Electoral Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 217–234, 1998
 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
0261-3794/98 $19.00+0.00
Pergamon
PII: S0261-3794(98)00016-X
Negative and Positive Party Identification in
Post-Communist Countries
Richard Rose*
Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XH UK
William Mishler
Department of Political Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
To understand party identification in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, we
need to give equal attention to negative partisanship—the identification of a party
that an individual would never vote for—as well as positive party identification. Our
institutionalist approach posits that in a one-party state the Party will be distrusted,
and socialization will encourage people to form a negative party identification. Survey
data from 1995 in Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovenia show 77 per cent have
a negative identification and only 30 per cent are positive; this produces a fourfold
typology of open, closed, apathetic and negative partisans. Discriminant function
analysis is used to identify political, economic and social structure influences on this
typology of partisanship. Negative partisanship is then distinguished between the
rejection of ideologically polarizing parties, whether Communist, right-wing, reformist or religious, or the rejection of parties appealing exclusively to a limited segment
of the electorate, such as a minority ethnic group. Discriminant function analysis
identifies leading influences on the reaction against particular types of parties. The
conclusion considers whether post-Communist citizens are more likely to move from
negative to positive partisanship or become knowledgeable sceptics, and concludes
that the development of knowledgeable scepticism is more likely.  1998 Elsevier
Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Keywords: voting, party identification, one-party, post-Communist, new democracies,
civic engagement
Long-standing identification with a particular political party is a central concept in electoral
studies. Notwithstanding major differences about measurement, there is widespread agreement
that identification with a political party is a desirable, perhaps even a necessary condition for
representative government in a stable democracy, and a decline in party identification can be
*Author for correspondence: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, Livingstone
Tower, 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XH, UK.
218
Negative and Positive Party Identification in Post-Communist Countries
interpreted as evidence of a crisis of democracy (see e.g. Campbell et al., 1960: Budge et al.,
1976; Dalton, 1996, 196ff; Miller and Shanks, 1996). In a review of the party identification
literature, Klingemann and Wattenberg (1992, 149) conclude, “To achieve a state of stable
democracies in Eastern Europe, we believe a rapid development of citizens’ images of the
major parties is essential”.
Since democracy is about competition between parties, an individual’s identification with
one party can be complemented by rejecting competing parties. Classic cleavage theories of
party systems, such as Lipset and Rokkan (1967), have emphasized parties being arrayed at
opposite poles of each dimension of competition. This implies that individuals will simultaneously develop a negative as well as a positive party identification. For example, Catholics
identified with a Catholic party would not consider voting for an anti-clerical party, and working class identifiers would reject the party of the opposing class, and vice versa.
In a one-party state there can be only one cleavage—for or against the governing party—
and especially so in a classic Communist party-state. It distinguished between the Party and
all other parties, which were banned or could only exist as front organizations controlled by
the Communist apparatus. The Party used elections to mobilize support; individuals had no
choice about whether to vote or whom to vote for, since abstention or rejecting the Communist
slate invited suspicion of dissent or worse (Karklins, 1986). Few subjects of a Communist
regime could be indifferent to it, but the intensity of its intrusive demands could generate a
reaction against The Party. Holmes (1997, 13) concludes, “Post-Communism is better understood as the rejection of the Communist power system than as a clear-cut adoption of an
alternative system”.
This article demonstrates the theoretical and empirical importance of negative party identification by analysing survey data from four post-Communist countries. The first section compares the political science concern with positive affect with the conflict-oriented sociological
interest in cleavages implying negative as well as positive attitudes toward parties. New
Democracies Barometer survey data show that negative party identification is far more common
in post-Communist societies, thus creating four types of partisanship: open, closed, apathetic
and negative. The objects of negative party identification differ radically: one group seeks
mass support but in fact is ideologically polarizing, while another appeals only to a limited
exclusive segment of the electorate, such as an ethnic minority. Whereas positive affect theories
can only conceptualize change in one party, our theory identifies as realistic alternatives in
post-Communist states a move from negative partisanship to closed partisanship (that is, having
both a positive and negative identification) or a move from negative partisanship to having
neither positive nor negative identification. The latter is deemed more likely and poses no
threat to democratization since, with increasing education and uncontrolled media, an electorate
of sophisticated sceptics can vote rationally for or against government, as in Schumpeter’s
(1952) model of electoral democracy.
Party Identification as a Two-Sided Coin
Significance of Negative Party Identification
The concept of party identification is a positive psychological affirmation that “one’s sense of
self includes a feeling of personal identity with a secondary group such as a political party”
(Miller and Shanks, 1996, 9). Linking an individual’s ego with a political institution creates
“the most stable of all political attitudes”. Identification with one party does not imply anything,
Richard Rose and William Mishler
219
positive or negative about attitudes toward other political parties (Miller and Shanks, 1996,
120). In an established democracy, party identification is invariably used to explain the longterm persistence of parties. In the new democracies of post-Communist Europe, the presence or
absence of identification with a party may also influence support or rejection of the new regime.
