Abstract
While many post-communist European party systems have experienced the rise of anti-establishment parties, not all have been equally vulnerable to challengers attacking both cultural and economic liberalism. This article borrows insights from scholarship on Latin American politics and develops a critical juncture approach to understanding the linkages between economic liberalization and political illiberalism in 15 post-communist democracies during the 1990-2020 period. It argues that contingent political dynamics during post-communist junctures shaped ensuing legacies by conditioning the long-term programmatic positions and variable electoral performance of “traditional” leftist parties. This path-dependent process culminated in variable electoral viability of illiberal parties with incentives for ideological differentiation and organizational capacities to adopt those economic positions that were most likely to be electorally rewarded. By focusing on variable incentives, resources, and constraints, the article challenges previous scholarship and advances and tests a novel theoretical framework based on a probabilistic approach to critical juncture analysis.
If the association between economic development and democratic stability is generally positive (Przeworski et al., 2000), events in post-communist Europe present an intriguing puzzle. Over the last two decades, exemplary reformers in Central Europe experienced dramatic re-alignments featuring conventional parties’ decline and illiberal resurgence. By contrast, some economic laggards in the Balkans exhibited – despite developmental and corruption problems – relatively predictable patterns of political representation and competition among status-quo parties with a longer shelf life. The absence of a clear association between economic progress, political reform, and liberal-democratic institutionalization after 30 years of post-communism is unsettling, a reason why it has sparked interest in populism and illiberalism as concerning symptoms of democratic dysfunction.
Why was the illiberal mix of culturally conservative and economically leftist positions or posturing more electorally viable in some post-communist democracies over the last two decades? Although a plethora of studies deal with the illiberalism problem, they provide only a fragmented view of region-wide institutional and ideological patterns. The main reasons for this have been narrowness of comparative scope (mostly focusing on Hungary and Poland), scarcity of appropriately measured concepts facilitating broader comparisons, and lack of attention to linkages between historical contingencies and subsequent institutional developments. Contrary to previous scholarship, I argue that the origins of illiberalism, specified as an empirically measurable phenomenon, can be traced back to concrete political dynamics during post-communist neoliberal junctures, defined as watershed periods of market reform and welfare retrenchment occurring sometime after second competitive elections. I demonstrate this by analyzing developments in 15 post-communist democracies, using expert survey and election data for the 1990–2020 period, 1 and tracing processes in concrete cases.
I develop the argument by drawing insights from scholarship on Latin America, where junctures of adjusting the relationship between states and markets in relatively recent history shaped subsequent institutional legacies (Roberts, 2014). Yet while I apply insights cross-regionally, I do so critically – by developing a theoretically novel probabilistic approach to critical juncture analysis and underscoring concrete linkages between prior events and subsequent outcomes. Specifically, my two-step argument highlights reactive sequences, opportunity structures, and institutional outcomes as legacies of post-communist junctures. First, I contend that contingent political dynamics shaped ensuing opportunity structures by conditioning the programmatic positioning and variable electoral performance of traditional leftist parties. Second, variable opportunity structures were either resources for or constraints on the electoral viability of illiberal parties with organizational capacities for adaptation and incentives to maximize contrarian legitimacy by strategically taking those economic positions that were most likely to be electorally successful.
Concretely, I underscore how prior political dynamics condition variable degrees of long-term popular uncertainty and affect illiberal political entrepreneurs’ subsequent strategic-choice incentives and electoral prospects. Where popular uncertainty was highest due to the Left’s neoliberal turn after bait-and-switch junctures, alienated voters were most likely to become a resource for anti-establishment illiberal parties that strategically adopted economically leftist banners as a viable electoral strategy. Conversely, where uncertainty was low due to leftist parties’ consistent positioning as credible champions on socioeconomic issues after aligning junctures, their voters’ loyalty constrained anti-establishment parties’ programmatic choices and electoral prospects, meaning that the illiberal combination of cultural conservatism and economic leftism was less viable in the 21st century.
The study makes several contributions. First, it adds to foundational arguments by critics of post-communist neoliberalism who early in the transition linked the rise of political illiberalism to economic liberalization efforts that too often neglected workers and leftist voters (Greskovits, 1998; Ost, 2005). As more recent processes of illiberal autocratization challenge conventional optimism attributing long-term democratic stability to swift liberalization, I also offer a nuanced analysis of early political configurations which, in retrospect, may have contributed to democratic decay in some post-communist countries. My contribution is not just empirical – because it significantly expands the scope of inquiry, but also theoretical – because it specifies an explanatory mechanism rooted in recent history.
Second, as it identifies path dependencies across the region, my argument is both more historically grounded and general than recent studies of the Left’s pro-market turn. Because it treats long-term interactive dynamics between leftist parties and illiberal outcomes, the study also contributes to debates about the relationship between concrete aspects of party system institutionalization and key divides of contestation in post-communist Europe. Third, unlike most work on critical junctures, this study is an example not only of how knowledge can be built based on cross-regional perspectives, but also how a focus on historical contingencies and probabilities can help avoid the “inevitability trap” of determinism (Dunning, 2017).
The first section describes the puzzle of post-communist illiberalism in the context of relevant literature and proposes an alternative approach. The second section develops a theory of contingent institutional development. The third section not only offers an empirical analysis of developments across the region but also traces the rise of illiberalism in the case study of Slovakia, which I then compare to the shadow case of Czechia to illustrate why the proposed theory is superior to rival explanations. The conclusion summarizes findings and implications.
The Puzzle of Post-Communist Illiberalism
Although political competition in post-communist democracies is defined by various conflicts, it has shaped relatively stable pattern of programmatic structuration (Kitschelt et al., 1999; Rohrschneider & Whitefield, 2009). Yet as such stability has not translated into coherent institutionalization (Rovny & Polk, 2017) and high party system volatility is self-reinforcing (Haughton & Deegan-Krause, 2015; Powell & Tucker, 2014), democratic accountability has suffered because mainstream parties routinely fail to develop programs representative of voters’ preferences (Haughton & Deegan-Krause, 2020).
Party system instability often begets populism, a contested concept which scholars commonly associate with illiberalism – the combination of sociocultural conservatism and economically “leftist” criticism of globalization (see Inglehart & Norris, 2016; Kriesi & Pappas, 2015; Pappas, 2016). Illiberalism has been especially salient across post-communist Europe, where unique communist and post-communist legacies define contemporary conflicts. For example, whereas prevalent public support for welfare and redistribution is a distinct communist heritage (Pop-Eleches & Tucker, 2017), the post-communist legacy of rejecting economic statism as a policy means that even material conflicts are usually articulated as contestation over culture or identity (Ost, 2005).
