the historical foundations of party politics in ece

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The Historical Foundations of Party Politicsin Post-Communist East Central Europe

JAMES TOOLE

Abstract

This article gauges how plausible deep historical explanations are in accounting for the emergence of

particular types of parties in post-communist Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Generating

and testing hypotheses from the centuries-long historical logic of Lipset and Rokkans model of

cleavage and party development, it finds that the historical foundations of post-communist parties may

be deeper than most analyses assume and that the influence of the communist era may be less than is

often believed. While a full understanding of the emergence of post-communist party types requires

both historical and non-historical explanations, historical ones should not be underestimated.

WHEN COMMUNIST RULE ENDED IN EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE, political

parties were among the most obvious bearers of political change. While communist

regimes had sanctioned only communist parties or their ideologically compliant allies,

most new post-communist regimes threw open their doors to political parties of nearly

all conceivable kinds. Because this transformation was so profound, and in most

countries quite sudden, post-communist Europe remains a region of great interest to

those trying to gain a better understanding of how political parties form and develop.

This study examines the historical foundations of party politics in the post-

communist East Central European states of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech

Republic. Given the thoroughness with which communist regimes attempted to stamp

out all non-communist political, economic, and social organisations, one cannot

expect most post-communist East Central European parties to have continual

organisational histories spanning the post-communist, communist, and pre-commu-

nist eras. One can ask, however, how closely the parties of today resemble parties of

pre-communist eras. Going further back in time, moreover, one can ask how clearly

the political parties of the most recent century appear to be products of even earlier

social and political divisions. This article asks how deep the historical roots of post-

communist East Central European parties might run. It addresses the question by

gauging how plausible historical explanations appear to be in accounting for the

emergence of particular types of political parties following the end of communist rule.

EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES

Vol. 59, No. 4, June 2007, 541 566

ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/07/040541-26 2007 University of Glasgow


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To analyse the historical foundations of East Central European parties, the article

tests the plausibility of a pre-eminent historical model of political party development,

one developed by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967a) for the study of

Western Europe. Lipset and Rokkans argument is one of the most commonly cited in

political science, but it is tested here in a way that is both important and rarely done.

Although Lipset and Rokkans original analysis was based primarily on deep

historical research, today their argument is rarely tested to its full historical measure.

This article appears to be the first to test Lipset and Rokkans argument for the cases

of East Central Europe by using the kind of deep historical research that pervaded the

original analysis. It examines over four centuries of East Central European social and

political history in an effort to see whether todays political parties have any

longstanding historical foundations.

The research presented here also should help us to better understand two other

important issues. Because it uses a model first developed from West European history

to reach conclusions about East Central Europe, it should help us to more clearlycharacterise some similarities and differences between the two regions. And because it

goes further back in time than most studies, it also should help us to put the influence

of the communist era on post-communist politics in broader historical perspective.

The model and its uses

The influence of the past on the present has long intrigued scholars of East Central

European politics. Before 1989, the main subject of interest was the influence of the

pre-communist era on the communist one (Chirot 1989). Since 1989, most attention

has focused on the influence of the communist era on the post-communist one(Jowitt 1992; Fukuyama 1992; Barany & Vo lgyes 1995; Crawford & Lijphart 1995;

Hanson 1995; Ekiert & Hanson 2003; Kopstein 2003). Some have argued that

communist regimes transformed economic structures, political and social institu-

tions, and individual attitudes so strongly for so long that post-communist politics is

bound to be shaped by their legacies for some time to come.1 On the other side are

those who contend that market forces and liberal ideas are powerful enough to

overcome most legacies of discredited communist regimes.2 Many scholars, of

course, interpret present-day politics using a mixture of both views.3 Studies of

political parties in East Central Europe have focused mainly on the present, but they

increasingly seem to consider what the parties of today have inherited from the past.

Some studies are focused mainly on the effects of the communist era.4 Others argue

1A prominent expression of this view is Jowitt (1992); see also Barany and Vo lgyes (1995).2Crawford and Lijphart (1995) have called this the imperatives of liberalism approach. A

prominent expression of this view is Fukuyama (1992).3Kopstein (2003), for example, contends that both the positive effects of communist legacies and the

effects of European liberal institutions are probably more important than scholars have imagined.

Hanson (1995) presents a persuasive revision of Jowitts (1992) argument that moderates some of the

latters key points. The summary offered in the present paragraph is necessarily cursory; see Crawford

and Lijphart (1995) for a balanced and wide-ranging analysis of the two alternative views.4See Rivera (1996), van Biezen (2003) and Grzymaa-Busse (2002). To the extent that they consider

past influences, Bielasiak (1997, 2002) and Kitschelt et al. (1999) focus mainly on the communist era.

542 JAMES TOOLE


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that eras prior to the post-Second World War imposition of communist rule have

greater effects on the present than most scholars realise (Wittenberg 1997, 2000;

Lubecki 2004). Still others argue that both communist and pre-communist eras have

some effects on post-communist party politics (Tworzecki 1996, 2002; Kostelecky

2002).

One of the models of political party development that is most helpful in evaluating

the influence of the past is the one created in 1967 by Lipset and Rokkan. The Lipset

Rokkan model has been applied to a remarkable range of political questions and to

many regions of the world. In recent years, it has been applied by many to analyse

party development in post-communist Europe (Cotta 1994; Ma rkus 1994, 1996;

Tworzecki 1996, 2002; Ko ro se nyi 1996; Rivera 1996; Mair 1997; Lewis 2000;

Lindstro m 2001; Sitter 2001, 2002; Kostelecky 2002; Zielinski 2002; Toole 2003).

What makes the Lipset Rokkan model so helpful in studying the question posed here

is its strong historical basisits insistence that contemporary party politics can have

deep roots in the accumulated social changes of several centuries. Lipset and Rokkanargued that the patterns of political opposition and alliance seen in the party politics

of any given West European country of the 1950s and 1960s were clear products of the

patterns of social upheaval experienced by that country over preceding centuries. They

argued that three successive social upheavalsthe Reformation and Counter-

Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the democratic and national

revolutions of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the Industrial

Revolution of the nineteenth and early twentieth centurieseach produced lasting

divisions, or cleavages, in West European societies. While the cleavages produced by

earlier upheavals persisted, they also were altered by the upheavals that came later.

Most important, though, was the idea that these social cleavages also producedpolitical divisions. As countries opened political participation to more and more

segments of society, in a process that eventually produced fully participatory liberal

democratic political systems, the multilayered structures of accumulated social

cleavages created political divisions around which political parties would form.

Why certain types of political parties existed in some West European countries but not

in others, or why certain types of parties were stronger in some countries than in

others, could be explained by the different social histories of the countries concerned.

That Lipset and Rokkan were able to provide specific and relatively simple

explanations for the diverse political party patterns of roughly a dozen West

European states by studying over 400 years of history was a truly impressive

achievement.

This study, by mirroring the original analysis done for Western Europe by both

Lipset and Rokkan and their collaborators,5 generates and tests a series of four

hypotheses addressing more than four centuries of social and political change.

Although it is possible to use the Lipset Rokkan model using purely contemporary

data, the model is at heart an emphatically historical one. Testing it fully should

involve at least one foray into the kind of deep historical research originally employed

5The remaining chapters of the book (Lipset & Rokkan 1967b) for which Lipset and Rokkans

chapter (1967a) serves as an introduction use historical analysis to apply the Lipset Rokkan argument

to particular countries and regions.

HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF PARTY POLITICS 543


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by Lipset and Rokkan and their collaborators.6 This study does not test historical

explanations for party development against competing explanations. It concentrates

instead on thoroughly exploring how far historical explanations can go in accounting

for post-communist party politics outcomes.

