Kevin Krause
Department of Government
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556-5639
Krause.4@nd.edu
Research for this article was supported a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Information Agency, and the US Department of State, which administers the Russia, Eurasian, and East European Research Program (Title VIII), a grant from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, and a seed-money grant from the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
In December of 1994 Slovakia's Prime Minister-designate, Vladimir Meciar, made a public call for "sedem statocnych"--seven braves--from opposition parties who would join the new governing coalition and give it the three-fifths majority necessary for amen ding the constitution and choosing a new president. Although Meciar's phrasing evoked the Slovak title of the popular American film, The Magnificent Seven and although the call was accompanied by the subtle but clear promise of rewards, no member s of the opposition came forward. The open attempt by one leader to undermine the discipline of other parties and his inability to succeed are together symbolic of the fundamental importance of political parties in shaping both the conflicts and the outc omes of Slovak political system. The main struggles within Slovakia's post-revolution politics have been fought within the context of a political party system. In the past two years especially, many of those battles have directly concerned that party sy stem's future shape.
In light of these developments, an understanding of Slovakia's party system should underlie any understanding of Slovak politics. Although there has been considerable attention to Slovakia's parties from many Slovak and from some western political scien tists, there has been little systematic attempt to understand Slovakia's party system as a whole. There also has been little comparison of Slovakia's system to those of other countries, particularly countries in Latin America with arguably similar experi ences of recent democratization. Comparison has been made even more difficult by the tendency of authors studying different sets of party systems to emphasize different features of those party systems. Where Giovanni Sartori (Sartori, 1976) explores Wes tern European party systems in terms of fragmentation and polarization, Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully (Mainwaring & Scully, 1995) explore Latin American party systems using measures of institutionalization and Herbert Kitschelt (Kitschelt, 1995) exa mines Eastern European party systems (with the notable exception of Slovakia) in terms of programmatic structuring. All three sets of authors believe that the criteria they study is essential for democracy in the region they study. All may offer lessons for Slovakia. In this paper, therefore, I will attempt to synthesize those characteristics of party systems that Sartori, Mainwaring and Scully, and Kitschelt believe to be important for democracy and I will use those characteristics to clarify Slovakia 's party system. Where possible I also will attempt to compare these results to corresponding cases in other regions. In many cases the available sources will not permit a systematic analysis or an effective comparison. Since this paper will be the bas is for of a much larger research project, those gaps will be filled here with reflections on how such data might be obtained and interpreted.
From the data that is available, I will argue that Slovakia's party system shares many system-wide characteristics with other successfully democratizing countries in Latin America and East Central Europe, but that it differs from many of them, particular ly its nearer neighbors, in the dimensions and polarization of its party competition and the legitimacy of the party system as a whole. These differences in turn stem from differences in the organization and electoral incentives offered by two rival grou ps of parties. In concrete terms, the reliance by Slovakia's largest party--the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia's (HZDS)--and a few smaller parties on clientelistic and charismatic incentives allows and even encourages a conception of a winner-take-al l democracy with few limitations on the elected leader. Opposition parties have gained public support through an almost exclusive use of programmatic incentives, but these incentives tend to highlight differences between the opposition parties and place limits on the type of acceptable political behavior, thus keeping opposition parties divided among themselves and reluctant to adopt successful tactics used by HZDS. The current shrill pitch of Slovak politics reflect efforts by each of these camps to ti p the delicate balance that makes it difficult for either to pursue its vision of Slovakia's political future. Because one of those visions does not necessarily include a competitive multiparty system, the outcome of this struggle is particularly importa nt.
Characteristics of Party Systems
Many prominent researchers suggest that political party systems play an important role in shaping democracies (Lijphart, 1994; Sartori, 1976; Schumpeter, 1942). In Western democracies parties serve as organized, two-way links between the people and the government, both representing popular will and helping to shape it. Party systems bring these multi-purpose organizations into direct contact with one another, providing an arena in which they can compete with one another or cooperate to achieve policy o bjectives and ensure party survival. Many argue (although their precise prescriptions differ) that the quality of democracy may depend largely on the characteristics of the political party system.
The Questions
To understand party systems researchers have asked a number of different questions. Giovanni Sartori's 1976 Parties and Party Systems, represents an early and still influential attempts to look at party systems in a systematic and comparative way . Sartori argues that the number of component parties offers a useful measure of the complexity and internal dynamics of a party system as long as it is supplemented by a measure of ideological distance, especially in systems with more than two parties. Sartori argues that "three-to-five parties, viz., limited pluralism, have very different interactions than six-to-eight parties, viz. extreme pluralism," and further that, "the fragmentation of the party system can reflect either a situation of segmen tation, or a situation of polarization, i.e. of ideological distance"(Sartori, 1976, p. 126). The combination of large numbers of parties and large ideological distance between them has clear consequences for democracy: "... the chances of su rvival of the polarized polities cannot be appropriately assessed. Their 'external' fragility and exposure to exogenous crises--such as inflation for Weimar, and Algeria for France--cannot be doubted and remain a constant.... The thing we know for sure is that if a polity is centrifugal at all levels--electoral, parliamentary, and party leadership level--then it is doomed: It can only, and quickly, end in deflagration"(Sartori, 1976, pp. 144-5).
Mainwaring and Scully in their 1995 Building Democratic Institutions examine the institutionalization of party systems in Latin America. They by no means reject Sartori's criteria but argue that fragmentation and polarization are not sufficient t o understand the role of party systems in the development of democracy: "Parties in systems with similar structural features (for example, two distinct cases of polarized pluralism) can behave in very different ways. Conversely, parties in the same syste m can change their behavior markedly without any change in the elements that form the system"(Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p. 28). A better measure is institutionalization, the "process by which a practice or organization becomes well established and widel y known, if not universally accepted" (Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p. 4). To assess the degree of institutionalization, they offer four specific characteristics: 1) "stability in the rules and nature of inter-party competition," 2) parties with "somewhat stable roots in society," 3) all major actors affording "legitimacy to the electoral process and to parties," and 4) the "independent status and value of" party organizations (Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, pp. 4-5). It can be argued that the first and fourt h characteristics listed here each include two related but distinct characteristics. Concerning the first characteristic, the stability of "rules" of competition can be differentiated from the stability of "nature of competition," by which the authors ap pear to mean a stable roster of players of the democratic game. The fourth characteristic likewise incudes both an emphasis on the extent of party organization and an emphasis on the autonomy of that organization from party leaders. Separating these dis tinct notions leaves six characteristics. This makes the analysis more complicated but considerably clearer, particularly with regard to party organization. Whether the relevant characteristics number four or six, their presence or absence has played a role in the success or the failure of democracies of Latin America, according to Mainwaring and Scully. "[I]nstitutionalizing a party system," they argue, "is important to the process of democratic consolidation. Whether or not an institutionalized par ty system exists makes a big difference in the functioning of democratic politics. It is difficult to sustain modern mass democracy without an institutionalized party system (Mainwaring & Scully, 1995 pp.1-2).
Herbert Kitschelt (Kitschelt, 1994) offers yet another set of characteristics of party systems in his attempt to identify the "programmatically structured party system." Kitschelt's three categories largely reinforce but do not simply overlap those of M ainwaring and Scully. He looks for 1) "the extent of programmatic structuring of party systems", 2) "the dimensionality and configuration of the programmatic structuring" and 3) "the proximity and symmetry of elite judgments and the representativeness of party leaders' issue stances for the political preferences of their voters"(Kitschelt, 1994, p.1). In explaining the first of these characteristics, Kitschelt focuses particularly on the degree to which "parties announce identifiable and differing commi tments to realize binding political decisions and collective goods they intend to deliver to society, were their representatives elected to political office with sufficiently strong electoral support. As an alternative to programmatic structuring, party systems can be based on charismatic leader-follower relations and/or clientelistic networks of exchange"(Kitschelt, 1994, p.1). He explains these alternatives not only in terms of Max Weber's categories for legitimacy but also in terms of specific types of incentives to voters and politicians, and he argues that charismatic parties in their inherent instability will either disappear when the charisma fails or develop a new source of legitimacy, usually clientelist in form. The clientelist form, while it self stable, may undermine popular support for the democratic system by its constant use of material incentives which suggest that democracy is about payment for services rather than political choice. Kitschelt's second category--the dimensions and confi guration of programmatic structuring--echoes Sartori's measure of the degree of polarization while recognizing that parties may compete along a different axis than that used by Sartori or, indeed, that parties may compete on more than one axis. Kitschelt 's final category, correspondence between party elites and their voters, echoes Mainwaring and Scully's search for the stability of party roots in society, though Kitschelt looks at the same relationship in terms of the "responsiveness" of elites (Kitsche lt, 1994, p.2). Together, according to Kitschelt, these three characteristics shape democracy because "the structuring of party systems is a critical element of democratic 'consolidation,' a state of affairs in which all relevant collective choices are s ubordinated to democratically elected players and in which most relevant political players do not see opportunities to defect from the democratic system of rules"(Kitschelt, 1994, p.1).
A Synthesis
These characteristics identified by Sartori, Mainwaring and Scully and Kitschelt compete in explaining what it is about party systems that is important for democracy. They do not necessarily conflict, however, and many of the suggested characteristics a re quite similar, even complementary. It is on this basis that I assemble them here and attempt to organize them around common themes. The simple aggregation of party characteristics does not require a great deal of intellectual rigor, and violates the commandment of parsimony, but for studying Slovakia's party system this method has two clear advantages: first, for a system whose party system has not been systematically examined, it does not leave stones unturned; and second, it permits the use of the Slovak case to evaluate the relevance of each of these characteristics, thereby contributing to an improvements in the theoretical discussion of party systems in East Central Europe and elsewhere.
In organizing the characteristics identified by these authors, the most apparent distinction lies in the level of analysis. Certain of the party system characteristics investigated by these authors refer to qualities possessed by individual parties in t hemselves. These characteristics refer mainly to the dynamics of party organization and support and can be measured without knowledge about other parties. These characteristics can provide information about the party system when the information about th e individual parties is added together and patterns or trends become apparent. Within this category further distinctions can help to clarify and simplify the characteristics of party systems to be explored. In their questions about characteristics #4a a nd #4b, Mainwaring and Scully explore the extent and role of party organization. They ask on one hand whether a party is "territorial comprehensive", "well organized" and has its own resources, and on the other hand how party decision-making is organized and the extent to which "there is a tendency toward routinization of intra-party procedures, including those for gaining control of the party" such that parties is not "subordinated to the interests of ambitious leaders"(Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p. 5). The other three questions asked by these authors about individual parties concern the relationships between the party and its likely voters. Mainwaring and Scully's question #2 seeks to find out how deeply voters are committed to a party by looking at the stability of party voting within particular groups and at the penetration of party loyalty into everyday life. Conversely, Kitschelt's question #3 about the correspondence between the views of party elites and voters seeks to identify how committed p arty elites relate to their actual or potential voting base over time. Finally, and closely related to both of these questions is Kitschelt's' question #1 in which he seeks to know why voters support individual parties: programmatic, clien telistic or charismatic incentives or some combination of these.
In addition to party-specific characteristics which can be assembled to yield a general picture, the authors discuss other characteristics which refer to the inter-relationship between parties in a system. These are relational characterist ics since it would be impossible to know the number, variability, or ideological configuration of party competition without looking at all (here Sartori would specify "all relevant") parties. With these questions, as with those mentioned above, further d istinctions can help clarify research efforts. Sartori's question #1 about the number of parties identifies perhaps the most basic inter-party characteristic. According to Sartori, the number of parties must be considered along with the ideological dis tance, and Sartori therefore asks his question #2 about party polarization. But to deal effectively with polarization it is first necessary to know the axis whose poles are being examined. Here Kitschelt's exploration of the basis of party competition i n his question #2--with its willingness to consider multiple axes and schemes other than left-right polarization--complements and updates Sartori's earlier work. Finally, with their concern for institutionalization, Mainwaring and Scully add a time dimen sion to these considerations by asking in #1b whether the parties competing and the basis of their competition remain stable over time.
Two additional characteristics do not concern parties per se but the environment in which they operate. Mainwaring and Scully ask perhaps the most fundamental and difficult question for party systems in still-consolidating democracies in their question # 3 which asks whether "the major political actors accord legitimacy to the electoral process and to parties"(Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p.5) Mainwaring and Scully do not specify who should be considered under the category 'major political actor,' but in t he course of their explanation they mention as major actors both party and non-party political elites as well as the voting public. A solid answer to this question must therefore provide some indication to the legitimacy of the party system among all of these various actors. In addition to this question, Mainwaring and Scully also ask about the formal and informal rules which shape a party system from outside. Although they do not ask about the nature of these rules, they again add a time dimens ion by asking in their question #1a whether those rules remain stable over time, without which the other aspects of the party system would themselves be unstable.
For the sake of convenience, I have listed in Table 1. the questions which can be used to examine the various characteristics of a party system. These questions are deeply intertwined and cannot be rank-ordered o r always be dealt with independent of one another. Keeping that in mind, I simply have assembled them into an order that will help to tell the story of the Slovak party system since 1989.
Party-Specific Characteristics
An understanding of a party system requires a look at certain particular aspects of individual political parties. In this section I will ask five questions about the major parties in the Slovak political party system and, where appropriate, the smaller parties. Since comparative research on particular aspects of specific political parties is time and energy intensive, much work remains to be done. Thus many answers in this section must still be reached through indirect methods or left tentative pending further research.
Extent of Organization
These similarities and differences in party system stability reflect similar patterns at the party level. Mainwaring and Scully contend that "party structures are firmly established if they are territorial comprehensive, if they are well organized, and if they have resources of their own"(Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p. 5). In terms of scope, organization and resources, most of Slovakia's larger parties can claim to qualify in most of these categories. By the elections of 1992, observes Darina Malova, " most of the large parliamentary parties had their own territorial structure, registered members, party fees, centralized organizational structure and standard procedures which meant that they provided for at least one paid position at district level"(Malo va, 1994a, p. 138). Most of these parties, she continues, "have developed well-organized national structures with often much more than only one paid official. In each district, some of these parties have built special regional coordinating and informati on centers especially before the elections. Currently in the Slovak Republic each party employs a professional staff of about 100 people"(Malova, 1994a, p. 138).
The results of the parliamentary and local elections of 1994 help to confirm Malova's observations. Each of the parties and coalitions elected to parliament in 1992--the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), the Party of the Democratic Left (SDL), the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), the Slovak National Party (SNS) and the coalition of Hungarian parties including Coexistence (Egytteles-Spoluzitie-Wspolnota-Souziti, here ESWS.), the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (MKDM), the Hungarian Civic Party (MPP)--proved able in 1994 to run an election campaign which gained more than the 5% threshold of votes needed for election to parliament. In addition to these, several parliamentary splinter groups from existing parties--the Democratic Unio n (DU), and the Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS)--also managed to organize themselves as electoral parties in their own right and to run successful campaigns for seats in parliament. Each of these parties or coalitions managed to field candidates in each of Slovakia's four electoral districts, to organize and to pay for nationwide election campaigns and to establish central and regional offices. Slovak election law eases the difficulties of funding for existing parties by providing a subsidy on a per vote basis for parties achieving a certain threshold of votes. In the election of 1992 this subsidy amounted to 15 SK (approximately 0.50 USD) for all parties gaining more than two percent of the vote. Before the 1994 election the ruling coalition of DU, SDL and KDH raised the threshold to three percent while also raising the subsidy to 60 Sk (approximately 2.00 USD) per vote (Malova, 1995b). Limitations on campaigning and campaign spending as well as limited but free public broadcast time have h elped to hold down the financial needs of parties and reducing the seriousness of financial limitations.
As evidence of the territorial spread of many of these parties is the rough similarity between their success at the Slovak-wide and local levels. As Table 2.. indicates, four parties and electoral coalitions--the present-day HZDS, SDL, KDH, and MK--have succeeded in winning a substantial number of both parliamentary and local council/mayoral seats in both the 1990 and 1994 elections. Several other parties have gained election to parliament without as much succes s at the local level. The sharp difference between the success of SNS at the republic and local levels in 1990 narrowed considerably in 1994 but largely because of a sharp drop in support at the parliamentary rather than a considerable increase at the lo cal level. The two new parliamentary parties in 1994--DU and ZRS--performed even worse at the local level. The failure of DU to win a great number of council seats or mayoralties reflects its lack of appeal and organization in Slovakia's villages and sm all towns. DU won most of its council seats and mayoralties it larger municipalities including 15.37% of municipal representatives in the capital of Bratislava and 12.20% of representatives in Slovakia's second largest city, Kosice. The similarly poor s howing of ZRS suggests a low level of organization throughout Slovakia. As a new party without even a strong parliamentary contingent before the 1994 election, it has lacked important resources for developing a stronger central administration (Meseznikov , 1995).
Like Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary each seem to have developed a number of parties with an extensive central organization, regular and sufficient sources of funding and a fairly broad local base. In addition to these, however, there r emain in each country smaller parties like Slovakia's ZRS and perhaps also its DU which lack one or more of these basic elements and struggle from election period to election period. A study of Czech political parties by Petr Kopecky finds a similar mix of parties including both formally centralized parties with adequate resources and also poorly organized parties which nevertheless manage to edge past the 5% electoral threshold for election to parliament (Kopecky, 1995). Reschova's analysis of local el ectoral results finds a similar--perhaps even greater--penetration of the major Czech parties into local political arenas (Reschova, 1995). In both the Czech and Slovak republics, it appears that the largest parties have mastered the complexities of crea ting and sustaining a reasonably effective organization.
Party Decision-Making
In an institutionalized party system, argue Mainwaring and Scully, "party organizations matter." By this they refer not only to the above discussed topic of the degree of party organization, but to the way that decision-making occurs within that organiz ation. In institutionalized party systems, party organizations "are not subordinated to the interests of ambitious leaders; they acquire an independent status and value of their own" and in practical terms this translates into "a tendency toward routiniz ation of intra-party procedures, including those for gaining control of the party"(Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p. 5). Although important, research on these decision-making processes within Slovak parties are often hampered by the unwillingness of parties to share these sensitive internal processes with outsiders. Still, some information is available, and not all party decision-making is--or even can be--kept private. It is possible to make tentative conclusions about how and by whom party decisions are made by looking at the conditions which shape party decision-making in Slovakia, the statements of party leaders, and the frequent cases of intra-party conflict which spill out into the public arena.
The study of Slovak parties does not lack for formal models of how party decision-making works. All Slovak parties boast party statues which establish how different degrees and types of decision-making powers are divided between various party organs. T he work of Slovak researcher Martin Urmanic suggests that Slovak parties are readily able to provide a formal organizational chart which shows the direction and flow of information and decisions among party offices. Nearly all of these organizational sch emes combine a hierarchy of local, regional, and national offices and at the highest level some combination of infrequently meeting congresses, regularly meeting councils, and sitting executive committees (Urmanic, 1995). Urmanic admits that it is diffi cult to know how whether information and commands really follow the specified arrows and whether the boxes on paper are not simply on paper.
It is necessary then, to look at more revealing measures of party decision-making processes. Janda in his broadly ranging study of political parties throughout the world uses a number of specific criteria to study the degree of decentralization in polit ical parties. His results show a wide spectrum of party types, ranging from those where a single individual or small group holds tight control over all aspects of political life to those where the central party is only in a position to provide some coord ination to individual candidates and local and regional party organizations who have considerable freedom in their political stance and their use of political resources (Janda, 1980) Janda's study uses a seven item scale for measuring party decentralizat ion: control over communications, administration of discipline, selection of legislative candidates, allocation of funds, selection of national party leader, formulation of party policy, and nationalization of structure. For most of these indicators the information for Slovakia remains anecdotal rather than systematic, but certain conditions in Slovakia make it easier to reach conclusions in several of these categories.
Constitutional and legal institutions discourage decentralization in the realms of candidate selection and party finance. Slovakia's single republic-wide elect body, the National Council of the Slovak Republic, is elected on the basis of proportional re presentation from party lists of candidates. Although preferential votes allow voter preference to move a candidate toward the top of a list (Malova, 1995b, p. 7), specific provisions make such occasions unusual. A 1994 survey of Slovak parliamentarians conducted by Malova found that over 85% of those responding had been chosen for their position by the party. Another 8% responded that they put themselves forward for nomination, and 5% stated that they had been put forward by social organizations outsi de the party. Even in these cases, however, their final nomination had first to be accepted by the party (Malova, 1995b, p. 7). When choosing and accepting party candidates, it appears that among Slovak parties it is the republic-wide level at which the final decisions are made. Although Slovak electoral law requires separate party lists in each of the four electoral district, any significant regional variations ultimately depend on the central party organization's willingness to allow--or inability to prevent--regionally decentralized candidate selection.
Slovakia's system of state finance for parties also strengthens tendencies toward centralization. The state subsidy to parties based on their performance in parliamentary elections, the largest source of funds for most parties, is paid to central party organizations. Membership revenue allows more opportunities for decentralization but although most major parties have memberships numbering in the thousands, the numbers are too small and the fees to low to provide a financial windfall to local and regi onal party organizations (Urmanic, 1995). Electoral law which guarantees parties a particular amount of broadcasting time during election campaigns likewise provides incentives for parties to use Slovakia's centralized state-run radio and television broa dcasters. The small size of Slovakia and the nation-wide distribution of its largest newspapers also encourage parties to control their communication at the national level. This is particularly true for those parties with affiliated, widely-read newspap ers.
For internally determined questions of party policy, discipline, leader selection and the centralization of national structure, the evidence for parties in Slovakia is not as clear, though it appears that in most parties the crucial decisions in these ma tters are made at the highest party levels. Malova's survey of parliamentarians finds that over 76% believed that their party's national executive held the most say in party policy, and another 9% attributed the most influence to the party's republic-lev el parliamentary club (Malova & Sivakova, 1994, p.23). Similar central control is reflected in the high degree of party discipline in voting on issues once they reach the parliamentary floor.
For most Slovak parties, however, this high degree of central control must be understood in light of an equally high degree of fragility of party structures. With the exception of the parties of the Hungarian Coalition and the small Democratic Party (DS ), every party elected to parliament in Slovakia after 1989 has undergone or emerged from the splintering or splitting of a party. The large number of splits and splinters occurring among the most prominent parties testifies to the early inability of man y parties in Slovakia to sustain a high degree of internal cohesion or to devise effective mechanisms for restoring consensus. Relative peace appears to have settled on the system since the middle of 1994 and since then only ZRS has experienced open spli ntering and this on a small scale. This suggests that Slovakia's parties may have seized upon sustainable decision-making processes. Not all have found the same solution.
In several of Slovakia's parties, internal stability appears to be the result of fairly effective mechanisms for integrating a variety of different viewpoints. The parties of the Hungarian coalition have managed to remain intact since 1989. In many way s their success reflects their limited options. The three major Hungarian parties do not receive many Slovak votes and therefore are limited to the electorate of the Slovakia's relatively small Hungarian minority. These parties have never received a tot al of more than 300,000 votes in any election, and with little room for growth in this total number party elites appear to have concluded that further splintering in an electoral system with a 5% threshold for entry into parliament could lead to political suicide for all Hungarian parties. The combination of a small electorate and a high threshold have caused Hungarian party elites to cooperate rather than splinter. Not only have these parties remained in tact, but they have formed lasting institutional links with one another and have formed electoral coalitions despite significant internal disagreements.