In a democratic election, voters by definition have a choice of parties. They may have
positive views of one or more parties, view one positively and another negatively, or have
only a negative view of one party without positive attachment to another. In their classic study
of The Civic Culture, Almond and Verba, 1963, 123, recognized that identification with a party
reflects divisions within society. While endorsing “open and moderate partisanship” as essential
to a stable democracy, they also cautioned that “a too hostile partisanship might jeopardize
the willingness to accept opposition, and could cause electoral decisions to be rejected or
dispensed with altogether”, an appropriate remark given that Italy, Germany and Mexico each
had had experience of competition between democratic and undemocratic parties leading to
undemocratic regimes. However, the Civic Culture questionnaire did not address negative partisanship directly. Questions were asked about respondents’ images of those who voted for
different parties—were they intelligent, selfish or betrayers of freedom?—and whether a person
would object to a family member marrying a supporter of another party (Almond and Verba,
1963, 124ff).
Using survey data about current likes and dislikes of American and German voters, Klingemann and Wattenberg constructed a typology distinguishing between antagonistic voters who
liked their own party and actively disliked the opposing party; balanced voters seeing good
and bad features in both major parties; and apathetic or de-aligned electors with neither a
positive nor a negative image of parties. Trends between elections showed that Germans have
tended to move from being antagonistic to balanced partisans with positive views about both
major parties. Concurrently, Americans have shown a tendency to move away from having
any clearcut likes or dislikes of parties and to vote for candidates in ways that lead to “a
profound lack of political accountability” (Klingemann and Wattenberg, 1992, 149).
To ignore negative attitudes toward parties risks removing conflict from electoral competition, a major theme of sociological theories. Lipset (1960)’s description of elections in a
democracy as the “democratic continuation of the class struggle” aptly conveys the Us versus
Them approach to party identification of political sociology. The classic Lipset and Rokkan
(1967) model placed voters at opposite ends of four dimensions: either they identify with the
church or anti-clerical movements; with rural interests or urban interests; with the middle class
or the working class; or with one nationality or another. When identification is not (or not
only) with a party but also with a religious denomination, this makes it easier to identify parties
that one would never vote for. In Northern Ireland, Protestants can simultaneously be sure
they will never vote Sinn Fein or Irish Nationalist and Catholics that they would never vote
Unionist or Paisleyite—while simultaneously floating between parties on their side of the cleavage structure. The white primary in the American South had a similar consequence of placing
the Republican party out of bounds to white electors, while encouraging competition within
all-white Democratic party primaries (Key, 1949).
An institutionalist approach to party identification looks first at the stimuli, the parties, rather
than at respondents. There is widespread recognition that in established democracies political
parties have become less clearcut institutions to identify with, as transitory personalities have
replaced programs in election appeals and single-issue groups have gained importance in articulating group interests (for a review, see Dalton, 1996, 208ff). In Communist countries, however,
the one party visible to the great majority of population for most of their lives, the Communist
220
Negative and Positive Party Identification in Post-Communist Countries
Party, was visible and persistent and discouraged indifference. The legacy of Communism is
widespread distrust of all major institutions of society, and political parties are consistently
among the most distrusted. The 1994 nine-nation New Democracies Barometer survey in countries of Central and Eastern Europe found that on average less than one person in seven trusts
political parties (see Rose, 1995; Mishler and Rose, 1997). When the very idea of party has
been discredited and institutions appear untrustworthy, then negative party identification ought
to be at least as high as positive identification.
Party Identifications in Post-Communist Countries
The classic Lipset–Rokkan model of party formation and party identification assumed the existence of major institutions of civil society, such as churches, business associations, free trade
unions, peasant organizations, etc. The model cannot be applied to a post-Communist society
for the predecessor regime did not allow independent institutions of civil society; they were
purged or put in the hands of party apparatchiks. As Mair (1997) emphasizes, “The new party
systems of post-Communist Europe are emerging in the wake of a democratization process
which is itself sui generis; . . . democratization is occurring in the effective absence of a real
civil society”.
The Communist Party was the only effective party during the socialization of the great
majority of Central and East Europeans. Socialization theories emphasize that the formation
of partisanship commences in childhood, being modelled on parental identification and tending
to persist largely unchanged through adult life and across generations (see e.g. Butler and
Stokes, 1974). Communist parties recognized the importance of socialization, seeking to indoctrinate their subjects from their earliest days at school and as adults. By comparison with
established democracies, Communist regimes produced a remarkably high level of party membership. Across nine countries covered in a New Democracies Barometer survey, an average
of 15 per cent of adults said they had belonged to the Communist Party or one of its closely
associated organizations and another 19 per cent said that at least one other person in their
family had been a party member (Rose and Haerpfer, 1996, 88).
Exposure to Communist propaganda encouraged dualistic political thinking—outward conformity and inward rejection (see e.g. Hankiss, 1990). The incentives for becoming a nominal
Communist were often instrumental rather than ideological, such as getting a job, a promotion,
or such benefits as a new flat (White and McAllister, 1996). Party members were not ideologically cohesive. New Democracies Barometer surveys have shown across ten post-Communist
countries that ex-Communists have virtually the same profile of political attitudes as the
national population (Rose, 1996a). Dissident movements actively cultivated distrust of political
parties; for example, the slogan of the Czech Civic Forum of Vaclav Havel and others was,
“Parties are for (Communist) party members; the Civic Forum is for all” (quoted in Olson,
1993, 642). In the final period of the Communist regime, ad hoc opposition movements
emerged in many Communist societies, but as Tarrow (1991, 17) has cautioned, “Unlike elections, interest groups and parliaments, social movements have a brief life upon the stage”.
