Am Mittwoch, den 16.06.2010 hält Professor Frances Millard im Hörsaal P4 (18-20 Uhr) einen Gastvortrag über die Entstehung neuer Parteien in Mitteleuropa, zu dem alle Mitglieder und Freunde des Instituts herzlich eingeladen sind. Frances Millard ist eine der führenden Ost- und Mitteleuropaforscherinnen und publiziert seit mehr als drei Jahrzehnten kontiniuerlich über die Länder der Region, insbesondere über Polen.  Hier der Abstract ihres Vortrags:

The comparative politics literature suggests that successful new parties are a rare
phenomenon in liberal democratic politics. This was also predicted to be true of new
democracies for four main reasons. First, existing successful parties would reduce access to
the political system by tightening the rules of entry after an early highly permissive period
when the political system was very open. Secondly, the widespread introduction of state
funding of parties creates a huge obstacle to resource-poor new parties. Thirdly, parties would
become increasingly coherent, both organisationally and ideologically; and the incentive to
split would decline. Fourthly, voters would gradually develop party loyalties leading to a
decline in electoral volatility and reducing the incentives for party entrepreneurs to chance
their arm in the electoral arena.
These are plausible arguments. However, there is no sign of the decline of new parties in the
region, although there are country variations: For a time Latvia led the field for the number of
new parties, but this changed at the last election. Recently Lithuania has seen a spurt in
successful parties. In 2004 the new Labour Party came first. In 2008 the National Revival
Party was composed entirely of national television celebrities and pop music stars with little
political experience, yet it won over 15% of the list vote and entered government. Even the
apparently solid two-bloc Hungarian system looked rather different after the 2010 election.
The election saw two new entrants to the parliamentary arena, the extreme right Jobbik and
the Green-Liberal Politics Can Be Different, along with the disappearance of two parties that
had been present since 1990. The Czech Christian Democratic offshoot TOP is expected to
enter the Czech parliament in June 2010.
This paper reviews the nature of new parties of Central and Eastern Europe. In general they
did not appeal to new sections of the electorate, they did not exploit ideological gaps on the
political spectrum, nor did they raise new issues hitherto ignored by the existing parties. The
most plausible explanations for their success lie in the opportunities for party entrepreneurs to
respond to elite failure. Elites did not succeed in maintaining voter loyalty. Distrust of parties
left the way open for voters to respond to offers from new parties.