Developing party structures in Central and Eastern Europe

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Beata Kosowska-Gcąstłt

Jagiellonian University

Piotr Borowiec

Jagiellonian University

Developing Party Structures in Central and Eastern Europe

Although the activity of political parties is a popular and widely studied issue, the nature of their organizational structures receive relatively less attention. While most research is focused on Western Europe, since the countries of Central and Eastern Europe experienced the process of democratization, there appeared a number of studies concerning also parties in this part of Europe. Paul G. Lewis was among the first authors to take an interest in this field. In 1996 he edited Party Structure and Organization in East-Central Europe, which contained several case studies regarding party formation and organizational structures of: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, and even former East Germany. Even though writ

ten in the early phases of the democratic transition, reflections concerning the organizational aspects of party formation still prove valuable. Several years later P. G. Lewis authored Political Parties in Post-Communist Eastern Europe (2000).

Chapter 4 of this book is devoted to organizational aspects of political parties in the region, and includes author s analysis of party structures, finances, factionalism and relationships between models of party organization in CEE and in established democracies.

Also relevant to the study of party organizational structures in CEE coun

tries are works by Ingrid van Biezen (2003) and Maria Spirova (2007). Van Biezen discusses the formation of political parties amidst democratic transition, with particular emphasis on their organization. Her research is based on examples

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12 Katarzyna Sobolewska-Myślik, Beata Kosowska-Gąstoł, Piotr Borowiec

from Southern Europe (Portugal and Spain), and Central and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic and Hungary). Spirova focuses on the formation, evolution, and organization of Bulgarian and Hungarian political parties. Apart from specifics, the book contains insightful general reflections on the organizational evolution of CEE political parties. For instance, she shows how politicians, at the beginning phases of post-communist party formation, did not stress the importance of or

ganizational structures. Later however, they came to appreciate organization as a valuable asset to party functioning.

Another book containing chapters focusing on political parties in CEE, which includes some discussion of their organizational aspects, is Party Politics in New Democracies, edited by Paul Webb and Stephen White (2007). Likewise, Stephen D. Roper and Janis Ikstens published a book in 2008 which discusses the question of party financing in post-communist countries. Other relevant papers also introduce and analyze theoretical models (Kopecky 1995; Szczerbiak 1999;

Hanley 2001; Enyedi and Linek 2008), and touch on other aspects of party orga

nization (Toole 2003; Tavits 2012a, 2012b; Gherghina 2014).

The study of the party statutes, as it is the case of the presented volume, may seem questionable, as what is on paper does not always reflect what is practiced.

Angelo Panebianco compared party statutes to the written constitutions of the states, saying that statutes do not describe party structures any better than consti

tutions describe the political systems (Panebianco 1988). Richard Katz and Peter Mair, answering Panebianco, noticed that even if both party statutes and states’

constitutions are not very precise in describing respectively political parties and political systems, it is almost impossible to understand the functioning of those entities without aforementioned written documents (Katz and Mair 1992). We argue that even if “official story” in the statute does not fully reflect “the real story” of party practice, the statute shows the initial design of the founders of the organization, amendments of the statute show the direction of changes desired by present activists. Thus, not denying the necessity of the empirical research of the power relationships within parties, we still perceive the study of party statutes as valuable and worth pursuing.

In the early 1990s, political parties in post-communist countries were gener

ally weak in terms of both political legitimacy and organization. This was a result of the move towards democracy, which entailed important changes in social structure, and the gradual development of market economy. The clear social and political cleavages, so important for building party identification and loyalty were lacking, which in turn led to large-scale electoral volatility, and a general disinterest of potential members in joining parties (Cotta 1996; Mair and van Biezen 2001; Mainwaring and Zoco 2007; van Biezen et al. 2012). This disinterest was also a product of the fact that people associated political parties with for

mer regimes (van Biezen 2003). These circumstances were unfavorable to party building, as parties need members on all levels in order to foster legitimacy and develop organizational structures.

Regardless, parties were organized in the immediate post-communist period because they were seen as necessary tools for democratic elections and the building

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of democratic institutions. In practice though, this was often done by elected deputies, who built their organizations from the top down after they had already become representatives - a practice not conducive to strong party organization.

The above trends apply mainly to parties that emerged immediately after the transformation. However, we cannot forget about parties held over from the communist era which retained their well-developed organizational structures.