If such peculiarities suggest why “transition losers” supported culturally authoritarian parties in the 1990s (see Greskovits, 1998), the emergence of a “transnational cleavage” centered on European issues strengthened radical right parties which absorbed leftist distributional concerns in the 2000s (Hooghe & Marks 2018, p. 124). As such parties tended to compete by defending socially conservative and economically left-wing positions against liberalism (Marks et al., 2006; Whitefield & Rohrschneider, 2015), they defined a key line of political contestation. Central in this struggle are economic issues which “constitute the common basis for party competition in the region,” despite the variable nature – or even questioned existence – of Rokkanian cleavages (Casal Bértoa, 2014; Haughton & Deegan-Krause 2020; Rohrschneider & Whitefield, 2009, p. 298, p. 10). Although mainstream reformist parties dominated elections without easily fitting usual patterns of contestation (Engler, 2020; Hanley & Sikk, 2016; Haughton & Deegan-Krause, 2020; Pop-Eleches, 2010), while other parties became distinctive through extreme positions on cultural questions, economic issues “loom sufficiently large everywhere to force them to show their cards and take positions” (Kitschelt 2015, pp. 86–7).
Whereas the importance of economic issues typically suggests the viability of openly leftist alternatives elsewhere (see Hooghe & Marks, 2018; Roberts, 2014), in Eastern Europe – where communist rule delegitimized Marxism – opposition to liberalism comes from parties combining culturally conservative and economically left-wing positions. Although such parties were not always illiberal (e.g., Hungary’s Fidesz), they eventually “showed their cards.” While their actual economic programs could be targeted, nativist, and variable – increasing “welfare for the wealthy” in Hungary (Szikra, 2018), reducing inequality in Poland – such parties called for statist, anti-austerity, and welfarist solutions, and even enacted economically interventionist policies (Toplišek, 2020).
Although scholars have focused on Hungary and Poland, illiberal parties have played a prominent role more generally across the region (Engler et al., 2019; Inglehart & Norris, 2016). Figure 1 aggregates parliamentary election results for such parties in 15 post-communist countries by using expert survey data on parties’ sociocultural and economic positions.
2
I define illiberal parties as parties which combined socioculturally conservative and economically “leftist” positions and were at some point in their career (usually early) “anti-establishment.” Such parties are different from both anti-establishment parties without illiberal positions and traditional leftist parties with illiberal positions, which, however, were integral to the communist and/or early post-communist “establishment.” While the measure does not represent all illiberal and anti-establishment voting in the region, it captures illiberalism with anti-establishment origins.
3
Appendix A.1 details my coding procedure and Appendix B presents all 80 parties categorized as illiberal. Based on my empirical and dynamic measure,
4
Figure 1 shows considerable variation in average electoral support for illiberalism between 2000 and 2020. While it was consistently viable in Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary,
5
illiberalism was somewhat less successful in Latvia, Bulgaria, and Croatia, and considerably less so in Moldova, Czechia, and Albania. Average vote share for illiberalism in parliamentary elections, 2000–2020. Note: Based on my baseline measure of illiberalism (see Appendix A.1). The alternative measure, which demands a higher threshold, generates lower values for each country but still produces a similar ranking, with Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia at the top and Albania, Czechia, and N. Macedonia at the bottom. The two measures are correlated (r = 0.80).
What explains this variation? If illiberalism is understood as a genre of populism or anti-establishment politics, the literature can be grouped in four broad categories. First, scholars on the demand side highlight economic inequalities produced by neoliberalism (Appel & Orenstein, 2018; Tucker, 2006), cultural skepticism of empowered minorities and women (Haughton and Deegan-Krause, 2020), and political factors including popular dissatisfaction with corrupt and ineffective governments (Engler, 2020; Hanley & Sikk, 2016; Pop-Eleches, 2010; Tavits, 2005) or the EU bureaucracy (Whitefield & Rohrschneider, 2015). Second, voluntaristic accounts on the supply side emphasize the role of political elites who mold voters through strategic manipulation or charisma (Engler, 2020; Haughton & Deegan-Krause, 2020). Third, populist tendencies can heighten acutely in times of crisis, such as the Great Recession and 2015 refugee influx, which reinforce doubts in the ability of liberal institutions to handle problems (Kriesi & Pappas, 2015; Vachudova, 2020). Fourth, the political representation literature argues that populism rises when leftist parties choose neoliberal recipes, thus losing traditional constituencies to the far right (Bagashka et al., 2021; Snegovaya, 2021).
While such studies offer much insight, they do not explain the variation in Figure 1, as I will show below, and are individually incomplete. For example, whereas arguments prioritizing ethno-populist appeals during the refugee crisis explain short-term developments after 2015 but not the long-term patterns in Figure 1, those emphasizing economic anxieties do not account for the low ranking of highly unequal Balkan countries. Although the role of policy choices, unrepresentative parties, and strategic politicians is indeed crucial, I argue that these factors are independent neither from each other nor from broader historical developments.
Although studies of party systems are more attentive to how history impacts subsequent politics (Kitschelt et al., 1999; Pop-Eleches & Tucker, 2017), they also fall short. If cleavages inherited from the communist past explained developments in the 1990s (Kitschelt et al., 1999), they do not map onto more recent trends (Bakker et al., 2015; Rovny, 2015). While the party systems literature generally emphasizes the related aspects of cleavage and institutionalization, illiberalism is viable in systems where these two factors vary, such as Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia (see Casal Bértoa, 2014), and it is not clear precisely what facets of institutionalization affect illiberal outcomes. Indeed, if party systems were expected to become more institutionalized with social modernization, proximity to the West, and simply the passage of time, their consolidation remains partial (Enyedi & Casal Bértoa, 2018) and its relationship with illiberalism – unsettled. As I show, while the communist past does not determine the present (see the comparison of Slovakia and Czechia below), more recent events shape a particular aspect of party systems – the stability of leftist parties – with implications for illiberal outcomes.
Recent History as an Alternative Framework
History offers better insights if illiberalism is understood as a product of more recent legacies and political agents’ strategies. Although the dichotomy between legacies and agency defined formative debates on post-communism, the two are not necessarily irreconcilable (Johnson, 2001). For example, early in the transition, elites exercised agency as they followed prominent consultants’ advice to protect reforms from popular backlash by acting decisively (see Hanson, 1998). Decisive agency meant that crucial neoliberal deepening was implemented not just by the Right (Czechia) but sometimes also by a Left (Hungary) willing to ignore ideological commitments. As early policy choices were “path-contingent,” they conditioned variable legacies (Johnson, 2001).
The dearth of scholarly attention to how such legacies might have subsequently shaped illiberalism is puzzling, especially given that illiberal actors have led some of yesterday’s most advanced post-communist democracies on authoritarian paths. As assumptions that the decisive liberalization of economic and political institutions was conducive to long-term democratization (see Grzymała-Busse, 2002; Hanson, 1998; Tavits & Letki, 2009) now appear to have been overly optimistic, a re-evaluation of early post-communist choices and dynamics can not only shed light on what previous scholarship missed regarding the past but also illuminate the choices illiberal actors made thereafter.
