Pártpolitika a posztkommunista világban és Nyugat-Európában

The article contrasts the structural properties of Western and Eastern European party systems and analyzes the converging and diverging trends in the two regions. The process of European unification highlights the differences between new and old democracies, especially given the resistance of party systems to Europeanization. The article shows that many specificities of recent Western patterns, particularly the weakening social functions of political parties, are more pronounced in post-Communist countries than in the West. At the same time the cited data prove that in some areas (e. g., the institutionalized role of parties in government) the most consequential divide is not between the old and the new democracies, but within the post-Communist region. The consolidation of the party systems in post-Communist countries is well underway, but there are notable exceptions, and some aspects of it (e.g., stability of parties) seems to be related more to certain institutional factors and to the level of polarization, than to the general level of democratic development.