The indoctrination hypothesis emphasizes the primacy of input; Communist Party efforts
are assumed to have created a very high level of party identification. By contrast, the Havel
hypothesis predicts that socialization into a Communist regime alienated people from party
politics, lowering positive party identification and encouraging negative party identification.
To assess positive and negative party identification requires survey data; the evidence analysed here comes from the fourth New Democracies Barometer (NDB) survey conducted by
Richard Rose and William Mishler
221
the Paul Lazarsfeld Society, Vienna in autumn, 1995. Appropriate measures of both positive
and negative partisanship are available for four Central and East European countries, Hungary,
Poland, Romania, and Slovenia. They differ substantially in political experiences before, during
and after Communism; Romania under Ceausescu was the most repressive, while Hungary
was the most liberal, though still a one-party state. In each country, an established national
research institute drew a stratified random sample with approximately 100 sampling points to
represent the country as a whole. The target was 1000 interviews; a total of 4162 face-to-face
interviews were completed in the four countries between 20 October–18 December 1995 (for
full details see Rose and Haerpfer, 1996). Because some samples were drawn to include youths
below voting age, respondents under age 18 were excluded, yielding a total of 3895 interviews
for analysis here.1
The New Democracies Barometer questionnaire first asked individuals a standard party
identification question: “Do you feel close to one political party or not?” If the answer was
yes, individuals were asked whether they felt “very, somewhat or not very close” to that party.
Respondents were next asked to select from a lengthy list a party that they would vote for if
an election were held the following Sunday, and then to select from the same list any party
that they would never vote for. In Hungary, the list had eight parties, in Slovenia ten parties,
and in Poland and Romania 15 parties each.
The pattern of responses supports the Havel hypothesis and rejects the indoctrination hypothesis. Even though citizens now have a choice between a dozen or more parties, in these four
post-Communist countries on average only 30 per cent identify with a party, whereas threequarters to nine-tenths identify with a party in an established democracy (cf. Fig. 1 with Rose,
1995: Table 2 and Dalton, 1996: chapter 9). The highest (sic) level of identification is in
Romania, where clientelistic methods are used to mobilize the population behind politicians
who describe themselves as party leaders. The lowest level of party identification is found in
Poland; this is consistent with a very high degree of fragmentation in the party system. Even
though Solidarity and the Roman Catholic Church were able to mobilize millions of supporters
to oppose a Communist regime, only 18 per cent now identify with any party. Individuals
gave a clear indication that they understood the significance of the question about party identification, for while only 30 per cent gave an identification, 77 per cent named a party they
would vote for if an election were held the following Sunday.
Whereas party identification in established democracies is regarded as showing civic virtue,
in post-Communist countries it is more likely to indicate that a person was formerly a member
of the Communist Party. Ex-Communists are 17 percentage points more likely to identify with
a party than those who had never been Communists, a finding consistent not only with Communist efforts to indoctrinate cadres but also with the Havel hypothesis that parties are for Communists and not for “the people”.
Negative partisanship In the multi-party systems of post-Communist countries, upwards of
a dozen parties are available for rejection; by contrast, in a two-party system, choices are
limited and simple. With many parties on offer, to identify a party one would never vote for
may be a stronger test of commitment than the standard question about current party identification or vote.2 In Romania and Poland, where the last decade of Communist rule was full of
bitterness rather than glasnost, more than nine-tenths named a party they would never support.
The Polish figures are specially noteworthy, for negative identification was more than four
times greater than positive identification. In Hungary and Slovenia, where repression was much
less, negative party identification is lower, yet still substantially more than positive identifi-
222
Negative and Positive Party Identification in Post-Communist Countries
Fig. 1. Negative and positive party identification.
Source: Paul Lazarsfeld Society, Vienna, New Democracies Barometer IV. Fieldwork, 20 October–11
December 1995; total unweighted number of respondents, 3895
cation. Overall, 77 per cent identified a party they would never vote for, more than twice the
proportion with a positive identification.
The high level of negative party identification is consistent with the Havel hypothesis that
socialization in the Communist era turned most voters off parties. It is logically possible for
this also to be consistent with positive indoctrination. However, even though ex-Communist
Party members are more likely to have a party identification, nonetheless a majority remain
without a party identification today, indicating that many members held party cards for instrumental reasons strong enough to inoculate them against ideological mobilization or commit-
Richard Rose and William Mishler
223
ment. When classic Lipset–Rokkan sources of cleavage, such as class and religion, are correlated with positive and negative party identification, some people are more likely to have both
a positive and a negative identification. More educated people are more likely to express a
determination never to vote for a party as well as to have a positive identification, and the
same is true for those who live in cities and for those who do not go to church. But social
structure differences do not encourage a majority of electors to form party identifications.
Types of Partisanship
From the two dimensions of party identification we can create a typology of four different
types of partisan, depending on whether an individual has only a positive or a negative party
identification, both, or neither.
