city council elec tions were held in 1999 and 2003, respectively, and the first nationwide local elections were held in 2005. 6 Blaydes 2011Corstange 2012;Lust-Okar 2006;Magaloni 2006;Pop-Eleches 2010;Tucker 2002. ine why this pattern exists in the context of legislative elections in a nondemocratic setting. 5 Goldberg, Wibbels, andMvukiyehe 2008;Monteiro and Ferraz 2010;Ross 2012.…”