Suchergebnisse

This paper considers the degree to which the new parties in post-communist Poland orientate towards, & are dependent upon, the state for their funding. All the main Polish parties & groupings surveyed believe that the state should play a continuing or greater role in providing them with financial support, & both the level & scope of state funding has been increased & extended since 1989. There is also some evidence pointing to the emergence of a party cartel with state funding provisions that discriminate heavily in favour of those that achieve the greatest electoral success. However, the Polish party system is still too fluid, undeveloped & lacking a stable enough pattern of interactions for a party cartel to have fully emerged. Moreover, the distinction between 'successor' parties with their roots in the communist period & completely 'new' parties is not necessarily as helpful in identifying the varying levels of state-orientation as hypothesised. Adapted from the source document.

BEFORE CONSIDERING WHETHER OR NOT PARTIES ARE SEEKING TO ORGANIZE AND ENCAPSULATE THEIR VOTERS IN EASTERN EUROPE, IT IS NECESSARY TO DETERMINE WHAT KIND OF ELECTORATES THEY ARE ATTRACTING. THIS ARTICLE STUDIES THE TYPE OF PARTY THAT IS DEVELOPING IN EASTERN EUROPE BY EXAMINING THE ELECTORAL STRATEGIES AND POLICIES OF THE SIX MAIN PARTIES AND GROUPINGS TO HAVE EMERGED IN POLAND SINCE THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF PLURALIST POLITICS IN 1989.

THIS ARTICLE SEEKS TO RELATE HYPOTHESES ABOUT HOW PARTY STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION WILL DEVELOP IN POSTCOMMUNIST EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE TO EMPIRICAL RESEARCH CONDUCTED AT THE LOCAL LEVEL IN POLAND. THE RESEARCH CONDUCTED IN POLAND CONFIRMS A PATTERN OF WEAK GROUNDING IN CIVIL SOCIETY AND DEPENDENCE ON THE STATE FOR FINANCIAL AND MATERIAL RESOURCES, TOGETHER WITH CENTRALIZED DECISION-MAKING COMBINED WITH SECTORAL LOCAL AUTONOMY. OF THE "NEW" PARTIES, ONLY SOLIDARITY ELECTORAL ACTION HAS BEEN ABLE TO MATCH THE "SUCCESSOR" PARTIES' DOMINANCE BY UTILIZING THE SOLIDARITY TRADE UNION'S LOCAL ORGANIZATIONAL NETWORK.

This book fills a gap in the existing literature on how parties and party systems are developing in the new democracies of post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. It provides the first detailed, empirically based examination from a structural and organizational perspective of the new parties and political groupings that have emerged in Poland since the collapse of communism in 1989. The author develops his argument on the basis of an analysis of five key structural and organizational variables: the internal distribution of power and modes of representation within the parties; the role of the party bureaucracy; the relationship between parties and their electorates; the development of parties as membership organizations; and the relationship between parties and the state. As the first in-depth, empirically grounded single-country study of party structure and organization in post-communist Eastern Europe, the book provides an opportunity to draw broader conclusions about the process of Central and East European party development and will contribute significantly towards the development of a post-communist political party model. Szczerbiak sheds light on an important aspect of the more general process of post-communist democratization in the region and provides a major contribution to one of the least-explored areas of transition

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