The simplest way to apply the Lipset Rokkan model to the problem at hand would

be to see whether parties that appear to compete across cleavages identified by Lipset

and Rokkan can be found in post-communist East Central European politics. But that

method has at least two severe drawbacks: (1) it fails to address why the given parties

and cleavages happen to be associated with one another; and (2) it offers no historical

perspective. A better way to apply the model would be to see whether parties

competing across Lipset Rokkan cleavages are found both in the post-communist

and interwar eras. This offers some historical perspective; by considering all modern

eras of generally competitive East Central European party politics, it provides a way

of gauging whether todays parties might have roots stretching back at least to the

early twentieth century. But it fails, like the first approach, to address why parties seemto be associated with particular cleavages.

The method used here aims to overcome the weaknesses of those two approaches.

It incorporates into testable hypotheses the particular historical logics developed by

Lipset and Rokkan to explain how particular past social conditions encouraged the

development of particular types of modern political parties. This method is the only

one of the three approaches that addresses why todays patterns of party politics have

emerged. It also is the only one to acknowledge that the Lipset Rokkan model can

explain the absence as well as the presence of particular party types. Not all countries

reflect all possible cleavages in their party politics, and the Lipset Rokkan model

hardly expects them to. What matters is not how many cleavages end up represented inmodern party politics, but rather how well the model predicts the particular mix of

cleavages that have found their way into the party politics of modern times.

While the Lipset Rokkan model offers an unusually comprehensive explanation for

the historical development of modern political parties, it is unlikely to fully predict the

array of parties found in post-communist East Central Europe. It is, after all, only one

model of party development. It also was developed for the study of Western rather than

East Central European politics; and while it has withstood many challenges, scholars

have pointed out weaknesses in its assumptions, definitions, and logic (Tworzecki 1996,

pp. 21 25, 2002, pp. 11 12; Lewis 2000, p. 143; Sitter 2002, pp. 427 434; Zielinski

2002, pp. 186 189). Some who have studied the historical foundations of East Central

European party politics have not used the model (Kitschelt et al. 1999; Lubecki 2004).

Others have applied it and found it wanting (Rivera 1996; Lewis 2000, pp. 140 149;

Lindstro m 2001). Still others have found that it explains some features of East Central

European party development but not others (Tworzecki 1996, 2002; Kostelecky 2002).

This study agrees with the latter position. It finds that the model offers plausible

explanations for the emergence of some but not all post-communist party types. It then

also considers why the model works in part but not in full.

6A handful of studies (Cotta 1994; Rivera 1996; Tworzecki 1996, 2002; Kostelecky 1996) have applied

the Lipset Rokkan model to East Central Europe using other kinds of historical approaches. Of these,

only Tworzecki and Kostelecky evaluate the impact of periods prior to the early twentieth century.

544 JAMES TOOLE


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The hypotheses

The first step in gauging the plausibility of the historical model of party development

for the East Central European cases is the generation of specific and testable

hypotheses from the Lipset Rokkan analysis. The four hypotheses generated here are

based on the four major cleavages that developed, according to Lipset and Rokkan, in

Western Europe: a centre periphery cleavage, a church state cleavage, an urban

rural cleavage, and an owner worker (or class) cleavage. The hypotheses are posed in

a parallel if then form. In each hypothesis, an antecedent clause depicts a particular

set of socio-historical conditions while a subsequent clause depicts a particular

situation in modern party politics. Each hypothesis is upheld only if the antecedent

socio-historical conditions and the subsequent modern political conditions can be

shown to exist.

Each hypothesis is tested for both of the two modern eras that featured generally

competitive party politics: the immediate pre-communist period of the interwar eraand the post-communist era.7 Testing for both modern eras offers three advantages.

First, it ensures that the model is evaluated for all periods in which suffrage laws

allowed virtually whole populations to participate in at least partly free elections.

Second, it helps us to evaluate the influence of the communist era on post-communist

politics. Where analysis upholds the Lipset Rokkan model for the interwar era but

not for the post-communist era, it identifies a way in which the communist era appears

to have been influential enough to break a pre-existing historical trajectory. Third, it

corrects errors that could be made in testing for the post-communist era alone. A

hypothesis upheld for the post-communist era cannot be said to show that parties have

deep historical foundations if it is not also upheld for the prior modern era.Two additional features of the hypotheses are worth noting. First, the hypotheses

address the presence or absence of types of political parties, not of specific individual

parties.8 Thus the existence of a predicted party type in both modern eras supports a

hypothesis even if the party type is represented by different specific parties in the two

eras. Second, the purpose of the testing is to provide a portrait of whole party systems.

Although each hypothesis is designed to predict the presence or absence of only one

party type, the four together are designed to depict a given countrys entire pattern of

political party alliance and opposition.

The church state cleavage is the subject of the first of the four hypotheses.

Generally the oldest of the cleavages, it originates in the Reformation and Counter-

Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In countries where the Roman

Catholic Church remained dominant after the Reformation, the churchs loyalty to an

7In the interwar era, only Czechoslovakia had a consistently democratic regime. But the

authoritarian regimes of interwar Hungary and Poland permitted relatively competitive party politics.

Regular elections tended to be held, and parties across the ideological spectrum were represented in

parliament.8The party types used here represent families of parties (for example, Christian Democratic, social

democratic, or agrarian) defined very broadly in terms of ideology and electoral base. On the value of

using such an approach in the historical study of East Central European parties, see Wittenberg (1997).

This approach to party type is particularly useful here because it mirrors the approach taken by Lipset,

Rokkan, and their collaborators (Lipset & Rokkan 1967b).



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outside authoritythe popemade it likely to come into conflict with the priorities of

the developing state. In countries that ended up having a Protestant national church

dependent upon no outside authority, church and state had fewer divergent interests

and were more likely to cooperate with one another. In northern Europe, where

national Protestant churches predominated and church interests were not perceived as

threatened by the state, strong political parties devoted to the defence of church

interests were not required. In much of Southern and Central Europe, where

majorities or large minorities of citizens were members of the Roman Catholic

Church, strong parties devoted to the defence of church interests formed without

exception as suffrage was extended, and continue to be found today (Lipset &

Rokkan 1967a, p. 34). Based on this logic, a testable hypothesis can be created for the

countries of East Central Europe:

H1: In countries in which Roman Catholic majorities or strong minorities existed, strong

church-based parties should be found.

By the standards of Western Europe, where the church-based (normally Christian

Democratic) parties that exist are usually among the most important ones, church-

based parties should be leading political parties if they are to be considered strong.

The second hypothesis concerns the centre periphery cleavage. If some churches

were important opponents of the growing power of West European states, so too were

geographically peripheral regions. People living in peripheral regions were usually

distinguished from those engaged in increasing the power of the central state9 not only

by their distance from the centre or by topographical features that cut them off from

the centre but also by cultural or ethnic differences. These longstanding differencesmost obviously manifest themselves in the politics of today in parties that represent

particular ethnic minorities. While an historical cleavage between state-builders at the

centre and their opponents on the periphery is found in every West European state

(Lipset & Rokkan 1967a, pp. 36 38), the cleavage tends to vary in importance across

states in modern times and often is not as important as other cleavages. Lipset and

Rokkan outline three historical conditions that are likely to produce ethnic parties in

modern times (1967a, p. 42); these form the basis of the second hypothesis.

H2: Where peripheral minorities were territorially concentrated, where they had stronger ties

to an external centre than to the centre of their own state, and where they had minimal

economic dependence upon their centre, modern ethnic parties are likely to form.

Lipset and Rokkan suggest that the three conditions create an ideal environment for

the formation of ethnic parties, but that not all three are required (1967a, p. 42). The

hypothesis is judged here according to that standard. To support the hypothesis, any

ethnic parties that exist need not be particularly large. Given that ethnic minorities are

9Unfortunately, Lipset and Rokkan confuse the issue by referring to those building the state as

nation-builders rather than state-builders (1967a, p. 36). On the crucial distinction between nation and

state, see Connor (1978). Lipset and Rokkans nation-builders (N, in the typology that appears on

their p. 37) are referred to here as state-builders.