Negative partisans can name a party they would never vote for but are without a positive
party identification; they are more than half the electors analysed here (Table 1). In Poland,
almost three-quarters are ‘anti-party’; in other countries, negative partisans range from an absolute majority to two-fifths. Using somewhat different operational measures, Almond and Verba
(1963, 155) found less than half this level of antagonism in Germany and Italy a generation
ago. Negative partisans in post-Communist countries are also far more numerous than in the
United States or contemporary Germany (cf. Klingemann and Wattenberg, 1992, Table 6). The
strong rejection of an undemocratic party, whether nationalist or traditional Communist, could
be interpreted as a move toward consolidating democracy. But rejection of one party without
positive identification with another is not a move to a civic democracy. The predominance of
negative partisans in post-Communist countries makes party competition today relatively
unstable, for while most voters identify a single point—a party that they will not support—
they have no stable commitment to a party they would vote for. The result is that betweenelection volatility in each party’s share of votes is double or treble that in the first elections
in new democracies in post-1945 Europe, and four to eight times higher than the volatility
rates of established democracies today (cf. Rose, 1996b, Fig. 7.2).
Closed partisans take party politics seriously: party competition occurs in a world of Us
versus Them, with both a positive and negative identification. In the ‘soft’ form of closed
partisanship, such as Britain after 1945, class differences made many Conservative and Labour
voters closed partisans, even though their differences on policies were limited. In the ‘hard’
form of closed partisanship in the first decades of the postwar Republic of Italy, Christian
Democrats and Communist closed partisans were polarized, placing obstacles to the consolidation of democracy (cf. Sartori, 1966). In West European democracies, the declining salience
of class, religion and other historic cleavages has reduced barriers between closed partisans.
Closed partisans average only a quarter of the electors in the four countries examined here.
Table 1. Types of partisanship by country
Negative
Closed
Apathetic
Open
Source: As in Fig. 1.
Poland
Rom
Hung
Slovenia
Total
72
17
9
1
55
39
3
2
42
28
19
11
38
16
40
6
52%
25
18
5
224
Negative and Positive Party Identification in Post-Communist Countries
In Romania they are relatively numerous, constituting nearly two-fifths of the total. Closed
partisans are also relatively numerous in Hungary, where parties have organized in a relatively
stable fashion around such classic dimensions as churchgoing versus anti-clericals and rural
versus urban, as well as differing about radical reform or continuity with the past.
Open partisans are positively committed to a political party and do not identify a party that
they would never vote for. Open partisans contribute to stability in the party system by consistently supporting one party; they also contribute to democratic stability by reducing hostility
toward other potential governing parties. Almond and Verba (1963, 155) classified 82 per cent
of Americans as open partisans. However, in post-Communist countries, open partisans are
rare; they average only 5 per cent of the electorate and are only 1 per cent in Poland (Table 1).
If one only asked about positive party identification, the low proportion with a positive
identification would imply widespread apathy or de-alignment. However, since more than threequarters of post-Communist electors have a negative party identification, apathy is limited.
Apathetic electors, without any positive or negative commitment, are as few as three per cent
in Romania and nine per cent in Poland. Only in Slovenia, where political contestation has
been relatively less harsh, is a substantial minority apathetic. The mean proportion apathetic,
18 per cent, is higher than in West Germany but substantially less than in the United States
(cf. Klingemann and Wattenberg, 1992, Table 6).
Accounting for Different Types of Partisanship
The literature on party identification catalogues many influences on party identification; the
most frequently emphasized is the identification of parents, transmitted through inter-generational socialization. However, in the countries examined here parents were compelled to vote
for the Communist Party whether they opposed or supported it, and parties now seeking votes
did not exist prior to 1990. Yet the basic point about the influence of the political past is
relevant in both the indoctrination and Havel hypotheses—albeit there is disagreement about
whether it should make people more or less likely to identify with competing parties. Theories
of economic influence on voters are particularly relevant in post-Communist countries, given
the shocks of transformation at both the macro-economic and micro-economic levels. Education, age and other social structure influences on party identification in stable democracies
may also be relevant (for a full list of independent variables, see Appendix A).
With two dimensions of party identification, we need a non-linear method to ascertain the
most important influences on four types of partisanship. Multiple discriminant function analysis
meets these requirements (Klecka, 1980). Consistent with the Przeworski and Teune (1970)
logic regarding nation-specific attributes as intervening variables in a generic social science
model of explanation, we pool data from the four countries, weighting each equally as having
1000 respondents. The discriminant analysis correctly predicts 34 per cent of all cases, an
improvement over random assignment of respondents to the four different categories of partisanship. Two functions account for all but two per cent of the explained variance; in Table 2
the most important variables, those having a loading of at least 0.30 on a function, are shown
in bold type.
The first and by far the strongest function arrays respondents according to the strength of
partisanship. Closed partisans, with both a positive and negative identification, are at one
extreme (group centroid mean: 0.24). Apathetic partisans are found at the other extreme (mean:
− 0.54), and open partisans, positive about one party and negative about none, have a centroid
very close to apathetic partisans. By contrast, negative partisans are near to closed partisans.
Richard Rose and William Mishler
225
Table 2. Influences on types of partizanship
Variable
Negative partisanship
Positive partisanship
Institutional trust
Approval of former Communist regime
Personal economic deprivations
Approved current family economic situation
Urbanization
Approval of current regime
Fears inflation more than unemployment
0.52
− 0.47
0.26
0.24
0.24
0.22
0.11
− 0.08
− 0.11
0.21
− 0.16
0.09
Age
Prefers authoritarian regimes
Gender: female
Education
Communist Party member
Political patience
Church attendance
Approves of Communist macroeconomy
Family economic situation better in past
Approves of current macroeconomy
Now or previously unemployed
− 0.14
0.39
− 0.05
0.19
0.20
− 0.12
− 0.15
0.09
0.06
− 0.06
0.09
0.51
− 0.48
− 0.32
0.29
0.24
− 0.16
− 0.16
0.15
0.10
− 0.10
− 0.10
79
19
0.24
0.10
− 0.38
− 0.54
0.31
− 0.09
0.24
− 0.24
Percent explained variance
Group centroids
Closed
Negative
Open
Apathetic
Percent correctly classified
All types
Closed
Negative
Open
Apathetic
0.06
34
42
27
28
43
Source: As in Fig. 1 and Table 3. Number of respondents = 3960.