Indeed, illiberal actors make choices which are shaped – yet not fully determined – by past legacies. As many anti-establishment parties are highly personalistic, their leaders play outsized roles in determining positions (Haughton & Deegan-Krause, 2020, p. 128–35). These positions, however, are strategically chosen based on path-dependent circumstances. While anti-establishment leaders make strategic choices – sometimes, the wrong ones – they exercise their agency in the probabilistic shadow of earlier events. As legacies are not simply inherited from the past but also constructed in the present (Kubik, 2015), illiberalism is a strategic construction of positions more likely to be viable where neoliberal reform legacies provided anti-establishment parties with opportunities for differentiation.
How, then, does recent history shape illiberal outcomes in post-communist Europe? To answer this question, I turn for insights to Latin America, a region with which Eastern Europe shares theoretically relevant developments in the not-so-distant past. Though both regions underwent elite-driven transitions to democracy and the market (Przeworski, 1991), the long-term effects of early political dynamics have been more systematically studied in the Latin American context. As Roberts has argued, contingent political dynamics during neoliberal junctures led to reactive sequences which channeled societal reactions to neoliberalism variably, ultimately creating different opportunities for anti-establishment actors to exploit nationalist and statist economic platforms (2013, p. 1440). Specifically, if programmatic alignment stabilized party systems where crucial reforms were led by conservatives and opposed by leftists, programmatic de-alignment increased voter uncertainty and destabilized party systems where champions of labor led reforms (Roberts, 2014). As economic shocks forced leftist incumbents to “bait-and-switch” and voters punished “party brands in crisis” (Lupu, 2016), leftist ideology and branding became resources available for subsequent populist mobilization (Cyr, 2017; Handlin, 2017).
This path-dependent framework is highly relevant for understanding illiberalism in post-communist Europe, where political elite choices and dynamics were also central for managing early economic crises and shaping capitalist orders (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012, p. 26; Pop-Eleches, 2009). Even if subsequent anti-establishment politics was not under explicitly anti-neoliberal banners, it was nonetheless characterized by riots, mass demonstrations, citizens’ exit from formal politics (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012, pp. 5–6), and “the strange death of the liberal consensus” (Krastev, 2007). As the legacies of early political strategies, competition patterns, and power balances conditioned institutional outcomes (Grzymała-Busse, 2002), I next explain how post-communist juncture dynamics shaped long-term illiberal outcomes.
Path-Dependent Sources of Post-Communist Illiberalism
Post-communist Junctures
I define post-communist junctures as the earliest watershed moments of neoliberal deepening and welfare retrenchment sometime after the second competitive national election in Eastern European countries.
Temporally, this period mattered greatly for democratic choices on economic issues. While early reforms were variegated and continuous – with countries liberalizing before second competitive elections – earlier reformers rarely carried democratic mandates based on economic promises. First competitive elections – for instance, in Poland (1989), the Baltics, Moldova, Ukraine (1990), Bulgaria (1990), and Albania (1991) – revolved around questions of regime transition, statehood, and constitutionalism, and offered limited alternatives as they were neither genuinely democratic nor about the economy. By contrast, subsequent elections – after limited liberalization and attendant social dislocations – featured economically salient questions. Beginning with second competitive elections, economic platforms were proposed in better consolidated democracies where power was more likely to switch hands “under electoral rules identical to the ones that brought the incumbent to office” (Cheibub et al., 2010, p. 69). Because of the greater salience of economic questions and meaningfulness of democratic choices, it was beginning with second competitive elections that politicians could be held accountable regarding campaign promises on economic matters. Overall, the juncture began in 1990 in Poland and ended by 2002, when many countries completed European Union membership negotiations after sufficient liberalization.
Substantively, I identify post-communist junctures based on Roberts’ definition of Latin American neoliberal junctures as periods when countries “attempted an ambitious package of market-based stabilization and adjustment… designed to dismantle historic forms of state intervention” (2013, p. 1430). These periods featured variable reform intensity and effectiveness – from more (Poland, Estonia, Latvia) or less effective (Albania, Ukraine, Bulgaria) “shock therapy” to more (Slovenia, Lithuania, Hungary) to less successful (Romania, Moldova, N. Macedonia) gradualism – as well as privatization, deregulation, and industrial and welfare policies (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012). These differences notwithstanding, post-communist junctures everywhere consolidated neoliberalism through the earliest decisive market-deepening measures – austerity programs, budgetary rollbacks, or welfare retrenchment – sometime after second competitive elections. I identify junctures by using data from the annual transition reports of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). 6 Appendix C catalogues key reform events in liberalization, market-making, and the social sector during relevant periods.
Post-Communist Junctures
Aligning junctures featured clear programmatic differentiation between rightist reformers and leftist rivals leading the parliamentary opposition. Although such junctures occurred under different circumstances – earlier in democratic Czechia and competitive authoritarian Albania, and later in Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Moldova, and Romania (Levitsky & Way, 2010; Pop-Eleches, 2009) 7 – political agents acted consistently with party brands, facilitating predictable dynamics and low uncertainty in all six countries.
Ambiguous junctures corresponded to more ambivalent dynamics. While rightist actors – ranging from shock therapists in Estonia and Ukraine to moderate reformers in Croatia and Slovenia – enacted liberalization, the relative weakness of leftist alternatives conditioned programmatic ambiguity. The Left was competitive in Croatia, Estonia, and Latvia, but did not lead the parliamentary opposition to reforms. Such parties wavered in Slovenia, where the Social Democrats withdrew from the reformist coalition after participating in it during most of the 1992-6 term, and in Ukraine, where the Communists opposed Kuchma’s reforms after helping him win the presidency. Even if leftist alternatives existed, dynamics were less conducive to ideological differentiation and uncertainty was relatively higher.
Bait-and-switch junctures entailed counterintuitive dynamics. Here, critical liberalization was either spearheaded by or implemented with crucial support from leftist or labor-based actors. In Hungary, a socialist-led government enacted “the most radical adjustment program ever implemented” after contrary campaign promises (Cook & Orenstein, 1999, p. 92). In Lithuania, the ex-communists also enacted significant reforms, including the currency board and flat tax, after pledges to lessen reform intensity (Bohle & Greskovits 2012, pp. 109–12). A similar dynamic occurred in Slovakia, as detailed in the case study below. Poland’s first democratically elected president Lech Wałęsa may have been an anti-communist but he also engaged in bait-and-switching subsequent to credible pro-labor rhetoric as the leader of the largest labor union which had recently demanded higher wages. Having campaigned against Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the prime-minister who had initiated shock therapy, by stoking “anti-capitalist anger” and organizing around class issues of poverty, inequality, and workers’ suffering, as president, Wałęsa was instrumental for sustaining austerity (Ost, 2005, pp. 60–93). As adversarial economic conditions required labor-based agents to deepen neoliberalism after contrary campaign promises in these countries, programmatic inconsistency produced high uncertainty.