Two other parties, SDL and KDH, have not been completely successful at avoiding splintering, but they have managed to remain the integrity and identity at the national level. When the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) became the SDL in 1991, it spawned the small Association of Communists of Slovakia which has since reclaimed the KSS label. The SDL lost another splinter group in 1994 when one of its parliamentary delegates and some of its membership formed the ZRS. KDH in 1992 lost a nationally-oriente d splinter which became the current Christian Social Union (KSU). In none of these cases, however, did these splits include considerable numbers of party elites or deprive the parties of considerable resources. Although more research needs to be done, t he relative success of the SDL and KDH in maintaining organizational continuity--at least compared to other parties in Slovakia--appears to be related to a degree of internal democracy and compromise among party leaders. SDL has not been without internal discord over the future direction of the party, but through the end of 1995 such problems appear to have been resolved or at least successfully delayed through internal mechanisms of voting and consultation. On those occasions where internal debates ove r party policy have become known, it appears that at least some matters are resolved through votes of the party elite, votes in which the losing side has respected the right of the victors. The announced intention of party president Peter Weiss's intenti on to resign his position before the 1996 party congress provides a concrete indication that although party decision-making may depend highly on a group of party leaders, there appears to be no single indispensable person or ultimate veto. And although t here have been persistent rumors of a sharp split within the party's leadership, none have left the party since 1994 despite the public invitation of Meciar and others. Although the party congress of 1996 will likely bring struggles over party direction and leadership, the party leadership's past success in resolving differences suggests that this group may yet find compromises which prevent any further split.
For two other parties--DU and ZRS--there is not much 'past' to use when making assessments abut their decision-making processes. At the end of 1995 both parties had yet to celebrate their second birthdays, and their internal processes of making decision s had little time to develop. Despite the lack of time, the development of a workable plan of leadership within DU appears to have been surprisingly successful in integrating prominent defectors from several movements and parties: a group which split fr om HZDS in early 1993, another which split from SNS later that year, and yet another splinter from HZDS in 1994. Although the party's leadership includes quite a number of the Slovakia's most prominent politicians, and although these leaders often have b een at odds, they all appear to have been able to submerge egos and differences to cooperate effectively in government, in parliament, in an election campaign and even, after 1994, in the opposition.
ZRS appears to have moved in the opposite direction. From its beginning as an SDL splinter group with a single member in parliament, it succeeded in gaining over 7% of the votes in the 1994 parliamentary election and electing 13 members of parliament. Yet in its early month in office, the party was shaken by the departure of one of its vice-presidents who announced the establishment of a new party for workers and accused ZRS leadership of forging signatures on the party's electoral coalition. Near the end of 1995, a critical report of party leadership written in the party's Bratislava office prompted a flood of charges and counter-charges between the two sides. Party leaders announced the closing of the Bratislava office leading Bratislava party offi cials to announce their secession from the party with the intention of founding or joining another political association for workers.
Unlike that of ZRS, the political fragmentation of SNS and HZDS appears to have stopped for the moment, but perhaps only because the loser fragments have already fallen away. Of all of Slovakia's major parties, SNS survived the longest without open inte rnal division, but in 1993 after achieving Slovak independence, the party began to suffer from deep disagreements over its further goals and political orientation and struggled over whether to enter into a HZDS-led government coalition. In the voting of an extra-ordinary session of the party congress, a nationally-oriented faction led by Jan Slota proved able to defeat the more economically-oriented faction led by party president Ludovit Cernak. Under Slota's leadership the party voted to accept HZDS's coalition offer, while Cernak's faction left to form the National Democratic Party-New Alternative (NDS-NA) which campaigned with and later merged with DU. Since the split SNS has avoided further splintering but it remains unclear whether this reflects i mproved effectiveness in resolving internal disputes or simply the result of excluding those who might disagree. Given the sharply more radical rhetoric of SNS since the split and its drop in public support to around 5% in polls, the latter explanation a ppears quite plausible. SNS remains internally coherent largely because it has reduced itself to a core of true believers who agree on strongly national principles.
Splits within HZDS have revealed some of the same phenomena as in SNS but without the substantial loss of support. HZDS itself came into being after a sharp split within the VPN movement which had its origins in the public action against the Communist P arty in 1989 and which had became the largest single bloc in Slovakia's parliament after the 1990 elections. Attempts by VPN leadership to remove Vladimir Meciar from his office as the premier of Slovakia's parliament led Meciar to form his own party. Wh en he did so he took with him fewer than half of VPN's parliamentary deputies but nearly all of the movement's public support. Since its establishment as an independent political party, HZDS has suffered two splinterings of its own. In early 1993 after growing internal disagreements with Meciar, a faction of parliamentary deputies led by then-Foreign Minister Milan Knazko left HZDS to form the Alliance of Democrats. In early 1994 after further internal conflicts, Knazko's successor as Foreign Minister, Josef Moravcik, and a number of other party members established faction within HZDS known as the Alternative for Political Realism and called for significant changes to the party. The faction and its members quickly were expelled from the party, became independent and eventually joined with Knazko's group to become the Democratic Union (DU).
In both cases, the splits opened HZDS decision-making processes to the public eye. First Knazko's faction and then Moravcik's claimed that Meciar operated HZDS as his own personal party organization and tolerated no disagreements. Meciar in response ch arged the factions with malice and greed in internal party dealings and suggested that their departure might actually be welcome. Political commentators in Slovakia frequently accept the arguments of Meciar's opponents at face value. They may in fact be quite correct, but to the extent that both the charges and counter-charges reflect weapons in a highly politicized struggle, it may be better to withhold judgement for the moment and address the conflict itself. At the very least, both of the splits fro m HZDS and the rhetoric which surrounded them suggest that HZDS structures were not able to resolve the conflicts which eventually caused Knazko, Moravcik and the others to leave the party. The accusations by both sides revolve around personality conflic ts and disputes over internal party decision-making. It is such quarrels rather than disagreements over policy issues that proved particularly threatening to HZDS unity.
Since the early 1994 departure of Moravcik's faction, which cost Meciar his premiership, HZDS has been notable for the absence of further public discord. As with SNS this period of calm can in part be explained by the earlier splits. The departu re of those likely to disagree has made further disagreement that much less likely. In particular, to the extent that HZDS has proven ill-equipped to resolve personality conflicts between Meciar and other party members, the departure of prominent and str ong personalities such as Knazko and Moravcik has helped to strengthen the party. The departure of these few individuals may also help to explain the relative stability of HZDS since mid-1994 because Knazko, Moravcik and a few of those departing with the m were among the few HZDS figures who could make a plausible claim to deserve leadership of the party and who might actually do so. Although other HZDS figures have since risen to public prominence, they have done so within the structures of the party an d do not appear likely to challenge Meciar's command of the party.
Changes in HZDS organization and prospects have also helped to discourage those who might make such a challenge or in some other way splinter the party. HZDS now requires that parliamentary deputies agree to pay a fine of 5,000,000 SK (approximately $15 0,000, which is many times the annual salary of a deputy) if they switch parties (Malova, 1994b). In addition to such disciplinary measures, the return of HZDS to government also allows the party to use a variety of incentives, public offices, and other resources to solidify support for the party. Firmer party unity actually reinforces itself by discouraging members from leaving their political options open in case there were to be yet another split. A variety of options open to Knazko's and Moravcik's factions--the knowledge that they could likely continue their political career outside of HZDS, the suspicion that weakness within HZDS might return the opposition to government before the next election--are no longer available to current HZDS members wh o might consider leaving or even making a challenge which could lead to expulsions from the party.
Such attempts to analyze the internal politics of HZDS from the perspective of institutional rules and individual incentives prove useful, but they almost inevitably point back to the figure of Vladimir Meciar who is quite clearly stands at the center of decision-making within his party. This main role may simply reflect Meciar's role as president of the party, but since 1994 his influence has often seemed to go beyond merely the privileges of his office. Unlike the leaders of many other parties in Slo vakia, Meciar has been spared even modest criticisms from other members of his party's leadership. Whether this reflects devotion or fear or some combination of both, it sets the decision-making process of HZDS apart from that of other parties in Slovaki a. Malova notes that Slovak parties typically have not survived the departure of their party leader--at least not without significant turmoil. While it is possible to imagine SDL without its president, Peter Weiss, or even KDH without its president, Jan Carnogursky, it is extremely difficult to imagine HZDS without Meciar. His departure from the political scene for any reason would likely lead to a complicated period of conflict and reorientation among all of the other parties.
Slovak political parties appear to share a tendency toward centralized control of resources and decision-making, but the parties vary widely in the degree to which decision-making at those highest levels is determined by institutional rules or by powerfu l individuals. Agh argues that many of the elements of centralized decision-making characteristic of Slovakia's parties are in fact true throughout the region and he describes the regions of the party as "upside-down," a rather normative way of describin g the predominance of the "organization party over the membership party"(Agh, 1995, p. 3-4.) Kopecky's more study of the Czech party system does not find the centralization in the Czech Republic to be quite as strong as Agh's general picture would sugges t. Basing his analysis on party structure rather than the more resource oriented questions suggested by Janda, Kopecky finds strong centralization in only two Czech parties--the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) and the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the Czech Republic's largest. Other Czech parties, Kopecky says, "do not seem to be formally very centralized" and offer considerable opportunities for participation and challenge from lower party levels (Kopecky, 1995). At the same time, other aspects of the Czech political environment which resemble that of Slovakia--including centralized subsidies and media access--offer similar incentives for centralization among Czech parties.
On the question of individual leadership, Slovakia may represent something of an exception to the East Central European norm. Most Slovak parties, like most parties in the other countries of the region, have demonstrated or at least offered strong hints of the ability to make decisions with some degree of internal democracy in establishing party policy and choosing party leadership. For Vladimir Meciar's role in HZDS, however, it is not as easy to find a regional parallel among large parties in the reg ion. As Lech Wal sa did not retain significant party ties while President of Poland, only Vaclav Klaus, head of the Czech Republic's ODS can be meaningfully compared with Meciar on questions of party dominance. Kopecky notes with some misgivings that "t he party is still frequently accused of being just a party of one man, in spite of its gradual move towards a complex, routinized and institutionalized electoral organization"(Kopecky, 1995). In this comparison, however, the institutionalization of the e lectoral organization matters less than that of the decision-making that directs it. In the absence of insight from Kopecky or other sources on the internal workings of ODS politics, it is possible at least to consider the party in terms used above and s uggest that the like other parties mentioned above, ODS might have better luck surviving without Klaus than HZDS without Meciar.
Voter Commitment to Party
When Mainwaring and Scully argue that an institutionalized party system features parties with "somewhat stable roots in society"(Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p. 5), they are discussing a complicated two-way relationship between parties and their voters. O ne important aspect of that relationship is the strength and consistency with which voters support a particular party. Although voters in Slovakia quite frequently change their support from one political party to another or to none at all, the overall pa ttern of party support has remained quite stable.
One strong indicator of the loyalty of voters is the degree to which they become members of the party they prefer. According to research undertaken separately by Martin Urmanic and by Grigorij Meseznikov, the size of membership in Slovakia's major parti es ranges from 2,000 for DU to 48,000 for SDL, and the ratio of a party's members to voters ranges from DU with 0.8% to SDL with 13-16% for (see Table 3). Since these numbers were provided by the parties themselve s, they may include a certain amount of exaggeration, particularly in the case of the Hungarian coalition's Spoluzitie which holds a rather loose definition of the concept of membership (Malova, 1995a). Nevertheless, the average percentage of members as a share of voters, which ranges from 6.7% to 7.1%, corresponds quite closely to the results of a FOCUS poll taken in December 1994 in which 8% of Slovaks claimed to be members of a political party (FOCUS, 1994).
Beyond the potential inaccuracy, however, there remain other problems with the usefulness of these numbers in establishing loyalty to parties. In the first place, even in the case of SDL and the Hungarian coalition non-members provide five times as many ballots as members, and the loyalty of non-members has, by far, greater impact on electoral outcomes. Membership might become a useful indicator if it became clear that the number of members acted as a barometer of societal support. The circumst ances of the East Central Europe make this proposition doubtful, however (Agh, 1995). This is particularly so in the Slovak case. The two parties with well above-average membership are the former communist party, now SDL, which began with an even strong membership base, and the Hungarian parties which represent a significant and coherent segment of the population. For Hungarians, unlike most other citizens of Slovakia, parties provide one of very few mechanisms for being heard in Slovakia's political l ife.
These doubts do not eliminate the usefulness of party membership in understanding voter loyalty, but they do suggest its limits. Fortunately, there are a number of other ways to measure the stability of voter preferences for a particular party. In the absence of longitudinal studies of the same individual voters' preferences over time, it is possible to use a variety of surrogate measures. One such measure is to ask voters in a single questionnaire about how they felt about parties in the past. Exit polls taken during the 1992 and 1994 elections did just this, asking voters about their choices in the previous election. Because these polls rely on voters to report past preferences even though their opinions may have changed in the meantime, these pol ls must be approached with some care and in concert with other sources of data. The results appear in Table 4. and show almost all parties having repeat voting percentages hovering around 50%. The exception is th e Hungarian coalition which kept over 80% of its voters from one election to the next.
Other types of data can clarify this picture further. As an alternative to relying on the honesty and memory of survey respondents, it is possible to use actual election results, though because of the secret ballot these have the disadvantage of measuri ng the results of entire political units and cannot be used to follow individual voters over time. Accounting for different electoral coalitions in 1992 and 1994, overall electoral results for some parties show a high degree of continuity (See Table 5.). This is particularly true for the Hungarian Coalition which saw its vote total decline by 22% between 1990 and 1992, mainly because of competition with an independent Hungarian Civic Party (MPP). When MPP is fac tored in, the total number of votes received by the Hungarian votes changes by less than 3% during either of the two voting periods. Also fairly stable has been HZDS whose vote totals grew by 16% in 1992 and shrank by 12% in 1994. Other parties have fac ed more instability. After a disastrous drop of 60% from 1990 to 1992, the position of KDH stabilized and its vote total grew by a moderate 6% in 1994. Quite the reverse situation occurred for SDL. In 1992 the party received almost exactly the same num ber of votes as it had (as the Communist Party of Slovakia) received in the previous election. In 1994, however, the SDL-led Common Choice (SV) coalition, which also included the Social Democratic Party of Slovakia (SDSS) and the Party of Greens of Slova kia (SZS), received fewer than half the number of votes received by the coalition partners from their separate 1992 campaigns. Only SNS saw significant changes in its vote totals in both elections, in each case losing approximately half of the vot es it had received in the previous election.
For determining the commitment of individual voters, the election results are helpful but insufficient. The vote total for a party may remain unchanged from year to year while the composition of the party's voters changes significantly. Although not so lved completely, this problem is ameliorated by looking at electoral results at the most specific possible level. Slovak sociologist Vladimir Krivy's has done extensive correlations at the municipal level comparing 1994 party support in parliamentary ele ctions to a variety of other municipal characteristics including party support in the previous election (see Table 6.) As might be expected from previous other indications of the stability of the Hungarian coaliti on, Krivy finds an almost perfect correlation (.9966) between the results of the coalition parties in 1992 and that of the 1994 coalition. For other parties the correlation is less clear but still strong, and even the significant drop in support for SDL' s 1994 coalition occurred within a framework of fairly high continuity (.7507) within individual municipalities.
The results of this research echo previous findings in public opinion polls which indicate that the demographic and regional strengths of parties tend to show considerable stability over time. Profiles of party supporters assembled from a September 1993 poll (FOCUS, 1993) could be used to provide extremely accurate predictions of the educational, denominational, regional, and age characteristics of exit poll results taken during the parliamentary elections of the following September (1994b), and they co ntinue to correspond to the results of subsequent polls (Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, 1994a). Similarly, according Krivy's calculations of the correlation between party support in municipalities and demographic characteristics of those muni cipalities, there appears to have been considerable stability at this level between 1992 and 1994. In no case out of five returning parties (HZDS, SDL, MK, KDH, SNS) or seven demographic characteristics (community size, education, 2 ethnicity categories , 3 religious denomination categories) did correlations found in 1992 correlation disappear or reverse themselves in 1994.
For the period after the 1994 elections, only public opinion polls provide any information for judging the loyalty of voters. Polls taken by Slovak Broadcasting (MVK SRo) show that opinion preferences for HZDS varied between 24% and 32% of those who kne w which party which they would choose. The range of preferences over time for other parties included 11%-16% for KDH, 8%-12% for SDL, 7-13% for DU, and 9-15% for the Hungarian Coalition. ZRS and SNS hovered just over 5% with preferences for ZRS ranging from 4%-8% and those of SNS from 5%-7% (MVK SRo, 1996). These relatively narrow ranges suggest a fairly high degree of continuity of loyalty, although like electoral results they may hide significant shifts in the composition of support. Also, these par ticular numbers can be deceptive because they do not include the large numbers of respondents who do not know who they would choose or who say that they would not vote. Nevertheless, these results at the very least suggest that there have been no sharp swings in preferences toward or away from any particular party. Research on party loyalty in 1995 similar to the exit polls of 1994 also confirms the continuity over time. Although most Slovak parties continued to show a significant ebb and flood of pa rticular voters, the most significant gains and losses came in the categories of "I don't know" and "I will not vote" rather than from other parties (MVK SRo, 1995).
For one set of parties the results are almost unambiguous. No matter how it is measured, the loyalty of voters with Hungarian ethnicity to Hungarian parties is almost absolute. The Hungarian coalition's exit polls show high loyalty, the coalition parti es' vote totals remain almost unchanged over time, and its stability at the municipal level is extremely high. Yet while these figures show that Hungarians in Slovakia support Hungarian parties, they do not help to determine the stability of parties with in the coalition. Here public opinion polls suggest a reasonable degree of continuity in percentages of support though 1995 saw a shift in favor of the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (MKDM) which in many polls has replaced Coexistence (ESWS) as the most popular party among Hungarians (MVK SRo, 1996). As long as these parties are able to maintain their electoral coalition, however, these shifts will only affect the composition and not the size of Hungarian representation in parliament.
Among the non-Hungarian parties, the question of voter loyalty is more difficult to assess:
HZDS shows fairly high continuity in vote totals and in the location and demographic characteristics of its voters, but whatever the methodological limitations of exit polling, it is difficult to ignore that fewer than 50% of those who claimed to have v oted for the party in 1992 voted for it again in 1994. Its relatively low level of membership may reflect the party's characterization of itself not as a party but as a movement which in the past did not encourage a formal, registered membership (Malova, 1994a).
KDH has suffered a significant drop in its vote totals after 1990, but it showed considerable stability between 1992 and 1994. It also shows stability in the location and demographic characteristics of its voters, although increasing popular support fo r the party among young and urban voters has meant a shift in the party's average demographic profile away from its traditional base among older and more rural inhabitants (FOCUS, 1993; Krivy, 1995a). The trend, however, is a slow and stable one and does not appear to have caused an exodus among the party's former voters. According to exit polls, KDH kept 56.1% of its voters from 1992 to 1994, the highest percentage among non-Hungarian parties.
SDL's poor performance from 1992 to 1994 is reflected in all measurements used here including a significant drop in overall vote totals, low stability at the municipal level and a lower percentage of repeat voters than KDH. Krivy finds that like KDH, S DL has become a party of more educated and more urban voters, but for SDL this shift is connected with a loss of voters.
SNS has maintained even lower loyalty than SDL. It has lost almost half of its previous number of voters in each successive election. While its stability within municipalities has remained higher than that of SDL, it too has experienced a shift in the location and demography of its supporters, in this case apparently losing some of its previous urban and more educated support.
Absence of good comparative data over time for DU and ZRS makes it difficult to judge the loyalty of these two parties' voters other than to note that they have maintained a stable basis of support in polls over time. ZRS high member/voter ratio does not seem to have much effect on the loyalty of support, and internal conflicts have actually set groups of members strongly against the central party leadership.
The level of party loyalty in Slovakia does not seem markedly strong or weak when compared to that of many other democracies, particularly those in the process of transition. As Kopecky notes, public opinion polls of party preference in the Czech Republ ic has demonstrate considerable continuity over time, but the Czech political spectrum is not without its own rapid gains and losses of support, particularly in the case of the Czech Party of Social Democrats and the Civic Democratic Alliance. The member ship of political parties in the Czech Republic likewise resembles the situation in Slovakia. High membership levels exist only among parties which existed during the communist era. Although it is necessary to bear in mind the ambiguity surrounding memb ership figures for Slovak parties, the results found by Urmanic and Meseznikov would place Slovakia with the Czech Republic and Denmark just above Ireland and Germany and just below Belgium and Italy in terms of overall party membership (Kopecky, 1995). Since there have been no elections in the Czech Republic since 1992 it is difficult to assemble further data such as exit polls or highly disaggregated election results which would allow a more precise comparison with Slovakia.
Comparison to the Latin American research of Mainwaring and Scully and others reveals a similar lack of easily comparable data, but descriptive accounts of Latin American party systems suggest that Slovakia would fall somewhere between the extremes found on that continent. On the one hand, it cannot be said of Slovakia that "entire generations have strongly identified with one party or another"(Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p.12) as it can of Paraguay and other countries in the region which show even stron ger levels of party loyalty. At the same time, it also cannot be said of Slovakia that "most citizens do not identify with parties, nor do they vote along party lines"(Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p.12) as Mainwaring and Scully describe Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador.
Party Commitment to Voters
In parallel with voter loyalty to a party is the party's understanding of the electorate. A number of works on political parties, most notably those of Otto Kirschheimer(1966) and Richard Katz and Peter Mair (Katz & Mair, 1995), emphasize that while som e parties have focused their attention on organizing and representing specific social groups, others have begun with a view toward the whole electorate and have pursued votes anywhere they might reasonably be found. The variety of approaches taken by Slo vakia parties system are evident in the stated goals of parties, in their activities to attract adherents, and in the success of those attempts.
The process of distinguishing Slovak parties by their relationship to the electorate can begin with a look at what parties call themselves. Certain parties in their very names appear to emphasize the party's socio-economic, denominational or ethnic basi s rather than any political position. Most pronounced among these is the Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS), but the group also includes the Hungarian Coalition (MK) and the Slovak National Party (SNS). Including smaller parties would add the Farm ers' Party of Slovakia (RSS), the Movement of Agricultural Workers (HP), the Union of Professionals, Entrepreneurs and Farmers (UZPR), the Party of Entrepreneurs and the Professionals (SPZ), and the Romany Civic Initiative (ROI). Several other parties e mphasize both the political and the social and or religious orientation of the party including the Hungarian Civic Party (MPP) and the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (MKDM), the Christian Social Union (KSU ). For the last three parties the religious reference is even more specific than it seems since in this context "Christian" is usually taken to mean "Roman Catholic." The names of other parties in Slovakia make reference to only to the party's stated po litical orientation, including in particular the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), the Party of the Democratic Left (SDL), the Democratic Union (DU), the Democratic Party (DS), the Social Democratic Party of Slovakia (SDSS), the Party of Greens o f Slovakia (SZS) and the party called Coexistence (Egytteles-Spoluzitie-Wspolnota-Souziti) which occasionally attempts to emphasize appeal across ethnic lines by including in its name the translation of "Coexistence" into Hungarian, Slovak, Polish and Czech.
The case of Coexistence, whose supporters are in fact almost exclusively Hungarian, echoes the common injunction against judging by name alone, but in certain cases there are strong links between a party's name and its actual relationship to the electora te. This is particularly true in the case of ZRS, SNS and the parties of the Hungarian Coalition. Although ZRS does not necessarily seek to exclude other types of supporters, it declares its intention to pursue the interests of the working class in Slov akia through political means. SNS by contrast, does exclude certain groups by limiting its membership to those with Slovak origin (Slovak National Party, 1994, Art. 5). The parties of the Hungarian coalition focus their efforts to varying degrees on perceived Hungarian interests (including, despite its multi-lingual name, ESWS), though not to extent of formally excluding non-Hungarians. KDH does emphasize its Christian/Catholic orientation and has strong roots in villages and small towns where R oman Catholicism continues to have an important influence. But KDH has also recently been more active in urban areas and has appeared willing to appeal to voters on the basis of other principles including its free-market and pro-western orientation and e specially since the elections of 1994 its opposition to Meciar government.