The regaining of legitimacy entailed a two-step process: dissolution of the former communist party and organization of a new social democratic party. During this process, most parties lost a large portion of their former members, yet still remained comparatively “populous”, which helped them preserve their well-de

veloped organizations and maintain a significant presence at the grassroots level.

A good example is the Bulgarian Socialist Party (Spirova 2005).

It is also important to note that, at the time, building a strong party organiza

tion was not always considered necessary, as electoral support could be generated not only by a large membership base, but via special media tactics. This was an easy way for newer parties to garner support without strong links to society. They were lucky, as the transition to democracy corresponded with the advances in technology that made such media campaigns possible (van Biezen 2003).

Considering the above, party building in the first years of democratic transition in the early 1990s in post-communist countries can be described by two different models. The first applies to parties that came into fruition after the fall of commu

nism, formed from the top down by a small group of politically active elites who were having difficulties building a membership base and developing organizational structures. The second applies to parties which reformed themselves on the back of their communist predecessors by simply changing their programmatic profile, and preserving their organizational structures. It is important to remember, that not all parties fit this particular scheme. In some countries, newly formed parties were not organized from scratch, but instead were based on larger “umbrella” or

ganizations, such as Civic Forum in the Czech Republic, or Solidarity in Poland.

In some cases, these parties were based on opposition movements active in former regimes. The differences in organizational development were also influenced by the course of democratic transition in the individual countries, whether resulting from Round Table Talks or otherwise. However, regardless of individual differences, two major trends that describe ways in which party structures transformed are the two discussed above. One, utilized by new parties, representing forces of change and forming their structures from scratch, and another; often labeled post-communist, which inherited their structure from their predecessors, but changed ideological profile to fit the new role they were playing.

Taking it into account, we thought it might be interesting to observe, whether those two different modes of organizational development were reflected in the statutory rules. The biggest differences might be expected in the territorial range of party structures i.e. the way they mirror administrative units of the state and the level of this administrative structure which can be reached by parties (Spirova 2007). Those parties which had the structures in the previous regime, can be ex

pected to preserve them and thus include them in their statutes. On the other hand

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at least some new parties, experiencing difficulties in recruiting members, might cut down also the statutory designed levels of organizational structure, placing their basic units not in the lowest levels of administrative structure of the state but starting somewhere in the middle, or may be organizing their units according to the shape of constituencies. Some differences might be expected in members’

rights and duties, but particularly in the requirements which had to be fulfilled by new members. Former regime parties could be expected to be more inclusive, while the new parties may form some limitations, concerning the involvement of the prospective member with the institutions of the former regime. The position of party leaders is a particularly interesting issue, because many of the new parties were organized by charismatic politicians, who had tendencies to treat their parties as personal enterprises and were unwilling to give up their position and power. In the former regime parties such leaders were less expected. Once more it is inter

esting to see whether such situations were or were not reflected in party statutes, in the powers attributed by statutes to party leaders or in a way of electing them.

Statutory rules may also be a source of information on such questions as distribution of power within a party, division of labor between party bodies etc.

and also it might be expected that the newly created parties would be dealing with those problems in a different way than the parties with longer history and experience. Therefore it might also be expected that the post-communist parties from various countries would bear more resemblance to each other from the point of view of statutes than the parties created only after democratic transition.

However it has to be remembered that the moment of democratic transitions in most of the post-communist countries is already located in a distant past, so the parties organized in the beginning of this process have either changed, or even ceased to exist, while some other new parties emerged. In fact although in the countries covered by the presented book, the length of the democratic history differs, most of the countries are already after two decades of democratic development. It means that some of the parties analyzed in this book are those, which are active since the beginning of democratic transition, while others are new in a sense of being created already after the process of democratic transition was completed.

The time factor turns the attention to two aspects of the problem of construction of party statutes. One is a question of the differences between the "old” and “new”

parties, however in this case “old” does not only mean post-communists, it in

cludes also the parties which were new in the beginning of transformation; “new”

parties here would be those formed in the first decades of 21st century. Are there important variations between those two groups in the main elements of party organizational structure as they are treated in the statutes i.e. members’ rights and duties, requirements for new members, position of the leaders, complexity of party organization?

Second very important problem is the introduction into party statutes ele

ments which are connected with contemporary evolution of party organizations, particularly the solutions including more elements of direct democracy. This means the participation of the rank-and-file members in some of the important party procedures such as the elections of party leaders and in the process of candidate

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selection. Less widespread is the participation of party members in the prepara

tion of party programs, although even this procedure is in some parties organized according to the rules of direct democracy. In Western Europe those changes were interpreted by many scholars as a tendency to accommodate the expectations of the modern citizens to be more actively engaged in politics and to provide one more platform of democratic participation in democratic state (Scarrow et al. 2002).