Post-communist junctures, therefore, are characterized by variable political dynamics, predictability, and uncertainty. This theoretical proposition is supported by the finding that in post-communist Europe, as in Latin America, programmatic alignment tended to reduce electoral volatility whereas bait-and-switching was associated with subsequently higher party system instability (see Appendix D; Roberts, 2014). Yet even if political dynamics during neoliberal deepening affected party systems, post-communist junctures engendered specific path-dependent sequences of institutional reproduction (see Collier & Collier, 1991, pp. 30–1). Because much of post-communist party system instability is intra-systemic – that is, registering voters who abandon “traditional” parties – I next focus specifically on some of the historically most established parties – those left of center – as key spheres of institutional reproduction.
Leftist Path Dependencies
I focus on the “traditional” Left for two reasons. First, since the Left is mostly comprised of historically and electorally relevant ex-communist parties, which mobilized labor during communism and commanded considerable support thereafter (Grzymała-Busse, 2002; Tavits, 2005), its electoral performance matters for party system stability. Second, because leftist parties traditionally attracted vulnerable electorates by defending economic interventionism (Tucker, 2006), changes in economic positions – as under bait-and-switching – have implications for their programmatic linkages with voters. Because “actors have strong incentives… to continue down a specific path once initial steps are taken in that direction” (Pierson, 2000, p. 254), leftist parties’ programmatic positions – once taken during junctures – will tend to be durable, either sustaining or disrupting linkages with voters.
Leftist parties had good reasons to reproduce positions over time. As incumbents, they “had strong incentives to implement fiscal austerity because they needed to prove… ability to operate in a democracy and market economy” (Tavits & Letki, 2009, p. 555). Additionally, successful reforms were rewarded with EU membership, trade, and investment from the West (Pop-Eleches, 2009), thereby creating linkage and leverage mechanisms, domestic stakeholders, and virtuous cycles (Levitsky & Way, 2005, p. 24; Vachudova, 2005). Where ex-communists governed early – in Hungary (1994–98), Poland (1993–97), Lithuania (1992–96), or Slovenia (1992–96) – they would continue on, rather than resist, a pro-market path. Although Poland’s ex-communists returned to power after the juncture, they also moved to the economic center.
Incentives for ideological reproduction were no less powerful where the Left led the opposition under aligning junctures. Where crucial reforms were spearheaded by the Right, opposition to neoliberalism was functionally important for leftist parties seeking to distinguish themselves ideologically. Because brand differentiation “maximizes ranks” (Lupu 2013, p. 61), leading leftist opponents – in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechia, Moldova, or Romania – had incentives to keep defending economically leftist positions over time.
The key point is that as parties developed reputations based on the issues they “own” (Whitefield & Rohrschneider, 2015), post-communist junctures engendered the Left’s programmatic reproduction on economic issues. Since junctures produce variable voter uncertainty about policy consistency, leftist parties’ durable positioning can be expected to affect their long-term electoral prospects. To use Hirschman’s (1970) concepts, if voters are likely to stay loyal to reliably leftist parties, they are likely to exit leftist parties exhibiting inconsistent or pro-market tendencies. Leftist parties’ economic positions and electoral performance are two mutually related legacies of post-communist junctures.
Environmental Legacies, Strategic Choices, and Illiberalism
Post-communist juncture condition subsequent opportunity structures within which political actors operate (see Mahoney & Snyder 1999, p. 24). Specifically, whereas the Left’s programmatic and electoral persistence constrains illiberalism, its programmatic inconsistency and electoral decline are resources enhancing illiberal viability. There are two factors linking environmental legacies and illiberalism – anti-establishment parties’ organizational capacities and unique incentives.
First, anti-establishment parties are often personalistic organizations (Mudde, 2007) whose autonomous leaders have considerable leeway to strategically choose positions on various issues (Burgess & Levitsky, 2003). Second, their position choices are driven by incentives to maximize legitimacy via strategic differentiation from the liberal establishment. As illustrated in Figure 2, these strategic choices depend on environmental legacies bequeathed after junctures. In sum, as post-communist junctures condition path dependencies linking the Left’s ideological and electoral status, environmental legacies create variable opportunities for ideologically adaptable anti-establishment parties to differentiate themselves and succeed by exploiting “leftist” economic positions. Strategic choices of economic positions by anti-establishment parties
The overall argument is sketched in Figure 3, which borrows concepts from Mahoney’s work on critical junctures in Central America. With its attention to “how actor choices create institutions and structures, which in turn shape subsequent actor behaviors… and new institutional and structural patterns” (Mahoney, 2001, p. 11), this framework is highly relevant for analyzing post-communist illiberalism as an outcome shaped by the environmental legacies of contingent choices during prior junctures. Divergent historical legacies of post-communist junctures
To summarize, as critical periods of market reform sometime after second competitive elections, post-communist junctures differed depending on who was in power and opposition. With rightist actors in power, junctures were either aligning – if a strong Left led the opposition, or ambiguous – if the Left was weaker or ambivalent. Where leftist or labor-based actors deepened neoliberalism, bait-and-switch junctures occurred. As variable dynamics conditioned incentives for ideological persistence with electoral consequences, junctures shaped subsequent environmental legacies. Where leftist parties programmatically persisted on the economic left, they tended to be electorally successful in the long term; where they moved to the center, they were likely to decline. As path dependencies shaped environmental legacies, ideologically flexible anti-establishment actors faced different opportunities. Whereas the Left’s persistence constrained their ability to capitalize on economically leftist positions, its decline enhanced opportunities for illiberalism featuring economically leftist positions or posturing as a viable electoral strategy.
Evidence
Analytical Strategy
Because I posit that path-dependencies feature a mechanism linking junctures, leftist party dynamics, and illiberalism, I begin by assessing (1) the relationship between traditional leftist parties’ economic positions and electoral performance and (2) the electoral viability of illiberalism after junctures. I then illustrate the theory with the case study of Slovakia and demonstrate its superiority to alternative explanations by comparing with the shadow case of Czechia.
Since I study the effects of junctures, I define the traditional Left as electorally relevant social democratic or communist parties with origins before junctures. Leftist parties originated before 1990 and gained at the minimum 10% support in at least one national post-communist election. While most are ex-communist parties, I also study historic social democratic parties revived after communism in Czechia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as those rooted in Estonia’s and Latvia’s pro-independence fronts. I additionally include the communist parties of Czechia, Moldova, and Ukraine because they were important under post-communism and, in the latter two cases, dominated the Left.
Treating the traditional Left’s evolution as an intervening variable implies that the Right did not play an identical role. Although identifying traditional Right parties is trickier due to their banishment under communism, they typically rely on “older historical identities and ideologies” and “seek broad electoral support for programs fusing elements of liberalism and varieties of conservatism” (Hanley, 2004, pp. 22–3). Having identified the Right by relying on previous scholarship (Hanley, 2004; Hanley & Szczerbiak, 2006; Vachudova, 2008), I mirror the strategy used for the Left and focus on prominent liberal and conservative parties with origins before the end of junctures and at the minimum 10% support in at least one national post-communist election. Appendix E lists analyzed traditional Left and Right parties.