Those parties which do not identify particular social groups in their names also tend to follow the pattern by not emphasizing particular groups in practice. The DU has concentrated its efforts among urban voters but this appears to have as much to do w ith limited resources as to a specific orientation, since DU leaders have announced at least tentative intentions to broaden the scope of their appeal. The small Democratic Party (DS) has followed a similar course with some occasional attempts to appeal to the party's roots among those who remember its pre-Communist success. Social Democrats and Greens have remained small parties and do not appear to have targeted any social group in particular. Despite its declared leftward orientation, SDL has remain ed aloof from particular socio-economic groups and has not engaged in particularly close contacts with or strong appeals toward unions or other workers' organizations. On ethnic questions the party has likewise refused to focus on Slovaks alone even to t he point of including ethnic Hungarians on its party electoral lists and of trying to establish party branches in primarily Hungarian areas. Something of an opposite step has been taken by HZDS which in its bylaws and public statements remains open to al l Slovak citizens regardless of ethnic identity, but which in practice has discouraged Hungarian support through sometimes openly negative statements about Hungary and Slovakia's Hungarian minority.
These links between parties and particular groups in societies must be inferred from party programs, from public statements by party leaders and election campaign strategy. These links become quite apparent when parties establish organizations or become affiliated with organizations which appeal to specific social, economic, religious, ethnic, or other groups. Beyond a few specific categories, however, such organizations and affiliations are rare. Nearly all major parties have organized or affiliated themselves with a youth organization and many parties have done the same with a women's organization. HZDS, SDL and KDH have established clubs within various professions, including doctors, lawyers, and teachers (Malova & Krause, Forthcoming). Some diff erentiation between parties can be found in their formal and informal coalitions with certain interest groups and smaller parties. The arrangements made by HZDS suggest an orientation toward rural areas and Roman Catholics, as it has formed an electoral coalition with the Farmers' Party of Slovakia (RSS) and signed agreements of cooperation with the national and Roman Catholic-oriented Christian Social Union (KSU), a splinter of KDH. HZDS recently also signed an agreement of cooperation with the small P arty of Entrepreneurs and Professionals (SPZ), a business-oriented party which in 1994 campaigned with the Democratic Party (DS). As with HZDS, the affiliations made by SDL also include an agricultural movement, the Movement of Farmers (HP) but SDL's oth er ties have been to parties such as SZS and SDSS which do not have a specific regional or demographic character. KDH has exhibited close ties with Slovakia's Roman Catholic church, but in recent years these have waned in prominence. In the 1994 electio n KDH chose as its only significant affiliation the Permanent Conference of the Civic Initiative (SKOI), a civic-oriented and largely secular interest group with close ties to the Democratic Party (DS).
The degree of regional organization can also suggest particular orientation and although Slovakia's larger parties are organized on a nation-wide basis, some of the smaller parties are not. As might be expected from its regional concentration and almost uniform voting habits, the parties of Slovakia's Hungarian minority are not organized on a nation-wide basis but only predominantly Hungarian areas. According to Malova, SNS is also not well-organized on a Slovakia-wide level but concentrated in central and northern Slovakia as well as among pockets of Slovaks in the predominantly Hungarian districts (Malova, 1995b, p. 10). Despite intentions of broader organization in the future, DU's formal structure is likewise limited and is concentrated in larger cities. The limited and fluctuating structure of the ZRS makes it difficult to evaluate the party's actual orientation.
It appears that while certain parties in Slovakia do make very specific appeals to certain groups and reinforce this with efforts at organizing those groups, these efforts are isolated. Slovakia's parties likely to incline toward particular societal gro ups, but they do not always focus their energies in toward that group in particular. Public opinion polls and electoral results do show certain patterns in voting but they confirm that, with the exception of the Hungarian Coalition (MK), no single party or even group of parties has even come close to "capturing" any social group, at least in the sense normally associated with mass parties. In fact, although Slovak parties do demonstrate recognizable profiles of supporters, many parties show quite simila r profiles.
The results of a public opinion poll taken in Slovakia in September 1994 just before the 1994 elections allow a closer look at the profile of party supporters (See Table 7.). Although I use this particular survey for convenience, its results correspond quite closely with those of other surveys conducted by Slovak Broadcasting in December 1994 and January 1996 (MVK SRo, 1994; MVK SRo, 1996). Table 7.. shows the support for various parties wi thin various gender, age, ethnic, educational, and occupational groups as well as for residents of various sizes of community. Patterns emerge from this which correspond to the appeals made by various parties:
HZDS received higher support than its national average among women, blue-collar workers, and retirees. It received considerably lower support from entrepreneurs and the unemployed. HZDS tended to receive more support as the age of the demographic grou p increased and less support with increases in the education level and community size;
SNS received considerably higher support than its national average among men, the unemployed, and entrepreneurs. SNS tended to receive less support in higher age groups;
ZRS received considerably higher support than its national average among blue-collar workers and the unemployed. ZRS tended to receive less support among those with higher levels of education;
The SV coalition performed worse than its national average among young people and entrepreneurs. SV tended to receive more support with increases in the educational level. The party also showed a narrow decrease in support with increases in the size o f the community;
KDH received higher support than its national average among women and the retired. It received considerably less support than average from blue-collar workers. KDH tended to receive more support as the age of the demographic group increased;
DU received higher support than its national average from entrepreneurs and white-collar workers. DU tended to receive more support with increases in the educational level and the size of the community.
Support for the Hungarian Coalition (MK) tended to follow the demographic profile of Slovakia's Hungarian population. MK alone received above average support among Hungarians while all other parties (with the interesting exception of ZRS) received cons iderably lower than average Hungarian support. Support for MK tended to decrease with increases in the education level and the size of the community.
Many of these trends already have been mentioned and reoccur in numerous studies using several different methods. The striking result of this method, however, is the similarity of the overall breakdown of party support in every measured demographic group with the exception of the Hungarian population. In every single category except one (higher education) HZDS held the first rank. The support for parties did vary somewhat from one demographic group to another but their levels of support tended to remai n consistent across the categories, especially for the larger parties. In only few cases did any party receive support from a particular demographic group which was markedly higher than the party's Slovakia-wide support. Furthermore, this occurred only for smaller and more targeted parties: ZRS received 101% higher than average support from blue-collar workers; DU received 65% higher than average support from those with higher education and in those Slovakia's largest cities. Only among the Hungarian minority did any one party receive even as much as one-third of the support of any particular demographic group. Otherwise, various demographic groups showed tendencies but no clear attachment to any single party or group of parties.
With the Hungarian exception always in mind, the inability of any other parties in Slovakia to capture large shares of particular demographic groups may simply reflect the large number of competing parties. Although no particular demographic group suppo rts any particular parties en masse, it is also important to investigate whether any demographic group makes up a high percentage of a party's supporters. The 1994 survey results can also be used to provide a rough model of a each party's supporte rs by their demographic characteristics (see Table 8. and Table 9.). The specific party profiles found in Table 7. remain apparent but become sharper here, especially for SNS, ZRS, DU and to some extent for KDH. Striking, however, is the degree to which support base for Slovakia's parties--especially the larger parties--resembled the Slovak electorate as a whole. For HZDS and SDL in particular the di fferences between the demographics of party supporters and the demographics of eligible voters was quite small. In fact much the same was true of the Hungarian Coalition. The profile of that coalition differed from the profile of Slovakia as a whole but in its over-representation of those living in smaller communities and those without higher education it did correspond closely to the profile of Slovakia's Hungarian population.
The supporters of KDH differed from the Slovak electorate as a whole in several ways: almost half (48%) were over 50 years of age (12% more than in Slovakia as a whole), and almost two-thirds (64%) of the supporters were women. The situation was revers ed for SNS. Its supporters were almost two-thirds male (65%), and two/fifths (41%) of its supporters were under 30 years of age--significantly more than in the population as a whole (25%). ZRS shared this skew towards the young to the extent that little over one-tenth (12%) of its supporters were over 60 years of age, whereas in Slovakia as a whole the figure is nearly double (22%). The most marked characteristic of ZRS, however, was the 63% share of its supporters who were blue-collar or unemployed, a s compared with the 32% in the population as a whole in these two categories. DU showed the opposite pattern, receiving support from a larger than average share of white-collar workers and entrepreneurs. An even more marked difference between DU supporte rs and the Slovak population as a whole can be found in the education levels and settlement patterns of its supporters. According to the 1994 poll, DU gained nearly one-fourth of its supporters each from villages with fewer than 2,000 residents (25%) and from cities with over 100,000 residents (24%). In Slovakia as a whole, however, the ratio of population in the smallest villages to those in the largest cities is over three-to-one (43% to 13%). Likewise, the ratio between DU supporters with basic educ ation to those with post-secondary education was less than 2 to 1 (22% to 12%) while in Slovakia as a whole the ration is well over 4 to 1 (32% to 7%).
These differences are important for understanding the parties in question, and they demonstrate that certain parties have been successful in appealing to particular groups within the population. It is important not to forget, however, that even the part y with the strongest correlation to education and urban areas, DU, still gets most of its voters from those who do not live in large cities and have not completed secondary school. Even the party with the youngest supporters--SNS--still gets 37% of its s upport from those over 40 years of age, while the party with the oldest supporters, KDH, gets 35% of its support from those under 40. Furthermore, these are the most extreme characteristics of these parties' entire profiles. With the exception of Slovak ia's Hungarian parties and to some extent the efforts of the ZRS, Slovakia's parties have not been particularly energetic or successful in targeting particular social groups and in return they have seen only modest differentiation among their voters. Onl y a few of Slovakia's parties capture voters on the basis of elemental personal characteristics. Whether by intention or by lack of any intentions, Slovakia's parties have taken few steps to incorporate voters in an active way that might transform "party identity" itself into an elemental social characteristic as has occurred in other societies. In Slovakia most parties and most voters appear to rely on more fluid and uncertain means of finding one another.
This phenomenon is by no means unique to Slovakia. Agh comments that "
Party Incentives for Voters
However deep or shallow are their ties to voters, parties must find a way to catch at least enough voters to survive until the next election. The incentives that Slovak parties offer to voters provide perhaps the best means of differentiating them fro
m one another. Herbert Kitschelt considers incentives under three incentives: charisma, clientelism, and program. Although no single party in Slovakia holds a monopoly on any particular type of incentives, a variety of direct and indirect evidence sugge
st that the use of charisma and clientelism by HZDS sets it apart from the more programmatically inclined KDH, SDL and DU and even to a certain extent from parties in the Hungarian coalition and the other parties in HZDS's own coalition.
One of the features most commonly attributed to HZDS leader Vladimir Meciar is his charisma. Whether Meciar supporters or opponents, Slovaks who watch the country's political scene credit the HZDS leader with personal magnetism and an ability to speak i
n a way that ordinary people can understand. Since his appearance on the Slovak political scene in 1990 polls have consistently placed him among the most popular and most trusted of Slovakia's politicians, usually at the top of any ranking (FOCUS, 1994).
Leaders of other parties rarely achieve even half of his popularity, and commentators from a variety of political standpoints acknowledge that no opposition party has come close to finding a political leader with similarly wide appeal.
A similar profile has emerged with respect to the ability of Meciar's HZDS to provide clientelist incentives. The most recent steps in this process began in November of 1994 with a long session of parliament devoted to deep personal changes in governmen
t ministries. Since then the government has introduced large numbers of its own appointees at even deeper levels. Opposition newspapers and politicians have also charged that the HZDS-dominated government has taken advantage of the privatization proces
s to increase its own financial and political resources. Among several steps by the government, the cancellation of a proposed scheme of voucher privatization and its replacement with a plan to give government bonds to voucher holders while privatizing f
irms directly has created significant possibilities for the government to increase its influence in the process of privatization. A critical report by the Wall Street Journal notes that according to a "recent report from the Washington D.C.-based
research firm, PlanEcon, Inc.," the Slovak government "is trying 'to recreate a politically controlled economy' through the 'large scale redistribution of state assets to political allies'"(King, 1996, p. 8).
Common observations such as these may be extremely suggestive, but they are also subject to question. Assertions of charisma are difficult to prove in a meaningful way, and it is further difficult to discern the role that charisma actually plays in brin
ging electoral success. Likewise, the accusations of patronage networks have largely remained limited to anecdotal, journalistic accounts and there has been little reproducible research which could confirm the scope of these networks and compare them wit
h those of other parties. Because of the sensitive nature of the such questions and the predictable lack of transparency in such dealings, it is no surprise that better research is not easily available. The investigation, however, need not stop simply b
ecause of an absence of positive indicators that HZDS and perhaps also its coalition partners differ from other parties in their reliance on charismatic and clientelistic incentives. Several indirect indicators can at least help to clarify the situation.
The first indicator which can suggest differences between parties in their use of clientelist incentives is simply time in office. Whether or not a party may be inclined to use such incentives, it must have the means to do so, and parties which remain o
ut of office for an extended period of time will not have access to the resources of the state. Of the 66 months between the first free elections in 1990 and the end of 1995, Vladimir Meciar served for over 42 months as the prime minister of Slovakia's g
overnment. Between the elections of 1992 and the end of 1995, Meciar was prime minister for 33 of 42 months. Among the other coalition parties, SNS has spent almost half of the period since the elections of 1992 in formal or informal coalition with HZDS
. ZRS did not gain access to government until it helped to create the HZDS ruling coalition, but since ZRS was a relatively new party at the time, this period represents almost the whole of its existence. During their periods in government, there is litt
le dispute that these parties have replaced considerable numbers of officials within state ministries and other state-run organizations. These observations cannot by themselves prove that HZDS and its coalition parties seek support through clientelist me
thods. But while they do not establish motive, they do help to establish means.
The brief duration in office of other parties has limited their access to the resources of the state, particularly since the elections of 1992. Until late 1989 the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) held a strong grip on virtually all employment and econ
omic resources in Slovakia, but vast reaches of this patronage network were severed by the revolution of 1989 which swept the party out of power and which made its return to power look quite unlikely for some time to come. The KSS lost further control of
former clientelist structures when it transformed itself into the more social-democratic oriented Party of the Democratic Left (SDL). KDH, which headed Slovakia's governing coalition from early 1991 until the mid-1992, has been accused of using its peri
od in government to develop clientelist networks at local levels. A poor showing in the elections of 1992, however, kept the party out of power for almost two years. After a brief period in government, it was again returned to the opposition by the elec
tions of 1994. Most of the leaders of the DU, which first appeared in 1994, had previously been members of parties led by or in coalition with Meciar and thus cannot claim exclusion from potential clientelist networks until their departure from governme
nt in late 1994. The leaders of this party, however, claim to reject such clientelistic political appeals and in fact cite this difference as one reason for their departure from their original parties.
If the parties of the DU-SDL-KDH coalition were in fact oriented toward establishing a clientelist network, their short duration in government should have done quite a bit to diminish the effectiveness of that network and of that strategy for future appe
als to voters. Even the moderate success of SDL and KDH in the local elections of 1994 could not provide much of a basis for a clientelist network since local levels remain largely dependent on subsides from the government and ministries above. Furtherm
ore, some evidence suggests that time spent out of government, especially between 1992 and 1994, caused SDL and KDH to re-orient their electoral strategies away from such methods. The actions taken (or not taken) by the DU-SDL-KDH government tend to conf
irm this shift. Although all of Slovakia's incoming governments have made significant changes in personnel, the changes made by the DU led coalition were not as sweeping as those made during the first six months of the HZDS-led governments which began in
1992 and late 1994. This argument proves less than decisive, however, in the light of claims by HZDS supporters and others that the DU coalition simply did not have time in the short pre-election period and that this coalition intended to make su
ch changes after the victory it expected to achieve in the 1994 elections.
A second indirect factor--the demographic profile of party voters--can help to settle some of the obvious uncertainties left by the first factor. By Kitschelt's standards, establishing that the HZDS-led coalition after 1994 is not based on programmatic
incentives should require some evidence that these parties attract supporters not only by "encouraging them to consider rather complicated calculations about the distance between a voter's ideal point and a party's promise and reputation to produce collec
tive good and social reform" but rather by "appealing to their loyalty to an outstanding personality or their immediate pocketbook advantages of having one party in office rather than another"(Kitschelt, 1995, p. 8) Party political programs themselves do
not offer much help in determining whether parties do or do not emphasize programmatic incentives. The complete absence of a program might signify the lack of programmatic incentives but none of Slovakia's major parties campaign without a prepared progr
am. Conversely, the presence of a party program cannot confirm a programmatic emphasis since, as Kitschelt argues, clientelistic parties "may feel compelled to disguise their operational focus on selective incentives and club goods behind a screen of sym
bolic political appeals to general policies and programs"(Kitschelt, 1995, p. 8). It is possible, however, to make educated guesses about which incentives a party emphasizes by looking closely at certain characteristics of that party's voters.
When discussing incentives used by parties "programmatic parties require high sophistication among voters" and require "the greatest amount of information and cognitive skills among votes to arrive at an intelligent choice between competing alternatives"
(Kitschelt, 1995, p. 4). All else being equal, parties which offer more than simply programmatic incentives should see an increasing level of support among voters with lower levels of the cognitive skills associated with voting. Conversely, strictly pro
grammatic parties should find their highest levels of support among voters who are best able to understand and respond to their specific type of incentive. If education level can be used as a rough measure of the cognitive skills, support for programmati
c parties should increase with education while support for non-programmatic parties should remain the same or decrease, producing a scissors-shaped pattern.
A variety of sources of data find precisely this pattern to be characteristic of parties in the HZDS-led coalition government elected in 1994 in comparison to the parties which formed the brief DU-led coalition government earlier in that year. Two surve
ys of public opinion, one by the Slovak Statistical Office and one by FOCUS, found extremely similar patterns of party support when measured by level of education (see Figure 1.). As above sections of this paper indicate, no party in Slovakia gains an mo
nopoly on or even majority support from any educational group, but these surveys show an almost perfect correlation between increased levels of education and decreased support for parties in the HZDS-led coalition. These polls show a similarly strong cor
relation between increasing levels of education and increasing support for the parties in the DU-led coalition.
Other evidence helps to confirm this link. A late 1995 poll by FOCUS shows that one year after the return of HZDS to power, measures of trust in the government also exhibited an almost perfect scissors pattern when analyzed according to the education le
vel of the respondent (see Figure 2.). Although "trust in the government" may not correspond exactly with support for the parties whose members comprise the government (HZDS, ZRS, SNS), the measure is closely related and is highly suggestive in its own r
ight. The greater the educational level of the respondents, the less likely they have been to respond positively to the arguments and appeals used by these parties not only before but also well after the elections of 1994. A different method used by Slo
vak researcher Vladimir Krivy provides strong additional support. Using results of parliamentary elections at the municipal level, Krivy looks for correlations between party support and particular municipal characteristics. For 1992 and especially for 1
994, Krivy finds negative and statistically significant correlations between the average level of education in a municipality and electoral support for the HZDS-led coalition. For the DU-led coalition he finds a significant positive correlation with educ
ation, completing the scissors pattern (see Figure 3.).
It is necessary to mention that for individual parties--as opposed to coalitions--the picture is not quite as simple. Krivy's method when applied to individual parties produces minor discrepancies. Four parties follow the pattern that would be predicte
d by the results for the coalition as a whole: HZDS and ZRS show a decline in support with increased levels of education while DU and SDL show increases in support with increased education (See Figure 4.). The situation is more difficult for SNS and KDH
, neither of which demonstrate a marked correlation in either direction. Krivy's calculations reveal correlations for these two parties than for others which are small nevertheless still opposite to those for their respective coalitions as a whole (Krivy
, 1995a).
Krivy's research points to an important shift over time which affects all of the major parties. Comparison between 1992 and 1994 shows that for HZDS and SDL (the two strongest parties in their respective coalitions) the scissors pattern has widened. Du
ring that two year period HZDS gained support among voters with lower educations and lost support among better educated voters. SDL did just the opposite. Applying the same time series to SNS and KDH reveals that although those parties' patterns differ
from their respective coalition partners, the pattern of their change over time does not differ from their partners. Between 1992 and 1994 the change in the correlation between education and support for SNS followed exactly the same pattern as that of HZ
DS. Similarly, the change in KDH's correlation during this period almost precisely reflects that of SDL (see Figure 5.).
More research would be needed to demonstrate firmer links between types of incentives and particular parties, but these results indicate that those with the least capacity to understand programmatic appeals are the most likely to vote for HZDS. As the s
kills for understanding programmatic appeals increase, support for HZDS and ZRS decreases and support for DU and SDL increases in direct proportion. For SNS and KDH the case is more difficult, but even here the educational demographic structures of their
support has changed, and by 1994 the educational demographics of these two parties resembled those of their respective coalition partners much more closely than they had in 1992.
Slovakia's parties differ as much in the incentives they can offer--whether measured directly or indirectly--as in their methods of making decisions. In this Slovakia differs from its neighbors. There is no available data for comparing Slovakia to its
neighbors in the terms of Kitschelt's research on programmatic decision-making, but impressionistic evidence suggests that neither the Czech Republic, Hungary nor Poland has a political figure who can match Meciar's near monopoly on charismatic and client
elistic incentives. Vaclav Klaus, Prime Minister of the Czech Republic and one of the few figures who might be able to make a similar claim, depends more on elaborate programmatic incentives and possesses a rather different appeal. Not only in the Czech
Republic but throughout the region, the various types of incentives seem more widely dispersed, and most parties seem capable of offering some combination of charismatic leadership and the promise of clientelist incentives in addition to a program. It d
oes appear true, however, that as in Slovakia the governing parties in its east central European neighbors have been able and willing to use the prerogatives of government as a means of providing employment and shoring up party support. Whether these cli
entelistic activities compare to those apparently being undertaken in Slovakia will require further research.
Several of the critical characteristics of a party system can be found by examining the relationships between parties. To understand Slovakia's politics it is crucial to understand not only how parties differ from one another but also how the engage wit
h one another in the political realm. Questions about the number of parties, the intensity of their polarization, and the stability of their competition help to sketch out the competition of parties in Slovakia. The first and perhaps critical question, h
owever, is what these parties are competing about in the first place.
Basis of Party Competition
To understand the basis of political competition in Slovakia, it is necessary to identify those issues over which parties actually compete. Simply reading the Slovak press would suggest several dozen possible conflicts, so it is useful to have a filter
for identifying what conflicts lie at the root of the numerous everyday clashes. A number of authors identify issues which have served as the basis of political party competition in a wide variety of countries over centuries of recent history. Slovakia'
s politics since the 1989 revolution contains elements of many of these conflicts but in the end revolves around three: the speed and intensity of economic transformation, the development of a Slovak nation-state, and the use of political power. For the
most part, these political divisions do not appear to be the represent cleavages between social groups as much as strong differences of opinion within the population. In recent years the political division at the elite level--largely a division of over t
he meaning and use of political power--has led to a corresponding sharpening of existing differences within the population as a whole
One starting point for identifying the dimensions of party competition and cooperation in Slovakia is to look at sources of divisions within other party systems in other countries. The most frequent starting point for discussing political divisions, Sey
mour Martin Lipset's and Stein Rokkan's "Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments," begins by asking the same questions posed here: "Which conflicts came first and which later? Which ones proved temporary and secondary? Which proved obd
urate and pervasive? Which cut across each other and produced overlaps
between allies and enemies, and which reinforced each other and tended to polarize the national citizenry?"(Lipset & Rokkan, 1967, p. 1) In answering their questions they focus on
"constellations of conflict lines within each polity" they call these "lines of cleavage" and identify four "critical" cleavages. These are "Owner-Worker," "State-Church," "Center-Periphery," and "Land-Industry"(Lipset & Rokka
n,
1967, p. 14).
In Democracies, Arendt Lijphart seeks to identify "issue dimensions" which determine competition within party systems. He uses four categories similar to those of Lipset and Rokkan, though he recasts them as "Socioeconomic," "Religious," "Cultu
ral-ethnic," and "Urban-rural." To these he adds three more: "Regime support," "Foreign Policy," and "Postmaterialism"(Lijphart, 1984, p. 128). Lijphart also offers several guidelines for identifying "the issue dimension of party systems"(Lijphart, 1984,
p. 127). He recommends looking at "party platforms and manifestoes" but only in concert with "the actual policies pursued by a party when it is in power"(Lijphart, 1984, pp. 127-8). He further limits his scope to differences which divide parties from o
ne another (rather than those which cause internal division), to those which divide major parties, and to those which endure from election to election.