546 JAMES TOOLE


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by definition relatively small in size, and given that West European ethnic parties also

tend to be relatively small, an ethnic party able to surpass the 5% threshold commonly

used to determine parliamentary representation should be regarded as large enough to

support the hypothesis.

The urban rural cleavage forms the basis of the third hypothesis. Lipset and

Rokkan argue that the translation of an urban rural cleavage into modern party

politics depends on the alliances and divisions formed in society during the Industrial

Revolution by groups already created during previous social upheavals. The

question this time is whether those engaged in the building of the central state allied

with rural landowners or with the urban bourgeoisie as industrialisation progressed.

If state-builders allied with the urban bourgeoisie, thus alienating the rural

landowners, an urban rural split was likely to arise in party politics. If they allied

with the landowners, that historical alliance between urban and rural interests would

end up neutralising urban rural political conflict in modern times. Hypothesis 3

is thus:

H3: In countries where state-builders allied with the urban bourgeoisie, the modern political

system should contain a strong agrarian party.

Because agrarian parties tend to be relatively small in Western Europe, the agrarian

parties of East Central Europe need not be as large as some other types of parties to be

viewed as supporting the hypothesis. Agrarian parties can be considered strong if they

are explicitly agrarian and manage to be consistently represented in parliament.

The fourth cleavage is important because it produced the strongest political

divisions in twentieth-century West European politics, but it is also complicated. Theproblem is that the class cleavage has proven ubiquitous in the party politics of West

European states, producing class-based parties everywhere. While the preceding

cleavages are useful in explaining why certain types of parties exist in some countries

but not in others, the class cleavage cannot be useful in that way. Lipset and Rokkan

find themselves able to say only that an understanding of the class cleavage will help to

tease out country-by-country differences in the strength and solidarity of class-based

parties (Lipset & Rokkan 1967a, p. 46). In fact, the clearest argument they present

deals more with the solidarity of class-based partiesthe degree of unity or division

among communist, socialist, and/or social democratic partiesthan with their

strength. Lipset and Rokkan argue that divisions among modern working-class

parties in a West European country are outgrowths of older battles between church

and state. Division among modern working-class parties tends to be strongest in

countries with sharp church state conflict and difficult histories of state-building

(such as France or Italy) and weakest in countries having little church state conflict

and relatively easy histories of state-building (such as Britain or Sweden) (Lipset &

Rokkan 1967a, p. 48).

Apart from the simple idea that one division might beget another, the logic

connecting earlier church state conflicts to later working-class divisions is not

immediately apparent. It emerges most clearly in the French and Italian case studies

presented in Lipset and Rokkans original edited volume (1967b). In both France and

Italy, Mattei Dogan explains, anti-clericism traditionally grew in regions where the



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dominance of the Roman Catholic Church was perceived as particularly heavy-

handed and exploitative; this opened the door later on to the message of the atheistic

communist movement (Dogan 1967, p. 184). In both countries, he writes,

Communism is historically the spiritual heir of anti-clericism as much as it is an

ideology generated by the economic conflict between social classes (p. 184).

Hypothesis 4 describes the relationship between church state and working-class

divisions:

H4: Where church state conflict was strong, clear division is likely to emerge among modern

working-class parties.

Clear division among working-class parties is found where communist parties co-exist

with social democratic ones. Communist parties are rarely the dominant parties of the

left and thus need not be as large as social democratic parties for working-class

division to be deemed significant. At best, in the cases of France, Italy, and Finland,West European communist parties consistently attracted about a quarter of votes cast

in parliamentary elections between the 1950s and 1980s (Gallagher et al. 1995, p. 186),

a share that declined in the 1990s and early 2000s to 15% or less. In virtually all other

West European states, they have struggled merely to enter parliament. For East

Central European working-class parties to be viewed as divided, communist party

strength should probably approach at least the 10 15% achieved in the highest recent

West European figures.

These four hypotheses are not the only useful hypotheses that can be teased out of

the Lipset Rokkan analysis. They have two virtues, however: (1) they provide one

hypothesis for each of the four major cleavages; and (2) they remain as true as possibleto the very specific logic and conditions laid out by Lipset and Rokkan.10 The

implications of the present approach are considered at the end of the article.

Testing the hypotheses

The second step in evaluating the plausibility of the historical model of party

development is the testing of the hypotheses. The first part of this section tests the

hypotheses for the interwar era, while the second part tests them for the post-

communist era.

The interwar era

Hypothesis 1 is the simplest of the four. It contends that societies having Roman

Catholic majorities or strong Roman Catholic minorities in the aftermath of the

Reformation and Counter-Reformation should develop strong parties for the defence

of church interests in the twentieth-century era of democratisation and mass

10Cotta (1994) and Zielinski (2002) both generate and test other sets of hypotheses derived from

Lipset and Rokkan. Zielinskis hypotheses are concerned with contemporary rather than historical

processes of cleavage translation. Cottas hypotheses are broader and are not directly connected to the

four individual cleavages.

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mobilisation. While Hungary has had a strong Protestant minority, both it and Poland

have long had clear Roman Catholic majorities. The Czech case is more complicated.

In terms of titular religious affiliation, the Czech lands have been considerably more

Roman Catholic than Protestant since soon after the Counter-Reformation;11 but

Czechs have resented the Catholic Church since it won dominance over Czech society

in the early seventeenth century (Kostelecky 2002, p. 96; Wandycz 1993, pp. 93 94),

and Czech society has since become the most secular in East Central Europe. In the

end, it seems reasonable to regard Czech society as less than fully Catholic from the

immediate aftermath of the Counter-Reformation onward. H1 thus suggests that

Poland and Hungary should have strong parties for the defence of the church in the

interwar era but that such parties should be weaker in the Czech lands.

In interwar Poland, important parties of the right and centre enjoyed close ties to

the Roman Catholic Church (Rothschild 1974, p. 31). The National Democratic Party

(Narodowa Demokracja), the main party of the right and the largest party in

parliament from the 1919 election until the 1926 coup, enjoyed the support ofsignificant sections of the Catholic hierarchy (Walters 1988, p. 183). The Christian

Democrats (Chrzescijanska Demokracja) were strongly clerical, and the Piast Peasant

Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe Piast) also enjoyed strong ties to the church

(Rothschild 1974, p. 31; Walters 1988, p. 183). In Hungary, party church relations

were far weaker. Even on the right, parties were based more clearly on support for the

regime, for industry, for large landowners, and for the revision of borders created by

the post-World War I settlement than for the Roman Catholic Church (Seton-Watson

1961, ch. 2; Walters 1988, pp. 213 218). In the Czech lands, ties between parties and

church were present but relatively weak. The Czech Populist Party (Ceskoslovenska

strana lidova) supported the church, but was fairly small. Even the NationalDemocratic Party (Ceskoslovenska narodn demokracie) was anti-clerical, in contrast to

the Polish party of the same name (Rothschild 1974, p. 95, fn. 8). H1 is thus upheld for

Poland, where parties have the expected ties to the Church, and for the Czech lands,

where such ties are present but weak. H1 is not upheld for Hungary, where close ties

are expected but are not present.

The three historical conditions of Hypothesis 2 focus less on the nature of the

relevant centre periphery conflicts than on the historical strength of the peripheral

groups involved. H2s first condition gauges the territorial cohesion of peripheral

groups, while its second and third conditions gauge the economic and political

autonomy that they develop over time. The groups involved are those peripheral

ethnic groups that by the modern interwar or post-communist eras would be strong

enough in East Central Europe to surpass a 5% threshold for parliamentary

representation. Peripheral groups relevant to the interwar era are ethnic Ukrainians

and Jews for Poland, ethnic Germans for Hungary, and ethnic Moravians and

Germans for the Czech regions of Czechoslovakia.12 For the post-communist era,

neither Poland nor Hungary has any ethnic minorities sizeable enough to be

11See Seton-Watson (1967, p. 414); Kostelecky (2002, p. 96); and United States Central Intelligence

Agency, Czech Republic, The World Factbook 2003, available at: http://www.cia.gov/cia/

publications/factbook/index.htm, accessed 13 August 2003.12For interwar census results, see Seton-Watson (1967, pp. 413 415).