The most important influences reflect the distinctive political legacy of a Communist political
system. The higher the trust in institutions, the more likely people are to have a party identification—but in the distinctive circumstances of post-Communist countries, the highest trust is
shown in authoritative institutions of the state (the courts) and the least in representative institutions (see Mishler and Rose, 1997). Thus, people who are trusting of authority are most
likely to be negative or closed partisans. Approval of the Communist regime, hardly the mark
of a democrat, reduces negative or closed partisanship today, and encourages apathy.
The second discriminant function, accounting for 19 per cent of the explained variance,
distinguishes positive partisans, whether closed or open, from those who are negative or apathetic. The most important influences are social structure characteristics and political influences.
226
Negative and Positive Party Identification in Post-Communist Countries
Older people are more likely to have a positive partisanship, a function of lifetime learning,
and more educated people, who are disproportionately young, are also more likely to be positive partisans. Women too are more likely to have positive commitments. The more undemocratic alternatives that an individual endorses, the more likely a person is to be negative or
apathetic about parties. It is noteworthy that economic conditions of the household and perceptions of national economic conditions are consistently of little or no importance.
Differentiating Negative Partisans
Voters can say they will never vote for a polarizing party appealing for a large share of the
vote on ideological grounds, whether Communist, Christian, rightwing authoritarians, or market-oriented reformers. Alternatively, they may reject a party that appeals to exclusive minority
interests, whether an ethnic group, agrarians or pensioners. The basis of rejection has important
implications for democratization. No problems arise if people say they would not vote for a
party that appeals to a minority that is effectively an interest group party, for example, Finnishspeakers never voting for the party of Swedish-speakers in Finland. By contrast, if parties with
what Duverger (1954, 283) has described as a “majority bent” are rejected, this can cause
polarization. For example, for decades in Italy after 1945 a large bloc of voters rejected the
Communist Party of Italy and another bloc rejected the Christian Democrats, effectively making
impossible the alternation of officeholding between the major parties. While there is not exact
correspondence between party types in different countries, we can group them into six tendencies, four ideologically polarizing, and two exclusive minority parties (Table 3).
In every country one or more parties are heirs to the old Communist ruling party organization
and many of its leaders. Opponents of the old regime do not need a positive party identification
to say that they would never vote for a party they were first made aware of through intrusive
socialization beginning in primary school. Across four countries, 20 per cent say they would
never vote Communist (Table 3), and two Hungarian parties have associations with the old
regime, the governing Socialist Party, and the hardline Workers’ Party, and almost a third of
Hungarians are confirmed anti-Communists. In the other countries between a tenth and a fifth
say they are lifelong enemies of parties inheriting the Communist mantle. The majority does
not show aversion to this group because opportunistic Communists have transformed them-
Table 3. Rejected parties by type and country
Hung
Polarizing parties
Communist
Right-wing
Christian
Reform
Exclusive parties
1. Ethnic
5. Agrarian
7. Other
No party rejected
(49)
32
6
4
7
(20)
0
18
2
(30)
Pol
(66)
17
20
8
21
(24)
17
4
3
(10)
Roman
Slovenia
(49)
19
18
9
3
(46)
35
2
9
(5)
(51)
18
14
15
4
(4)
0
1
3
(45)
Total
(53%)
21
14
9
9
(24%)
13%
6
5
(23)
Source: As in Fig. 1. Full detail of classification of individual parties available from authors.
Richard Rose and William Mishler
227
selves into vote-seeking social democrats; in Hungary there is very little support for a return
to a one-party Communist state (see Rose and Haerpfer, 1996, 21).
Before the Second World War, right-wing parties espousing undemocratic values under dictatorial leaders were strong throughout Central and Eastern Europe. In post-Communist countries today, right-wing parties secure very few votes. Even in Romania, where such parties are
relatively strong, their vote is no greater than for LePen’s party in France or Haider’s party
in Austria. The proportion saying they would never vote for a right-wing party is as high as
20 per cent in Poland, and 18 per cent in Romania. It is lowest in Hungary, 6 per cent,
because right-wing groups have gained so little electoral support that they lack salience in the
contemporary political spectrum.
Historically, the clerical versus anti-clerical dimension has been important throughout Europe. In Hungary, Romania and Slovenia a significant minority are regular churchgoers and
another minority are secularists opposed to clerical influence. Even in Poland, where the Catholic Church was a pillar of resistance to Communism, society divides on such issues as abortion. Just as religious influence is shown by voting for a Christian party, so anti-clericalism
leads people to committed rejection of a religious party. This group averages about one-tenth
of the electorate; a similar proportion of voters tends to vote for such parties.