Because they are useful for “measuring empirical information on policy positions across a wide range of countries” (Wiesehomeier & Benoit, 2009, p. 1437), I rely on two expert surveys not only to measure illiberalism but also to assess the Left’s programmatic evolution (see Appendix A.2). Specifically, I use the Chapel Hill Expert Surveys (CHES) conducted in multiple waves throughout the post-juncture period (Bakker et al., 2015; Polk et al., 2017) and the Democratic Accountability and Linkages Project (DALP) administered in 2008–9 (Kitschelt, 2013) – roughly the midpoint between junctures and 2020. While I primarily rely on CHES due to its capacity to capture positions across time, I utilize DALP where CHES data are unavailable and to cross-validate results.
Findings
As expected, the Left tended to continue down ideological paths originating during junctures, thereby reinforcing long-term patterns of programmatic reproduction. Drawing on Acemoglu, Egorov & Sonin (2013), Figure 4 compares the average economic positions of leftist parties relative to country and regional medians (represented by 0.0) after junctures. As seen, while its positions were most statist and redistributionist, on average, where the Left had led parliamentary opposition under aligning junctures, economic positions tended to be less leftist where it had been weaker or ambivalent during ambiguous junctures. Strikingly, as the Left clearly veered towards the economic center after bait-and-switch junctures, divergent programmatic positions in the aftermath period reflected prior political dynamics – a finding valid at both the country and regional levels. Mean economic positions of leftist parties after post-communist junctures
Durable divergence certainly does not imply that economic positions after junctures were static or that programmatically consistent leftist parties were uniformly anti-reformist. While the Left has been dynamic, the key point is about relative long-term positioning. For example, Bulgarian and Romanian ex-communists may have eventually embraced pro-market agendas (Tavits & Letki, 2009) after aligning junctures, yet their economic positions remained identifiably and persistently leftist – relative to both their domestic rivals and other leftist parties across the region. Meanwhile, social democrats in Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland persisted closer to the center after bait-and-switch junctures. While Poland’s case is somewhat peculiar because of Wałęsa’s labor-based populist leadership during the juncture, when ex-communists returned to power in 1993, they, too, continued on a reformist path (Markowski, 2002).
Consistent with the hypothesis that party brand dilution reduces voter confidence over time, such divergent positions translated into variable electoral fortunes in the long run. Figure 5 documents changes in electoral support between the 1990s – when junctures typically occurred – and the aftermath period. The left side of the figure shows that whereas the Left made net electoral gains in the 2000s after opposing neoliberalism in countries as different as Albania (+17.1%), Czechia (+5.8%), and Moldova (+9.8%), such gains were more modest after ambiguous junctures. While some leftist reformers did well in elections soon after bait-and-switching (Tavits & Letki, 2009), their overall tendency was towards decline. Although the downward trend varied based on country-specific circumstances – from the total collapse of Slovakia’s relatively small ex-communist party, through more (–11.1% in Lithuania) or less (–5.2% in Poland) considerable gradual erosion, to relative stability and eventual decline under Hungary’s idiosyncratic electoral system – the reformist Left faced losses in the long term. Mean change between the 1990s and 2000s in net electoral performance of the post-communist Left and Right.
The right side of Figure 5 lends additional support to the argument by showing that long-term electoral trends were less variable for rightist parties, which generally declined after all three types of junctures. Indeed, while reformist incumbents during junctures were generally punished by voters in the long term regardless of whether they were socialists, liberals, or conservatives, only leftist opponents during junctures tended to be electorally rewarded in the long term. If contingent variation of political configurations during junctures had variable longstanding electoral consequences for the Left, this was not the case for the Right.
Finally, the Left’s variable electoral fortunes culminated in divergent illiberal viability. As seen on the left side of Figure 6, there is a strong negative correlation between the Left’ electoral performance and illiberal parties’ vote share. This finding that illiberalism was more electorally viable where the Left declined is consistent with prior research showing that post-communist leftist reformers alienated traditional constituencies who became more likely to shift support to right-wing or populist parties (Bagashka et al., 2021; Snegovaya, 2021), many of which are indeed illiberal. Correlates of illiberal electoral viability after post-communist junctures. Note: The regression represented by the fitted line yields a coefficient of -0.777 (standard error = 0.098), N = 91, R-sq. = 0.41.
Crucially, while my findings confirm such insights, they also go a step further (back in history). As Figure 6 shows, illiberal outcomes not only varied based on the Left’s electoral performance, but also were more generally rooted in post-communist junctures. While electorates either rewarded or punished the Left for its persistent positions on economic issues, junctures – where these positions had originated – shaped durable legacies. As leftist parties rose or fell because of positions reflecting earlier political dynamics and choices, actors critical of the liberal establishment encountered variable opportunities for exploitation. Specifically, it was where the Left lost support after moving to the center due to contingencies during the juncture that anti-establishment parties tended to strategically adopt economically leftist positions or posturing for electoral success in the aftermath period. The following discussion further demonstrates the validity of the argument by tracing concrete processes, addressing issues of reverse causality, and considering alternative explanations.
Illustrative Case Study: Slovakia
Having provided an initial plausibility probe of the argument, I next present evidence from Slovakia as a detailed case study and from Czechia as a shadow case. This approach not only adds confidence in the theory through process tracing, thus reducing the possibility of interpreting potentially spurious relationships as causal, but also increases inferential power by combining correlations, such as the ones discussed above, with an analysis of specific variables, mechanisms, and outcomes (Tarrow, 2010). The brief comparison is advantageous for two reasons. First, pairing Slovakia and Czechia allows me to hold more or less constant several factors and focus on specific variables of interest. Second, by analyzing these consolidated democracies instead of Hungary and Poland, my study should assuage plausible concerns about illiberal voting under autocratization.
For most of the 1990s, Slovakia failed to make significant progress towards liberalization. Indeed, resistance to Czechoslovak Finance Minister Vaclav Klaus’ early reforms not only spurred Slovak independence (Orenstein, 2001) but also set the tone for Slovakia’s refusal to enact major liberalization under Vladimir Mečiar’s competitive authoritarian regime. Preferring to increase fiscal spending, welfare paternalism, and protective regulations, Mečiar’s government refused to sign IMF agreements, grew international indebtedness, and engaged in clientelistic rent-seeking (Bohle & Greskvits 2012, p. 145; Pop-Eleches, 2009). Rather than break with the previous system, Mečiar’s national-populist Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) continued the patrimonial practices of late communism, thereby driving Slovakia into fiscal crisis and international isolation, which in turn strengthened the opposition parties for the watershed 1998 parliamentary election (Fisher, 2006; Levitsky & Way, 2010, p. 94; Vachudova 2005, pp. 170–5).