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considered. For the post-communist Czech Republic, only ethnic Moravians are

sizeable enough to be considered.

The ethnic history of East Central Europe suggests that at least some of the groups

that end up constituting at least 5% of a modern states population had long been

cohesive and autonomous and thus should have been able and eager to establish

modern parliamentary parties of their own. Ukrainians in Poland and both Moravians

and Germans in the Czech lands had long been territorially concentrated, and all also

had stronger economic and political ties to cities other than the modern Polish and

Czech capitals of Warsaw and Prague. As a result, they can be expected to have

developed political interests and identities strong enough to warrant the creation of

modern parties of their own. According to the logic of the hypothesis, Polish Jews and

German Hungarians should be much less likely to form such modern parties. Both

groups lacked regions in which they constituted a majority, living mainly as ethnic

minorities of widely scattered urban populations. Germans in Hungary were much

farther from a German centre than were their co-ethnics in the Czech lands, while Jewsin Poland, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, lacked any external centre at all to call their

own. Historical conditions in East Central Europe thus suggest, according to H2s

logic, that only Ukrainians in Poland and Moravians and Germans in the Czech lands

would be likely to form ethnic parties in any part of the twentieth century.

Analysis of interwar party politics upholds H2 for Hungary but only partly upholds

it for the other two cases. In Poland, party lists representing Ukrainian, Jewish, and

other ethnic interests won representation in the Sejm in each election between 1922

and 1930, together winning between 15 and 26% of the vote (Rothschild 1974, Tables

9 11). Because only Ukrainian parties are predicted by H2 but both Ukrainian and

Jewish parties existed, the hypothesis is only partly upheld.13

In the Czech lands, whereboth German and Moravian parties are expected, ethnic German parties were

extensive but no significant ethnic Moravian parties formed (Rothschild 1974, pp. 99

100). In Hungary, ethnic German parties are not expected and no significant ones

formed.

Hypothesis 3, concerning the urban rural cleavage, requires an in-depth look at the

process of state-building that occurred in each of the East Central European countries

during the period of the Industrial Revolution. In Europe, the building of modern

states was a long process. One way that Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic

differ from most (but not all) West European countries is that they generally did not

have independent states of their own during the nineteenth century. The Czech lands

of Bohemia and Moravia had been parts of the Austrian empire since the sixteenth

century and did not gain independence until 1918. Poland had been partitioned in the

late eighteenth century between Russia, Prussia and Austria, and did not regain its

independence until 1918. Only Hungary enjoyed any real independence during the

nineteenth century, and then only for part of it. Ruled by Austria since 1683, Hungary

won effective sovereign control over its domestic affairs (and a share of control over

foreign and military affairs) in 1867. In large part because of this legacy, most of the

state-building that occurred in nineteenth-century East Central Europe must be

13Jewish voters, in fact, appear to have supported ethnically Jewish parties far more extensively than

was previously believed (see Kopstein & Wittenberg 2003, pp. 87 109).

550 JAMES TOOLE


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considered less a matter of building state institutions (which were controlled by those

who ruled over Poles, Czechs and Hungarians) than of struggling for independence in

the first place. This protracted struggle for independence was largely incremental,

rarely overt, and only occasionally violent. By this point in history it also was

acquiring a new and powerful ally: nationalism. Peoples all around Eastern Europe

were viewing themselves, for the first time, as unique ethnically defined nations

deserving of independent states of their own (Connor 1991).

Hypothesis 3 requires determining whether the state-builders of nineteenth-century

East Central Europe were more allied with the urban bourgeoisie or with the landed

aristocracy. For post-1867 Hungary, state-builders are those governing the mostly

sovereign Hungarian part of the empire. For Poland, the Czech lands, and pre-1867

Hungary, state-builders are those struggling for independence and/or developing the

national identities that push the independence struggle forward. In Poland and

Hungary, the aristocracy of the nineteenth century was in general more powerful than

the aristocracies of Western Europe and derived its strength primarily from its controlover land (Banac & Bushkovitch 1983a, pp. 1 2). In Poland, this landed aristocracy

had enjoyed unrivalled political influence for centuries, leaving the urban bourgeoisie

very small and unusually weak by the advent of partition at the turn of the nineteenth

century (Kamnski 1983; Kochanowicz 1989, p. 111; Bideleux & Jeffries 1998,

pp. 144 146). In Hungary, the rural aristocracy had also been the dominant political

class for centuries (Stokes 1989). In the nineteenth century it was far stronger than the

nascent urban bourgeoisie (Ger}o 1995, pp. 2 3; Bideleux & Jeffries 1998, pp. 298

304). Both the Revolution of 1848, in which Hungarians tried but failed to overthrow

Austrian rule, and the Compromise of 1867, in which they succeeded in wresting

domestic sovereignty from Austrian hands, were led by a portion of the landedaristocracy. That aristocracy was divided between the wealthier, more conservative,

and more Austrian-oriented magnates and a less wealthy, more nationalist, and more

restive gentry. It was the gentry that constituted Hungarys state-building political

leadership both before and after the restoration of a sovereign Hungarian state in

1867.14 The gentry were not the only revolutionary leadersthey were supported by

urban radical intellectuals, many drawn from the aristocracybut they were clearly

the dominant group (Deak 1983, p. 123). In Hungary as in Poland, state-building

efforts were clearly dominated by rural aristocratic interests.

The situation in the Czech lands was different. These regions were far more

industrialised than Poland and Hungary, and on a par with advanced regions of

Western Europe. This meant that an urban bourgeoisie emerged earlier and developed

political influence more quickly there than in either of the other two East Central

European countries (Stokes 1989). Before 1848, the Czech bourgeoisie had been the

only bourgeoisie of political importance in the region (Niederhauser 1970, p. 187), and

the Czech national movement had been dominated by urban dwellers particularly in

Prague and in medium size towns (Koralka 1992, p. 84). After 1848, the movement

expanded into rural areas but remained urban-based and urban-directed

14See Janos (1982) and Deak (1983, pp. 123 135). A similar internal class division is seen in the

Polish partitions (Walters 1988, pp. 51 52).



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(Koralka 1992, p. 86). The role of the nobility in the national movement remained far

more limited than in Poland or Hungary (Koralka 1992, p. 82).15

If H3 is correct, the historical contrast between Poland and Hungary, on the one

hand, and the Czech lands, on the other, will produce different political party

outcomes in the modern era. In Poland and Hungary, the rural base of the nineteenth-

century state-builders binds rural areas to the political centre and leaves no reason for

conflict between urban and rural areas. Hence no agrarian parties are likely to be

found. In the Czech lands, however, domination of the state-building process by urban

interests is likely to provoke lasting resentment and alienation among at least some in

more rural areas. Agrarian parties are thus more likely to develop.

Examination of interwar electoral results from the three post-communist states

shows relatively little support for H3. In interwar Poland, peasant parties are not

expected, but peasant parties from both the former Austrian and former Russian

partitions attracted significant electoral support (Seton-Watson 1961, pp. 32 33;

Walters 1988, pp. 183 184). In interwar Hungary, where peasant parties are likewisenot expected, the agrarian Smallholder Party (Kisgazda Part) played an important role

in the aftermath of the short-lived communist regime of 1919 (Hajdu & Nagy 1994,

pp. 309 318), was represented in several interwar parliaments, and won the largest

share of the vote in the last pre-communist election in 1945. In the Czech lands,

however, an agrarian party is expected and did exist. The Czechoslovak Agrarian

Party (Republikanska strana venkovskeho a malorolnickeho lidu) played a strong role in

Czechoslovak parliamentary politics, winning the largest share of the vote in the 1925

and 1929 lower house elections.16 In the end, H3 fails for Poland and Hungary but is

upheld by the Czech case.