Herbert Kitschelt's 1992 article on "The Formation of Party Systems in East Central Europe" makes an important contribution to this framework. The article was one of the first works to suggest that the party conflicts this region could not be understoo
d simply as a conflict between "left" and "right" and that the conflicts might be better understood by looking at more than one dimension. In the article, Kitschelt proposes "to distinguish three highly abstract dimensions along which political cleavages
can be organized... These components are (1) rules specifying who is a player admitted to the institution, (2) rules of the game players are expected to follow, and (3) the assets players are endowed with in order to participate in the game"(Kitschelt,
1992, p. 11). These abstract dimensions of cleavages translate into practical terms as the conflict (1) between "inclusive" and "exclusive" definitions of citizenship, (2) between an "authoritarian position (favoring narrow scope of democracy and primari
ly hierarchical mode of collective decision making)" and a "'libertarian' alternative (broad scope/participatory mode)," and (3) between "proponents of a purely 'spontaneous' market allocation of resources" and "advocates of a political redistribution of
resources"(Kitschelt, 1992, pp. 12-13). In a later work, Kitschelt rephrases this latter dimension as a conflict between "'liberal' positions" and "'populist' calls for redistribution or expropriation in favor of particular groups or social classes"(Kits
chelt, 1995, pp.13-14). Kitschelt's categories overlap but do necessarily coincide with the divisions identified by Lipset and Rokkan and Lijphart.
Two of the issue dimensions discussed by Lijphart have played a role in Slovakia's party system but have not emerged as decisive except among a small share of the population and a few individual politicians. Parties which represent post-materialist (spe
cifically environmental and ecological) issues and rural constituencies exist and have even gained seats in parliament, but they have remained small and dependent on the support of larger parties.
Despite recent works by Inglehart and others that show "post-materialist" values such as participatory democracy and environmental protection do hold some weight in east central Europe and are represented by separate political parties, but at the same ti
me these issues have not yet had a formative effect on Slovak politics. The Slovak Party of Greens (SZ) gained representation in the Slovak parliament in 1990. Two splinters of that original party--the Party of Greens in Slovakia (SZS) and the Slovak Gr
een Alternative (SZA)--gained a small number parliamentary deputies in 1994 as part of coalition agreements. SZA gained a seat through an informal coalition with Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS). SZS gained two seats as part of the left-oriente
d Common Choice (SV) coalition. With the exception of debate over the completion of the Slovakia's Glabcikovo dam on the Danube River and which has now nearly disappeared from public view and occasional protests over the completion of new nuclear power p
lants, neither these parties nor their issues have come to play a major role as the basis of a main issue dimension. Rather, Slovakia's environmental parties have been pushed to the margins in part as a result of their own susceptibility to division over
other issue dimensions. The two parties which emerged from the original Slovak Party split over the same questions of nation and state building which shape Slovakia's political scene as a whole. This split contributed to the failure of either green par
ty to gain seats in parliament in 1992. With both parties now represented in parliament, the potential for cooperation on environmental issues continues to remain low because SZA sits with the governing coalition and SZS with the opposition.
The urban-rural dimension shows a similar pattern although with deeper roots and potentially more significant consequences for Slovakia's political future. Urban-rural issues have tended to remain on the margins of Slovak politics and have not been the
overt subject of political divisions. Within interest groups representing municipalities there have been conflicts between the interests of those which are larger and more urban on the one hand and those which are smaller and more rural on the other. Th
e size of the community has been a determining factor in many internal conflicts within the Association of Cities and Villages in Slovakia (ZMOS), an association which represents nearly all municipal governments in Slovakia. A separate interest group, th
e Union of Cities, has even emerged to offer additional representation for larger municipalities (Malova & Krause, Forthcoming). Yet while these issues have divided municipalities and their respective interest groups, they have not had a particularly str
ong effect on political parties. When urban-rural questions have emerged at the highest levels of government, they have tended to reflect rather than shape party conflict. Parties disagreed strongly over proposals for new levels of territorial administr
ation, but their disagreements did not concern the question of whether this organization should be directed more toward urban or toward rural areas. Rather, parties clashed over concerns over the number and purpose of new regional offices, the opportunit
ies for party patronage, and concerns over the autonomy of Hungarian regions. Mayors have endorsed or opposed these plans largely along party lines. Likewise, although HZDS leader Vladimir Meciar has made statements critical of Slovakia's largest city,
Bratislava, in these instances his remarks have concerned not so much the city itself or its interests but the actions of the city's government which is led by members of the opposition KDH and Democratic Union (DU).
Urban-rural issues have entered the political party system directly in the form of agricultural-oriented parties, but to date their position has resembled that of the environmental parties. They remain small and divided by other issues. In 1994 the Mo
vement of Farmers (HP) gained a seat in parliament as part of SV coalition and the Peasant's Party of Slovakia (RSS) gained three seats in coalition with HZDS. Not only is their representation relatively small, therefore, but it is divided between coalit
ion and opposition forces. Recent attempts by these to parties to combine their strength have been made more difficult by this division and the results of negotiations are not yet clear.
Two other potential issue dimensions play more of a role in determining party competition and cooperation in Slovakia but only in certain spheres and among certain parties. Recent coalitions and oppositions have not been united on questions of religion
or socio-economic policy. With significant internal disagreements both either sides, it has also been difficult to differentiate opposition from coalition on the basis of these issues. In Slovakia in recent years these two groups of issues have shown a
potential to divide rather than to unite. Their divisive capacity has been most significant for the trio of KDH, DU and SDL which briefly formed a government together in 1994 and which has since that time remained in the opposition.
By Western European standards, Slovakia's population is quite religious. In the 1991 census of Slovakia and in regular public opinion surveys since then, over 60% of Slovaks have regularly characterized themselves "believers" and only 20% have responded
that they do not belong to any church. The population is also particularly Roman Catholic. This denomination accounts for over 60% of Slovaks overall and over 80% of those who claim a religious affiliation. Protestants, mainly Lutherans, form the next
largest denominational group but they account for only about 10% of the Slovak population. Of the remaining denominations, only Greek Catholics exceed 3% of the population (FOCUS, 1993; FOCUS, 1994; Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, 1995). Alo
ng with its pronounced levels in Slovakia, religious belief appears to be related to voting behavior. Krivy finds that for Slovak municipalities the percentage of Roman Catholics is positively correlated with the share of votes for three major parties in
the 1994 parliamentary election: KDH, HZDS and SNS. Correspondingly negative correlations appear for SDL, DU and ZRS. Public opinion surveys have found similar patterns among individual Slovak voters (MVK SRo, 1995).
Although religion plays an important role in Slovak society and although many of Slovakia's display a recognizable religious profile, religious differences have not played a large role in shaping basic political divisions. The Christian Democratic Movem
ent (KDH) has played an important role in every Slovak parliament since 1990 and has at times championed various church-related issues including campaigns against abortion and pornography. It has also consistently pursued the restitution of Roman Catholi
c church property confiscated during the communist period, and it has advocated greater freedom and support for private education at all levels. Yet the religious character of many of KDH's issue positions has inspired neither strong agreement nor strong
discord. Issues of social morality, religious education or church involvement in government have been solved or postponed in relative quiet. Nor have religious issues generally played a role in the encouraging political alliances. The parties with the
most Catholic electorate have in fact frequently pursued and formed coalitions with far less Catholic parties rather than with one another. Since early 1994 KDH entered into coalition with the post-communist SDL and HZDS has entered into coalition with
Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS), a splinter from SDL. To the extent that religion has played a significant role under the most recent HZDS government, it has been as a source of struggle between the HZDS and KDH as each has accused the ot
her of using and misleading the hierarchy and the followers of the church.
The issues that Lijphart describes as "Socioeconomic" and those that Kitschelt includes under the heading of "distribution" are similar enough to be considered together here. Unlike religious issues which help shape the electorate as a whole but which a
re expressed at an elite level mainly by one party, socioeconomic and distribution issues play a prominent role at both the electoral level and in campaigns and parliamentary debate. Yet like the religious issues, socio-economic questions have sh
aped the political scene only in limited ways. The socio-economic dimension lacks clarity in the political realm and has not proven strong enough to cause parties which share similar socioeconomic views to overlook differences on other issues. Since th
e largely successful marketization of Slovakia's economy which was undertaken in the early 1990's, the single most dominant socioeconomic issue in Slovakia has been the progress of privatization and the protection of workers from the negative effects of t
he process. More complicated than a simple "for" or "against" privatization, political debate has focused on the speed of the privatization process, the choice of firms to be privatized and the method of privatization. This mix of factors and the differ
ences in outcome depending on their combination has led to a series of apparent reversals by various parties. HZDS which campaigned against rapid privatization in 1992 and which privatized few major industries during most of its first term in office proc
eeded to privatize numerous of major concerns in its final days in office. Since 1994 HZDS has again pursued a mixed strategy of keeping certain "golden egg" industries in government hands while rapidly privatizing much of the remainder through direct sa
les, usually to management. SD shared much of HZDS's reluctance toward privatization in 1992 but while in government coalition in 1994 it cooperated with KDH and DU to plan a program of coupon privatization. At the same time, however, the party also pr
oposed a referendum on legislation which would allow the investigation of illegal sources of funds in already completed privatization agreements. Since 1994 SD has defended the coupon privatization method as at least better than the HZDS-led coalition's
approach of giving long-term bonds to coupon holders and selling firms directly. The shift of SD 's position on privatization in 1994 gave impetus for the candidacy of the ZRS which accused SDL of abandoning the interests of workers. Since late 1994, h
owever, nearly all of the management buy-outs have occurred while the organ responsible--the Fund of National Property--has had as its chairman a member of ZRS. KDH and DU have consistently endorsed more rapid privatization through the coupon methods use
d in Czech and Slovak Federal Republic after 1990, but even they compromised with SD to limit the scope of coupon privatization in 1994.
On other socioeconomic issues the political debate has been equally complicated. The establishment of a tripartite system of bargaining between labor unions, employer unions and the government has largely kept labor politics out of the political sphere.
Since 1994 the governing coalition represented in the tripartite system has always included a party with a self-proclaimed pro-labor orientation, but this has not prevented these successive government from resisting the wage and benefit demands organize
d labor. Despite the presence of ZRS in its government, HZDS has actually received praise from otherwise unfavorably inclined western newspapers and analysts for its "tightfisted spending policy that has spurned labor's calls for higher wages"(King, 1996
). At the same time, both of the governing coalitions since 1994 have also engaged in the politically popular activity of raising pensions and promising improvements in health care.
The difficulty of attributing a distinctive "left" or "right" socioeconomic orientation to complicated economic strategies is certainly not unique to Slovakia, but the inconsistency between party claims and party actions, and the rapid changes which have
occurred in both, make it difficult to draw a clear dimension of socioeconomic competition. One side of the spectrum is easier to trace than the other. KDH, DU and the small extra-parliamentary Democratic Party (DS) can make a fairly plausible claim to
a position on the "right" to the extent that this means pro-market policies and rejection of calls for broader, government-ensured economic security. Although not "proof" of these parties' socio-economic orientation, it is interesting to note that for K
DH, DU and DS the opinions of party supporters also fall on the socio-economic "right." Slovakia's opinion research firm FOCUS has devised a measure of "economic orientation" based on answers to public opinion survey questions . The scale defines respon
dents as "liberal" if they respond positively to questions about rapid economic change, freedom of exchange, and capitalism as the best option for Slovakia's future economy (FOCUS, 1994, p. 97). A December 1994 FOCUS poll shows that although DU and KDH
together attracted less than 30% of likely voters overall these same parties attracted over 60% of voters who fall into the "liberal" category (FOCUS, 1995). That this ratio was similar in a May 1994 poll suggests that the share of "liberal" support is r
ather stable over time (FOCUS, 1994).
On the "left" positions are somewhat less clear. ZRS was elected in 1994 on the basis of pro-labor promises and opinion polls have consistently shown it to be on of the few parties in Slovakia with a marked socio-economic profile. The party's supporter
s consist largely of workers and the unemployed (see Table 10.) (Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, 1994a). Yet the party has participated without substantial objection in a government which has not pref
erred employee-led privatization proposals to management-buy-outs and which has not shown particular largess to trade unions. SDL has not made quite this large a shift. It moved to some degree away from the economic "left" in its cooperation with DU and
KDH during their coalition government though more recently it has attempted to recover much of the political space on the left which was taken by ZRS in the 1994 election. Over the course of this period, however SDL has not received particularly strong
support from within demographic groups commonly associated with the socio-economic left. A 1996 survey suggests that while SDL supporters are more likely than average to be employed in state sector, they are less likely than the average Slovak to work in
blue-collar jobs, to be dissatisfied with their financial situation, or to consider themselves "lower class."(MVK SRo, 1996).
The remaining parties on the Slovak political scene are harder to categorize on the socioeconomic dimension. HZDS representatives frequently refer to it as a "movement of the wide center," and in economic terms it has indeed engaged in activities aimed
across the socio-economic spectrum. On one hand, the numerous management buy-outs approved by the Fund of National Property--on which HZDS appointees form a majority--hold the potential to create a small group of extremely wealthy property owners. On th
e other hand, having cancelled the "voucher" method of privatization, HZDS strongly supported and has since taken considerable credit for an SNS-proposed alternative which would deliver a guaranteed sum of SK 10,000 (approximately USD 330, well over one m
onth's average wages) plus interest to all those who had subscribed to the initial coupon offer. The question of public support does not shed much additional light on the party's perceived socio-economic profile. Supporters of HZDS include a somewhat hi
gher than average share of those with orientations identified by FOCUS as "social market" and "socialist," but at the same time the party receives support across all class and occupational groups, with only a slightly higher level among blue-collar worker
s. Surveys show that HZDS receives consistent and markedly high support only within the employment category of "retirees."
For Slovakia's ethnically oriented parties, economic issues have played a more marginal role. Neither the Hungarian coalition nor SNS has demonstrated a clear socio-economic profile in recent years except to the extent indicated by their participation i
n or support for particular governments. The situation corresponds in general terms to Kitschelt's contention that, "
Socio-economic issues do matter to politicians and voters in Slovakia but vague party positions, mismatches between rhetoric and policy, and frequent political reversals make it difficult at the policy level to identify a socio-economic profile fo
r many parties. This is particularly true for parties in the governing coalition of HZDS, SNS and ZRS and those in the Hungarian Coalition. The lack of clear profiles has been paralleled by a lack of major public socio-economic conflicts within those t
wo coalitions. The Hungarian parties have continued in close cooperation with one another and plan to cooperate in future electoral coalitions. HZDS, SNS and ZRS have cooperated even more closely, maintaining support for a coalition government and comin
g into public conflict on socio-economic issues only to the extent that each party has accused the others of seeking undue gain from particular privatization projects. The current opposition parties including KDH, DU and SDL have been out of power for ap
proximately two years and during that time have not been burdened by the need to reconcile rhetoric with policy. While in the opposition they have publicly differed in their socio-economic prescriptions and even sharpened in these differences. While par
ty continued to engage in periodic consultation, they have not often succeeded in coordinating their opposition efforts. Leaders within SDL have often repeated the sentiments expressed in 1995 by then-president of the party Peter Weiss who stated that SD
L wanted "its own seat within the opposition"(Meseznikov, 1996, p. 21). A socio-economic issue dimension, and to some extent a parallel religious one, thus exists among the opposition while the coalition parties, though containing a similar socio-economi
c and religious mix of voters and elites, have not proven divisible by these same issues. The left-right dimension in Slovakia is a cross-cutting dimension that does not cut all the way across.
The issue dimensions discussed above have shaped particular parties but have not had a decisive effect on the shape of the Slovak political scene or on the formation of coalitions and oppositions, especially after the 1992 election.. Crucial instead hav
e been intertwined dimensions of state building which relate to who makes up the state and to how it is governed.
The first of these dimension actually includes several related issues which Lipset and Rokkan would likely consider under the heading of Center-Periphery, which Kitschelt would consider under the heading of "citizenship," and which Lijphart might divide
between Ethnic and Foreign Policy. One pole in each of these related issue dimensions has been occupied by parties which emphasize the "Slovak nation" as an important principle of political organization. Depending on the specific issue in question, the
other pole has been occupied by a combination of Czechs, Slovak citizens of Hungarian ethnicity, and Slovaks who endorse rival principles of political organization which range from Czecho-Slovakia to autonomous Hungarian regions, to the European Union and
NATO. Certain parties have remained consistently at one of these poles, while others have searched for a suitable middle ground. The mere fact that these conflicts are both politically divisive and capable of dividing parties in a consistent pattern of
fer initial signs that this dimension differs from those discussed above.
Signs of this issue dimension appeared in increasing levels after 1989 in the form of questions about the role of Slovakia within Czechoslovakia. Formally the issue is dead-- solved by the separation at the end of 1992--but the struggle over the split h
elped to clarify differences between parties and shape the way the Slovak party system would split over subsequent issues. On one side of the pre-election debate in 1992 stood the Slovak National Party (SNS) which had since 1990 advocated some form of Sl
ovak independence and the small Slovak Christian Democratic Movement (SKDH) which split from KDH in 1991 largely over intensity of feeling on national issues. On the opposite side stood the Hungarian parties whose leaders and followers believed that thei
r interests were better served as long as both Hungarians and Slovaks remained minority groups in the larger multi-ethnic state of Czechoslovakia. Near to this position stood several small parties consisting largely of Slovaks with a "Czechoslovak" orien
tation including the Civic Democratic Union (ODU) which contained many of the leaders of the former Public Against Violence (VPN), and a coalition between the Democratic Party (DS) and the Slovak branch of the Czech Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the only
major party to campaign in both the Slovak and Czech republics.
In the campaign for the 1992 election the three largest parties sought to occupy territory in the middle ground on the question of future relations between the Czechs and Slovaks. All acknowledged the need for some revision of the then existing relation
ship, but they varied in their proposals and in their intensity of emphasis on the subject. SDL remained committed to a continuation of the Czecho-Slovak federation, but in its campaign it did not cooperate with its one-time sister party in the Czech Rep
ublic. After the election the party parliamentary club went even further, narrowly voting to let party members vote their conscience on the potential separation of the two republics. KDH also campaigned for a continuation of federation and accused HZDS
of wanting to split the country. Yet as prime minister of the Slovak Republic of the CSFR, Jan Carnogursky had in many ways sparked public debate over independence by weighing the possibility that Slovakia might enter the European Union with "its own st
ar" on the flag. HZDS presented an even more ambiguous figure in the campaign, promising to resolve difficulties between Slovaks and Czechs but not specifying a particular method for their resolution. Through the tone of party statements, however, it ac
quired a reputation as a party which would take concrete and immediate measures to improve the position of the Slovak Republic vis-a-vis the Czech Republic, whether within the CSFR or in some other framework.
In the election HZDS won nearly half of the seats in the Slovak National Council. Meciar became Slovakia's premier and his negotiations with Czech premier Vaclav Klaus rapidly led to the separation of the two republics. The ambiguity of many major part
y positions during the campaign make it difficult to argue that the election revolved solely around Slovak independence, but in combination with other issues the election campaign and results did confirm the role of perceived "Slovak" interests as an infl
uential dimension of political conflict. Furthermore, although the specific question of independence was resolved shortly after the election, the issue had longer term effects. In 1992 HZDS had as its main asset an extremely popular party leader. With
the break-up of Czechoslovakia the party also acquired a reputation as the party of Slovak independence, a reputation which contained strong negatives for some and strong positives for others. Along with SNS, HZDS became the most plausible representative
of Slovak interests against those who might threaten them or allow them to be threatened.
The 1992 elections sparked a wave of political migration as masses and elites moved across party lines to join those with similar beliefs. This has strengthened the national issue dimension. Conflict over the importance and method of defending specific
ally Slovak interests has emerged in a prominent but still vague foreign policy dimension concerning integration into European structures and a considerably sharper ethnic policy dimension which concerns the rights and responsibilities of Slovakia's Slova
k and Hungarian populations.
Several of Slovakia's parties have consistently supported Slovakia's integration into any and all international and Western European structures that would have it is a member. This group includes the parties of the Hungarian coalition and DS, the same
parties which in 1992 had supported the continuation of a Czechoslovak federation. Only slightly more circumspect, KDH and DU have also encouraged integration into the European Union and NATO. SDL has likewise endorsed these steps, although unlike the o
ther parties mentioned so far it does so without the whole-hearted endorsement of its membership, many of whom have little trust in the EU and even less in NATO. Among the parties of the HZDS-led coalition, ZRS and SNS have consistently questioned the wi
sdom of integration into NATO or the EU. HZDS, by contrast, has consistently endorsed integration, although its expressed reservations have increased over time. Although party leaders have repeatedly emphasized the party's intention to pursue NATO and E
U membership, other party figures and the party-owned daily newspaper Slovenska Republika have often been harshly critical of these institutions. Like SDL, HZDS has given itself room to maneuver by stating that such decisions would depend on a vot
e of Slovakia's citizens in a referendum. A similar spectrum has emerged on the more immediate and concrete question of ratifying the basic treaty between Slovakia and Hungary which had been signed by the two countries' premiers in 1995. Only SNS unambi
guously opposed this treaty though this party was joined a group of parliamentary deputies within HZDS and another group from DU. Although the treaty had gained sufficient support between HZDS and members of the opposition, HZDS leaders refrained from br
inging the issue to a vote until they had secured sufficient support from within their own coalition. They did not accomplish this task until early 1996, receiving the support of SNS in exchange for amendments to the criminal code which criminalized the
spreading of false information about Slovakia abroad.
Although on these questions of integration the dividing line between support and opposition often runs between HZDS and its own coalition partners, the placement of parties along a spectrum of support for integration nevertheless resembles the spectrum o
f party support for the preservation of Czechoslovakia. From Hungarian parties and DS on one extreme, the spectrum includes more moderate support by KDH and SDL, mixed signals from HZDS and rejection by SNS. The two parties which came into existence aft
er the breakup of Czechoslovakia reflect their to some degree their party of origin on these questions. DU which emerged from SNS and HZDS supports integration but is more likely to express reservations than SDL or KDH. ZRS which emerged from SDL differ
s from its parent party by expressing the same doubts at the elite level that the membership of both ZRS and SDL express at the mass level. Although by no means a perfect representation of Slovakia's political scene, the spectrum on this issue dim
ension is the first to be discussed so far in which the proximity of parties to one another corresponds approximately to the parties' actual coalition-forming decisions.
A further, if minor, aspect of European integration helps to shed additional light on the dimensions of Slovakia's political scene. One explanation of the terminology "standard" and "non-standard" to describe the current cleavage in Slovakia stems from
observations about the willingness of the parties themselves to become integrated into the European political spectrum. Slovak political scientists note that while KDH, DU, SDL and the parties of the Hungarian Coalition have all at least applied for memb
ership in an international party organization, the other major Slovak parties--HZDS, SNS and ZRS--had not. In one way, this dichotomy is a weak one since ZRS does indeed cooperate with "workers'" parties outside of Slovakia and since for SNS the question
of becoming "standard" by joining a Europe-wide organization is complicated by the non-existence of such an organization. Although national parties analogous to SNS exist throughout europe, they are by their very nature less likely to form a strong i
nternational organization. In another sense, however, Slovakia's "non-standard"--i.e. unaffiliated--parties themselves this aspect of their "non-standard-ness" and embrace it as part of their appeal. Like affiliated parties which offer their interna
tional membership as evidence of their legitimacy as parties and their European orientation, the unaffiliated parties cite their lack of affiliation as a sign of their independence and their commitment to Slovak interests over the interests of Europe as a
whole. To the extent that "standard" means "affiliated," the terminology therefore corresponds roughly to the position of parties on European integration and reflects the foreign policy dimension of Slovak politics.