Although HZDS still won this election, it was no longer able to form a government. A key reason was that the ex-communist Party of the Democratic Left (SDL’) – which had a number of options, including a coalition government with HZDS, one-party minority government with HZDS’s tacit support, or simply refusal to participate in government – ultimately agreed to cooperate with the Right, despite initial reluctance (Fisher, 2006, p. 155; Levitsky & Way, 2010, p. 96n89; Vachudova, 2005). Indeed, the stable pro-democratic government formed in 1998 and led by Mikuláš Dzurinda would have been impossible without SDL’’s choice to support it, which was by no means inevitable. As the de-facto largest single party in the coalition government, 8 SDL’ was then given control of nine portfolios out of twenty one (Grzymała-Busse, 2002, p. 248), including the ministries of finance and labor and social affairs.
Before entering the government in 1998, SDL’ – a member of the Socialist International – had campaigned as a “left party” promising to increase wages and pensions, guarantee state participation in strategic firms and financial institutions, and secure quality healthcare and free education for all as well as housing for young and socially weak families (Fisher, 2002, pp. 129–133). Having once hemorrhaged about a third of its electorate following participation in a reformist but short-lived caretaker coalition government in 1994, by 1998 SDL’ had recovered electoral support to its previously highest level by positioning itself “as the party most likely to lessen the economic burden” (Grzymała-Busse, 2002, pp. 154–8).
Yet once in the government and faced with a “deteriorating economic situation,” SDL’ Finance Minister Brigita Schmögnerová was “forced to take many unpopular steps,” including a “tough fiscal package to reduce the budget deficit,” a higher value-added tax, and increases in rent and fuel prices (Haughton, 2004). Having enacted austerity through the single greatest annual reduction in government spending in 2001, by 2002 the government had restored macroeconomic balances, privatized large financial institutions and industrial firms, and sold key assets to international investors (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012, pp. 148, 180; Mikloš, 2014). The 1998–2002 period marked Slovakia’s neoliberal juncture, although significant reforms were also implemented during Dzurinda’s subsequent rightist government (2002–6). If critical junctures are associated with “key choice points” (Mahoney, 2001), “significant change” (Collier & Collier, 1991), contingency, and “criticalness” (Capoccia Kelemen, 2007), SDL’’s contingent choice to participate in Dzurinda’s first government, where it led reforms from the Ministry of Finance, resulted in liberalization that was relatively deeper than under any other modern Slovak government – particularly in privatization, investment, financial freedom, and reduced government spending. 9 As substantive changes signaled a credible commitment to neoliberalism, by 2002 Slovakia was transformed from an economic “black sheep” to a frontrunner in the EU accession competition (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012, p. 170; Fisher, 2002; Vachudova, 2005).
The bait-and-switch destroyed Slovakia’s leftist party. First, as SDL’ plummeted from 14.7% electoral support in 1998, to 8.5% approval in 2000, to 1.4% support in the 2002 election (Kopeček 2002, p. 255), a new anti-establishment party, Direction (SMER), appeared. Second, though not yet illiberal in 2002, SMER – which neither followed “traditional notions of mass party organization and ideology” (Rybář & Deegan-Krause 2008, p. 498) nor was connected to organized labor – would strategically embrace illiberalism after 2002, 10 accounting for three-quarters of overall support for illiberalism in Slovakia between 2000 and 2020. 11 Third, the path-dependent process began in 2002, when SMER gained 14.7% support by absorbing large portions of SDL’’s former electorate. Indeed, those who shifted from SDL’ to SMER “represented the largest single group,” with a plurality of former SDL’ voters supporting SMER and a plurality of SMER voters coming from SDL’ (Rybář & Deegan-Krause 2008, p. 514).
SDL’’s collapse between 1998 and 2002 was not due to poor economic and government performance. While other coalition members remained in government after keeping their electoral fortunes in a context of economic stability, inflation reduction, and improving perceptions of corruption and government services, 12 SDL’ was the only major party from the governing coalition that lost significant support. Nevertheless, the fact that SMER succeeded after splintering from SDL’ raises potential questions of reverse causality – rather than being a product of SDL’’s electoral losses due to bait-and-switching, SMER’s novel anti-establishment appeal could have led to SDL’’s collapse.
However, reverse causality is not the case for three reasons. First, although before 1998 SDL’’s skepticism of neoliberalism had reflected decentralization of power towards cadres at lower organizational levels, an elitist minority represented the party as an acceptable partner in Dzurinda’s reformist government. As the reformist policies of these elites contradicted the prevailing mood among regular members in local party organizations, SDL’ quickly experienced a 23.5% membership loss after only a year of reforms and before SMER’s foundation (see Kopeček, 2002, p. 253). 13 Second, although SMER portrayed itself as non-ideological during its formative years, its economic positions – as reflected by manifestos containing the most leftist content among all parties except for the unreformed communists – targeted specifically SDL’’s “alienated membership” (Grzymała-Busse, 2002, pp. 155–7; Rybář & Deegan-Krause 2008, pp. 504, 508–9).
Third, as reflected in the European Social Survey, first administered in Slovakia soon after the 2002 election, economic issues were central for early SMER voters. While they did not typically deviate from the national average on issues of immigration, religion, public safety, or dissatisfaction with democracy and the government, SMER supporters were significantly more economically progressive than supporters of all other major parties – with half self-identifying as economically “left” or “center-left” and a third favoring government reduction in income differences (see Appendix H). As these opinions “showed considerable continuity with those who had previously voted for SDL’” (Rybář & Deegan-Krause 2008, pp. 510), SMER was “quick to exploit the political opportunity structure” (Haughton 2004, p. 187). As the traditional Left lost support because it led neoliberal reforms, SMER capitalized on its disaffected constituency by taking up economically leftist positions.
SMER’s leftist positioning, however, was not enough to win the 2002 election, after which Dzurinda second government continued deepening reforms. As neoliberalism shifted issue salience from questions of nationalism and democracy to economic ones (Rybář & Deegan-Krause 2008, pp. 513–4), SMER next capitalized on the declining HZDS whose nationalist authoritarianism had previously dominated Slovak politics. As HZDS’s supporters were not only most anti-immigrant but also most dissatisfied with the economy amid continued reforms (see Appendix H), they did not flock to the now compromised ex-communists – with whom HZDS had previously shared the leftist vote (Haughton, 2004, pp. 180–4; Grzymała-Busse, 2002, p. 159). Instead, they flocked to SMER, which by now supplemented its economic leftism with ethnic nationalism.
This strategic illiberal pivot after 2002 was unproblematic as SMER’s flexible centralized structure (Rybář & Deegan-Krause, 2008, p. 498) facilitated considerable leadership autonomy and top-down decision-making. As Robert Fico guided the party towards more illiberalism, SMER attacked the government’s “anti-social” policies, privatization, international corporations, and the flat tax, and vilified ethnic minorities, specifically Hungarians and the Roma (see Bohle & Greskovits, 2012; Mesežnikov et al., 2008). As a result, it dominated “a broad field of voters with increasingly economic concerns” by holding “nearly all of its 2002 voters” and attracting many new ones, the plurality of whom came from HZDS and were thus more “nationally-oriented” and religious than the Slovak average (see Appendix H; Rybář & Deegan-Krause 2008, pp. 514–6). By positioning itself as an openly illiberal opponent of the neoliberal government, SMER won the 2006 poll, driving the greatest illiberal gains in a single election after 2000.