Hypothesis 4, concerning the class cleavage, requires a close look at another aspectof the state-building process. Here the focus is on relations between church and state:

the deeper that divide, then the deeper the divide later on between communist parties

and their social democratic counterparts. In their analysis of the class cleavage, Lipset

and Rokkan distinguish between traditionally Roman Catholic and traditionally

Protestant countries. For countries with historical Roman Catholic majorities or

strong minorities, the key is to examine struggles between state-builders and the

church during the crucial phases of educational development and mass mobilisation

(Lipset & Rokkan 1967a, p. 49). These phases occurred after the secularising challenge

15Bideleux and Jeffries argue that the contrast between the Czech urban bourgeoisie and the

Hungarian landed gentry is often exaggerated, and that the Hungarian gentry were more urban and

less landed than often believed (1998, pp. 309 310); but when put in broad European perspective, the

contrast still seems valid. Compared to the state-builders of most of Western Europe, those of Hungary

had very strong rural interests, either owning considerable amounts of land or having only recently

moved to the cities. It is worth noting that the gentry as a class owned a significant share of Hungarian

land (Janos 1982, p. 61, Table 5).16See Rothschild (1974, Tables 19 22). Rothschild, however, underscores the increasingly broad-

based nature of the party (p. 97); based on that, Rivera (1996, p. 187) goes so far as to regard interwar

Czechoslovak party politics as having no significant urban rural divide at all. The party was

electorally strong, but its relatively weak commitment to agrarian interests erodes to some degree its

support for H3.

552 JAMES TOOLE


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posed by the French Revolutionin short, during the nineteenth century (Lipset &

Rokkan 1967a, p. 15).

The classic case of church state conflict in nineteenth-century Europe is, of course,

France, where revolutionary leaders and their successors imposed an avowedly secular

state on a deeply Roman Catholic country. While all three East Central European

countries were strongly or nominally Roman Catholic as well, they differed from

France in at least one critical way: none (with the exception of post-1867 Hungary)

had sovereign states of their own. Because they were not in control of the states that

governed them, most East Central European state-builders were engaged not in the

policy-making decisions that sparked the church state conflicts relevant to H4, but

rather in broader struggles for independence. Lacking the authority to impose their

will on state structures or policies, they posed no serious challenge to the church and

had little reason to antagonise it. One would expect, then, that most of them would not

come into open conflict with the church during the nineteenth century.

In two of the three country cases, however, conflict with the church did develop.After 1867, Hungarian nationalists had the chance to engage in full-blown state-

building, and one of the objects of their new-found power was control of education. At

the turn of the nineteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church had enjoyed an almost

complete monopoly over education in Hungary (Juhasz 1953, p. 661). The churchs

general social and political authority in the Habsburg realms was further strengthened

in 1855, when the Vatican signed a concordat with the empire. After 1867, Hungarian

nationalists attacked church privileges on a variety of fronts, passing laws on mixed

marriages, the categorisation of religious denominations, the separation of church and

state, and education (Janos 1982; Pe ter 1989). Law XXXVIII of 1868 placed all

schools under state supervision, built an expanded network of elementary schoolsaround the existing core of religious schools, introduced compulsory subjects to the

curriculum, established teacher training institutes, and created a state-run inspection

system (Frank 1994, p. 258). Similar legislation was passed in the Austrian-ruled half

of the empire, but the primary force behind those latter laws were Austrian secular

liberals, not Czech or Polish nationalists (Cohen 1996, pp. 36 54).

While neither Poles nor Czechs enjoyed such sovereignty, many Czechs challenged

church power where they could. The Austrian state that ruled over them enjoyed

church support both because the church tended to support established states in

principle over nationalist movements and because church and state were allied in a

multitude of practical ways. Support for the Austrian state further estranged the

church from a Czech society already sceptical of its motives (Pechacek 1953, pp. 638

641). For many nineteenth-century Czech nationalists, [t]o be a patriot was

synonymous with being against Vienna and against Rome (Pechacek 1953, p. 638).

The conflict between nationalists and the church, though not directly affecting the

policies of state, had lasting effects on Czech society, setting the stage for a further

wave of secularisation following World War I (Pechacek 1953, p. 641).

Only in Hungary did the church and state-builders come into severe conflict over the

content of actual state laws and policies during the nineteenth century; but Czech

nationalists were clearly ready and willing to do the same as the Hungarians. Given

their intentand the fact that Czech society was changed in a very real way by the

lack of church support for the nationalist causeit seems prudent to categorise them



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alongside the Hungarians. Polish nationalists were far less interested than their

Hungarian or Czech counterparts in coming into open conflict with the church.

If H4 is to be supported by the East Central European cases, then one should find

clear division among working-class parties in both Hungary and the Czech Republic

but not in Poland. Division among working-class parties is indicated when a large

social democratic party is forced to co-exist with a communist party strong enough to

consistently enter parliament. Examination of electoral results in interwar Europe

upholds H4 in two of three cases. In Poland, division among working-class parties is

not expected and no significant division is found. While social democratic parties were

important interwar parties, communist parties won only 1 2.3% of the vote

(Rothschild 1974, Tables 8 11). In the Czech lands, division is expected and is

found. Strong division within the working-class movement led to a socialist

communist split in 1921; each party thereafter won at least 10% of the vote in at least

two interwar parliamentary elections (Seton-Watson 1961, pp. 38 39; Rothschild

1974, Tables 19 22). In Hungary, division is expected but is not found. Support forthe left, never wide to begin with, was greatly weakened during the interwar years by

the failure of Be la Kuns 1919 communist regime. Communist support remained

negligible throughout (Seton-Watson 1961, p. 39). In the end, H4 is upheld for Poland

and the Czech lands but fails for Hungary.

Table 1 presents a summary of the results of the hypothesis testing for the

interwar era.

The post-communist era

According to the logic of H1, strong post-communist parties for the defence of thechurch should exist in Poland and Hungary but should be weaker in the Czech lands.

While no large nominally Christian Democratic parties are found in the region, some

important parties do act like parties for the defence of church interests even if they

choose not to use the Christian Democratic label. In Poland, where political parties

have come and gone with far greater frequency than in either of the other two East

Central European states, parties backing church interests and incorporating religious

ideals have regularly dominated the conservative side of the ideological spectrum. For

all practical purposes, Poland upholds the hypothesis (Karatnycky 1998). In Hungary,

the record is more mixed. While conservative parties have been sympathetic to

Christian ideals, they have been less clearly linked to the policies of any one church.

The only major Hungarian party to have used the Christian Democratic label, the

Christian Democratic Peoples Party (Keresztenydemokrata Neppart), has never on its

TABLE 1TESTING FOR THE INTERWAR ERA

Poland Hungary Czech Lands

H1 Yes No YesH2 In part Yes In partH3 No No Yes

H4 Yes No Yes

554 JAMES TOOLE


15/27

own attracted more than 5% of the popular vote. The Hungarian Democratic Forum

(Magyar Demokrata Forum), the party that dominated the first post-communist

parliament (1990 94), had strong Christian elements but actually originated in the

countrys Protestant minority. FIDESZ, the party that dominated the third post-

communist parliament (1998 2002), originated as a generally secular liberal party

before shifting in the early to mid-1990s to a conservative ideology based as much on

economics and nationalism as on any religious sentiment. At best, Hungary only

partly supports the hypothesis. In the Czech Republic, the hypothesis is supported.

While the main parties of the Czech right are much more economically liberal than

religiously conservative, the country does have a Christian Democratic party large

enough to regularly enter parliament (Markowski 1997, p. 240). H1 is thus supported

for Poland and the Czech Republic but only partly supported for Hungary.