In many West European political parties this trend has begun on a larger scale in the decade of 1990s, so this coincided with the process of democratic transitions in post-communist countries. At that time direct democracy in the organization of political parties was not the important subject for the parties in the countries experiencing transitions. However it might be expected that with time, parties in CEE would also see the necessity of introducing at least some of such solutions. They might be either seen as fulfillment of the expectations of modernizing societies or might be perceived by parties themselves as important function of introducing modern and contemporary elements in East Central European societies. There is also a third possibility as shows the example of the Polish party Civic Platform, which introduced the direct elections of the leader and announced the direct elections of regional leaders in order to fight corruption within territorial party organizations. So we were curious whether direct democracy in some party functions were introduced by parties in Central and Eastern Europe, and if so, which parties decided to include them in their statutes? The older ones, functioning form the beginning of the democratic transitions, or the newer ones, just recently formed.

Also very important to the functioning of political parties are legal regulations, both in constitutions and in special laws pertaining exclusively to political parties.

Nowadays such regulations are adopted in almost all countries, both established democracies, new democracies but also non-democratic states (Karvonen 2007).

Ingrid van Biezen wrote that such legislation can often be used to strengthen links between parties and the state, thus making parties semi-state agencies or “public utilities” (van Biezen 2004,2012; Casal Bertoa and van Biezen 2014). In countries analyzed in this book, the legal regulations pertaining the functioning of political parties were adopted in the very beginnings of democratic transitions. It was important for us to learn how detailed are those regulations, which particularly concern organizational structures of the parties. Part of the question was the way the regulations defined the democratic character of the parties and their structures.

It is usual practice, that legislators include into the party laws the requirement to abide with democratic rules but also the more detailed requirement of the democratic internal structures. However there are differences in a way in which those democratic rules are defined. Sometimes there are very detailed, stipulating inclusivity of supreme party bodies and organization of the grassroots party units (here the example might be German Party Law, Political Parties Act, Federal Law Gazette I 1994, p. 149), sometimes the rules are very general and did not define the requirement of internal democracy.

In analyzing CEE party structures, we will invoke organizational models developed with reference to Western Europe. Among the best-known models are

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those of: cadre and mass parties, described by Maurice Duverger (1965); catch

all parties, described by Otto Kirchheimer (1966); electoral-professional parties, described by Angelo Panebianco (1988); and cartel parties, described by Richard Katz and Peter Mair (1995). When post-communist CEE parties were in their infancy, these models were used as tools of speculation for how they may develop.

Petr Kopecky predicted in 1995 that, due to the social and political condi

tions of the time, these parties would turn out to be anything but mass parties (Kopecky 1995). He also hypothesized that state subsidies would replace the need for members, and that the media would play an increasingly prominent role in electoral mobilization. His analysis of the organizational structures of six Czech political parties did not fully support this hypothesis at the time, though he did acknowledge a marked difference between the organizational structures of parties held over from communism, and newly created parties.

Paul G. Lewis (1996) in the opening chapter of the book he edited, which focused on the organizational development of parties in CEE, also refers to models of party organization, and assesses their usefulness in studying parties of new de

mocracies. He concludes that mass party models are inadequate for CEE with the exception of mass membership. He states that much more popular is the catch-all party model, which emphasizes electoral performance based on the mobilization of voters rather than members. Conversely, Panebianco’s electoral-professional party model, emphasizing the professionalization of parties and developed party struc

tures, is not very relevant for the parties in CEE. Lewis also refers to the cartel party model as relevant for describing the dependence of CEE parties on state funding.

Other elements of CEE parties however, such as the instability of parties in new democracies, do not fit in to this model. Moreover, in the cartel model, voters chose from a “the fixed menu” of parties, and “almost all substantial parties may now be regarded as governing parties” (Lewis 1996:12,14). These conditions certainly do not apply to East Central Europe. Ingrid van Biezen also refers to the models of party organization in the context of the party formation in Central and Eastern Europe. She particularly points to important differences in organizational patterns between pre-democratic Western political systems and post-communist political systems of Central and Eastern Europe. While in Western Europe mobilization followed by organization allowed parties to form their structures after engaging large number of potential members, many new CEE democracies formed their party structures not only in a different sequence, but with different assumptions.