Closely related to the foreign policy dimension are questions of ethnicity and citizenship. These have remained the Slovak Republic's most durable and heated political themes since the separation of Czechoslovakia. The relative positions of parties on
the dimension of minority policy closely resembles their relative positions on the question of integration. The actual location and grouping of the parties is a bit different however. A look at party statements and party voting in parliaments suggests t
he existence of three distinct groups distinguished by their understanding of the proper relative status of the Hungarian and Slovak nations within Slovakia. At one pole, the parties of the Hungarian Coalition understand Slovakia's population in national
terms and believe that the Hungarian and Slovak nations should function as largely equal partners. The seek conditions for Slovakia's Hungarians which are analogous to those enjoyed by Slovakia's Slovaks. These include the right to sue their native lan
guage in schools, offices and other settings, along with equal distribution of resources and some degree of administrative or cultural autonomy. Least sympathetic to this position are the parties of the current governing coalition, especially SNS and a s
egment of HZDS which, although they repeatedly emphasize the "civic" nature of their position also emphasize Slovaks as the "statotvorny narod" or "state-forming nation" of Slovakia (Krause, 1996). While not excluding minority rights, this concept catego
rizes Hungarians together with Slovakia's other, much smaller minorities and identifies minority rights as something granted by the "state-forming" Slovaks. Accordingly, the governing parties have pursued policies which allow the use of the Hungarian lan
guage in many spheres but which also require that all citizens of Slovakia master the Slovak language and use it in official settings. They have also implemented a territorial redistricting plan which reduces the extent of administrative districts where
Hungarians form a majority (Krivy, 1996, p. 267).
Between these two poles stand KDH, SDL and DU, which differ from the others mainly in their reluctance to call any attention to minority issues or national identity. in their programs and public statements they reject "national" solutions and offer vari
ous formulations for balancing the rights of Slovaks and Hungarians as citizens. In practice, however, they often appear reluctant to take any position at all. The Slovak Language Act (c. 270/1995 Z.z.) offers a crucial example. Hungarian parties rejec
ted the proposal as infringing on the rights of Hungarians. Deputies of KDH abstained. Most of those representing DU and SDL after vocal protest against the law proceeded to vote in favor of it (Sujova, Kovacic, & Samel, 1995).
The Hungarian question is the first issue dimension discussed so far which might be called a "cleavage" in the strict sense of the concept used by Lipset and Rokkan to describe a political conflict based on deep social division. At the Slovakia-wide lev
el, the "cleavage" aspect is in once sense marginal since it directly isolates only one tenth of the population. But to the extent that the issue of how to consider the Hungarian population in slovakia has also sown an ability to divide Slovak parties, t
his dimension plays a very significant role. The threefold division of party positions created by this issue dimension provides perhaps the best map for understanding coalition-formation in Slovakia since 1992 and especially since 1994. while in governm
ent in 1994 the coalition of DU, KDH and SDL accepted the silent support of the Hungarian Coalition but never invited its formal, equal participation in government. Since returning to the opposition DU, KDH and SDL have engaged in a mix of cooperation an
d coalition with the Hungarian parties. On the other side of the spectrum, HZDS formed the first of its coalition governments with the strongly pro-Slovak SNS. When in need of an additional coalition partner after the 1994 elections, HZDS and SNS found
one in ZRS, a party marked by a wariness of foreign--if not specifically Hungarian--intentions. This, however, was not the only reason that ZRS appeared to be a particularly eligible coalition partner. Other factors can be found in a final, equally visi
ble issue dimension.
The last issue dimension in Slovakia is the hardest to define because it is least related to particular political issues and most related to the political system itself. It is probably much too simple to suggest that this dimension reflects a conflict b
etween democracy and authoritarianism or even support or opposition to a democratic regime. More correct would be to argue that the conflict concerns limits on how political power gained and used in Slovakia's democracy. The conflict exists at both the
level of party elites and that of party supporters, and it pits the HZDS, SNS and ZRS against former governing coalition partners SDL, KDH and DU along with the parties of the Hungarian coalition.
Slovak parties frequently differentiate themselves from other parties by pointing out how others violate democratic principles and attempt to use power for party or personal interests. Until the summer of 1996 when HZDS, SNS and ZRS engaged in mutual re
criminations, these accusations of "undemocratic methods were rarely used by parties against fellow members of a coalition or opposition, even when there were sharp intra-coalition or intra-opposition on other issues. The accusations made by coalition an
d opposition parties against parties of the opposite side have frequently been quite specific and range from simple arrogance of power to fraud and criminal activity. Each accusation is met with counter-accusations, and in the constant conflict over whic
h side is truly democratic, both sides claim the same high ground. While it is easy to assert that it one side is more willing to put specific interests over democratic principles, it is extremely difficult to offer satisfying evidence which is not subje
ct to counter-charges from those accused. A careful examination of the specific allegations would help this process but it is far beyond the scope of this work. A survey of party elites on their understanding of democracy would also help but none are ye
t available for Slovakia. Since party leaders are all usually very careful in public statements to praise democracy no matter what their actual intentions might be, it is necessary to look for indirect indicators which are less subject to denial or count
er-charges. On this particular issue dimension, to understand the way in which parties understand. One such source is the attitudes of party supporters, who have less incentive to hide their actual understanding of democracy. If party support can be ta
ken as a sign of satisfaction with party positions, a consistent pattern of party support by those who express particular political opinions should also hint at the orientation of the party. In Slovakia, particular patterns at the mass level allow a re-e
valuation of the accusations which fly back and forth at the elite level
Surveys of public opinion taken by the firm FOCUS frequently include a number of questions designed to measure the public understanding of democracy. Among the most suggestive of these is a question which asks respondents to rank their preference for tw
o statements: "What is important in politics is patient negotiation" and "What is important in politics is decisiveness and the firm hand of a strong personality"(FOCUS, 1994). In May of 1994, 41% of respondents in Slovakia agreed partially or in full wi
th the first statement while 26% agreed with the second. Among supporters of HZDS, the ratio was reversed: only 30% agreed with patient negotiation while 48% preferred decisiveness and a firm hand. These ratios have remained stable in other surveys tak
en over a longer period. In those surveys, SNS and ZRS showed profiles similar to that of HZDS. Supporters of all other parties were considerably more likely to support patience over decisiveness. The imbalance between the two groups of parties on this
question is so significant that HZDS alone attracts three fifths major-party supporters favored "decisiveness and the firm hand of a strong personality." The supporters of HZDS, SNS and ZRS include nearly four fifths of major-party voters who endorsed t
his position. Although care must be taken with generalizations, the results suggest that those who favor "decisiveness" are almost four times more likely to support one of the parties of the HZDS-led coalition than they are to support all other major par
ties combined.
Results on a variety of other questions look quite similar. When asked whether "unity and solidarity" were more important than "plurality of opinion and democracy," HZDS received considerably higher than average preferences for "unity" over "plurality."
SNS and ZRS again showed similar profiles (FOCUS, 1995, p. 68). HZDS alone captured over half of major party supporters who prefer "unity." The HZDS, SNS and ZRS coalition together attracted three fourths of all such voters. Figures are similar for
those who agree that "government should control and direct mass media"(FOCUS, 1995, p. 134). Other questions asked in 1994 lend credence to this profile since HZDS supporters were considerably more likely than supporters of other parties to agree that "t
he right of the majority to decide even at the expense of the minority" and that "in the interest of the people a politician can sometimes act contrary to the law"(FOCUS, 1994).
The picture that emerges from these surveys is shows well above average support for HZDS and its coalition partners among those respondents who are more likely to emphasize the importance of action and strength over procedural limitations and less likely
to endorse democracy when it conflicts with other values. Although this group of respondents appears to make up the largest single share of the coalition's supporters, it is also important to note that a significant share of the coalition's supporters f
all somewhere in the large middle ground on questions of priorities in a democracy. And a smaller than average but numerically significant share of support for these parties comes from those who believe that democracy ought to be firmly bound by rules an
d other limitations. The same broad spectrum of opinions about democracy is not apparent among the supporters of SDL, KDH, DU and the parties of the Hungarian coalition. A very small share of their support--from one third to less than one tenth dependin
g on the question and the party--come from those who do not place a high value on the limitations imposed by a democratic system. In this sense, then, these parties have a more limited if not numerically smaller base of support with regard to opinions ab
out democracy. Supporters of SDL, KDH, DU and the Hungarian coalition seem to have a considerably lower tolerance for activities which might violate democratic norms.
On this basis it is possible to take another look at the charges of anti-democratic behavior which fly back and forth at the highest levels. A number of Slovak commentators on political matters have long argued that one group of parties--those they labe
l as "non-standard" and which include HZDS, SNS and ZRS--have pursued their own interests while ignoring key rules of the democratic game. In an edited volume entitled Slovakia: Parliamentary Elections 1994. Causes - Consequences - Prospects, t
hese parties are described as employing "a crude majoritarianism following the rule 'the winner takes all'"(Butorova, 1995, p. 138) and "characterized by "a confrontational style of politics, a leader type of organization of the party, and questioning the
principles of pluralist democracy"(Szomolanyi, 1995, p. 15). Unfortunately the supporting evidence presented in these articles is rarely strong enough to substantiate these claims, and the articles make little attempt to analyze or refute the counter-ch
arges which are leveled by the accused parties. The term "non-standard" in this context threatens to become only a residual category with negative connotations. At the same time, it does seem clear that the general accusations made against HZDS,
ZRS and SNS by these authors and others bear intriguingly close correspondence to the preferences of a large share of those parties' voters in opinion surveys. Without entering into the battle over specific incidents therefore, it is possible at least to
conclude that far the supporters of HZDS, ZRS and SNS are more likely than others to tolerate party politics which is, in the words of the aforementioned articles, "confrontational," "majoritarian" rather than "pluralist," and conducted according to the
"leader principle."
Before jumping from "non-standard" to the label "authoritarian," which is sometimes used to describe these parties, it is important to note that these descriptions do not conflict with democracy per se but only with certain of the more durable typ
es of democracy. The characteristics noted in HZDS, SNS and ZRS and the preferences of many of their supporters are often also associated with the concept of "populist" democracy, a concept which in its descriptive, if not its normative, sense describes
a sub-type of democracy. The work of Guillermo O'Donnell on "delegative" democracy provides an even more apt description. By the adjective "delegative" O'Donnell describes "newly installed democracies" which "are democracies, in the sense that th
ey meet Robert Dahl's criteria for the definition of polyarchy" but which "are not--nor seem to be moving toward--representative democracy"(O'Donnell, 1992, pp. 1-2, final italics added). These democracies, says O'Donnell, are "grounded on
one basic premise: he (or eventually she ...) who wins a presidential election is enabled to govern the country as he sees fit, and to the extent that existing power relations allow, for the term to which he has been elected. The President is the embodi
ment of the nation and the custodian of the national interest, which it is incumbent upon him to define"(O'Donnell, 1992, pp. 6-7). He notes a number of characteristics including a "strongly majoritarian" impulse and "practically no horizontal accountabi
lity" of the president to political institutions or any others (O'Donnell, 1992).
The pattern described by O'Donnell matches quite closely the preferences of a significant share of HZDS supporters, as well as those of SNS and ZRS. The FOCUS survey of May 1994 suggests that those supporters are only slightly less favorable than averag
e to "respect for democratic principles"(Krivy, 1994) but that at the same time they are considerably more favorable than average to "unity and solidarity of people," "the firm hand of a strong personality" and the absolute right of the majority. O'Donne
ll's characterization likewise corresponds to many of the steps taken by HZDS-led governments including the exclusion of opposition representatives from sensitive committees, transferral of various powers from the president to the government, and the slo
w response of the government to unfavorable decisions by the Constitutional Court. Since supporters of a delegative type of democracy are several times more likely to vote for HZDS, SNS or ZRS than for other major parties, and since the HZDS-led coalitio
n appears to fit the delegative model more closely than its rivals, the issue dimension discussed here may well be labeled as a conflict between delegative and representative forms of democracy.
The placement of parties on questions of "democracy" almost perfectly matches their positions on "Slovak" questions. Furthermore, there are intriguing affinities between the notions of the "state-forming nation" and "delegative democracy." Both, in par
ticular, emphasize the rights the a majority within a democracy and define that majority in very basic terms. The basis of the former majority ethnicity and of the latter on election results. In both cases this group is conceived of as the majori
ty rather than one of a multitude of possible majorities depending on the political question at hand and how it is framed. Furthermore, since the government is chosen by the voice of the people there is little need for accountability to other, riv
al political institutions which only serve to interfere with the carrying out of popular will. Both of these related conceptions have been embraced by the HZDS, SNS and ZRS coalition, each party emphasizing those elements which are most consistent with i
ts position and most appealing to its support base.
Party views on "democracy" also correspond closely to the previously addressed issue of incentives for voters. As O'Donnell notes, preference for a "delegative" democracy rests on the belief in the elected leader's ability to solve a nation's problems,
whatever the methods. The ability to appeal to such preferences bears close resemblance to Kitschelt's description of charismatic incentives, and evidence both direct and indirect suggests that such incentives and the share of voters who respond to them
strongly tilt in the direction of HZDS. That party and its coalition partners also appear to hold a near monopoly on clientelist incentives of tangible benefit--incentives which Kitschelt finds to be in the long run to interfere with the more delicate pr
ocesses of representative democracy. Left to the SDL, KDH, DU and the Hungarian parties are only programmatic incentives and even these are not their exclusive domain since HZDS, ZRS and SNS can offer programs as well. As Slovakia's recent coalitions an
d oppositions have divided between representative and delegative forms, they have correspondingly divided between those limited to programmatic incentives and those which are capable of--indeed inclined to-- offering non-programmatic incentives as well.
These related conflicts have become increasingly clear in the reshuffling of political elites which occurred between 1992 and 1994, and they have been echoed in the subsequent reshuffling of supporters to the extent that only a very small percentage of vo
ters now shift their support across coalition-opposition lines
Together issue dimensions related to national identity and to preferred methods of democracy help to explain both elite and mass support for Slovakia's otherwise counter-intuitive series of left-center-right coalitions since 1994. In varying combination
s, these have brought SNS and ZRS together with HZDS and brought SDL together with KDH, DU, and the Hungarian parties. Although conflict over Hungarian interests forms the deepest of the divisions, the continued use of clientelist and charismatic incenti
ves and the related need to preserve an accountability-free delegative democracy may create its own entrenched conflict. Debate within SDL over whether to join the HZDS-led coalition reflects not so much programmatic affinity as the belief that the party
's return to government offers the only means of shifting the balance of resources away from those currently in power. Whether such a coalition will come about depends not only on the decisions made by the leaders of SDL but also on the willingness of HZ
DS. A coalition with SDL would require HZDS to rely on softening SDL's commitment to integration and representative democracy or foregoing some of its own delegative tendencies in exchange for a coalition which contained both SDL and ZRS and which might
attempt to reorient Slovak politics along a left-right socioeconomic issue division.
Slovakia's issue dimensions thus remain in flux, but in their current form they differ in a notable way from Slovakia's neighbors and from other newly democratizing countries. Recent research by a Kitschelt-led team has investigated the issue positions
of parties of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria. Using Kitschelt's 1992 work as a basis, interviews asking political elites to rank parties on a series of dimensions found the Czech Republic's party system to be "clearly of a uni-dimension
al nature"(Kitschelt, 1994, p. 36) on a left-right socioeconomic scale though some variance along Kitschelt's above-mentioned libertarian-authoritarian scale. In Hungary, interviews likewise found a predominant dimension, but one which pits "left-liberta
rian" against "right-authoritarian" with some differentiation variance along an axis of "social protection" versus "market austerity"(Kitschelt, 1994, p. 38). Research in Poland reveals a similar pattern, although Kitschelt refers to Poland's second dime
nsion as"social welfare" versus "capitalist-religious" preferences, and he notes that the locations of parties and the high degree of fragmentation "does not translate into an easy formation of majority coalitions among parties"(Kitschelt, 1994, p. 40).
In Bulgaria, the research finds that both citizenship and economic issues play important roles but within an overall framework of "relatively weaker structuring" and "the instability of parties and the absence of a capacity to develop and pursue consisten
t policy goals"(Kitschelt, 1994). Slovakia's parties at the end of 1995 seem considerably more stable and capable than those of Bulgaria's in 1993, but the two countries do share conflict on the citizenship dimension. Yet only in Slovakia do the "citi
zenship" and "democracy" dimension (which Kitschelt would likely label as "authoritarian-libertarian") take precedence over the economic dimension. It is intriguing to speculate on whether the "national identity" and "democracy dimensions" have reinforc
ed one another since Slovakia's independence. Perceptions of the fragility of that newly gained independence in the face of "non-Slovak" economic and political actors, be they the European Union, foreign investors or the Hungarian minority, may well pla
y a role in strengthening the appeal of delegative democracy and a strong leader who promises to protect against "foreign" threats.
Party System Size
Counting parties consistently and reliably is not an easy task. Difficulties arise in how to count coalitions, splinter parties, parliamentary clubs and fringe parties. Sartori suggests counting all parties in parliament which have coalition or blackma
il potential. He regards other parties as not-relevant for assessing the 'size' of the system. Mainwaring and Scully in their more recent work on party systems argue that Sartori's rules are not self-explanatory and instead propose using mathematical fo
rmula for party system size devised by Laakso and Taagepera (Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p. 29). In many ways, however, the raw calculation is not the most interesting result of attention to party system size. More interesting is how that number can be u
sed in conjunction with other aspects of the party system, and how it can be viewed in comparison to other party systems. For these purposes the methods used by Sartori and those used by Taagepera and Laakso yield similar results in the case of Slovakia.
Applying Sartori's method to Slovakia raises number of difficulties. Sartori's rules for relevance depend on the influence of parties "over time"(Sartori, 1976) and not just in a single election. It is unclear how much time is necessary to make this ju
dgement and time is one commodity that party systems in post-communist countries have not yet acquired in great quantity. For Slovakia it is necessary to make a judgment of party size on the basis of three elections in a four year period even though this
may not be enough to determine the relevance of certain marginal parties. Sartori's rules also deal poorly with coalitions formed solely for the purpose of election. Such electoral coalitions dominated the election in Slovakia in 1994.
With these caveats, it is possible to count the number of parties in Slovakia's party system after each of its three elections. In the election of 1990 seven electoral blocs won seats in the Slovak National. Once in parliament the largest of these, Pub
lic Against Violence (VPN), split into two roughly equally sized parliamentary delegations: the Civic Democratic Union (ODU) and the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS). These along with four other parties--the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH),
the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS), the Slovak National Party (SNS) and the Democratic Party (DS)--clearly to meet Sartori's condition of relevance, either as necessary members of a coalition (ODU, KDH and DS) or as parties which affect the tactics of
their opponents (HZDS, KSS and SNS). The other elected blocs are more difficult to count. One of these is a coalition of two Hungarian parties which campaigned on a common list while maintaining separate party identities and organization. Since these
parties can be distinguished from one another and retained separate identities in parliament, I will count them here as separate parties. The final party elected to the Slovak National Council was the Party of the Greens (SZ) which barely exceeded the 3%
threshold, did not participate in governing coalitions during this period or afterward. It therefore does not meet the test of relevance, and I will not include it when counting parties during this period. With this exclusion and with certain reservati
ons about treating the Hungarian parties as separate, I conclude that the Slovak party system numbered 7 after the election of 1990 and that this number rose to 8 with the split of VPN in 1991.
The 1992 election brought a drop in the number of parties in parliament. The new 5% threshold excluded DS, ODU, and SZ but did not effect the other parties which had held seats in the 1990-1992 parliament: HZDS, KDH, SNS, the Party of the Democratic Le
ft (SDL, formerly KSS) and the two parties of the Hungarian Coalition. Since each of these parties participated in or provided the necessary support for a governing coalition, all 6 can be considered relevant. Splinters from the HZDS in 1993 and from bo
th HZDS and SNS in late 1993-early 1994 merged to form a seventh parliamentary party during this period. This party's participation in government qualifies it for eligibility under Sartori's rules.
The period after the 1994 election is more difficult to measure because unlike previous elections, only two of the seven electoral blocs which gained election to parliament were composed of single parties: SNS and the new Association of Slovak Workers (
ZRS). The rest were combinations of electoral coalitions and "crypto-coalitions" in which members of a smaller party were placed on the list of a larger party without a formal agreement that would incur the higher electoral thresholds applied to coalitio
ns (see Table 11.) (Zemko, 1995). For purposes of Sartori's method it may be possible to ignore the crypto-coalitions since such parties are without sufficient influence even to demand a formal electoral agreeme
nt. Similarly, it may also be possible to exclude RSS in light of the almost total dependence of this small party on its coalition partner HZDS. The other two coalitions raise more difficult questions. The SV coalition contains one large party--SDL--an
d three smaller parties, two of which have in the past gained seats in the national or Czecho-Slovak federal parliament. These parties work together in parliament and together form a single parliamentary club but they maintain separate identities and org
anizations. A significant change in the orientation of one of these parties would not compel a change in the others. They may thus be considered as separate parties, but this does not necessarily mean that they should be counted under Sartori's rules si
nce they have extremely parliamentary delegations (1-3 members of parliament) and since their absence from the electoral list would not have significantly altered SDL's chances of entering parliament, and some suggest that the party might actually have pe
rformed better without the coalition partners (Juza, 1995; Minar, 1995). For the purposes of counting, I will not consider these smaller parties as "relevant" by Sartori's criteria, though I acknowledge that this is an oversimplification. As final facto
r, it is necessary to note that the parties of Hungarian Coalition were in 1994 joined by the smaller Hungarian Civic Party (MPP). In light of this party's small parliamentary delegation and relatively low electoral support in the 1992 elections (2.29%),
I will not use it when counting the number of parties, although I acknowledge that as with other choices concerning the Hungarian Coalition, this is a difficult one. With all of these caveats this process of counting yields 8 parties.
Because it looks not at individual parties but at distributions of seats and votes, the method used by Taagepera and Laakso has the mixed blessing of neither requiring nor permitting discretionary decisions about whether particular parties are "relevant.
" It does, however, suffer from the related difficulty of determining whether parties elected together on a common electoral list should be considered as a single party. For the purposes of these calculations I will consider parties which were elected o
n the same list to be a single party unless they have formed a separate parliamentary club. In the case of Slovakia's parliament, this condition calls for treating all of electoral coalitions (formal and "crypto") as single parties with the exception of
the Hungarian Coalition whose members have formed two separate parliamentary clubs.
The results of the Sartori and Taagepera and Laakso methods yield different raw numbers for party system size but show almost precisely the same pattern over time (see Table 12. and Figure 6.) The party system
size increases with the split of VPN in 1991, drops significantly after the election of 1992 and then increases over the next two years with the split of HZDS. For the 1994 election Sartori's method shows a slight increase reflecting the appearance of ZR
S while Taagepera and Laakso's shows a slight decline largely reflecting an increasing imbalance between HZDS and a large number of smaller parties.
Assessing the meaning of these numbers is difficult in the abstract. Sartori argues that more than five parties reflects a condition of "extreme pluralism" while five parties or less may be considered to be limited pluralism (Sartori, 1976, pp. 127-128)
. In seeking to make use of Sartori's categories without using what they view as potentially ambiguous counting rules, Mainwaring and Scully translate raw numbers produced by Laakso and Taagepera's formula into Sartori's categories as follows: "Systems
with an Ns between 3.0 and 3.9 usually correspond to Sartori's category of limited pluralism, while those with an Ns of 4.0 or higher usually correspond to the category of extreme pluralism"(Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p. 32). Using these translations of
Sartori's categories, both counting methods again yield extremely similar results. Both place the Slovak system within the category of extreme pluralism after the 1990 and 1994 elections but show it dropping to or slightly below the lower limit of extrem
e pluralism after the election of 1992. Both counting systems also yield averages sizes for the party system over time which are about 25% higher than their respective limits for extreme pluralism.