Hypothesis 2 is unique among the four hypotheses because it cannot be applied to

all countries and eras studied here. For H2 to be given a fair chance of succeeding,

ethnic political parties must be capable of attracting enough votes from their ownethnic groups to achieve regular parliamentary representation. By the post-communist

era however, the number of East Central European ethnic groups large enough to

support parliamentary parties had declined sharply from the interwar period. Poland

had become 98% ethnically Polish, while Hungary was 90% ethnically Hungarian and

had no ethnic minority constituting more than 4% of its population.17 Ethnic

Germans had been all but absent from the Czech lands since the 1940s. By the 1990s,

the only East Central European ethnic group large enough to exceed a 5%

parliamentary threshold were ethnic Moravians, who constitute about 13% of the

population of the Czech Republic. Moravian parties did arise after the demise of

communist rule, but even the largest of them soon proved inconsequential. TheMovement for Self-Governing Democracy/Society for Moravia and Silesia (Hnut za

samospravnou demokracii-Spolecnost pro Moravu a Slezsko, HSD-SMS) won 7.9% of

Czech Republic votes in the 1990 election and 4.2% of Czech Republic votes in the

1992 election. Since 1992 no Moravian party has come anywhere close to reaching

even 1% of the vote. Only in 1990 did the HSD-SMS exceed 5% of the vote, and even

then the party attracted only about 60% of Moravian votes. Although H2 would

expect a Moravian party to exist in the post-communist Czech Republic, such a party

only briefly managed to arouse a short-lived flurry of interest. H2 thus fails in the only

post-communist case to which it can apply.

Hypothesis 3 expects modern agrarian parties to form in the Czech lands but not in

Poland or Hungary. For the post-communist era, however, the hypothesis fails in all

cases. In Poland, at least two important parties have maintained primarily rural

agendas and bases of electoral support. The most recent lower house election, in 2005,

placed both Samoobrona and the Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe)

in parliament; while the former party has only been in parliament since 2001, the latter

has won between 7 and 15% of the vote in each post-communist lower house election.

In Hungary, an explicitly agrarian party, the Independent Smallholders Party

(Fu ggetlen Kisgazda Part, FKgP), was consistently represented in the National

17United States Central Intelligence Agency, Poland and Hungary, The World Factbook 2003,

available at: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.htm, accessed 13 August 2003.



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Assembly from 1990 until 2002 and was a junior partner in the conservative coalition

of 1998 2002. The FKgP split in 2001 and is not currently significant.18 However,

because of the partys long-time influence and only recent demise, it seems reasonable

at present to characterise Hungary as having an important post-communist agrarian

party. In the Czech Republic, where agrarian parties should be expected, no significant

ones have formed.

Hypothesis 4 expects clear division among modern working-class parties in both

Hungary and the Czech Republic but no such division in Poland. Examination of

electoral results in post-communist East Central Europe, however, suggests that such

division only occurs in the Czech Republic. There the large and ideologically moderate

Czech Social Democratic Party (Ceska strana socialne demokraticka) has regularly co-

existed in parliament with the hard-line Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia

(Kommunisticka strana Cech a Moravy, KSC M), which has won between 10.3% and

18.5% of the vote in the four elections held since 1992. In neither Poland nor Hungary,

by contrast, have communist parties managed even to enter a single parliament. H4thus fails for Hungary, where division was expected but is not found. It succeeds for

Poland (where division is not expected and is not found) and the Czech Republic

(where division is expected and is found).

Table 2 presents a summary of the results of the hypothesis testing for the post-

communist era.

Results of the hypothesis testing

Table 3 presents a summary of the overall findings when both modern eras are

considered together. The main rule applied in the table is that hypotheses are onlyupheld overall when they are supported by evidence from both modern eras. Even a

party whose post-communist presence is predicted by a hypothesis cannot be said to

have longstanding historical foundations if no party of its type existed during the

interwar era. Table 3 only addresses 10 of the 12 possible combinations of hypotheses

and country cases, since H2 cannot be tested for post-communist Poland or Hungary

using the specific logic articulated by Lipset and Rokkan. Because those post-

communist cases offer no conditions under which H2 could be supported, it would be

illogical to draw any conclusions about H2s success or failure.

TABLE 2TESTING FOR THE POST-COMMUNIST ERA


H1 Yes In part YesH2 n/a n/a NoH3 No No NoH4 Yes No Yes

18Anti-communism also has been a hallmark of the Smallholders, but while the partys anti-

communist message was always clear, it was formed as an agrarian party, attracted the bulk of its

support from rural areas, and strongly promoted rural interests.

556 JAMES TOOLE


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The most general conclusion to draw from Table 3 is that the historical model of

party development fails more often than it succeeds in explaining the development of

particular types of post-communist political parties. The model fails in six out of 10

possible instances and succeeds in only four. Two important specific patterns also

stand out in the table. As shown by the H2 results, the model fails to explain thetranslation of the centre periphery cleavages into modern party politics (partly

because it produces no conclusions at all for two of the three country cases). It also

fails, as shown by the H3 results, to explain the translation of urban rural cleavages

into modern party politics.19

Explaining patterns of party politics

The Lipset Rokkan model appears to explain only some of what we see in post-

communist East Central European party politics. In order to more completely

understand the presence or absence of particular party types in post-communist EastCentral Europe, we need to account for what the model does not clearly explain. In

this section we push the Lipset Rokkan analysis as far as it will go and then consider

other historical explanations for post-communist party development. The ultimate

goal is to see how far historical explanationswhether derived from the Lipset

Rokkan analysis or notcan take us in accounting for the particular party types that

have arisen in East Central Europe following the end of communist rule.

The preceding analysis suggests that the utility of the Lipset Rokkan model

in explaining the array of party types seen in East Central Europe is limited. But

the hypotheses tested in the analysis are based on a very strict interpretation of the

Lipset Rokkan argument. They were crafted to reflect as precisely as possible the

particular historical conditions that Lipset and Rokkan regarded as creating patterns

of party alliance and opposition in modern West European politics. A strict testing of

the model is valuable because it allows us to stay as close as possible to the models

assumptions and to take advantage of any relevant similarities between East Central

Europe and the West European cases for which the model was originally designed. But

it also is likely that interpreting the Lipset Rokkan model more broadly would

permit it to explain more than it can when used very strictly.

TABLE 3OVERALL SUPPORT FOR THE MODEL


H1 Yes No YesH2 n/a n/a NoH3 No No NoH4 Yes No Yes

19The table also shows that the model fails to explain how any of the historical cleavages might have

translated into modern party politics in Hungary. Due to space limitations, the Hungarian exceptions

are not discussed here.



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This section uses both a broader interpretation of the Lipset Rokkan model and

historical arguments not used by Lipset and Rokkan to help account for what the

strict interpretation of the Lipset Rokkan model could not explain. The advantage of

conducting strict testing first and broadening the logic only later is that earlier strict

testing establishes a baseline against which later broadening can be judged. This allows

us to differentiate among the plausible historical explanations that emerge. While the

emergence of some post-communist party types are seemingly explained by even a

strict interpretation of the Lipset Rokkan model, others are explained only when that

interpretation is broadened. Still others are explained only by forsaking the model

entirely. Some are not readily explained by any argument based on longstanding

historical factors.

The centre periphery cleavage

The first notable failure of the strict testing of the model is the failure of H2 to predictCzech outcomes or even to apply to the post-communist Polish and Hungarian cases.

A fairly simple broadening of the Lipset Rokkan logic can help us to better

understand how historical centre periphery cleavages might have offered foundations

for post-communist divisions among particular types of East Central European

parties. Strict testing of the Lipset Rokkan logic tends to focus on how the cleavage

can lead to parties representing particular historically peripheral ethnic groups. But

the cleavage can also be viewed more broadly as leading to other modern political

manifestations of centre periphery tensions. Perhaps the simplest of these to analyse

is the emergence of parties advocating nationalisms of the historical centre. It is

reasonable to expect that peripheral ethnic groups, cohesive and autonomous enoughto form fairly important modern political parties, could engender a backlash among

central populations intent on maintaining their political dominance. The advantage in

selectively broadening in this way is that it allows for modern political manifestations

of historical centre periphery tensions even in countries that in modern times have

been shorn of their peripheral ethnic minorities. Thus in Poland and Hungary, the

existence of post-communist nationalist parties could be explained by the persistence

of nationalist traditions that became deeply embedded in the central culture during

past eras of much greater demographic heterogeneity.

