The Party Systems

Abstract

The party systems in the four Visegrad states are still young, fragile and unstable. They are still developing, though they have reached different stages of development. Some, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic, show sign of stabilisation. This is less obvious in Poland and the Slovak Republic. There has been only one normal election (excluding the first transition elections in 1989–90) in Hungary (1994), three in Poland (1991, 1993 and 1997) and one each in the independent Czech Republic (1996) and Slovakia (1994). This is still a very narrow basis for party systems to develop to maturity and stability. This will take time. However, the transformation of the former communist parties is virtually complete in Hungary and Poland, is far advanced in Slovakia, where the new post-communist parties have been returned to power, but has not started in the Czech Republic, where the KSCM remains unreconstructed and actually lost support in 1996. The centre-right part of the political spectrum remains chaotic in Hungary and above all in Poland and Slovakia, but not in the Czech Republic. Even here, the battle for domination of the centre-right between conservatives and christian democrats is not fully over, though it now seems that christian democracy cannot become the major political force on the right there.