An interesting trend is developing across recent elections in post-communist “Visegrad-4” of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. More specifically, it now seems possible that the right could hold power in all four of these countries simultaneously for the first time since the Polish communist successor party returned to power in 1993.
Poland has had a stable right-wing government since the 2007 parliamentary elections, and indeed one could largely claim that the 2005-2007 government was also by and large right wing (although it certainly had its populist elements as well). Moreover, the ruling party center-right party looks likely to get its presidential candidate elected this month provided the election is not rained out. The more recent trend began in Hungary in April, where the right-wing Fidesz swept into power with a commanding 2/3 majority of the parliament. It then continued in the Czech Republic last month, where, despite the fact that social democratic party won the most seats in election, three right wing parties now control 118 out of 200 seats in the parliament and look likely to form a coalition government.
Intriguingly, the Slovak Spectator now suggests that Slovakia could follow the Czech example and possibly produce a center-right government as well. What makes this case different from the Czech one, though, is that the center-left (and incumbent) SMER party looks likely to enjoy a substantial “victory” in the election, as opinion polls suggest it will win more than twice as many votes as its nearest competitor (in contrast, the Czech left-wing party “won” the election by less than 2% of the vote). While it is still probably an unlikely scenario that SMER will be left out of the post-election government, this raises an interesting question in terms of legitimacy: are voters in Slovakia going to be ready to accept the fact that a party that wins such a commanding victory could not be part of the government? This has happened before in Slovakia – when Vladimir Meciar’s MZDS won the 1998 Slovak elections but was kept out of government – but the margin of victory was tiny, with a single percentage point of vote separating the top two parties.
As for the larger question of this rightward trend in Central Europe, I’m sure it will be easy to write it off (no pun intended) to idiosyncratic factors in each country, e.g., the scandals that plagued the SLD in Poland and MSzP in Hungary, the success of new right wing parties in the Czech Republic, etc. Interestingly, what does not seem to be the case is that “it is a bad time to be an incumbent in an economic crisis” is explaining everything. Post-communist countries are notorious for voting incumbents out of office with a startling degree of consistency (see in particular Andrew Roberts’ piece on “hyperaccountability” in Electoral Studies, available ungated here), and yet the Poles appear to be on the verge of electing a president from the ruling party (although it should be noted that Poland has weathered the economic downturn better than any other European country). Moreover – despite what may happen in post-election coalition negotiations – the Slovaks look very likely to hand a decisive electoral victory to the center-left incumbent SMER.
So it may well turn out to be the case that these are just idiosyncratic events that all happen to produce right-wing governments. On the other hand, as we know from the literature on Latin America, when enough governments in a region trend to either the left or the right, scholars tend to take notice and start trying to explain the trend. I wonder if we are on the edge of such a period in Central Europe.
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I don’t know a lot about domestic politics in other CE countries then mine, which is Czech Republic.
Here the polls predicted stronger performance of the left, leaving us again with the ineffective equilibrium between the left and the right, each holding aprox. 50% of the seats in the lower chamber.
These polls would suggest “voting for incumbent” pattern, because the previous goverment was a shaky centre-right one supported by “deserters” from the left. It was finally toppled over and the “neutral”, caretaker government finished the term.
But polls were wrong, and even though the most seats in 2010 elections won social democrats (as mentioned in the article), the united left (= social democrats + communists) suffered strong defeat, paving the way for the right government, which is being born these days.
You can look for many causes of the results – people didn’t forget that social democrats overthrew the government while Czech republic was holding the EU presidency, also the head of social democrats is a kind of Czech Berlusconi, unacceptable for the majority of population, the big topic was also corruption (but it was also 4 years back)…
But there is finally one main cause and that is economic crisis. The “responsible state budget” was motto of right wings parties, while social democrats were saying “take it easy, we have resources, we will actually give more money to the ‘common people’” (and Czech communists? in this regard, as in many others, they still didn’t come into terms with reality). I am happy to say that Czech people calculated where this could lead (Greece is not that far from here).
The context of economic crisis, recent development in EU and its monetary zone, huge problems of some European countries… and the proposed solutions and responses by right and left parties… these could be the factors shared across Central Europe.
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