Since all three East Central European countries have had at least some cohesive and

autonomous ethnically peripheral groups, this broader interpretation of the model

would explain the presence in both modern eras andin all three countries of nationalist

parties representing central interests. Important parties in all three interwar East

Central European statesfor example, the National Democrats in Poland (Narodowa

Demokracja), the Unity Party (Egyseges Part/Nemzeti Egyseg Partja) and the Arrow

Cross (Nyilaskeresztes Part-Hungarista Mozgalom) in Hungary (particularly in the

1930s), and the National Democratic Party in Czechoslovakia (Ceskoslovenskanarodn

demokracie)advocated clearly nationalist policies on behalf of ethnic Poles,

Hungarians, and Czechs respectively. The nationalist rhetoric espoused by post-

communist parties tends to be more subtle than that espoused by interwar parties. But

all three East Central European countries continue to have parties with clearly

nationalist positions. In Poland and Hungary such parties are important, as shown in

558 JAMES TOOLE


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Poland by the League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin) and Samoobrona, and

in Hungary by FIDESZ (since the mid-1990s), the Independent Smallholders Party,

and the Hungarian Justice and Life Party (Magyar Igazsag es Elet Partja). In the

Czech Republic, such parties are present but less important (the largest being the

KSC M). A broadened interpretation of the translation of historical central periphery

tensions into modern party politics permits us to see how interwar and post-

communist political divisions over the assertion of the nationalism of the dominant

culture can have longstanding historical foundations.20

The urban rural cleavage

The second notable failure of the hypothesis testing is the failure of H3 to predict

divisions in post-communist party politics. Since no fairly simple broadening of the

Lipset Rokkan logic seems fitting, any historical explanation for the translation of

urban rural cleavages into divisions in post-communist politics would need to gobeyond the Lipset Rokkan model.

The logic of H3 interprets East Central Europe almost entirely wrongly. It predicts

the Czech case correctly for the interwar era but not for the post-communist one, and

it predicts the Polish and Hungarian cases incorrectly for both modern eras. That

pattern suggests that any historical explanation for the Polish and Hungarian failures

lies in the pre-communist era and that any historical explanation for the Czech failure

lies in the communist one.

Using the Lipset Rokkan model, H3 predicts that higher levels of rural

participation in state-building will make later urban rural political division unlikely.

The logic is based on two assumptions: (1) that important aspects of state-buildingalways naturally take place at the political centre; and (2) that greater rural

involvement in the important and inherently centre-based process of state-building

ends up binding countryside to city so closely together that no conflict develops

between them. By the interwar era, however, the involvement of rural interests in state-

building had failed to suppress urban rural conflict in Poland and Hungary. Why?

A plausible answer emerges when two key historical differences between Poland and

Hungary, on the one hand, and Western Europe, on the other, are taken into account.

These are the economic backwardness of Poland and Hungary and their late control

over modern independent states (Chirot 1989; Janos 1982). The combination of these

differences may have been enough to drive the development of urban rural political

divisions in Poland and Hungary off the trajectory predicted by H3. In the more

economically backward of West European cases (such as Germany), Barrington

Moore has argued, late industrialisation was closely tied to the systematic suppression

of a vast peasantry by a small but very powerful rural nobility (Moore 1966, ch. 8). 21

In the even more economically backward cases of Poland and Hungary, such

20Another way to broaden the interpretation of the translation of the centre periphery cleavage into

modern party politics is to de-emphasise ethnic or national features of the cleavage and think mainly in

terms of geographic ones. Tworzecki (1996, ch. 3) has done this in detail for Poland, making a carefully

argued case that historical regional differences have played a role in structuring post-communist

electoral politics.21On the utility of Moores approach to the study of East Central Europe, see Stokes (1989).



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suppression is likely to have been even more extreme. The intra-rural tensions caused

by the suppression of the peasantry would have further deepened upon the delayed

arrival of independent states. The new states finally won by Poles and Hungarians

gave already dominant rural elites potent new sources of political power. When the

differences that divide Poland and Hungary from Western Europe are taken into

account, it becomes easier to understand why modern populist peasant-oriented

parties developed in Poland and Hungary despite the participation of rural elites in the

development of independent states.

The harder question to answer is why H3 fails for the post-communist Czech

Republic. Because H3 succeeds for the Czech lands in the interwar era but not in the

post-communist one, any historical explanation would probably contend that a pre-

communist trajectory of cleavage translation was broken during the intervening

communist years. But how would communist economic, social, or political

transformations so reduce pre-existing urban rural divisions in the Czech lands that

they would fail to emerge in post-communist politics? It may be, as Kitschelt et al.have argued (1999), that the bureaucratic-accommodative form of communist regime

established in the Czech lands is more likely to create a post-communist pattern of

party competition that focuses much more strictly on distributive economic issues than

on social, cultural, geographic, or regional ones. That would help to explain why

modern urban rural divides were eroded in the Czech lands during the communist era

but re-emerged after communist rule in Poland and Hungary, where communist

regimes took a different form. However, Kitschelt and his co-authors also make it

clear that communist regime types are, to a considerable degree, legacies of pre-

communist eras (Kitschelt et al. 1999, pp. 21 22). The more the past influences

communist regime behaviour, the less the communist era can be held responsible forthe kind of change seen in the H3 results.

Divisions over communist rule

Any attempt to understand the possible historical foundations of post-communist East

Central European party politics should take into account not only the divisions in

party politics expected by the Lipset Rokkan model but also any others that seem to

have emerged. The clearest division to have emerged outside the Lipset Rokkan

framework may be one dividing persons associated with the former communist

regimes from those not associated with them.22 Such regime divides are complex,

mainly because they appear less than fully formed. They are based not only on formal

connections to communist regimes (such as regime employment or party membership)

but also on attitudes toward them. And attitudes toward former regimes tend to

remain conflicted among those on both sides of the divide. Their newness suggests that

their capacity to endure must remain open to question, particularly as the era that

spawned them fades inexorably into the past.

22See Kova cs (1996, pp. 511 530), Kitschelt et al. (1999) and Grzymaa-Busse (1999). Post-

materialist and related divides, viewed by some as helping to explain post-Lipset Rokkan West

European party politics, show little strength in East Central Europe.

560 JAMES TOOLE


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Regime divides must be regarded as offering little support for deep-rooted historical

explanations for post-communist party politics. They are unlikely, after all, to have

discrete historical foundations dating back further than the mid-twentieth century

advent of communist rule. To the degree that they matter, regime divides have more

shallow historical roots than the divides based on most other historical explanations

considered here.

The historical foundations of post-communist parties

As the best established historical model of party development, the Lipset Rokkan

model is an ideal starting point for evaluating how deep the historical foundations of

East Central European post-communist parties run. Initial strict testing of the model

produced minimum baseline results. Broadening the interpretation of the model and

taking additional historical arguments into consideration allowed us to see how far we

could go in producing a plausible accounting of the historical foundations of the post-communist parties.

Initial strict testing supported Lipset Rokkan-type explanations for fewer than half

of the 12 combinations of cleavages and countries. Broadening the interpretation of

Lipset Rokkans centre periphery argument in a way consistent with the spirit of the

model allowed us to explain how that cleavage might well offer historical foundations

for patterns of party politics observed today. Allowing those revised conclusions to

alter Table 3 would improve the results of the hypothesis testing and thus make the

model work in seven of the 12 instances (by making all three H2 tests supportive).

Going beyond Lipset and Rokkan to consider the implications of East Central

European economic backwardness allowed us to explain how the class dynamics ofrural Poland and Hungary could have led to post-communist outcomes not predicted

by the Lipset Rokkan logic. Historical arguments, however, do not readily offer clear

and deep explanations for the emergence of all post-communist party types. The

historical foundations of regime divides are at best more shallow than most other

foundations considered here; and any historical explanations for the absence of post-

communist Czech agrarian parties would likewise originate no earlier than the

founding of the communist era.