Reform parties see themselves as democratic, but in a post-Communist context support for
market reforms can be a radical position stimulating negative reactions from those unsettled
by economic transformation or doubtful about its putative benefits. In Poland, where economic
‘shock therapy’ was particularly swift and contentious, a fifth say they would never vote for
a reform party, making this the chief negative party identification. Elsewhere, there has not
been large-scale reaction against reform: from three to seven per cent reject this bloc of parties.
In competitive elections, no party can expect to win all the votes. Whereas a first past
the post system encourages politicians to aggregate support in larger parties, the proportional
representation system in use almost everywhere in Europe gives parties with as little as five
per cent of the vote seats in Parliament and political resources, thus encouraging the formation
of parties with an exclusive appeal to a limited minority of the electorate. Ethnic parties are
a textbook example of a party with a self-limiting appeal, asking everyone of a minority identity
to vote for their party implies that no one belonging to the majority ethnic group should support
it. In Romania, there is a substantial Hungarian minority, which has its own party; right-wing
Romanian nationalist parties also exacerbate ethnic differences. In consequence, 35 per cent
there say they would never vote for one or another ethnic party. In Poland, a party representing
the very small German minority produces a similar negative reaction. In both countries, the
percentage in the majority nationality saying they would never vote for an ethnic party is much
higher than the minority actually supporting it. In Slovenia and Hungary no party is visibly
seeking votes on behalf of ethnic minorities.
In an urban, industrial society, agrarian parties are also minority parties, for their appeal is
addressed to rural voters, a minority of the labour force and of the electorate. Unlike Scandinavian agrarian parties, post-Communist agrarian groups have not yet sought to broaden their
appeal to include green issues or other issues of appeal in cities. For urban voters to say that
they would never vote agrarian is simply to state the obvious: they are not rural dwellers. In
most countries, agrarian parties have limited political salience and are ignored rather than
explicitly rejected. However, in Hungary the Small Holders Party has been in government
and makes right-wing appeals on non-agrarian issues; it is firmly rejected by 18 per cent
of Hungarians.
Negative partisanship is important because as in post-Communist party systems opposition
228
Negative and Positive Party Identification in Post-Communist Countries
is usually directed against parties with a majority vocation rather than parties “irrelevant” in
the formation of governing coalitions (Sartori, 1976, 300ff). Rejected parties usually seek to
form part of government—but not in coalition with other parties their supporters would never
vote for. In Poland, two-thirds of the electors reject a major (though not necessarily
mainstream) party and in the other three countries about half do so. Furthermore, the substantial
Romanian rejection of the Hungarian minority party implies polarization, given right-wing
parties campaigning on an aggressively nationalist platform. In all four countries, those
rejecting Communist, right-wing, Christian or radical reform parties are substantially more
numerous than those positively identifying with these parties.
Accounting for Different Types of Negative Partisanship
If generic influences determine why individuals would never vote for a party, then a discriminant function analysis of the pooled four-country data set should produce a good fit with explanatory variables about political values toward democratic and undemocratic regimes. An alternative hypothesis is that strong negative feelings against a party are created by the specific
national context; in that case, discriminant function analysis should have a weak fit.
The discriminant function analysis correctly predicts which kind of party 25 per cent would
never vote for (Table 4). The first function identifies those who would never vote for reform
parties; it emphasizes having been a Communist Party member, suffering substantial economic
deprivation from reform, and current economic conditions. The second function, almost equal
in importance, particularly identifies people who would never vote for an ethnic party: this
group is very much urban, and also more likely to include non-churchgoers, and younger
people. The third function focuses on those who would never vote for Christian and Agrarian
parties. They are influenced by being positive about the former Communist regime and not
approving the current regime, and being younger. Correctly predicting 25 per cent of the
negative party identification, while better than chance, leaves a lot unexplained.3
Insofar as individuals reject a party for reasons specific to a country or party, for example,
the personality of its leader, a generic cross-national model should be inadequate. We can test
whether country-specific context is meaningful by re-running the discriminant function analysis
and including dummy variables for Hungary, Poland and Romania; Slovenia is treated as the
excluded category. This does produce a better fit; a total of 30 per cent of all cases are correctly
predicted. Since the relevant functions in each country run are specific to that country, limits
of space preclude reporting the details here.4
Stable Identification or Sophisticated Scepticism?
In analysing an emerging party system, the key comparisons are dynamic: between what was,
what is and what the party system may become. While the historical evolution of Western
party systems occurs in very different conditions than the revolution in party politics in postCommunist countries, political science theories do identify alternative paths for an emerging
party system.
