La competizione partitica nei paesi in via di democratizzazione. Spagna ed Europa orientale in prospettiva comparata

N. 3/2004 PARTY COMPETITION IN DEMOCRATISING COUNTRIES: SPAIN AND EASTERN EUROPE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE by Barbara Pisciotta The article examines the emerging structure of party competition in the new democracies of Eastern Europe. Although it is too easy to conclude that post-communist party systems are too weak and too undeveloped compared to South and West European ones, there have been some characteristic tendencies of political and electoral behavior that may be emphasize: electoral and party fragmentation, high electoral volatility, declining confidence in parliament and parties, and emergence of “umbrella organizations”. The last tendency, which was relevant in the first phase of Spanish transition, suggests an important relationship between the persistence of umbrella organizations in the consolidating party systems and the stability of party competition. In some countries, the umbrella organizations were a transitory political phenomena and their loss (Spain) or transformation (Czech Republic) provided a party competition structured on Western socio-economic divisions; in other countries, the persistence of this type of party organization provided a no stable and definite party competition, in which the one division that seems to exist everywhere – as Kay Lawson pointed out – is that between the minority who are doing well in the post-communist struggle and want to do better, and the majority who are doing poorly and want to reestablish some measure of pre-revolutionary social security (Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia).