University of Sussex
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

Who gets in?: Ideology and government membership in Central and Eastern Europe

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 09:36 authored by Lee Michael Savage
Studies of government participation in established democracies demonstrate that ideological factors significantly influence whether or not a party gets into government. Thus far, research on government participation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) indicates that ideological considerations have been insignificant. This is unexpected given what we know from the literature on parties and party systems in the region. Party systems have become more stable and parties themselves rapidly developed identifiable policy platforms. I argue that one of the reasons for this disparity between the government participation literature in new and established democracies is the failure to understand the ideological space across the CEE region. Although party competition can be conceptualized as a one-dimensional space in each country, the policies that underpin notions of ‘left’ and ‘right’ vary. Imposing a definition of the ideological space that was developed for West European countries ignores the ideological context of CEE. This article finds that when the left–right space is defined in a way that is meaningful to CEE countries, ideological factors are highly significant indicators of government membership across the region. Specifically, ideological proximity to the formateur and proximity to the median significantly increase a party’s probability of participating in government

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Party Politics

ISSN

1354-0688

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Issue

4

Volume

20

Page range

547-562

Department affiliated with

  • Politics Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-05-30

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC