Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/247266 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Citation: 
[Journal:] Politologický časopis - Czech Journal of Political Science [ISSN:] 1211-3247 [Volume:] 24 [Issue:] 3 [Publisher:] Masarykovy Univerzity v Brne [Place:] Brno [Year:] 2017 [Pages:] 302-329
Publisher: 
Masarykovy Univerzity v Brne, Brno
Abstract: 
This paper proposes an updated approach to explaining two outcomes unforeseen by the existing comparative literature on post-communist successor parties: 1) the electoral stabilization (and even growth) and 2) the divergent developments of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS; later DIE LINKE) in Germany and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM). The paper proceeds by integrating a critical reexamination of earlier studies’ organizational and programmatic explanations of electoral success with an analysis of the party-system level of government-opposition signaling and positioning vis-à-vis other parties, which can be expected to take on heightened importance in ‘third-generation elections.’ It is argued that both parties’ successes were tied to a strategic orientation toward going beyond their confinement in a delimited electoral ‘milieu’ and occupying a wider electoral ‘vacuum’ to the left of their Social Democratic competitors, albeit with early programmatic modernization and delayed organizational centralization in the PDS as opposed to a near-total continuity of programmatic non-reform and decentralized organization in the KSČM. The findings suggest that earlier studies specifically overlook the impact of subsequent (‘third-generation’) iterations of party competition on successor-party success as well as the mediation of organizational and programmatic factors by the party-system level.
Subjects: 
Czech Republic
electoral politics
Germany
party system
post-communist successor parties
Published Version’s DOI: 
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Accepted Manuscript (Postprint)

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