Sartori argues that party size yields meaningful results only if used in combination with measures of party system polarization, but he also acknowledges that the number of parties alone helps to shape how parties interact with one another. Before going
on to discuss polarization, therefore, it may yield certain insight to compare the size of Slovakia's party system with those of other democratizing countries in Latin America and East Central Europe. In contrast to Sartori's method, the comparability a
nd availability of existing data for Taagepera and Laakso's formula makes this latter method preferable for such calculations. Furthermore, the Slovak case suggests that the results of the two methods are quite comparable. For the purposes of better com
parison with the results found by Mainwaring and Scully, I will recalculate party size for Slovakia and other countries in East Central Europe only on the basis of electoral blocs in parliamentary elections, ignoring for the moment the presence of formal
or "crypto" coalitions or of changes occurring between parliamentary elections.
Of the twelve Latin American democracies measured by Mainwaring and Scully over the last 25 years, all but Chile, Brazil and Ecuador have a lower average than Slovakia's 4.19 (see Table 13.). Looking only at t
he most recent election (as of 1993 for the Latin American cases), Slovakia's 4.41 in 1994 falls into the middle of the group of twelve, below Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia as well as the countries mentioned above. It is still higher than the other six cou
ntries measured: Colombia, Paraguay, Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina, and Uruguay (Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, pp. 30-31). Within East Central Europe, Slovakia again falls near the middle of the group though it has shown a recent upward trend toward. Slov
akia's average party size of 4.19 is nearly a full point higher than that of the Hungary or the Czech Republic for the same period but well below that of Poland. For the most recent election, however, Slovakia's party size is greater than that of Hungary
or Poland and lower only than that of the Czech Republic. The subsequent disintegration of certain parties in the Czech parliament--while not threatening the current government--yield an even larger party system size within parliament, but public opini
on polls suggest that elections would produce a smaller party size in the next parliament. Among the countries of both regions, Slovakia's party system size remains higher than average, but not markedly so.
Polarization
Sartori acknowledges that "fragmentation of the party system can reflect either a situation of segmentation or a situation of polarization, i.e. of ideological distance"(Sartori, 1976, p. 126). Sartori defines his category of "polarized pl
uralism" as a pure or polar type on a spectrum bounded at the opposite end by one-party totalitarianism. Sartori notes eight features of this pure type:
the presence of relevant anti system parties. . . .
the existence of bilateral oppositions. . . .
the center placement of one party, . . . or of a group of parties. . . .
polarization. . . as a fourth, synthetic characteristic
prevalence of the centrifugal drives over the centripetal ones. . . .
congenital ideological patterning. . . .
the presence of irresponsible oppositions. . . .
politics of outbidding or overpromising. . . ."(Sartori, 1976, pp. 132-139)
Sartori's definition of polarization differs in key ways from ordinary understandings of the term. Sartori emphasizes the direction rather than the amount of conflict. Whether parties oppose one another angrily has less of an impact on polarized plurali
sm than whether those parties compete on some degree of common ground or turn their backs one another and pursue extremes. Claims that the Slovak party system has become polarized often reflect the common use of the term as sharp opposition rather than t
he more technical standards used by Sartori. Evaluating Slovakia's party system along Sartori standards may offer different insights about Slovakia's prospects for democracy.
Using Sartori's model to examine the Slovak political party system first requires decisions about how to adapt his spatial model which appears designed for use with a single axis ranging from ideological left to ideological right. As the work of Kitsche
lt and others suggest, this one-dimensional model is not well-equipped for analyzing electoral competition in East Central Europe and especially not in Slovakia. None of Slovakia's major issue dimensions even correspond to the left-right opposition which
forms the basis of Sartori's model. The features of Sartori's "polarized pluralism," however, do necessarily not depend on the presence of a one-dimensional struggle between left and right and can be applied to Slovakia's party competition. The transl
ation, however, makes applying his criteria more difficult than he might have expected.
The most difficult step is determining which issue dimension or dimensions to use as the basis for applying Sartori's spatial metaphors. The socioeconomic left-right scale places HZDS and the Hungarian coalition in a large and blurred center flanked som
ewhat to the left by SDL and ZRS, somewhat to the right by SNS and KDH, and clearly to the right by DU and DS. As the previous section suggests, however, this dimension still lacked clarity in late 1995 and appeared to play little role in shaping governi
ng coalitions. On the national-related dimensions--both with regard to European integration and citizenship rights for Hungarians--the Hungarian parties stand at one pole along while SNS stands at the other pole with HZDS nearby. DU, KDH SDL and ZRS sta
nd nearer to the middle though ZRS inclines in the direction of SNS and HZDS. The democracy dimensions--both regarding the type of democracy and the use of programmatic incentives--show almost the same pattern, though in this case it is HZDS which stands
at the far pole rather than SNS.
Within these relevant issue dimensions it is possible to make certain tentative judgements about the presence or absence of basic characteristics of polarization as identified by Sartori. On "national" issue dimensions, the wide distance between the par
ties suggests a high degree of polarization. Furthermore, the SNS and the Hungarian parties, especially ESWS, together create a situation which resembles a bilateral opposition, with one radical party on each side of parties in the center of the politica
l spectrum. The potential for polarization on this issue remains closely tied to the participation of the polar parties in coalitions The DU-led coalition relied on the silent support of the Hungarian parties but did not include them in the formal coali
tion, largely out of fear of public reaction. While SDL, KDH and DU remained in power and presented a relatively unified front on Hungarian issues, they remained open to criticism from both sides. The center standing occupied encouraged bilateral opposi
tion with some centrifugal tendencies on both sides. Since the Hungarian parties already claimed nearly all Hungarian votes and since these parties held little attraction for non-Hungarians, the centrifugal flow of support benefitted mainly HZDS and SNS.
When HZDS won the single largest share of the 1994 vote, it entered into coalition with SNS. With the formation of this coalition, power shifted from a government of the center to a government nearer the pole defined by SNS. But the shift remained par
tial and the incorporation of SNS into a governing coalition has prevented further bilateral opposition, muting centrifugal tendencies. As long as the coalition remains cohesive there remains a rough divide between the coalition partners, with their more
Slovak-centered outlook on citizenship, and non-coalition members, who are less likely to share those opinions. The opposition between these two "sides" tends to push conflict toward the center. Several of the non-coalition parties have sided with HZDS
on questions such as the Law on the State Language. HZDS, too, has shown a willingness to woo these center parties through certain moves including the signing of a Slovak-Hungarian agreement, even though doing so required other steps to appease unhappy
members of SNS. Although the Slovak-Hungarian agreement and other similar steps seem designed more for foreign than domestic consumption, they are nevertheless a sign that even the highly charged conflict on nationality issues is not caught in a centrifu
gal spiral.
On the European integration aspect of the nationality dimension it is HZDS that has recently occupied the center, but the combination of a strong coalition and low tension minimizes the risk of polarization on this question as well. HZDS leaders have co
mbined a vaguely pro-NATO and EU stance with occasional sharp anti-integration rhetoric. Although this conflicts with position of the party's coalition partners and many of its own supporters, HZDS's recent ability to maintain the loyalty of its partners
and supporters has prevented the formation of a strong, separate anti-integration voice in Slovak politics. The long and uncertain timetable for any sort of military or economic integration has further helped to deny this issue the sort of immediacy whi
ch might allow the extremes to mobilize support. The issue dimension does however contain the seeds of polarization should HZDS remain in the center and the prospects of EU or NATO membership become considerably more concrete.
On questions of democracy, no single strong party occupies the center. In terms of supporters' opinions, the parties standing closest to the center on the "delegative-representative" democracy issue dimension are SDL and, at least before its entry into
coalition, ZRS. These parties do not firmly occupy the center in a way conducive to polarized pluralism. In fact the entry of ZRS into coalition and discussions within SDL about following suit indicate that the allegiance of this "center" remains negoti
able. And although the actions and the rhetoric of the HZDS-led government have been in many ways uncompromising, even HZDS occasionally seems to find benefits in reaching toward the middle ground. The ongoing drama over whether SDL will enter into the
HZDS governing coalition reflects uncertainty over just how far HZDS might be willing to move from its extreme position toward the center in exchange for other political advantages. Although the answer remains uncertain, it seems that HZDS has at least n
ot turned its back on the center. It has not pursued exclusively centrifugal politics. The alternation between the HZDS-led and the DU-led coalitions and the relatively narrowness of the HZDS-coalition's electoral plurality kept both groups of parties w
illing to look toward the center or, at least, balanced between the center and extremes.
The shrill conflict between Slovakia's HZDS-led coalition and parties in the opposition--a conflict often characterized as polarized--does necessarily not translate into polarization by Sartori's standards. The characteristics important to Sartori--cent
rifugal pressure and bilateral oppositions on key dimensions of conflict--do not dominate the political party system. This cautious optimism, however, assumes that the party in power is not what Sartori would call an anti-system party. He defines an ant
i-system party as one which "would not change--if it could--the government but the very system of government"(Sartori, 1976, p. 133). The main danger of polarized pluralism--in addition to the toll taken by sharp political conflict itself--is precisely t
he accession of such a party to power and its alteration of the system of government in ways which reduce polarization at the expense of pluralism. Slovakia's relatively low polarization, according to Sartori's definition of the term, might actually refl
ect the victory of an anti-system party, albeit "anti-system" in a very limited sense. Leaders of HZDS have on several occasions clearly expressed their desires to modify Slovakia's constitutional system away from a parliamentary to a presidential system
(Wolf, 1994, p. 9) and as discussed in previous sections they have taken steps to limit accountability of democratically elected leaders to any source except the electorate itself. This type of anti-system tendency does not conform directly to Sartori's
examples of communist and fascist parties, but it lead to weaker democracy in the long run. Both Kitschelt's discussion of clientelistic and charismatic incentives and O'Donnell's discussion of the absence of horizontal accountability emphasize the corr
osive effects of these characteristics on democratic systems.
In comparison with other new democracies, Slovakia's party system is one of the few cases where potentially anti-system parties play a major role. The relatively clear left-right axes of Latin American party systems conform more closely to the systems o
n which Sartori developed his analysis. This allows Mainwaring and Scully more easily to compare polarization within Latin America, but it make comparisons to Slovakia less clear. The party systems of the Czech Republic and Poland share with Slovakia a
large number of parties and thus face the potential threat of polarized pluralism. But in neither the Czech nor the Polish party system have anti-system parties managed to attract a significant share of the vote or to seize political momentum. The large
ly single-axis Czech system contains quite radical Communist parties as well as a party defined by anti-foreign sentiments but these parties have remained small and have not succeeded in disrupting the noisy but still essentially centripetal competition b
etween parties of the socioeconomic near-right and the socioeconomic near-left. In Poland, cultural issues have played a greater role, but the competition along Poland's "social welfare"-"capitalist-religious" issue dimension remains oriented toward the
center where parties compete for voters. As long as Slovakia's HZDS-coalition remains within the bounds of the democratic game, Slovakia will continue to share relatively low levels of polarization with its neighbors. Should that coalition take further
active steps toward changing the constitutional system, Slovakia's low polarization will differ from that of its neighbors as a signal that an anti-system party has already won.
Stability of Competition
With their focus on institutionalization, Mainwaring and Scully invariably ask whether the characteristics studied by others have an enduring character. When they ask about the stability of competition they refer both to party system size and the to bas
is of party competition. In a system of stable competition there is little ongoing change in the roster of players or the sides for which they play. Since the election of 1990, Slovakia has experienced change in both the roster of parties and the basis
of completion between them, but this change has been slow and largely incremental. Six years of relative stability, however, does not provide much material for assessing whether competition will remain stable in coming years.
To measure the stability of a party system's players, Mainwaring and Scully look at the volatility of party representation in parliament. To do this they use Pedersen's index, a measure of the share of seats that change party hands from one election to
the next. Because a high number of seats changed party hands during first two freely elected Slovak parliaments, I will also calculate Pedersen's Index for party delegations at the beginning and near the end of each parliamentary term. Table 14. provides the number of seats held by parties in parliament at important junctures. Table 15. shows the change in seats during parliamentary terms and between elections along w
ith the Pedersen's Index for that period. Although the calculations involved in Pedersen's index are quite simple, the index becomes more difficult to calculate when the splitting and joining of parties force prudential judgements about which parties shou
ld be considered as the successor to a party which has split into several pieces. In the 1992 election both HZDS and the Civic Democratic Union (ODU) claimed the mantle of the 1990 Public Against Violence (VPN). When the split occurred it was VPN-ODU wh
ich kept legal continuity and a slightly greater number of parliamentary deputies. HZDS, however, took with it not only two-fifth of VPN's deputies but nearly all of its popular support (Krejci, 1994, p.244). Later surveys from the 1992 election show tha
t 50% of those who claimed to have voted for VPN in 1990 voted for HZDS in 1992 while only 9% of VPN voters chose for ODU (Krejci, 1994, p.220). For purposes of calculating electoral volatility, I will consider HZDS as the successor of VPN. For calculat
ing intra-parliamentary volatility, I will consider VPN-ODU as the successor of VPN.
Coalitions also pose a problem for calculating electoral volatility, especially when their membership shifts from one electoral period to the next. For purposes of calculating electoral volatility from one period to the next, I will consider coalitions
as single units. This, admittedly, obscures the entry of several smaller parties on lists of larger ones and causes a slight underestimation in electoral volatility, but the simplification is made in this case by the significant difficulties in determin
ing whether to count crypto-coalition parties such as SZA and SKOI. This underestimation affects only the 1992-1994 electoral volatility and even the broadest definition of "new" parties participating on coalition lists would only raise the number of sea
ts changing hands from 31 to 40 and Pedersen's index from 21% to 27%.
After acknowledging these difficulties, it is possible to note a fairly high degree of continuity in parliamentary representation among Slovak parties. In each parliamentary election four-fifths or more of all seats in have been won by a group of five p
arties or coalitions--KDH, SDL-SV, SNS, the Hungarian Coalition, and VPN-HZDS--and each of these five has gained seats in each of the first three elections. Furthermore, if these five parties are rank ordered by the size of their parliamentary delegation
, none of the parties or coalitions has moved up or down by more than one rank from one election to the next. Similarly, none of these parties' parliamentary delegations has grown or diminished by much more than 50% of its size from one election to the n
ext. Electoral volatility has revealed itself most sharply in the disappearance (DS, SZ) and appearance (ZRS, DU) of smaller parties on the parliamentary scene. Opinion surveys suggest that after 1994 party preferences have remained quite stable and tha
t future electoral volatility will largely reflect the ability or inability of three smaller parties--ZRS, SNS and DS--to exceed parliament's 5% vote threshold. Intra-parliamentary volatility has likewise declined dramatically from 29% between 1990 and 1
992 to 19% between 1992 and 1994 and to just over 1% between the September 1994 election and the end of 1995. Over half of the volatility during the first parliamentary term occurred within VPN; almost three fourths during the second occurred within HZDS
. The recent decline in this volatility reflects a new stability within HZDS and should this condition hold, parliament may experience little additional volatility during the current session.
Even without assuming a drop in volatility, the stability of party competition in Slovakia's remains comparable to other democratizing countries. After two electoral periods Slovakia's mean electoral volatility stood at 21.5%. This far exceeds the over
all mean of 8.6% for Western Europe between 1885 to 1985 (Bartolini and Mair cited in (Mainwaring & Scully, 1995, p. 7), but it is not so far above the 15.2% average for France during that period. In comparison with Latin America, Slovakia stands near th
e middle of Mainwaring's and Scully's index, higher than Chile (17.5%) and Costa Rica (18.2%) but slightly below Mexico (22.4%) and Paraguay (25.8%). Within Central Europe comparisons are more difficult. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have all e
xperienced higher volatility but some of this difference may be due to intervening factors including two significant changes in Poland's electoral law and Hungary's longer, four-year interval between elections. Czech Republic's electoral volatility of 32
% between 1990 and 1992 cannot be explained away with such explanations because its institutional circumstances exactly corresponded to those of Slovakia. Czech party volatility during this period without question exceeded that of Slovakia, and polls sug
gest that had Czech elections been held simultaneously with the Slovak elections of September 1994 both republics would have found similar levels of electoral volatility for the 1992-1994 period. Slovakia's electoral volatility thus appears to be no high
er than that of its Visegrad partners and arguably much lower.
As the number and strength of the parties in Slovakia's political scene has remained quite stable, so have the relative positions of most parties on most of the important issue dimensions, especially since 1992. Changes in party position often reflect n
ot so much a switching of sides as a gradual change in the boundaries of the issue dimension itself. Changes in alliances among Slovak parties do not reflect changes in those parties' positions as much as slow shifts in the issue dimensions themselves.
As some issues have grown in salience, different coalition arrangements became more attractive.
Some shifts indeed have occurred. The dependence of SDL, KDH and DU on programmatic incentives leaves those parties bound to their positions lest in changing their positions they lose large numbers of voters. In contrast, the reliance of HZDS on voters
who are less attuned to programmatic incentives at least theoretically offers that party's leaders more leeway in changing positions on issue dimensions as long as the party maintains its charismatic and clientelistic incentives. The party's self-placem
ent in the "wide" and "pragmatic" center particularly on the socioeconomic issue dimension allows it to choose from a large menu of policy options which might not necessarily prove consistent over time. The dramatic change in the speed of privatization a
t the end of the second Meciar government in early 1994 (Hajko, et al., 1995, p. 40), the government's apparently rapid decision to prepare and sign an agreement with Hungary and its subsequent reluctance to bring that agreement to a parliamentary vote al
l reflect notable if not fundamental shifts on issue dimensions which have not translated into noticeable changes among voter support. Although the HZDS-led coalition has not frequently used this cushion of non-programmatic support, it does appear quite
capable of using it successfully when the need arises.
On a number of issue dimensions, however, apparent changes in party position simply reflect changes in the limits of what was possible--or necessary--after 1989. Foremost among such dimensions stands the issue of socioeconomic development. Privatizatio
n and marketization have progressed so far in Slovakia as to make original issue positions held by anti-market parties untenable among voters. Thus parties on the socioeconomic left have abandoned overall critiques of the market system and instead focus
on limiting the excesses of the market system. The symbolic change in the name of the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) to the Party of the Democratic Left (SDL) reflected a real change in the orientation of the party toward acceptance of a market system
, but it did not reflect a significant change in position relative to other parties in the Slovak political scene. Likewise, the rapid and essentially irreversible division of Czechoslovakia forced a number of parties to abandon their original pro-federa
tion position and to support Slovak independence. Relative positions do not appear to have changed, however, because the parties which in the past supported the federation still tend to be the strongest supporters of Slovakia's integration into European
structures.
In other cases, splits and splinters have snapped party bonds that had previously forced compromise positions. The collapse of VPN in 1991 freed the leaders of both its HZDS and ODU factions from the need to find common ground and allowed the new parti
es to adopt dramatically different positions on questions of economic reform and the future of the Czechoslovak federation. Likewise the later splinters from HZDS (and to a certain extent in SNS) helped to create sharper positions for both the original a
nd the offspring parties on major issue dimensions. The departure of the Knazko and Moravcik factions of HZDS and the Cernak faction of SNS arguably increased the focus of the HZDS and SNS on a nationality issues, delegative democracy and non-programmati
c incentives. The a new party, DU, emerged with quite the opposite orientation. Leaders of HZDS and SNS appear to regard these splits as largely positive as they promoted consolidation at the elite level without costing many voters. For SDL the split o
f ZRS has affected party position in a different way. The formation of ZRS represented little purification at the elite level and considerable competition at the electoral level. Whereas HZDS had already conceded much of the electoral space later occupi
ed by DU, SDL still relied for voters on the space taken by ZRS. The splinter has in fact reinforced tendencies within SDL away from the socioeconomic center in the interests of regaining the voters lost to ZRS. SDL's April 1996 congress should help to
resolve some of these internal tensions, but that meeting do not seem likely to dramatically re-orient the party. In general, the reorientation-through-separation caused by past splits appears to have created more homogenous parties which are less inclin
ed toward further splits and therefore away from further rapid changes in party orientation that can be caused by splitting.
A final group of shifts in party positions have occurred through compromises required for the establishment of new coalitions. Relations between the Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) and the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) changed dramatically betwe
en 1990 and 1994 with sharp antipathy to giving way to cooperation in a broad coalition government. The HZDS-led coalition of 1994 likewise brought the Association of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS) closer to the business interests within HZDS and SNS. Freque
nt coalitions between parties on opposite sides of issue dimensions in Slovakia have often required changes in party positions. The DU-KDH-SDL coalition required compromise on both sides on the method and amount of privatization. The HZDS-led coalition h
as required ZRS to accede not only to an acceleration of privatization but also to privatization methods which most frequently involves direct sales to managers rather than employees. Within the same coalition SNS has agreed to accept a treaty with Hung
ary in exchange for a law "on the Protection of the Slovak Republic."
Many of these compromises simply reflect cases of bargaining, not an uncommon occurrence in politics and particularly not when parties require the support of coalition partners to govern, but parties have rarely switched sides. Parties indeed have moved
to attack positions they once defended, but usually this has occurred as part of a general shift of all parties in one direction or another. SDL leaders now criticize central planing in economics, but they remains less likely to do so than the leaders o
f other Slovak parties. Parties also have joined with former opponents, but they have done so only on the basis of a different issue dimension. KDH and SDL cooperated in a coalition based largely on a rejection of Vladimir Meciar and his party's under
standing of democracy. To do so, SDL and KDH agreed to compromise on economic questions and to submerge deep disagreements over the role of the Roman Catholic church and the meaning of Slovkia's past. Those issues did not disappear, however. In early 1
996 KDH allied with HZDS and against SDL to pass legislation criticizing Communist Party rule before 1989.
The sides that parties have taken on various issue dimensions have tended to endure and remain quite stable over time. The issue dimensions themselves, however, have risen and declined in importance. The anti-communism which shaped the 1990 election
has largely given way to other issues. The socioeconomic issue dimension has remained important but extremely diffuse. The national-related issue dimensions which came to prominence in the election campaign of 1992 and the democracy-related issue dimens
ions which sharpened in 1994 have provided a stronger basis of agreement between various parties and encouraged compromise in other areas. Future changes in Slovakia's party competition seem as likely to arise from changes in the predominant issue dimens
ions as from sharp changes in party position. In this Slovakia resembles its neighbors in the region, but it differs from them in one important respect: HZDS remains a wildcard. Its dominant position and near monopoly on non-programmatic incentives put
a veto power over the stability of Slovakia's party system largely in the hands of this one party, a party which is strongly dependent on the decisions of its leader.
Understanding Slovakia's parties and party system is important because, for the moment at least, it is parties that determine the course of Slovakia's political system as a whole. But non-party political institutions and actors as well as a set of const
itutional and legal rules create a framework in which Slovakia's party system operates. To understand why Slovakia's parties matter it is important to understand the contours and strength of these restraints.
Determining Who Governs
Mainwaring and Scully argue that in an institutionalized political party system, the main political actors accept "that parties and elections are the means of determining who governs" and accord "legitimacy" to "the electoral process and parties"(Mainwar
ing & Scully, 1995, p.13). In Slovakia in 1995 freely elected parties can make the strongest claim as the holders of political power in Slovakia, if only because of the absence of other strong political actors. Would-be politicians can few centers of po
wer other than parliament and government and few routes into either of those two arenas except through membership in or leadership of a political party. It is on party lists that representatives are elected to parliament, in party clubs that they organiz
e themselves in parliament and largely along party lines that they vote on legislation and on executive appointments. In recent years parties have deepened their hold on power by strengthening party discipline and, through use of the executive, extending
party reach further into state administration. The strong position of parties seems to have permeated Slovak politics at all levels of government, but this remains consistent with a strong multiparty system only as long as party control coexists w
ith the notion of party competition.
