The addition of Central and Eastern Europe to the laboratory of subjects for comparative politics is a welcome consequence of postcommunist transformation. Scholars of the region now draw more firmly on a repertoire of theory and methods from the discipline as a whole, as well as their historical insight and detailed understanding of particular countries within the region. These studies are exemplary in that regard. They pose clear questions arising from broad theoretical concerns, they answer them by mobilizing an array of qualitative approaches and sophisticated quantitative methods, and they structure their arguments by a series of building blocks with an explanatory focus.
Kevin Deegan-Krause asks a familiar question about Slovakia, namely, why democratization faltered so badly before its resumption following the 1998 elections. However, the question effectively changes when it becomes a comparative one: Why did the Czech Republic maintain its (albeit not untroubled) democratic trajectory, while Slovakia slid away from and then returned to its democratic path? How can one explain both the divergence of the two paths and their subsequent reconvergence? Previous explanations proved only partial, explaining why Slovakia was different (hence the shift toward authoritarianism) or why the Czech Republic and Slovakia were similar (hence both could sustain democratic development).
Deegan-Krause's argument centers firstly on the concept of “institutional accountability,” a condition of mutual institutional restraint and respect for jurisdictional boundaries, drawn largely from the work of Guillermo O'Donnell and Andreas Schedler (G. O'Donnell, “Horizontal Accountability in New Democracies,” in L. D. A. Schedler and M. Plattner, eds., The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies, 1999, 29–51; and Andreas Schedler, “Conceptualizing Accountability,” idem, 13–28). During the mid-1990s, Slovakia's ruling government under Vladimir Mečiar pursued a strategy of escalating attacks on the institutions intended to hold it accountable. In the Czech Republic, by contrast, “violations of institutional accountability never constituted a systematic pattern” (p. 7).
Although the tracking of the “systematic encroachment” by the Slovak government after 1994 is meticulous and pertinent, it would have been helpful to have a clearer conceptualization of the negative dimensions of accountability “encroachments” and “violations.” Much of what the Mečiar governments did was legal, while many of their efforts—including use of patronage, control of state broadcasting, and the weakening of the opposition role in parliament—were mirrored in attempts to expand executive power (almost) wherever postcommunist governments enjoyed a secure parliamentary majority. Weak institutions, ambiguous overlap of jurisdictions, and lack of precedent helped make this possible. Indeed, in Poland, a new word was invented for stretching interpretation of the Constitution beyond the bounds of credibility: falandization (falandyzacja), after President Lech Wałęsa's legal adviser. In 2006, the Polish Law and Justice coalition pursued a similar strategy to that of the “early Mečiar.” The new Slovak coalition of 2006, once again including Mečiar's Movement for Democratic Society (HZDS) and the Slovak nationalists, appeared to have acted with some restraint in its early months. Whether institutional constraints became firmer after the deposing of HZDS in 1998 is not clear. Nor is it quite clear when the story actually ends; the Dzurinda government receives patchier attention, and there is no discussion of the further fate of the parties in the 2002 election.
Of course, the main force of Deegan-Krause's argument lies in adducing the ways in which legal means provided the basis for extralegal means of institutional assault, and in any case this is only part of his story. The second dimension is that of the electorate, the issues that distinguished it (internally within Slovakia and in contrast with the Czech Republic), and the sources of division. Essentially, those who voted for parties of the Mečiar coalition came to care little about accountability, while those who opposed those parties came to care more (and triumphed in 1998). Mečiar himself used nationalism to justify violations of institutional accountability, and he played a major role both in the mobilization of nationalism and in the subsequent rapid alignment of nationalist and antiaccountability attitudes. In the homogeneous Czech Republic, the national issue was irrelevant, and political competition centered on the economy. Nor was there an “accountability divide” in the Czech Republic. After a nod to the religious support of the Christian Democrats, one can treat economic issues as fundamental to political choice in the Czech Republic.
