Inter-Party Mobility among Parliamentary Candidates in Post-Communist East Central Europe

Abstract

The development of stable partisan commitments among political elites is crucial for party-system institutionalization in the new democracies of post-communist Europe. Little is known, however, about the partisan behavior of those who compete for national office. This study begins to fill this gap through an analysis of inter-party mobility among all candidates who ran for the lower house of parliament in two pairs of consecutive elections in Poland (1991–3 and 1993–7) and in three pairs of consecutive elections in the Czech Republic (1990–2, 1992–6 and 1996–8). We consider the overall extent of inter-party mobility, structural versus voluntary components of mobility, patterns of movement between types of parties and electoral payoffs of stable and shifting partisan affiliations. Although the overall rate of party-switching has declined substantially in the Czech Republic but not in Poland, changes in other characteristics of inter-party mobility indicate that party-system institutionalization is taking place in both countries.