The initial basis for the strength of parties in Slovakia can be attributed largely to its institutional heritage. The end of the political monopoly of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC) marked the beginning of a search for new centers of power
. The revolution severely wounded the Communist party, but it left most of the political institutions which the party had established and once occupied. Now open, these became the center of political competition because of their constitutionally establi
shed powers. The Slovak parliament, a 150 seat unicameral legislature, maintained responsibility for making laws on a wide variety of cultural and social policies within the Slovak republic (Wolchik, 1991). The passage of a new constitution for Slovakia
and the republic's independence in 1993 significantly widened the influence of Slovakia's parliament. As before, the parliament retained the sole right to approve legislation, to approve a government and remove it through a vote of no confidence, to cal
l early parliamentary elections, and to make a variety of other legally binding decisions. New provisions reflecting Slovakia's independence included the power to approve treaties, and by a three-fifths vote to declare war, to amend the Slovakia's new co
nstitution. Certain provisions of the new constitution place the parliament in extremely strong positions with regard to other political institutions (Malova & Sivakova, 1994). Constitutional change is the prerogative of parliament alone and requires on
ly a single three-fifths majority of deputies to make any constitutional change. Similarly, the relatively weak presidency is further weakened by the ability of parliament to recall the individual occupying the office for a number of broadly interpretabl
e reasons with only a three fifths vote.
The rules for election to the Slovak parliament and the Czecho-Slovak Federal Assembly have consistently favored party members. Since 1990 the principle of proportional representation of political parties according to their share of votes has determined
election to federal and republic parliaments. Although the laws have changed over time, none of the changes has obscured the basic condition that those who wish to win election to parliament can do so only as part of a list presented by a political part
y. With successive election laws, this condition has become even more restrictive. Where the 1990 electoral law (47/1990 Sb.)considered party lists to be valid if they were supported by the signatures of 1,000 citizens, the 1992 law (60/1992 Sb.) raised
the number to 10,000. Where the 1990 law required that parties receive 3% of valid votes to qualify for the proportional distribution of seats to the Slovak National Council, the 1992 law raised this threshold 5%. This latter law expanded options to al
low parties to submit combined coalition lists but simultaneously restricted the practical effect of this change by increasing the threshold to 7% for coalitions of two or three parties and to 10% for coalitions of four or more (Krejci, 1994). The electi
on law favor parties in other ways as well. Since 1992, success in parliamentary elections has brought with it a substantial per vote state subsidy (60 Sk or 2.00 USD in 1994). This subsidy is paid to parties and depends on party electoral result
s. Likewise, although the Slovakia's system of list-based proportional representation allows for preferential votes, fewer than 7% of members of parliament elected since 1990 have gained their seats thanks to preference votes. The preferential vote syst
em used since 1992 lets preference take effect only for those candidates receiving preferential votes totaling 10% of the party's vote in their electoral region. For parties with considerable popular support or a few popular leaders to absorb the prefere
ntial votes, this almost eliminates the importance of the preferential vote. No candidate of HZDS, for example, has ever gained a seat through the preferential vote system.
The combination of strong incentives for participation in parliament and restrictions on the type of organization necessary to do so have combined to produce a strong party orientation among Slovak politicians. It is virtually impossible to find a major
Slovak political figure whose name is not associated with a particular party or movement. No parliamentary regulations forbid members of parliament from forsaking their party membership to become independent, yet such instances are quite rare in Slovaki
a's parliament (see Table 14.) Whenever parliamentary deputies have abandoned a party, they have quickly attempted to join another party or to establish a party of their own not simply a "parliamentary club" but an electoral party
capable of returning the deputies to parliament in future elections. In contrast to countries with systems of presidential governance or majoritarian election, those who aspire to political power in Slovakia's proportional parliamentary system must not o
nly have personal popularity but also the ability to construct and participate in an organization which can elect sufficient representatives and which can remain cohesive enough to exert influence over executive appointments and legislation. This is true
even for political leaders demonstrate with personal popularity. Although consistently the most popular politician in Slovakia, Vladimir Meciar has still devoted extensive effort to building an extremely strong HZDS political party organization and to s
ecuring the discipline of its parliamentarians. Unlike the executive of a presidential regime, he is not free to abandon his party or provoke its wrath, even in the short run. Although rare in Latin America these party-friendly institutional structures
in Slovakia are largely shared by the Czech Republic and Hungary, both of which also combine strong parliaments and a degree of proportional representation and both of which exhibit a strong dependence of politicians on their parties. Only in Poland's qu
asi-presidential system do individual political figures seem able to rise to prominence without parties, but constitutional limitations on the presidency obligate the president to work closely with prime ministers who are chosen by parties.
The constraints of formal institutions, however, are not necessarily enough to ensure a continued role for political parties as the brokers of political power in Slovakia. This is especially so since the Slovak constitution allows a wide range of
changes of political institutions with a simple majority vote of parliament alone and permits changes to the constitution itself with only a single 3/5 vote of parliament. It is thus necessary to ask, as Mainwaring and Scully do, about the legitimacy
of a party system as the basis for determining who governs. It would appear that the major threat to the party system as a whole are particular political parties.
Among non-party political elites, there seems to have been little threat to party dominance. Unlike may countries in Latin America, Slovak political leaders have not faced pressure or challenges from the military, which has a strong tradition of subordi
nation to civilian control. Nor have political leaders or the party system faced irresistibly strong pressure from labor unions, employers groups or social movements. A tripartite bargaining system has provided the labor and business with a non-party ch
annel of influence over policy-making, but this is one of the only such channels, and its scope remains extremely limited. Furthermore, neither labor nor business seem ill-disposed toward the functioning of a party system. When this system has p
roven unable during periods of minority government, unions have quickly turned to parties to discuss their demands. Likewise the business community has begun to see the certain advantages to pursuing their goals by lobbying parties and not simply ministr
ies (Cambalikova, 1992; Malova & Krause, Forthcoming). Other social organizations and movements have remained extremely weak and aside from occasional union actions, it is parties that have organized or directly supported most of Slovakia's public demons
trations in recent years.
Among political institutions, Slovakia's constitutional court holds the power to declare legislation as unconstitutional, but it has not used this power to pursue an interventionary course. Its few rulings with regard to parties have tended to support th
e rights of parties to exist and to enter parliament. Should a conflict arise in the future, the court has not shown a particularly strong capability for enforcing its rulings against the wishes of parliament, and its rulings on matters concerning parlia
mentary procedure have sometimes simply been ignored or had their implementation delayed.
Slovakia's presidency holds certain important prerogatives such as control over the appointment of ministers and ambassadors and the (as yet unused) right to preside over parliamentary and cabinet meetings, but in general the formal powers of the office
are few. A presidential veto on legislation can be overturned with a simple majority. The president cannot disband parliament except in very limited circumstances while on the contrary parliament can remove the president with only a 60% majority. The m
ain political assets of Slovakia's presidency are its visibility and informal access to other political institutions. It is in the use of this type of power by Slovakia's current president, Michal Kovac that has prompted controversy. In particular, Kova
c has been both praised and criticized for his 1994 encouragement to Slovakia's opposition party members to join together in a motion of no conference against Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar's government. Although this action and others taken by the presi
dent have become the subject of a formal parliamentary investigation under the HZDS-led coalition, it appears that Kovac's action did not overstep his formal limits since the vote of no confidence occurred through the presumably free votes of a majority o
f elected representatives. Whether the current president or future occupants of the office may represent a threat to the party system remains slightly more ambiguous. Kovac himself does hot appear to pose a significant threat. He did not publicly encou
rage the splintering of HZDS and gave his voice only in favor of unity among opposition parties in a vote against a government that had already fallen into the minority. Kovac has maintained close ties to leaders of KDH, SDL and DU and has become increas
ingly vocal in his criticism of the HZDS-led coalition. He has not, however, made any public efforts intended to intervene in the coalition or its member parties or to undermine the legitimacy of the party system as a whole. The current formal weakness
of the presidency would appear to limit the negative influence of the president over parties to those situations where there is already considerable disarray.
If the legitimacy of the political party system faces any threats in Slovakia, it is from the members of parties themselves. Few such threats been expressed directly. All major Slovak parties claim support for the multi-party system and none has sugges
ted alternatives. Potential threats have appeared, however, in steps taken against individual political parties and coalitions. Foremost among these has been the formal investigation begun by parliament regarding the falsification of signatures on the e
lectoral petition of the Democratic Union (DU). This has occurred despite the binding validation of the petition by the Constitutional Court in 1994. Since the court's verdict cannot be overturned by a parliamentary decision, the ultimate goal of the i
nvestigation remains uncertain. Partisan motives appear to play an extremely strong role, however, since similar accusations against ZRS have not become the subject of any investigation at all. In addition to this effort, the HZDS-led coalition in parli
ament has also taken a number of concrete steps within a parliamentary framework to limit the voice of the opposition. These steps include the refusal to consider opposition proposals for agendas and the restructuring of committees to limit opposition vo
ice. The HZDS-led coalition in late 1994 voted to change the customary practice of awarding seats and even leadership positions on parliamentary committees on a roughly proportional basis in consultation with all parties. The new committee lineup not on
ly gave the ruling coalition a majority in 10 of 11 committees and the committee leadership on all 11, but also to exclude all opposition members from certain committees, including the important committee for oversight of Slovakia's intelligence service.
In order to obtain its majorities on certain committees while not violating the rule that each parliamentary deputy serve on at least one committee, the HZDS-led coalition resorted to enlarging the relatively small and powerless parliamentary Committee o
n the Environment and filling seventeen of its nineteen seats with members of the opposition (Malova & Krause, 1996).
Along with these practical but in many ways limited steps have come a number of more radical statements. The speeches of several of Slovakia's party leaders cast doubt on their parties' commitment to a competitive multi-party system. In 1995, for exam
ple, the chairman of the Slovak Nationalist Party (SNS), Jan Slota argued that the Slovak Parliament did not need any parties representing Slovakia's Hungarian minority and would be better served by their absence. In late 1994 newly re-installed Premier
Vladimir Meciar made less inflammatory but perhaps more threatening comments about the role of parties in general. Citing the conflict between the President and the government and the past defection of members of his party, Meciar noted that the proporti
onal and parliamentary system denied direct responsibility of elected leaders to citizens. In response, he voiced his preference for a "majority system" of electing parliamentary representatives and a "chancellor system or classical presidential system"
of executive authority. Both such steps, he argued, would make political leaders individually accountable to voters and unable to "hide behind the image or authority of somebody else"(Wolf, 1994, p. 9). Although these statements might be taken as no more
than rhetoric, together with the practical steps taken in parliament they suggest at least a lack of appreciation for parties--particular parties or parties in general--as important in a democratic system. Other positions of party leaders and supporters
give weight to these conclusions. The use of non-programmatic incentives and endorsement of delegative democracy do not require nor indeed favor a system of multiple, competing political parties, and it is precisely those parties on the non-programmatic
and delegative sides of the "democracy" issue dimensions which have voiced their dissatisfaction with the political existence of other parties and taken steps to restrict their voice. It is probable that a majority of Slovaks do not agree with su
ch steps. Half or more Slovaks regularly support parties other than HZDS, ZRS, SNS and their smaller associate parties and a significant but now dated 1992 survey of east central Europe showed Slovaks to be the least likely of all respondents in the regi
on to accept "the dissolution of parliament and the abolition of political parties"(Mangott & Neuhold, 1995, p. 337). Demographic evidence presented above, however suggests another difference between Slovakia and its neighbors in the region which may pro
ve less favorable for Slovakia's parties: of the 19% who agreed in 1992 with "the abolition of political parties," it is likely that a most voted in 1994 for one of the parties in the HZDS-led coalition.
Stability of Rules
The final section on Slovakia's parties is also the shortest. Mainwaring and Scully look at institutionalization of party systems from the perspective of Latin America where many countries have made frequent and significant changes in the framework of r
ules which govern their party systems. To date this has not occurred in Slovakia.
Since the revolution of 1989 Slovakia has maintained a parliamentary system with proportional representation based on party lists and a threshold for entry. A new electoral law in 1992 raised the this threshold for Slovakia's parliament from 3% to 5% an
d introduced the possibility of formal coalitions between parties, though with higher thresholds. The law also made slight changes in the system of preferential voting on party lists and introduced per vote financing for parties. These changes had their
most significant effect on four small parties and coalitions: the Social Democratic Party of Slovakia (SDSS) the Democratic Party in coalition with the Civic Democratic Party (DS-ODS), the Civic Democratic Union (ODU) and the Slovak Christian Democratic
Movement (SKDH). In 1992 each of these crossed the old 3% limit but did not cross the new 5% threshold. The new limitations in this way nearly halved the size of Slovakia's party system from a potential eleven to six. This, in effect, provided bonus s
eats to those parties which did make their way into parliament. The new provisions for finance, however, helped to ensure that the smaller parties received some funding and survived in some form to campaign for parliament during the election of 1994.
Although 1993 brought Slovakia independence under a new constitution, the legal framework affecting Slovakia's party system has changed little since 1992. The new Slovak Republic adopted the most recent Czecho-Slovak election law as its own, and parliam
ent changed the law only slightly in 1994 to impose a limit on campaign spending and to increase the state's "per vote" subsidy for political parties while slightly increasing the threshold of vote share required to qualify for that subsidy (Malova & Siva
kova, Forthcoming, 7-8). Regulations concerning parties in parliament likewise did not change significantly except for the addition of new committees (Malova & Sivakova, Forthcoming, 21). The exclusion of opposition representatives from certain committe
es and the end of the informal proportionality principle for distribution of committee seats and chairmanships does however suggest that considerable changes are possible outside of the parliament's legally binding Standing Orders. Likewise the establish
ment of a commission to investigate DU also suggests the possibility for parliamentary action against parties which is neither specified in law nor approved by the Constitutional Court.
It is difficult to gauge the likelihood of further changes. Proposals for a change in the territorial organization of Slovakia potentially include changes in the arrangement of electoral regions and this would likely have some effect on the level of pa
rliamentary representation of parties. Meciar's proposed changes to the constitutional and electoral system would represent a far deeper change but to the extent that he did not follow through on these suggestions even though a change in the electoral sy
stem would have required only a majority vote of parliament, these proposals cannot be regarded as serious legislative proposals as much as salvos in the fierce conflict between Meciar and Kovac. Yet when Slovakia's premier, the leader of its largest par
liamentary party, offers such proposals for consideration, they cannot be taken lightly. Although the legal framework surrounding the Slovak party system has been in many ways more stable than that of its Hungarian and Polish neighbors--both of which hav
e made significant changes in their electoral laws in recent years--such offhand proposals and the easy abandonment of informal parliamentary procedures do little to generate confidence in its future stability.
The questions explored in the preceding sections offer a variety of pieces which can be assembled into several different pictures of the role of political parties in democracy. Reconstructing the models that Sartori, Mainwaring and Scully, and Kitschel
t use to understand party systems can indeed help to understand Slovakia's party system. Doing so can also help to understand which aspects of those models are yield the most insight and merit further attention.
Sartori
Sartori's analysis of party systems on the basis of size and polarization provided one of the first systematic methods for comparing party systems with one another, and evidence confirms the important connection between these characteristics and the surv
ival of democracy. Whether the size of Slovakia's party system is calculated through Sartori's method or through that of Taagepera and Laakso, it exceeds the limits of moderate pluralism. Should such a large party system be accompanied by polarization,
Sartori argues, it would fall into the category of "polarized pluralism" and thus at significantly higher risk of democratic breakdown. But the question of polarization remains unclear even when alternative issue dimensions are substituted for Sartori's
left and right. In some cases Slovakia's parties do appear to be willing to look toward the center for support, but parties representing various sides have just as frequently turned their back on the center and dismissed opponents as unacceptable partner
s for negotiation. The ambiguity may reflect the lack of decisive strength of any side at the electoral level, where even HZDS has never received more than 40% of popular support and can rely on only about 30% to 35% of the vote. As long as HZDS remains
in need of coalition partners besides SNS, Slovakia may avoid the worst effects of polarized pluralism. If, however, HZDS uses its current position of strength to reconstruct the political scene at the expense of particular parties or the party system a
s a whole--as certain tendencies within the party appear disposed toward--then Slovkia could quickly find itself in the middle of polarized pluralism and, eventually, a dominant party regime.
The difficulty of applying "polarization" to a political system with multiple and still shifting axes diminishes some of the usefulness of Sartori's categories for understanding Slovakia. HZDS occupies the center in some respects and abandons it comple
tely in others. Without stable references of left and right along a single axis it becomes difficult to assess whether certain evidence of polarization along some issue dimensions can threaten the system as a whole. Still the question of polarization do
es call attention not only to the distance between parties but to the parties' willingness to bridge that distance. In Slovakia, as the KDH-DU-SDL coalition demonstrates, even substantial gaps can yield a workable coalition if the parties involved desire
to cooperate.
Mainwaring and Scully
Reconstructed from questions explored in this paper, the Mainwaring and Scully index shows Slovakia to be quite advanced in many aspects of institutionalization, but that strength may be undermined by certain isolated weaknesses. Their first criterion o
f regularity in party competition includes the questions here addressed as "stability of party competition" and "stability of rules." On both of these questions, Slovakia performs has shown quite a high degree of stability, both in practical terms and in
comparison to its neighbors and Latin American cases. While not as stable as most western democracies or Latin American countries such as Uruguay or Columbia, Slovakia fits comfortably the second tier which includes reasonably stable Latin American part
y systems such as Costa Rica. In terms of "somewhat stable roots in society," a topic addressed here in terms of the mutual loyalty between parties and voters, Slovakia has made a slower start. But although almost no party has "encapsulated" voters or e
ven tried to do so, most parties have been fairly successful at attracting an increasingly loyal base of party supporters. The role of parties in "determining who governs"--Mainwaring and Scully's third criterion--is strengthened by a party-friendly poli
tical system and the lack of opposition from non-party elites. The potential of HZDS elites to threaten party rule in Slovakia remains a question mark. The role of these few elites casts similar doubt on an important aspect of the authors' fourth criter
ion: strong party organization. Nearly all of Slovakia's parties have developed reasonably strong, adequately financed and widespread party organization, but decision-making within several parties--particularly HZDS--can plausibly be said to depend on a
single individual or small group of individuals. If this factor could be safely overlooked, Slovakia would ranked quite highly in the authors' index of Latin American party institutionalization--an impressive achievement given the country's recent retur
n to democracy. The difficulty lies in assessing the risk that these party elites might pose to the party system. Such an assessment might depend more on a knowledge of individual psychology than on analysis of political institutions. The mere potentia
l of certain individuals to threaten the party system, however, suggests that Slovakia's party system institutionalization is still near the beginning of its course.
The question of recent beginnings is the biggest difficulty involved in applying the Mainwaring and Scully criteria to Slovakia. Their important questions about "stability" of rules and competition demand access to a fairly long track record of democrac
y and democratic elections, but Slovakia's experience only slightly exceeds five years. The lack of any inclination toward even moderate "encapsulation" among Slovakia's parties appears to be part of a broader trend which affects the entire post-Soviet s
phere and may even be reflected in a certain amount of de-encapsulization in western Europe as well. These trends do not necessarily condemn the criterion to irrelevance, however, since the move away from encapsulization may simply be part of a lo
wer levels of party system institutionalization in the all regions.
The Mainwaring and Scully criteria prove extremely useful for understanding Slovakia in their emphasis on the interaction between individual parties and the party system as a whole, and especially in their insight that when a party's organization is holl
ow or when a party's decision-making becomes completely dependent on the party leader, the effects can hamper the institutionalization of the political party system as a whole. Mainwaring and Scully also contribute to understanding Slovakia's political s
ystem by noting the importance of party system legitimacy. As long as certain Slovak political leaders remain unconvinced that a multi-party democracy is the best available alternative, that system cannot be considered well institutionalized.
Kitschelt
Kitschelt's study of programmatic competition, with its emphasis on party competition and party incentives provides an extremely useful tool for studying Slovakia's party system--useful in ways that even the author might not realize. Kitschelt's questio
n of correspondence between voter and elite opinion--a question addressed in several of this paper's sections--finds a mixed response. The attitudes of party supporters conform quite closely in many cases to the opinions of party leaders, although the co
rrespondence seems poorest on the weakly defined socioeconomic issue dimension. In many cases the closest correspondence concerns not particular issues but broader themes of ethnic identity and the meaning of democracy. Such themes also stand at the hea
rt of Kitschelt's question about the type of incentives used by parties. Here Slovakia exhibits an increasingly sharp split between parties which can and do offer non-programmatic incentives and those which cannot. This split plays such an important rol
e in Slovakia's party system that it overshadows many of the other issue dimensions on which political parties often compete. Slovakia thus brings together Kitschelt's question of how parties compete for votes with the question of what they
compete about. In Slovakia, perhaps more than in any of those eastern European cases studied by Kitschelt, the methods of party politics have also become an issue of party politics. Since Kitschelt believes that in the long run a successfully democrati
c party system must rely on "programmatic" incentives, the competition between parties on questions of incentives and questions of method should prove decisive for Slovakia's continued democratic development.
Since they were formulated specifically with regard to eastern Europe, it may be no surprise that all three of Kitschelt's questions help to identify important aspects of Slovakia's party system development since 1989. His careful attention to issue dim
ensions and acknowledgment that these may prove multiple and complex during a period of transition offers an essential basis for understanding the multi-sided conflicts between Slovakia's political parties. His early, 1992 work on eastern Europe actually
identifies in broad terms the three dimensions which currently dominate Slovakia's politics: economic distribution, citizenship, and democratic rules. Kitschelt's question of elite-supporter agreement helps to point instances in Slovakia where issue di
mensions which are most important for elites are not always those which are most important for party supporters and visa versa. Finally, and perhaps most illuminating is Kitschelt's focus on party incentives. Those looking for new ways of differentiatin
g between Slovakia's ruling coalition and opposition can find one key in the ways that those parties attract voters. Slovakia thus offers neither a good example of programmatic completion nor an example of non-programmatic competition. Rather, it offers
a case where the type of completion has not yet been resolved, and where the attempt to find a resolution has become one of the most important questions in its political debate.
Meciar
The questions asked by these three sets of authors help to reveal the important facets of Slovakia's party system between 1989 and 1996. Rather than recapitulate a paper that is already far too long, I will call attention to a single thread of an argume
nt which runs through these many sections. The argument runs as follows: a significant but not majority share of Slovakia's population do not respond well to programmatic incentives but do respond to charismatic or clientelistic incentives; only one pa
rty, HZDS, has consistently proven able to offer clientelistic and charismatic incentives in addition to programmatic ones and thus to attract the support of this population; unlike the population which responds to programmatic incentives (and divides in
to segments according to different specific programs), the population which responds to charismatic and clientelist incentives has remained largely undivided in its support of HZDS; therefore despite appealing primarily to a minority segment of the popula
tion, HZDS receives twice as much support as the nearest "programmatic" party.
This argument can extended to explain the effect of HZDS's success on Slovakia's political party system as follows. An emphasis on clientelist and charismatic incentives allows, even encourages a "delegative" understanding of democracy which de-emphasiz
es horizontal accountability of the sort imposed by rival parties and rival political institutions. HZDS without the restraints imposed by programmatic voters has been able to pursue the muting of rival parties and rival institutions without losing its b
ase of support. Dramatic further steps require a broader majority, but the threat posed by such steps has managed to unify the opposition, if only around opposition to HZDS and its methods of government. Many smaller steps are possible, however, with th
e current parliamentary majority formed by HZDS and its two small coalition partners. It is also possible for HZDS and these smaller parties to expand their hold over the clientelistic voter through selective privatization and targeted government largess
e. With patience therefore, Slovakia's Vladimir Meciar seems in a position to achieve his political goals even without the help of the "Magnificent Seven."