Stable Identification as a Goal
Many political scientists assert that a high level of partisanship is necessary for democracy to
take root. In a review of Southern Europe, Morlino (1995, 316) concludes, “Experiences with
Richard Rose and William Mishler
229
Table 4. Influences on parties never vote for
Variable
Communist Party member
Personal economic deprivations
Approved current family economic
situation
Now or previously unemployed
Fears inflation more than unemployment
Education
Political patience
Urbanization
Church attendance
Approves of Communist macroeconomy
Prefers authoritarian regimes
Approves of current macroeconomy
Approval of former Communist regime
Age
Approval of current regime
Family economic situation better in past
Female
Political trust
Percent explained variance
Group centroids
Reform
Right wing
Christian
Ethnic
Agrarian
Communist
Percent correctly classified
All types
Reform
Right wing
Christian
Ethnic
Agrarian
Communist
Reform parties
Never vote for
Ethnic parties
Christian/Agrarian
parties
0.55
0.53
0.47
0.09
− 0.11
0.08
0.02
0.06
0.09
0.23
0.17
− 0.15
0.10
0.06
0.05
0.13
0.25
0.16
0.11
0.03
0.28
− 0.06
− 0.04
0.06
0.01
0.13
0.06
0.01
0.54
0.49
0.29
0.29
0.25
0.04
0.38
0.05
0.05
0.00
0.05
− 0.19
− 0.14
0.13
0.03
− 0.06
0.00
0.21
− 0.11
0.21
0.67
− 0.47
− 0.32
0.21
− 0.20
0.11
34
0.33
0.11
0.05
0.00
− 0.23
− 0.32
−
−
−
−
−
33
− 0.20
0.12
0.28
0.71
− 0.20
− 0.11
20
0.07
− 0.23
0.36
− 0.26
0.35
− 0.10
25
34
10
21
49
30
23
Source: As in Fig. 1 and Table 3. Analysis of respondents naming a party they would never vote for
excluding those naming ‘other’ party; N = 2859.
democratization suggest a strong relationship between regime consolidation and the stabilization and structuring of parties and party systems”. In a major review of Latin American party
systems, Mainwaring and Scully (1994, 27ff) argue, “Building a party system appears to be
a necessary though insufficient condition for consolidating democracy and governing effec-
230
Negative and Positive Party Identification in Post-Communist Countries
tively”. Creating a positive identification is part of the process of institutionalizing representative government.
In post-Communist societies, there are two different ways in which stable party identification
could develop. One option is that the majority who currently have a negative party identification
might become closed partisans by developing a positive identification too. This may not be as
difficult as it sounds, for according to Wattenberg (1994, x:) “Negative attitudes can easily be
turned into positive attitudes by better performance or a change in policies. To make apathetic
people care about political parties once again may well be more difficult”. Alternatively, to
achieve open partisanship, the ideal endorsed by Almond and Verba, appears much more difficult. First, people would have to abandon the commitment never to vote for a particular party,
even if there is evidence that some parties do threaten democracy, and also develop a positive
identification with a party. To achieve this through inter-generational socialization would
require up to two generations for the majority of electors to view parties unaffected by the
experience of the Communist era.
An Electorate of Knowledgeable Sceptics?
In societies in which the Communist Party was for two generations the only party, there are
good grounds for expecting popular reservations about parties to continue indefinitely. In such
circumstances, the Hungarian political scientist Toka (1997, 63) argues that post-Communist
countries do not require a party system based on a high level of party identification: “Political
parties are more the products of democracy than its creators”. The development of partisanship
may thus not be a necessary condition for democratization.
The consolidation of a new democracy occurs when all the parties (and other groups, such
as the military) are committed to upholding the democratic regime, whatever the outcome of
an election (see e.g. Gunther et al., 1988; Linz and Stepan, 1996). The decline of undemocratic
parties should lead to negative de-alignment, that is, a significant reduction in the number of
people who can identify a party that they would never vote for. However, in the absence of
positive partisanship, this would create electoral volatility as most voters would lack both a
positive and negative identification. The result would be a ‘floating’ party system, if elites
responded by launching, breaking up or amalgamating parties as the exigencies of officeseeking made appropriate, a strategy called trasformismo by Italians. Initial elections in postCommunist countries have shown a high level of volatility among parties as well as voters.
Many students of electoral politics in new democracies fear that partisan de-alignment would
lead to a plebiscitarian democracy in which an elected leader ruled without accountability to
parties or the public, or to a ‘man on horseback’ converting an election majority into dictatorial
rule (cf. Klingemann and Wattenberg, 1992, 137ff; O’Donnell, 1994). However, there are
substantial institutional and attitudinal barriers to this happening. Many post-Communist countries do not have a directly elected president, and Central and East European countries, unlike
Soviet successor states, have a Parliament and Prime Minister strong enough to check a nonelected President (cf. Baylis, 1996; Taras, 1997). The previous regime’s stress on the cult of
the leader has produced a negative reaction against undemocratic leadership as well as against
parties. When people are asked if they think their country would be better governed by getting
rid of Parliament and elections and having a strong leader, 72 per cent of NDB respondents
say no (Rose and Mishler, 1996).
The implications of electoral competition in the absence of stable party identification is
increasingly an issue in established democracies too. Inglehart (1977, chapters 10–12) has
Richard Rose and William Mishler
231
argued that because the contemporary electorate is cognitively mobilized, much better educated
and thus better able than preceding generations to process political information, it is increasingly easy to decide how to vote without relying on habitual identification with a party. In a
television age, the contemporary electorate also finds it much easier to obtain information
about politics than before, a point especially true of a post-Communist regime. Extending this
concept, Dalton, (1996, 213ff) describes an increasing portion of the electorate as apartisan,
people without a party identification but not apathetic or apolitical. They are cognitively alert
to what is happening politically and sufficiently educated to evaluate political issues by themselves without needing party labels as cues.