In Western Europe, mass political mobilization preceded the building of party structures, which enabled the organization of mass parties, by engaging potential members prior to forming party structures. In Central and Eastern Europe, this process often started with building party structures, with mass mobilization not always following that step (van Biezen 2003). Mass mobilization of party mem

bers was seen by some in CEE parties as unnecessary hassle, easily avoided by addressing voters directly through media and political actions. Another author, Sean Hanley referring particularly to the electoral-professional model argues that it does not accurately describe party organization in CEE because, as he puts it,

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the organizational evolution of parties is “path dependent,” and results in a type of hybrid party organization (Hanley 2001).

In fact, the applicability of party models to empirical cases (and not just in CEE) is a much discussed subject in current academic literature. Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond wrote that most of the models are based on the experience of European parties and nowadays when parties develop in countries all over the world, their organizational structures should also be studied and taken into ac

count as viable ways of party organization (Gunther and Diamond 2003). Among new concepts concerning party models there are several theoretical propositions which emphasize just one particular aspect of party organization or functioning:

either the central role of the leader (Harmel and Svasand 1993; Seisselberg 1996;

Hopkin and Paolucci 1999); or the special relationships between central and local party structures (Clark 2008). Some of them, particularly the business-firm party model proposed by Jonathan Hopkin and Caterina Paolucci, are also used in most recent studies concerning the parties in the region of Central and Eastern Europe, however it is important to emphasize that they concern parties formed only recently and not in the beginning of transition (Kopecek 2016).

It seems quite obvious that trying to describe the structures of political parties functioning today in CEE one cannot use one single model of party orga

nization. On the other hand there are two models that stand out as particularly relevant: mass party; and catch-all. While not fully applicable to any one party, they provide a helpful mechanism for describing the main trends in CEE party development. Therefore, we have decided to use one of them - the mass party model - to construct a common framework of reference, as it is the most exhaus

tive and complete in terms of both the structure and function of parties. Those familiar with the concept of party models know, that apart from the strict orga

nizational structures of parties, those models usually involve also the question of functions which parties perform in the political system but also in relation to the civil society. Here we would like to address the question of those two aspects of the concept of party model, structures and functions, particularly the fact, that in various models there is a certain degree of discrepancy between the two. In other words it can be said that in various models a certain lack of balance may be observed between the amount of attention which the particular author gives to the actual organizational structures of parties and to the second part of the model, i.e. the changing functions of parties which condition the subsequent changes in structures. Looking from this point of view we think that the most balanced models are those proposed by Maurice Duverger. Elaborating the model of mass party (and also the cadre party which is not our concern here), Duverger put equal emphasis on those two aspects of the problem: organizational structures of parties and their correlation with the function parties perform. Looking at the Duverger s models, particularly the mass party, we learn quite a lot of details of all levels of the organizational structure from the most basic, membership units to the central party office and parliamentary group. Duverger gives quite a detailed picture of their mutual relationships, of the relationship between the structures of the party and the administrative units of the state. Thus using the

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Duverger s model as a starting point we identified the set of the primary elements of party structure can be presented as follows:

- Well-developed network of interdependent party organs, and levels of party organization corresponding to the administrative division of the state.

- Prevalence of hierarchical, vertical ties.

- Strict membership requirements and procedures.

- Prevalence of representative democracy in internal party decision-making (such as in selection of candidates and party leaders).

- Predominance of the central party organization, with high accountability to mass membership.

- Constant tension between the central party organization and the parlia

mentary party.

These elements are not only a good starting point for analysis, but a basis on which to identify new solutions, listed as follows:

- More “flat” party structure - lesser significance of hierarchical/vertical ties.

- Personal fusion of the central party organization and the parliamentary party.

- More power and privileges for parliamentary representatives, both from national parliaments, and from the European Parliament (if applicable).

- More power in internal decision making for party members, including direct democracy in selection/election of candidates and leaders.

- Involvement of non-members in parties’ internal decision-making pro

cesses, particularly in terms of candidate selection.

The idea behind constructing such frameworks was to adopt a “middle of the road” approach in using party models. In other words, we wanted to show that they were useful in analyzing party organizations, yet not absolute. We have asked all authors to take this general framework into account when describing the statutes of their parties, and in particular when summarizing their findings.

By putting this volume into the hands of the readers, we hope to inspire further research on the evolution of organizational structures of political parties in Central and Eastern Europe. This area of research is still underdeveloped and in need of further attention.

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