End Notes
Tables
Table 1. Questions for understanding party system characteristics. S = Sartori, M&S = Mainwaring and Scully, K = Kitschelt.Category Source Question Party-Specific M&S #4a What is the extent of the party organization? M&S #4b How is party decision-making organized? M&S #2 How loyal are voters to the party? K #3 How responsive is the party to voters? K #1 What incentives does the party use to attract voters? Inter-Party K #2 What is the basis of party competition? S #1 How many parties are there? S #2 How polarized is party completion on that basis? M&S #1b How stable is party competition? System-Wide M&S #1a How stable are rules governing the party system? M&S #3 To what extent does the party system determine who governs?
See text reference.
Table 2. Percentage of votes received in the parliamentary elections and percentage of municipal council memberships and mayoralties by
coalition and party, 1990 and 1994 [Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, 1994 #121; Krejc~i, 1994 #99].Year Party/Coalition % of Vote in Parliamentary Elections % of All Municipal Council Members
Elected, % of Mayors Elected 1990 VPN 29.35 20.4 17.5 KDH 19.21 27.4 19.8 SNS 13.94 3.2 1.6 KSS 13.35 13.6 24.2 MK 8.66 10.6 6.0 DS 4.40 2.3 1.4 SZ 3.49 1.2 0.5 1994 HZDS-RSS 34.96 23.23
of
which
HZDS=22.78
RSS=0.4516.20
of which
HZDS=15.88
RSS=0.32SV(SDL-SDSS-SZS-HP) 10.41 19.40
of
which
SDL=15.65
SDSS=0.58
SZS=0.59
HP=4.5821.25
of
which
SDL=17.87
SDSS=0.53
SZS=0.39
HP=2.46MK (Eg.-MKDM-MPP) 10.18 12.50
of
which
Eg.=6.30
MKDM=3.89
MPP=2.318.86
of
which
Eg.=4.66
MKDM=1.99
MPP=2.21KDH 10.08 19.69 14.77 DU-NDA 8.57 1.50
of which
DU=1.19
NDA=0.311.07
of
which
DU=0.71
NDA=0.36ZRS 7.37 1.43 .89 SNS 5.40 3.73 2.06
See text reference.
Table 3. Party membership by total count and percentage of votes cast for the party in the 1994 parliamentary election.[Meseznikov,
1995 #132; Urmanic, 1995 #123].Party Votes, 1994
Parliamentary
ElectionMembership Urmanic Meseznikov Number Percent Number Percent HZDS 1,005,488 - - 34,000 3.4% SDL 299,496 48,000 16.0% 40,000 13.4% MK 292,936 40,000 13.7% - - KDH 289,987 25,000 8.6% 27,000 9.3% DU 246,444 - - 2,000 0.8% ZRS 211,321 - - 20,000 9.5% SNS 155,359 7,000 4.5% 7,000 4.5% Overall
(for these parties)Votes Membership Number (range) Percent (range) 2,501,031 168,000 to 178,000 6.7% to 7.1%
See text reference.
Table 4. Share of 1992 party/coalition voters who also voted for the party/coalition in 1994 (1994b).Political Party or Coalition Repeat Voter Percentage, 1992 to 1994 MK 83%
KDH 59% SDL 1992 / SV 1994 49% HZDS 47% SNS 44%
See text reference.
Table 5. Parliamentary election results for parties and coalitions and change across election periods from 1990 to 1994 [Krejc~i, 1994
#99, pp. 255, 261; Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, 1994 #195].1990-1992 Party or Parties 1990 Results Successor Party
(if different)1992 Results Percent
change
between
1990 and 1992VPN 991,285 HZDS* 1,148,625 +16% KDH 684,782 same 273,945 -60% SNS 470,984 same 244,527 -48% KSS 450,855 SDL 453,203 -1% MK 292,636 same 228,885 -22% DS 148,567 DS/ODS 102,058 -31% SZ 117,871 SZS** 66,010 -44% 1992-1994 Party or Parties 1992 Results Successor Party
(if different)1994 Results Percent change
between
1992 and 1994HZDS 1,148,625 same 1,005,488 -12% KDH 273,945 same 289,987 +6% SNS 244,527 same 115,359 -53% SDL+SDSS+SZS 642,639 SV 299,496 -53% MK+MPP 299,574 MK 292,936 -2%
*Public opinion data suggests that in the split of VPN into HZDS and ODU, the vast majority of popular support went almost immediately
to HZDS and remained there [Krejc~i, 1994 #99] even though most of VPN's elite became part of ODU. For purposes of assessing continuity
over time, I will consider HZDS as the successor party of VPN.
**When SZ split, largely over questions related to Slovak independence, one faction kept the name SZ, but the rival faction--SZS--kept more
than 2/3 of the voters. For purposes of assessing continuity over time, I will consider SZS as the successor party of SZ.
See text reference.
Table 6. Correlation between 1992 and 1994 parliamentary election results for parties and coalitions at the municipal level (Krivy, 1995b, p. 100)Political Party or
Coalition Correlation 1992 to 1994 MK + MPP 1992 / MK 1994 .9966 KDH 1992/1994 .9348 HZDS 1992/1994 .9216 SNS 1992/1994 .8571 SDL+SDSS 1992 / SV 1994 .7507
See text reference.
Table 7. Percentage of support for parties within various demographic groups. In each box the first number represents a party's percentage of support within a given demographic group. The second number gives the difference between support for t
he party in that group and support for the party in Slovakia overall. Shaded boxes highlight demographic groups where the difference exceeds 5% (Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, 1994a).Categories HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK All Slovakia 27.4 6.7 7.2 14.8 11.6 8.0 10.4 Gender HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK Men 24.1 -3.3 8.5 +1.8 8.1 +0.9
15.3 +0.5 8.2 -3.4 6.6 -1.4 9.2 -1.2 Women 27.7 +0.3 4.3 -2.4 5.5 -1.7 12.5 -2.3 13.6 +2.0 9.0 +1.0 10.0 -0.4 Age Group HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK 18-24 22.1 -5.3 10.0 +3.3 7.8 +0.6 11.0 -3.8 7.1 -4.5 7.1 -0.9 10.7 +0.3 25-29 24.1 -3.3 10.9 +4.2 8.2 +1.0 11.4 -3.4 10.5 -1.1 7.7 -0.3 8.7 -1.7 30-39 24.9 -2.5 6.9 +0.2 7.7 +0.5 15.0 +0.2 8.3 -3.3 9.0 +1.0 8.3 -2.1 40-49 28.1 +0.7 5.4 -1.3 8.4 +1.2 14.9 +0.1 9.7 -1.9 8.1 +0.1 8.4 -2.0 50-59 24.8 -2.6 2.8 -3.9 6.9 -0.3 15.5 +0.7 14.5 +2.9 9.3 +1.3 9.3 -1.1 60+ 29.3 +1.9 4.5 -2.2 3.8 -3.4 14.2 -0.6 14.9 +3.3 5.6 -2.4 12.4 +2.0 Ethnic Group HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK Slovaks 29.0 +1.6 7.5 +0.8 7.0 -0.2 15.2 +0.4 12.2 +0.6 8.6 +0.6 1.1 -9.3 Hungarians 1.3 -26.1 0.0 -6.7 4.6 -2.6 4.2 -10.6 1.3 -10.3 1.7 -6.3 76.6 +66.2 Education HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK Basic 28.5 +1.1 5.7 -1.0 8.7 +1.5 11.7 -3.1 12.4 +0.8 5.2 -2.8 12.1 +1.7 Secondary 25.1 -2.3 7.4 +0.7 9.5 +2.3 14.8 +0.0 8.5 -3.1 7.4 -0.6 8.5 -1.9 Secondary w/dipl. 26.0 -1.4 6.3 -0.4 2.7 -4.5 14.3 -0.5 11.5 -0.1 9.7 +1.7 9.0 -1.4 Post-Secondary 18.0 -9.4 5.8 -0.9 2.7 -4.5 18.5 +3.7 11.1 -0.5 13.2 +5.2 5.8 -4.6 Professional Group HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK Workers 30.0 +2.6 7.4 +0.7 14.7 +7.5 12.9 -1.9 7.2 -4.4 6.1 -1.9 7.2 -3.2 White-Collar 24.5 -2.9 4.8 -1.9 3.9 -3.3 15.0 +0.2 9.8 -1.8 10.0 +2.0 9.1 -1.3 Entrepreneurs 19.7 -7.7 9.8 +3.1 2.5 -4.7 12.3 -2.5 13.1 +1.5 10.7 +2.7 7.4 -3.0 Farmers 24.4 -3.0 11.6 +4.9 3.5 -3.7 18.6 +3.8 14.0 +2.4 4.7 -3.3 12.8 +2.4 Unemployed 18.7 -8.7 9.9 +3.2 10.8 +3.6 14.8 +0.0 8.4 -3.2 7.4 -0.6 9.9 -0.5 Retired 30.0 +2.6 3.9 -2.8 3.5 -3.7 13.5 -1.3 15.5 +3.9 5.9 -2.1 11.8 +1.4 Community Size HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK Under 2,000 28.8 +1.4 6.4 -0.3 5.9 -1.3 15.0 +0.2 11.3 -0.3 4.4 -3.6 13.3 +2.9 2,000-9,999 23.6 -3.8 6.5 -0.2 5.8 -1.4 13.7 -1.1 8.8 -2.8 7.4 -0.6 12.6 +2.2 10,000-49,999 25.0 -2.4 5.7 -1.0 7.2 +0.0 13.5 -1.3 11.1 -0.5 9.0 +1.0 9.8 -0.6 50,000-99,999 29.3 +1.9 6.4 -0.3 10.8 +3.6 13.3 - 1.5 11.7 +0.1 8.8 +0.8 0.8 -9.6 100,000+ 20.7 -6.7 7.6 +0.9 6.0 -1.2 13.2 -1.6 12.4 +0.8 14.0 +6.0 3.6 -6.8
See text reference.
Table 8. Demographic composition of parties. In each box the first number represents the share of a party's support which comes from the given demograpic group. The second number gives the difference between the representation of that group in
Slovakia as a whole and its representation among party supporters groups where the difference between party support within a group and in Slovalia overall exceeds 5% of those polled. Shaded boxes highlight demographic groups where the difference exceeds
5% (Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, 1994a).Gender Slovakia HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK Men 49 45 - 3 65 +17 58 +10 54 +5 36 -12 41 -8 47 -2 Women 51 55 +3 35 -17 42 -10 46 -5 64 +12 59 +8 53 +2 Age Group Slovakia HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK 18-24 15 13 -2 24 +9 17 +2 12 -3 10 -5 14 -1 17 +2 25-29 10 9 -1 17 +7 11 +2 8 -2 9 +0 10 +0 9 -1 30-39 21 20 -1 23 +2 24 +2 23 +2 16 -5 25 +4 18 -3 40-49 19 20 +2 16 -3 22 +4 20 +1 17 -2 19 +1 16 -3 50-59 14 13 -1 6 -8 14 +0 15 +2 18 +5 16 +3 13 -1 60+ 22 24 +3 15 -6 12 -10 22 +0 30 +8 16 -6 27 +6 Ethnic Group Slovakia HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK Slovaks/Other 89 99 +10 100 +11 92 +3 97 +8 99 +10 98 +9 10 -79 Hungarians 11 1 -10 0 -11 8 -3 3 -8 1 -10 2 -9 90 +79 Education Slovakia HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK Basic 32 35 +3 28 -4 39 +7 27 -5 37 +5 22 -10 40 +8 Secondary 37 36 -1 42 +5 49 +12 39 +2 30 -7 36 -1 33 -4 2ndary w/dipl. 24 24 +0 23 -1 9 -15 25 +1 26 +2 30 +6 23 -1 Post-Secondary 7 5 -2 6 -1 3 -4 9 +2 7 +0 12 +5 4 -3 Occupational Group Slovakia HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK Blue-Collar 20 22 +3 23 +3 43 +24 18 -2 13 -7 16 -4 15 -5 White-Collar 30 28 -2 23 -7 18 -12 32 +2 26 -4 40 +10 28 -2 Entrepreneurs 6 4 -1 9 +3 2 -4 5 -1 7 +1 8 +2 4 -1 Farmers 6 6 +0 11 +0 3 +0 8 +0 7 +0 4 +0 8 +0 Unemployed 12 9 -3 19 +7 20 +8 12 +0 9 -3 12 -0 12 +0 Retired 27 31 +4 17 -10 14 -13 26 -1 38 +11 21 -6 33 +6 Community Size Slovakia HZDS SNS ZRS SV KDH DU MK Under 2,000 43 47 +4 43 +0 38 -6 46 +3 44 +0 25 -18 60 +16 2,000-9,999 7 6 -1 7 +0 6 -1 7 +0 6 -2 7 +0 9 +2 10,000-49,999 24 23 -1 22 -3 26 +1 23 -1 24 +0 29 +5 25 +0 50,000-99,999 12 13 +1 12 +0 19 +7 11 -1 13 +0 14 +2 1 -11 100,000+ 13 10 -3 15 +2 11 -2 12 -1 14 +1 24 +11 5 -8
See text reference.
Table 9. Percentage of support for parties within various demographic groups in Dec. 1994. In each box the first number represents a party's percentage of support within a given demographic group. The second number gives the difference between s
upport for the party in that group and support for the party in Slovakia overall. Shaded boxes highlight demographic groups where the difference exceeds 5% (MVK SRo, 1994).Age
Group Slovakia HZDS ZRS SDL KDH DU 18-24 13.6 12.4 -1.2 14.5 +0.9 8.4 -5.2 7.7 -5.9 18.5 +4.9 25-34 22.8 17.3 -5.5 23.6 +0.8 19.8 -3.0 18.3 -4.5 30.3 +7.5 35-44 20.6 20.8 +0.2 22.7 +2.1 22.1 +1.5 17.2 -3.4 24.2 +3.6 45-54 14.6 16.6 +2.0 14.5 -0.1 22.9 +8.3 17.2 +2.6 11.8 -2.8 55-64 13.7 15.5 +1.8 15.5 +1.8 16.8 +3.1 16.5 +2.8 10.7 -3.0 65+ 14.3 17.4 +3.1 9.1 -5.2 10.0 -4.3 23.1 +8.8 4.5 -9.8 Education Slovakia HZDS ZRS SDL KDH DU Basic 21.6 24.8 +3.2 24.5 +2.9 13.0 -8.6 27.2 +5.6 7.9 -13.7 Secondary 43.7 46.6 +2.9 64.5 +20.8 42.7 -1.0 41.4 -2.3 34.2 -9.5 2ndary w/diploma 24.2 20.6 -3.6 8.2 -16.0 30.6 +6.4 24.3 +0.1 39.9 +15.7 Post-Secondary 10.6 8.0 -2.6 2.7 -7.9 13.7 +3.1 7.1 -3.5 18.0 +7.4 Occupation Group Slovakia HZDS ZRS SDL KDH DU Entrepreneurs 6.7 5.6 -1.1 6.4 -0.3 5.3 -1.4 5.3 -1.4 10.7 +4.0 State Employees 30.3 27.7 -2.6 27.3 -3.0 35.1 +4.8 24.3 -6.0 44.1 +13.8 Ag. Employee 6.1 8.0 +1.9 10.9 +4.8 6.9 +0.8 6.5 +0.4 2.3 -3.8 Private Employee 15.8 14.8 -1.0 20.9 +5.1 17.6 +1.8 15.4 -0.4 16.9 +1.1 Unemployed 9.4 8.0 -1.4 10.0 +0.6 8.4 -1.0 5.3 -4.1 5.6 -3.8 Retiree 24.7 30.5 +5.8 20.0 -4.7 21.4 -3.3 37.9 +13.2 10.7 -14.0 Other 7.0 5.4 -1.6 4.5 -2.5 5.3 -1.7 5.3 -1.7 9.7 +2.7 Employment Slovakia HZDS ZRS SDL KDH DU Employer/Manager 5.7 4.7 -1.0 4.5 -1.2 7.6 +1.9 7.7 +2.0 7.3 +1.6 Profess./Specialist 9.2 8.0 -1.2 2.8 -6.4 13.0 +3.8 5.3 -3.9 14.6 +5.4 Non-Manual Labor 25.6 24.8 -0.8 15.5 -10.1 33.6 +8.0 23.1 -2.5 33.7 +8.1 Skilled Worker 34.1 36.5 +2.4 53.6 +19.5 30.4 -3.7 34.9 +0.8 27.5 -6.6 Unskilled Worker 20.0 21.1 +1.1 19.1 -0.9 13.0 -7.0 26.0 +6.0 9.0 -11.0 Never employed 5.4 4.9 -0.5 4.5 -0.9 2.4 -3.0 3.0 -2.4 7.9 +2.5 Community Size Slovakia HZDS ZRS SDL KDH DU Under 2,000 30.4 38.2 +7.8 28.2 -2.2 26.7 -3.7 30.2 -0.2 20.2 -10.2 2000-4,999 15.4 10.8 -4.6 15.5 +0.1 19.8 +4.4 13.6 -1.8 13.5 -1.9 5,000-9999 7.4 4.9 -2.5 9.1 +1.7 9.2 +1.8 6.5 -0.9 5.6 -1.8 10,000-19,999 8.0 8.4 +0.4 12.7 +4.7 3.8 -4.2 7.1 -0.9 6.2 -1.8 20,000-49,999 16.0 16.2 +0.2 20.9 +4.9 16.0 +0.0 19.5 +3.5 19.1 +3.1 50,000-99,999 10.7 10.5 -0.2 9.1 -1.6 6.9 -3.8 8.9 -1.8 12.9 +2.2 100,000+ 12.1 11.0 -1.1 4.5 -7.6 17.6 +5.5 14.2 +2.1 22.5 +10.4 Regions Slovakia HZDS ZRS SDL KDH DU Bratislava 7.8 7.3 -0.5 2.7 -5.1 9.9 +2.1 9.5 +1.7 13.5 +5.7 Western Slovakia 34.2 29.0 -5.2 37.3 +3.1 22.9 -11.3 32.0 -2.2 27.0 -7.2 Central Slovakia 30.1 37.9 +7.8 33.6 +3.5 31.2 +1.1 24.9 -5.2 25.3 -4.8 Eastern Slovakia 27.9 25.8 -2.1 26.4 -1.5 35.9 +8.0 33.6 +5.7 34.3 +6.4
See text reference.
Table 10. Percentage of support for parties within various socioeconomic groups in 1996. In each box the first number represents a party's percentage of support within a given demographic group. The second number gives the difference between sup
port for the party in that group and support for the party in Slovakia overall. Shaded boxes highlight demographic groups where the difference exceeds 5% (MVK SRo, 1996).Financial
Situation Slovakia HZDS ZRS SNS KSS SDL KDH DU Very Good 1.1 2.4 +1.3 0.0 -1.1 6.2 +5.1 0.0 -1.1 1.0 -0.1 2.0 +0.9 5.3 +4.2 Good 25.6 24.6 -1.0 10.6 -15.0 33.8 +8.2 10.0 -15.6 35.7 +10.1 23.8 -1.8 24.0 -1.6 Bearable 45.5 48.4 +2.9 55.3 +9.8 40.0 -5.5 45.0 -0.5 41.8 -3.7 45.5 +0.0 36.0 -9.5 Strained 20.3 17.9 -2.4 23.4 +3.1 15.4 -4.9 25.0 +4.7 16.4 -3.9 20.8 +0.5 28.0 +7.7 Critical 6.5 6.7 +0.2 10.6 +4.1 4.6 -1.9 20.0 +13.5 5.1 -1.4 7.9 +1.4 6.7 +0.2 Social Class Slovakia HZDS ZRS SNS KSS SDL KDH DU Upper 2.1 2.1 +0.0 0.0 -2.1 3.2 +1.1 0.0 -2.1 2.2 +0.1 1.0 -1.1 5.9 +3.8 Upper Middle 21.3 19.1 -2.2 8.8 -12.5 29.0 +7.7 15.0 -6.3 22.6 +1.3 21.9 +0.6 32.4 +11.1 Lower Middle 50.7 50.2 -0.5 55.6 +4.9 50.0 -0.7 45.0 -5.7 57.0 +6.3 46.9 -3.8 45.6 -5.1 Lower 25.9 28.6 +2.7 35.6 +9.7 17.7 -8.2 40.0 +14.1 18.2 -7.7 30.2 +4.3 16.1 -9.8
See text reference.
Table 11. Electoral blocs, coalition partners and "crypto-coalition" partners in the 1994 Slovak parliamentary elections.Electoral
Bloc Percentage
of votes in 1994Electoral Coalition Partners "Crypto-
Coalition" Partners HZDS-RSS
(Movement for a Democratic Slovakia &
Peasants Party of Slovakia)34.96 HZDS (Movement
for a Democratic Slovakia)
RSS (Peasants' Party of Slovakia)SZA (Slovak Green Alternative) SV
(Common Choice)10.41 SDL (Party of the Democratic Left)
SDSS (Social Democratic Party of
Slovakia)
HP (Movement of Farmers)
SZS (Party of Greens in Slovakia)MK
(Hungarian Coalition)10.18 ESWS (Coexistence)
MKDM (Hungarian Christian Democratic
Movement)
MPP (Hungarian Civic Party)KDH
(Christian Democratic Movement)10.08 SKOI (Permanent Conference of the Civic
Initiative)
DS (Democratic Party)DU
(Democratic Union)8.57 NDS-NA (National Democratic Party-New Alternative) ZRS
(Association of Workers of Slovakia)7.37 SNS
(Slovak National Party)5.40
See text reference.
Table12. Party system size according to various measurement techniques.Method June1990 March1991 June1992 March1993 March1994 Sept.1994 Average Sartori 7 8 6 7 7 8 7.31 Taagipera and Laakso 4.98 7.52 3.18 3.80 4.62 4.41 4.94
See text reference.
Table13.Party system size (Taagipera and Laakso's method, treating electoral blocs as single parties) according to parliamentary election results after 1989.Country 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 Average Slovak Republic 4.98 3.19 4.41 4.19 Czech Republic 2.22 4.96 3.59 Hungary 3.74 2.89 3.32 Poland 9.18 3.88 6.53
See text reference.
Table14. Seats in Slovakia's parliament by parliamentary club after elections, near the end of parliamentary terms and in the most recent month.Party Year/Month/Event June
1990
ElectionsApril
1992June
1992
ElectionsJune
1994September
1994
ElectionsFebruary
1996VPN 48 - - - - - ODU - 23 - - - - HZDS - 20 74 56 61 61 DU - - - 16 15 15 SDL/SV 22 22 29 28 18 18 KDH 31 20 18 18 17 16 SKDH - 16 - - - - SNS 22 17 15 9 9 9 NDS-NA - - - 5 - - ZRS - - - - 13 12 Hungarian Coalition 14 - 14 - 17 - MPP - 5 - - - DS 7 5 - - - - ZS 6 5 - - - - Independent - 3 - 4 - 2 Total 150 150 150 150 150 150
See text reference.
Table 15. Intra-parliamentary and electoral volatility of parties in Slovakia, 1990-1996.
Party 1990-1992 1992-1994 1994-1996 Intra-
ParliamentaryElectoral Intra-
ParliamentaryElectoral Intra-
ParliamentaryVPN-ODU -25 0 - - - VPN-HZDS +20 +26 -18 -13 0 DU,NDS-NA - - +21 +15 0 SDL/SV 0 +7 -1 -11 0 KDH -11 -13 0 +1 -1 SKDH/KSU +16 0 - - - SNS -5 -7 -5 -6 0 ZRS - - +1 +13 -1 HungarianCoalition n/a 0 0 +3 0 FMK/MPP +5 - - - - DS -2 -7 - - - ZS -1 -6 - - - Independent +3 - +4 - +2 Parliamentary Seats Changing Hands 44 33 25 31 2 Pedersen's Index (Change / # of Seats) 29% 22% 17% 21% 1%
See text reference.