Communist regimes encouraged their subjects to develop a high level of cognitive awareness
of politics in order to identify party dictates that had to be obeyed and those that could be
ignored or evaded. In addition, people needed sophistication to discriminate between what was
true and false in party-controlled media. The legacy may be an electorate of sophisticated
sceptics. Such sceptics may be more sophisticated than counterparts in a stable democracy,
since the penalties for misunderstanding Communist party rhetoric were greater. Today, the
scepticism of Central and East Europeans shows up in low levels of trust in the media, in
parties and in Parliament (Mishler and Rose, 1997). Scepticism encourages people to be more
likely to name a party they would never vote for than to identify positively with a party.
Democracy is secure from would-be dictators if the electorate is sceptical about their promises. However, democratic governors are also vulnerable to sceptics, for voters without a positive party identification will be quick to turn against politicians who do not perform as they
would like. Even though sceptics place a low value on politicians and parties, they place a
high value on free, competitive elections. In post-Communist political systems, sceptical voters
maintain democracy by exercising a central democratic right: voting to turn the rascals out of
office and give power to a democratic alternative.
Acknowledgements
The New Democracies Barometer survey data analysed here was organized by the Paul Lazarsfeld Society, Vienna, with the assistance of grants from the Austrian Federal Ministry for
Science and Research and the Austrian National Bank. Dr Christian Haerpfer and Evgeny
Tikhomirov were very helpful in the initial collection and processing of the data.
Notes
1. In Hungary, between 20 October–8 November 1995 GfK Hungaria interviewed 948 respondents age
18 or over; in Poland, GfK Poland interviewed 949 persons between 25 October–7 November; in
Romania, GfK Romania interviewed 1002 respondents between 1–11 December; and in Slovenia the
Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, interviewed 996 persons between 1–31 November
1995. Minor weighting was introduced as required to match age, gender and education to census
figures. Missing data for particular variables can result in the number of cases analysed being slightly
smaller than the numbers reported here.
2. It is possible that a larger listing of parties is more likely to include parties that are objectionable
to large numbers of people, albeit their existence may also be ignored unless the media specially
publicizes extreme parties as a threat. However, intense publicity also implies that the party has a
substantial positive appeal.
3. We ran an additional discriminant function analysis including respondents who did not name a party
they would never vote for. This did not improve the level of prediction and, as expected, the influences identified were sufficiently similar to Table 2 to add little to our understanding.
4. Further details available from the authors.
232
Negative and Positive Party Identification in Post-Communist Countries
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Appendix A
Variables in Analysis
Variable:
Mean
Age
2.9
Education
2.2
Gender: female
0.53
Urbanization
2.7
Church attendance
2.9
Communist Party member
0.31
Approval of former Communist regime
− 1.3
Approval of current regime
1.5
Prefers authoritarian regimes
0.64
Institutional trust
3.5
Political patience
0.69
Approves Communist macroeconomy
0.50
Approves current macroeconomy
− 0.31
Approves current family economic situation − 0.48
Family economic situation better in past
0.61
Fears inflation more than unemployment
0.74
Personal economic deprivations
0.97
Now or previously unemployed
0.16
VARIABLE
Age
Education
Gender: female
Urbanization
Church attendance
Standard deviation
1.5
1.0
0.50
1.0
1.7
0.46
5.3
4.1
0.82
0.99
0.46
5.1
4.2
1.2
1.0
0.44
0.94
0.36
DESCRIPTION
1 = 18–29; 2 = 30–39; 3 = 40–49; 4 = 50–
59; 5 = 60 +
1 = elementary; 2 = secondary; 3 =
vocational; 4 = university
1 = female; 0 = male
1 = 1–5000 population; 2 = 5001–20,000; 3
= 20,001–100,000; 4 = 100,001 + population
1 = never; 2 = once per year or less; 3 =
Occasionally; 4 = monthly; 5 = weekly
234
Negative and Positive Party Identification in Post-Communist Countries
Communist Party member
Approval of former Communist regime
Approval of current regime
Prefers authoritarian regimes
Institutional trust
Political patience
Approves Communist macroeconomy
Approves current macroeconomy
Approves current family economic situation
Family economic situation better in past
Fears inflation more than unemployment
Personal economic deprivations
Now or previously unemployed
1 = respondent or family member previously
Communist Party member; 0 = no family
members previously Communist Party
member
21-point scale ( − 10 to + 10) registering
satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the former
Communist political system
21-point scale ( − 10 to + 10) registering
satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the former
Communist political system
Number of alternatives to the current regime,
including the army, a strong leader,
communist rule and suspension of parliament,
that respondent somewhat/strongly supports
Average score on seven point scales (where
1 = maximum distrust and 7 = maximum
trust) for 15 social and political institutions
1 = “strongly/agree it will take years for the
government to deal with the problems
inherited from the Communists”; 0 =
“strongly/agree that if our system can’t
produce results soon, that’s a good reason to
try some other system . . .”
21-point scale ( − 10 to + 10) registering
satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the
Communist macroeconomy
21-point scale ( − 10 to + 10) registering
satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the current
macroeconomy
1 = Family’s current economic situation
“very/satisfactory”; 0 = “very/unsatisfactory”
1 = Family economic situation 5 years ago
“somewhat/much better” than today; 0 = past
economic situation “same, somewhat or much
worse.”
1 = fears inflation somewhat/much more than
unemployment; 0 = fears unemployment
much/somewhat more
Number of items respondent reports having
“often” or “sometimes done without”
including: food, heating, gasoline, clothes,
medical care
1 = unemployed now or sometime during
past year; 0 = not