The post-communist party politics of East Central Europe may well have

longstanding historical foundations. A strict interpretation of the Lipset Rokkan

model takes us only partway toward explaining the emergence of particular post-

communist party types, but when that interpretation is broadened and combined with

other historical reasoning, a plausible accounting emerges for how many types of post-

communist East Central European parties can be viewed as having deep historical

roots. This study by no means proves that todays party politics has roots that extend

back in time beyond the twentieth century, and it cannot offer plausible deep historical

explanations for the emergence of all post-communist party types, but it does suggest

that such roots exist and offers propositions that can be tested more thoroughly in

future research.

The explanation offered here for the divisions observed in post-communist East

Central European party politics is neither parsimonious nor all-encompassing. It

suggests that we need to go beyond a single historical model to construct a plausible



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historical explanation, and that even combined historical explanations fail to explain

everything. Moreover, this study does not attempt to assess the contributions that

alternative theories of party development might make to the explanation.23 Different

historical approaches and non-historical theories doubtless all have something to add

to our understanding of how different types of parties have developed in East Central

Europe. Tworzecki has argued (1996, pp. 158 161) that the Lipset Rokkan model is

useful but must be supplemented with other approaches in order to fully explain East

Central European party politics outcomes. This study uses a different method, but

reaches the same conclusion. Any complete understanding of post-communist party

politics is likely to require a combination of approaches.

Implications of the analysis

The findings of this study can help us to better understand the impact of communist

rule on East Central Europe, the comparison of East Central to Western Europe, andour use of the Lipset Rokkan model.

One advantage of evaluating the deep historical foundations of contemporary party

politics is that it offers an unusual opportunity to put more recent historical eras into

broad historical perspective. The communist era is one often assumed to have

tremendous importance to contemporary politics because the changes it forced on

societies and political systems were so dramatic. But it may also be that its proximity

to us in time tends to make us overestimate its importance and to underestimate the

continuing importance of earlier eras.

Perhaps the most surprising conclusion that one can take away from a comparison

of Table 1 and Table 2 is how little appears to change between the interwar and post-communist eras. Religious parties partly strengthen in Hungary, and agrarian parties

disappear in the Czech lands. A strict interpretation of Lipset Rokkan (the

interpretation reflected in the tables) would also highlight the disappearance of ethnic

parties in the Czech lands, although a broader interpretation of centre periphery

cleavage translation would show consistency across the two eras for all three countries.

But on none of the other hypothesis tests do the results change over the temporal gap

that is bridged by the 45-year era of communist rule. Application of deeply historical

Lipset Rokkan reasoning to the study of East Central European party politics thus

suggests that the communist era has had relatively little impact on the politics of

today.

The question that arises, but that must remain unresolved, is whether the

communist era in East Central Europe will come to be seen as an historical upheaval

as important as the three revolutions that form the basis of the Lipset Rokkan

logic.24 Twentieth-century communist rule differs from the great upheavals of past

centuries in that it began very suddenly and was almost wholly imposed by an external

23Among the theories that stand as alternatives to the historical approach are ones emphasising the

form of communist rule, the mode of transition from communist to democratic rule, the structure of

political institutions, international influences, and the preferences of party elites or political

entrepreneurs.24The answer would seem to depend on future assessments of the regime divide, which has not yet

existed long enough for its true historical importance to be judged.

562 JAMES TOOLE


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power. These features were crucial to making the era seem so utterly transformative;

given the capacity of human nature to absorb only so much extreme change at any

one time, the sudden external imposition of communist rule was an undeniably

breathtaking (and often traumatic) event for tens of millions of East Central

Europeans. But it also may be that these features ended up making the era less

transformative for whole societies than for individual people. Because East Central

European communist rule did not arise naturally from longstanding trajectories of

domestic social and political development, its effects may have been less profound

than are often realised. Indeed, the regions communist regimes faced serious

challenges to their efforts at social transformation, and at least some important pre-

communist values, behaviours, interpersonal networks, and institutions appear to

have survived decades-long efforts to eradicate them (Vo lgyes 1975; Szelenyi 1988;

Wittenberg 1997, 2000).

This study also suggests that West European models can be useful in the study of

East Central European party development. After all, the Lipset Rokkan modeldoesparticularly when interpreted more broadlyend up offering plausible

explanations for the post-communist emergence of a number of East Central

European party types. In general terms, the utility of West European models should

not be surprising, given how similar East Central and Western Europe often are when

viewed either in contemporary global terms (i.e. when jointly compared to other world

regions) or in broader historical terms (i.e. when their long-term commonalities are

taken into account). Keeping a broad perspective on the relationship between East

Central and Western Europe would seem important, and is possible even when global

scope or long-term historical perspective are impractical to incorporate into an

analysis. One way to do this is to treat the two regions on fundamentally equal terms.Ingrid van Biezen (2003), for example, has studied East Central European party

development using a model that gives equal weight to the different pre-democratic

regime types found in East Central, Western, and Southern Europe. Such a model

allows her to thoroughly incorporate West European experience into the comparative

analysis without according Western Europe undue influence.25

The analysis also suggests that our use of the Lipset Rokkan model should respect

its complexity. The models application by scholars to so many analytical purposes

and world regions testifies to its sophistication and versatility. Yet that complexity also

makes it likely to work better when applied in some ways than when applied in others.

Here the model is used in only one way, by applying its deep historical logic to explain

the development of modern political party types. But even to the degree that the model

is upheld by this study, that success cannot represent a blanket validation of the model

for the study of East Central European political parties. Studies using the model to

study issues that are very different than those considered herefor example, the

structure of party organisations (Toole 2003) and the theoretical significance of new

democratic party systems (Zielinski 2002)have found the model less useful in

25In the study, variation in pre-democratic regime type leads to different democratic-era party

political outcomes in East Central and Western Europe because they create different challenges for

developing parties. But differences in cross-regional outcomes also turn out to be less dramatic than

one might think; they tend to be more of degree than of kind (van Biezen 2003, p. 219).



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explaining post-communist East Central European party politics. It may be that the

long-term historical foundations of party politics are more resilient than we often

realise, even as shorter-term features of party politics remain subject to considerable

change. A near half-century of communist policymaking, for example, might only

modestly affect the pattern of broad social divisions that end up helping to structure

emerging post-communist party types, but might have an important effect on the

particular kinds of internal organisations that newly emergent political parties choose

to build.

Conclusion

Long-term historical analysis is not often applied to the study of contemporary

politics. It is rarely applied even when using models, such as the Lipset Rokkan

model, that are strongly rooted in long-term historical dynamics. Long-term historical

analysis should be particularly useful when attempting to evaluate the importance ofrecent eras, such as the communist era, on contemporary politics. Studying the eras we

remember alongside eras that lie beyond our own experience should help to ensure

that the impacts of the ones that we remember are evaluated as broadly and as

objectively as possible.

In its time, communist rule deeply affected the lives of millions of East Central

Europeans. But the effects of the communist era on the party politics that emerged at

the end of the 1980s may not be as uniformly profound as one would expect. This

study suggests that social divisions originating decades and even centuries before the

advent of communist rule have helped to structure the array of party types found in

the post-communist politics of East Central Europe. Not all party types can be readilyexplained using long-term historical models, and general party types represent only

one feature of party politics, but there is reason to believe that the historical

foundations of post-communist party politics may be deeper than most analyses

assume.

Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne

References

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Barany, Z. & Vo lgyes, I. (eds) (1995) The Legacies of Communism in Eastern Europe (Baltimore, JohnsHopkins).

Bideleux, R. & Jeffries, I. (1998) A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change (London, Routledge).Bielasiak, J. (1997) Substance and Process in the Development of Party Systems in East Central

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