Three Essays on the Mainstream Right in Post-Communist Central and Southeast Europe
Open AccessThis dissertation seeks to conceptualize, describe, and explain how post-communist mainstream right parties have responded to the specific challenges that they have encountered over the last 35 years as they navigated an increasingly volatile party political scene in Central and Southeast Europe and as they wrestled with massive geopolitical, economic, and social transformations that the countries of the region underwent in this period. The first essay in this dissertation is a descriptive exercise that conceptualizes the fundamental tensions at the core of the post-communist mainstream right political project, which seeks to preserve national values and traditions while economically modernizing post-communist societies through Euro-Atlantic cooperation. The first essay also charts the divergent strategies of centrist blurring on salient identity issues and radicalizing culture wars that the post-communist mainstream right parties have used to handle this fundamental tension of mainstream right politics. This essay draws on the comparative expert survey data about political parties and an original qualitative survey of the ways that the post-communist mainstream right parties have handled the increasingly salient issues of sexual morality politics, such as the rights of the LGBTQ+ population and women’s reproductive rights. The second essay argues that one of the consequences of this strategic divergence within the post-communist mainstream right is that the radicalized mainstream right parties have strengthened and differentiated their party brands in a way that has given them greater staying power over the last 35 years. By contrast, the blurring strategy of the centrist mainstream right parties has diluted these parties’ brands and made them vulnerable to recurring cycles of electoral and organizational reinvention and replacement. This essay draws on an in-depth controlled comparison of the divergent strategies and trajectories of the mainstream right political parties in Bulgaria and Slovenia. The third essay argues that one of the causes of divergent strategies used by the post-communist mainstream parties is the cross-national variation in the relative size and attitudinal polarization of social coalitions available for mobilization through one or the other strategy. Using cross-national survey data, this essay shows that the Višegrad countries and Slovenia exhibit greater attitudinal polarization on salient identity issues between occupational groups than Southeast European countries. Also, within the former group of countries, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia have remarkably rapid educational and occupational transitions that made it electorally viable for their mainstream right political parties to pursue the radicalizing culture wars strategy in opposition to these rapid changes.
- All rights reserved
Notice to Authors
If you are the author of this work and you have any questions about the information on this page, please use the Contact form to get in touch with us.