Although electoral breakthrough and persistence differ conceptually (Mudde, 2007), the party’s strategic adaptation also facilitated long-term electoral success. Since SMER fared better, on average, when contesting elections as a challenger critical of neoliberalism (28.8%) than as an advantaged incumbent (27.1%), 14 its success had much to do with its broadly illiberal appeal. As it firmly embraced both economic leftism and sociocultural conservatism after 2002, SMER not only dominated the leftist vote in the absence of a standard social democratic party (see Binev 2022b) but also was Slovakia’s most successful illiberal actor in the first two decades of the 21st century.
This success was concretely enabled by environmental opportunities as the reformist Left collapsed. As the two traditional rightist parties that came out of the 1998 reformist coalition performed consistently before experiencing losses in 2012 (SDKÚ-DS) and 2016 (KDH) (see Appendix G), very few of their voters shifted to SMER (see Rybář & Deegan-Krause, 2008). Even when the traditional Right declined in the 2010s, there was little reason for its voters to support SMER in what had become a highly polarized environment. Indeed, the more successful SDKÚ-DS may have lost support in 2012 and 2016 but it remained consistently liberal on both economic and cultural issues, as documented in the expert surveys. In turn, KDH, which mixed economically liberal and socioculturally conservative positions, lost just 3.9% in 2016. While the Right’s decline may have marginally contributed to illiberalism after 2015, it was dynamics on the Left that explain long-term illiberal viability in Slovakia.
Slovakia versus Czechia
A comparison between Slovakia and Czechia provides additional evidence and helps clarify why the argument is superior to alternative explanations. Whereas in Slovakia illiberal parties averaged 42.2% electoral support in the 2000s, or a nearly 10-point increase from already high levels in the 1990s, in Czechia illiberalism gained an average of 8.2% support after 2000, a meager 3.5-point increase relative to the 1990s. Even if it can be plausibly argued that Czech illiberalism was mostly channeled via the unreformed Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) – here coded as traditionally leftist – both the average overall support for illiberalism in the 2000s and the increase relative to the 1990s would still be twice lower than in Slovakia, with Czechia still ranking in the bottom tier in Figure 1. 15
Unlike Slovakia, Czechia experienced an aligning juncture during which Vaclav Klaus’ rightist government was opposed by clearly identifiable leftist parties – the Social Democrats (ČSSD) and communist KSČM. Whereas support for KSČM remained consistent throughout the 1990s and 2000s, support for ČSSD improved (see Appendix G). Specifically, while the pre-communist ČSSD underwent a “difficult renewal” after 1989 and was initially unpopular, it quadrupled its support by the end of the juncture in 1996. During this period, ČSSD built up an image of a “protest opposition party” by criticizing the rightist government’s “scorched earth” policies, thus managing to appeal to constituencies unsatisfied with the economic transformation (Kopeček & Pšeja, 2008).
Throughout the 1990s, the Social Democrats established themselves as the leading leftist party. While over time their ideology oscillated – between explicitly leftist criticism of reforms (in the mid-1990s) and “pragmatic shifts” to the center (2002–5) – ČSSD dominated a third of the electorate between 1998 and 2006. It achieved this despite internal disagreements, frequent changes in leadership, and low membership. Indeed, the Social Democrats “thrived” as a leftist party which shared the same side of the spectrum and even substantial constituencies with the Communists. Having distinguished themselves as a leftist critic of neoliberalism, they then suffered no negative electoral consequences even after cooperating with both the Right (1998–2006) and the otherwise ostracized Communists (2005–6) (see Kopeček & Pšeja, 2008). Although it declined somewhat thereafter, ČSSD still won the 2010 and 2013 parliamentary elections with over 20% support. When ČSSD finally declined precipitously in 2017 following a coalition government with an anti-establishment and billionaire-led party, the illiberal ANO 2011 and Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) won a combined 40.2% of the vote 16 by attracting voters from the same socio-economically disadvantaged and peripheral regions that had been the main support base of the traditional Left (see Lysek et al., 2021).
If illiberalism ultimately rose in 2017 as the Left declined, the relative stability of leftist parties beforehand prevented illiberal viability in the long term. Even when the new anti-establishment parties TOP 09, Public Affairs, ANO 2011, and Dawn commanded significant shares of the vote in 2010 and 2013, they did so without adopting economic leftist positions. Additionally, although the traditional Right experienced an average of 9.3-point drop in the 2000s relative to the 1990s (see Appendix G), opportunities for exploitation of culturally conservative positions did not result in long-term illiberal viability. And if Czechia’s Social Democrats pragmatically engaged in neoliberal reformism over time, the circumstances under which they did so were very different than in Slovakia. As traditional leftist parties in these two countries found themselves in opposite political roles during junctures, they conditioned opposite long-term illiberal outcomes.
This comparison helps to rule out all alternative explanations noted above. The two countries share a common past (under Czechoslovakia), similar levels of development, an “embedded neoliberal” variety of post-socialist capitalism, and successful political and economic reforms (earlier in Czechia than in Slovakia) that culminated in joining the EU at the same time (Bohle & Greskovits, 2012; Vachudova, 2005). Because between 2004 and 2017 Slovaks consistently trusted the EU more than Czechs (Buštíková & Guasti, 2017, p. 172), perceptions of the EU’s expanding power and cosmopolitanism do not account for variable illiberal outcomes. Neither do popular perceptions of poor governance and corruption – because the two countries rank similarly on comparative attitudinal indices, such as the Corruption Perceptions Index and the World Bank’s Government Effectiveness Index 17 and Control of Corruption Index, which gave both countries nearly identical scores for the 2004–2012 period, 18 when SMER achieved its three most impressive electoral victories (two of which as a challenger). Other unsatisfactory explanations include the depth of neoliberalism and inequality. Indeed, after EU accession both countries adopted similarly radical “avant-garde” reforms (Appel & Orenstein, 2018) and their inequality levels, being among the three lowest in the region (along with Slovenia), were nearly identical between 2004 and 2018 (The World Bank, 2022).
