Conclusions: An Institutional Model to Predict the Number of Parties in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

This study has drawn a new picture of the formation of party systems in post-communist democracies in Europe. Eighteen years after the beginning of the transition towards democracy, party systems in Central and Eastern Europe have adopted very different structures across the twenty democracies in the region. In some cases, such as in Hungary or Albania, systems with two major parties and a few small competitors have emerged, whereas other countries, such as Poland, Ukraine or Russia, have suffered over a few elections from hyper-fractionalisation and many micro-parties, and Latvia, Lithuania and Bosnia still have extremely large party systems. This is of major importance, since the number of parties is considered to be an important variable in comparative politics and comparative political economy, having impacts on governability and representation, and also on policy outcomes, among which are economic performance or violent conflicts.