Deegan-Krause certainly discusses the key dimension of Czech political development, but he does not give it the fundamental weight it deserves. After independence, the Czech Republic had only one secure majority government (1992–96). The exclusion of the unreformed Communist Party, in a country differing from Slovakia in its deeper rejection of the old regime, reduced opportunities for coalition formation. Vaclav Klaus, though a centralizer and from the outset unenthusiastic about the development of civil society, achieved, like Mečiar, a second election victory; but his new minority government was dependent upon opposition votes for key legislation. It was soon wracked with dissension, it did not endure, and Klaus did not return to power as party leader. Nor did the 1998 Czech Social Democratic Party ČSSD government have a majority (one cannot regard the Civic Democratic Party [ODS]as an “informal member” of that government, p. 105), while its ČSSD successor in 2002 had a wafer-thin unreliable majority, unable even to prevent Klaus's election to the presidency and often dependent in practice on communist support. Political stalemate persisted in 2006, with an ODS comeback but an indecisive election outcome and ensuing difficulties of government formation. The establishment of the Senate, albeit delayed, constituted another institutional check on the executive, compared to Slovakia's unicameralism. Thus parliament, stronger in the absence of solid governing majorities and split into two chambers, did (pace Deegan-Krause, p. 226) create a stronger institutional barrier to encroachment in the Czech Republic.
Jason Wittenburg's study of Hungary is more narrowly focused and his puzzle is of a different sort, but it is also linked to issues of general theoretical concern to the democratization process. If the Czech Republic and Slovakia offer profound similarities in (inter alia) their shared history of a common state, their postcommunist institutional structures, and the attitudes of their populations, Hungary constitutes an “unlikely” and “ironic” case for the persistence of political preferences from the precommunist period. Yet despite profound changes in the shape of the economy and the class structure, and with a long-lasting authoritarian regime inimical to autonomous social organization and committed to an overt socialization program to generate “New Socialist Man,” the distribution of the right-wing vote exhibited “extraordinary” continuity between the last effectively competitive election of 1945 and the second postcommunist election of 1994. (1994 was significant because the first free election in 1990 was exceptional, not least because so many left-inclined voters voted against the reformed communists as a manifestation of a general desire for regime change.) Existing theories of attitudinal persistence did not resolve this conundrum, since neither expressive nor instrumental approaches would predict Hungarian continuity after the resumption of democratic politics.
Wittenberg finds the answer to his persistence puzzle—continuity alongside high levels of electoral volatility—in the religious life of the community. Unfortunately, there is no space here to question how far 1945 can be taken as a departure point for embedded political preferences that then persisted, save to note that the case is not made simply because 1945 was (mostly) a free election. However, the uncovering of the mechanism is persuasive. Wittenberg reviews the generally familiar story of communist attitudes and policies toward the churches and a catalog of mechanisms similar to those used elsewhere in the region to undermine religious beliefs and practices. His painstaking documentation of the activism, counterstrategies, and resistance of many priests at the local (settlement) level shows how the Catholic Church in particular could foster social interaction outside party auspices. It is in the participation in and maintenance of the church community, signaled by children's participation in religious instruction, that the explanation for persistence can be found. In fact, this seems quite compatible with a modified “encapsulation” or subcultural explanation.
The unravelling of one element of sources of the Right is an important contribution to the understanding of Hungary's distinctive development after 1990: a gradual polarization into two left–right blocs, represented by the Socialists (MSzP) and (through its transmogrification) the Alliance of Young Democrats (Fidesz). Religiosity has long been identified as a marker of the Hungarian Right (unlike in Slovakia). I expect that in practice, few would take issue with Wittenberg's categorisation of particular Hungarian parties but would not necessarily follow his argument. If the Right is defined as “the principal opposition to their ‘leftist’ opponents” (p. 37), then in 1990 Fidesz and the Alliance of Free Democrats (SzDSz) also belong here. Fidesz in particular was bitterly anticommunist. If “post-communist rightist parties are palpably more secular” than their precommunist counterparts, then—given that virtually all parties favored the move to a capitalist economy—what is the basis for distinguishing a liberal bloc as secular and free market?
One should not end on a note of criticism of two fine works. The issue of divergent and congruent paths might also be interestingly applied to Slovenia and Croatia, with similar histories of sharing a common state and no history (unlike Serbia) of independence. Divergent patterns of political socialization could also be explored in Poland, where there remain strong regional differences in religious and secular attitudes to politics. Both authors have provided frameworks of wider potential interest. Their studies are interesting and cogently argued. This reviewer learned a great deal from them, and that is the best test of all.