Likewise, the financial and refugee crises do not have much explanatory power. The Great Recession led to parallel productivity declines and unemployment growth, temporarily punctuating positive trends in both countries. 19 As the Great Recession contributed to increased illiberal viability (in 2010 and 2012) after the greatest illiberal gains in Slovakia (in 2006) and as it was actually more severe in Czechia (Kriesi & Pappas, 2015) – where illiberalism remained electorally unviable in the two subsequent elections – the financial crisis did not drive illiberal outcomes in these countries. Outside of the recession, neither experienced significant macroeconomic crises – as proxied by parallel inflation levels and GDP growth rates 20 – for which incumbents could have been blamed between 2000 and the 2019 Coronavirus pandemic. Although the refugee crisis – which affected both countries similarly – may explain ethno-populist success after 2015 (Buštíková & Guasti, 2017; Vachudova, 2020), it does not account for long-term differences in support for illiberalism. Finally, while leadership manipulation based on charisma and populist discourses can inspire popular rejection of traditional parties and raise the salience of illiberalism, novel highly charismatic parties were no fewer in Czechia than in Slovakia (three in each country) after 2000 (see Haughton and Deegan-Krause, 2020, p. 131). 21 Likewise, populist discourses were not associated with stronger electoral performances, including specifically of illiberal parties, in these two countries (see Engler et al., 2019).
Unlike unsatisfactory standard accounts focused on bottom-up demand, crises, and top-down entrepreneurship, the theory prioritizing post-communist junctures explains variable – and persistent – institutional outcomes. While both countries underwent initial liberalization after the highly repressive and non-reformist communist regime and before the split of Czechoslovakia, the different junctures they experienced as subsequently independent political entities conditioned divergent path-dependent “increasing returns” (Pierson 2000) linking leftist politics and illiberal viability over the long term. Specifically, whereas in Czechia an originally minor leftist party rose to prominence after opposing reforms during the juncture, thereby limiting long-term opportunities for subsequent illiberal success, in Slovakia the collapse of a relatively small leftist party enabled strategic adaptions towards durable illiberal viability.
Similar adaptive strategies and syphoning of voters from leftist reformers to illiberal parties also occurred in Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland (Markowski, 2006; Ramonaitė, 2002; Vegetti, 2019, p. 85) after bait-and-switch junctures. It is true that anti-establishment parties with considerable leadership autonomy and adaptive capacities for ideological differentiation from the “liberal establishment” exist all across post-communist Europe. However, such parties adopted leftist economic positions with greatest electoral success after bait-and-switch junctures. As the Left’s persistent programmatic positioning conditioned path-dependent legacies rooted in post-communist junctures, challengers of the liberal status quo adapted to variable opportunities by strategically adopting those positions that were most likely to be electorally rewarded.
Conclusion
In this article, I have developed a theoretical framework for understanding the uneven electoral viability of illiberalism during the last two decades in Central and Eastern Europe. I have traced the sources of this variation to the political dynamics during post-communist junctures relatively early in the transformation. As these junctures engendered path-dependent divergences with ideological and electoral implications, they conditioned variable opportunities for illiberal viability. Specifically, where the Left had led the opposition to market reforms during junctures, its neoliberal skepticism conditioned programmatic alignment and lowered uncertainty. As a result, the Left tended to persist electorally, stabilize party systems, and constrain opportunities for illiberal gains. Conversely, bait-and-switch junctures increased uncertainty by conditioning the Left’s neoliberal turn and subsequent electoral decline, thus enhancing opportunities for illiberal success in the long term. Having developed this argument, I analyzed region-wide patterns in 15 democracies based on empirical evidence, traced processes in a detailed case study, and made comparisons demonstrating why this explanation is superior to alternatives.
Admittedly, my study relied on important analytical decisions about the categorization of parties and post-communist junctures. While I differentiated between traditional leftist and illiberal parties, the lines in reality are certainly not so neat. Some traditional leftists, such as Bulgaria’s and Romania’s ex-communists, have been important channels of illiberalism with their ethnic scapegoating over the years, thus likely limiting the viability of anti-establishment illiberal parties. Moreover, the Left has not exactly shied away from neoliberal measures even after aligning junctures in countries such as Bulgaria and Czechia. It is also true that leftist opposition to reforms during aligning junctures still resulted in some of the weakest welfare protections in countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia (see Bohle & Greskovits, 2012). Nevertheless, the necessary caveats associated with analytical decisions are compensated by significant advantages. By using stylized evidence reliant on clear categorizations and measurement and by focusing on concrete sequences of reproductive mechanisms, I have offered a unique comparative perspective linking prior political dynamics and subsequent illiberal outcomes in post-communist Europe.
Of course, my framework does not explain everything about illiberalism in this region. The relatively recent economic and refugee crises certainly played a role and so did the rollback of counter-majoritarian institutions, suppression of civil society, corruption, and questionable media freedoms. Yet as the long-term legacies of market reform had path-dependent consequences with implications for illiberalism, early economic liberalization and its attendant political dynamics remain crucial for understanding developments in the three decades after communism.
This study makes several key contributions which are both empirical – because my perspective is longer-term and more general, and theoretical – because I highlight a concrete mechanism featuring variable incentives, resources, and constraints. First, by problematizing earlier work, which argued that the liberalization of ex-communist parties was a positive development both for these parties’ electoral prospects and for liberal democracy (Grzymala-Busse, 2002; Tavits & Letki, 2009), I add to scholarship about the failures of democratic accountability (see Grzymala-Busse, 2019). In retrospect, my work also contributes to foundational arguments about the problems of an economic transformation that neglected both the importance of political configurations and some of the most affected constituencies (see Greskovits, 1998; Ost, 2005),
Second, although Latin America is clearly different from Eastern Europe – where the shadow of communism, the EU’s liberal regime, and relatively lower inequality – make radical leftist challenges to liberalism less actionable, I have argued that cross-regional insights can be gained and additionally refined for making sense of post-communist developments. By doing so, I have added considerable nuance to scholarship seeking to uncover the linkages between political choices, societal reactions, and institutional outcomes (e.g., Roberts, 2014). Third, by highlighting how the legacies of relatively recent history condition – rather than determine – subsequent adaptive strategies and variable probabilities of outcomes, I have suggested one possible avenue for avoiding the “inevitability trap” typically associated with historical institutionalism (Dunning, 2017). Whether and how these newly developed insights might apply back to the Latin American context or elsewhere is a question for further research.
Lastly, I have proposed that political conflict in post-communist Europe is fundamentally conditioned by interactive dynamics between recent historical legacies and agency. I have demonstrated that programmatic consistency matters greatly for representative politics in the long run and suggested that while constituencies might have been initially tolerant of neoliberal reformers on the left, their patience was not limitless. As legacies shape behavior without inhibiting political choice, alternatives to illiberalism can be formulated with the hindsight of history. If post-communist Europe is to overcome the illiberal challenge – and strengthen its democracy – its politics requires forward-looking solutions that are truly representative.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental Material - Post-Communist Junctures, the Left, and Illiberalism: Theory with Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe
Supplemental Material for Post-Communist Junctures, the Left, and Illiberalism: Theory with Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe by Binio Binev in Comparative Political Studies
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Diana Kapiszewski, Marc Howard, Jeff Anderson, Charles King, Kevin Deegan-Krause, and Ken Roberts for their support and inspiration during the research process that ultimately resulted in this work, as well as the journal’s editors and the anonymous reviewers whose critical comments led to significant improvements. The author is solely responsible for any shortcomings.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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