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272 Dokumentation und Analysen
Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen (ZParl), Heft 2/2015, S. 272 – 291
Parliamentary Party Switching: A Specic Feature of Post-Communist
Parliamentarism?
Elena Semenova
Parliamentary party switching (i.e., the change of parliamentary party groups, PPG) has
rarely occurred in most West European countries.
1
Although it is impossible to revoke the
MP’s mandate if he or she switched to another PPG after the elections, many countries in-
cluding established democracies have introduced laws that aim at discouraging defections
from the parliamentary party groups.
2
For example, in Austria and Belgium, there is a legal
requirement that an MP has to sit in the parliament for the political party for which he or
she had run for elections.3 In contrast to most Western European countries, the extent of
parliamentary party switching in new democracies and transformation countries (including
post-communist countries) has indeed been substantial, as revealed in the cases of Baltic
countries, Ukraine, Poland, and Russia.4
e importance of parliamentary party switching has been acknowledged in a recent
report on parliamentary party switching by the Council of Europe. is report underlines
that in the member states of the Council of Europe, “imperative mandates are prohibited
and parliamentarians are free to exercise their mandates as they see t. Nevertheless, the
mandates are moral contracts between voters and the parliamentarians, based on the prin-
ciples, values and opinions defended in their election manifestos. Switches in political af-
liation after elections therefore raise questions and criticisms – in particular in ethical and
moral terms – relating to political opportunism, potential threats to public condence in
the political class and the internal discipline of political parties”5.
1 For example, only one Swedish MP changed the PPG during the current legislative period. See
Jordi Xuclà, Post-Electoral Shifting in Members‘ Political Aliation and its Repercussions on the
Composition of National Delegations, Report for the Parliamentary Assembly (Committee on
Rules of Procedure, Immunities and Institutional Aairs), Reference to Committee: Doc. 13125,
Reference 3944 of April 22, 2014, Council of Europe, http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/
X2H-Xref-ViewPDF.asp?FileID=21345&lang=en (accessed on June 7, 2015), p. 5.
2 See Kenneth Janda, Laws Against Party Switching, Defecting, or Floor-Crossing in National Parlia
-
ments, e Legal Regulation of Political Parties, Working Paper 2, August 2009, University of
Leiden, http://www.partylaw.leidenuniv.nl/uploads/wp0209.pdf (accessed on May 20, 2015), p. 4.
3 See Jordi Xuclà, op. cit. (fn. 1), p. 7.
4 See Marcus Kreuzer / Vello Pettai, Patterns of Political Instability: Aliation Patterns of Politicians
and Voters in Post-Communist Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, in: Studies in Comparative Inter-
national Development, vol. 38 (2003), no. 2, pp. 85 – 86; Iain McMenamin / Anna Gwiazda,
ree Roads to Institutionalisation: Vote-, Oce- and Policy-Seeking Explanations of Party
Switching in Poland, in: European Journal of Political Research, vol. 50 (2011), no. 6, pp. 838 –
866; Kazimierz M. Slomczynski / Goldie Shabad / Jacub Zielinski, Fluid Party Systems, Electoral
Rules and Accountability of Legislators in Emerging Democracies – e Case of Ukraine, in:
Party Politics, vol. 14 (2008), no. 1, pp. 91 – 112; Frank C. ames, Searching for Party Eects in
Post-Communist Ukraine, in: Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 38 (2005), no. 1,
pp. 89 – 108; Stephen White / Richard Rose / Ian McAllister, How Russia Votes, Chatham House
Publishers 1997, pp. 237 f.; Carol Mershon / Olga Shvetsova, Parliamentary Cycles and Party
Switching in Legislatures, in: Comparative Political Studies, vol. 41 (2008), no. 1, pp. 99 – 127.
5 Jordi Xuclà, op. cit. (fn. 1), p. 5.
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273
Semenova: Parliamentary Party Switching in Central and East European Countries
Yet, the topic of parliamentary party switching is greatly underestimated in legislative
and party research.6 In the rst place, party switching is seen as an unusual and eccentric
behavior of individual parliamentarians, which stems from a weakly institutionalized party
system
7
and occasionally the realignment of voters.
8
Parliamentary party switching is usu-
ally perceived as a specic element of party systems in developing and transition countries.
It may either result from or contribute to the weak recognition of party labels, the lacking
partisan attachments of voters, and the use of non-democratic recruitment strategies such
as patronage.9
1. Studying party switching: operationalization and hypotheses
e study of party switching is empirically challenging for two major reasons. e rst and
most important problem related to empirical research is the diculty of denition and
operationalization.
In the existing research, the concept of parliamentary party switching has been used as
an “umbrella” term, which describes any change of party aliation conducted by a member
of parliament.10 However, with respect to the study of post-communist parliaments, this
operationalization leads to several theoretical and empirical diculties, which need to be
discussed. First, most researchers on parliamentary party switching in Western European
countries have used the term “party switching” to describe the change of aliations across
party-based parliamentary groups. In post-communist countries, however, parliamentary
party groups (PPG) were both partisan (i.e., formed by a political party) and non-partisan
(i.e., formed by deputies from dierent parties or non-partisan MPs). Second, some studies
on parliamentary party switching in Central and East European (CEE) countries have re-
vealed that the change of a PPG aliation was not automatically accompanied by a change
of party membership. For example, in the 1990s, some MPs elected on the ticket of the
Communist Party of Russia changed their PPG aliation by switching to the Agrarian
PPG without giving up their Communist Party membership.11 Moreover, they were re-
nominated for the following parliamentary term on the ticket of the Communist Party of
Russia. ird, the value of partisanship in CEE countries diers from that in advanced
parliamentary democracies. Even in post-communist countries with partisan-based coali-
tion governments, non-partisan ministers have been often appointed: For instance between
1990 and 2000, the number of non-partisan ministers in Finland was approximately three
6 See William Heller / Carol Mershon, Political Parties and Legislative Party Switching, Palgrave
Macmillan 2009, p. 4.
7 See Scott Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems in the ird Wave of Democratization: e
Case of Brazil, Stanford University Press 1999.
8 See David Canon / David Sousa, Party System Change and Political Career Structures in the
United States Congress, in: Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 17 (1992), no. 3, pp. 347 – 363.
9 See Scott Desposato, Party Switching in Brazil: Causes, Eects, and Representation, in: William
Heller / Carol Mershon, op. cit. (fn. 6), pp. 109 – 144.
10 See the chapters in William Heller / Carol Mershon, op. cit. (fn. 6).
11 See omas F. Remington, e Russian Parliament: Institutional Evolution in a Transitional Re-
gime, 1989-1999, Yale University Press 2008.
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274
percent while it reached 30 percent in Poland and Lithuania.12 ese peculiarities signify
that it is appropriate to study parliamentary party switching in these countries as changes in
aliation among PPGs, while ignoring the existing (or non-existing) partisan aliation of
an MP.
e second problem is that collecting data is extremely laborious because it requires in-
formation to be gathered at the level of the parliament, the political party, and the indi-
vidual. Party switching has, therefore, not been studied in depth, particularly from a com-
parative perspective.13 In countries where party switching has been rare, a complete set of
data is available. In contrast, in countries where party switching has been (or was) more
pronounced, the existing studies have often used data from a single legislative term. For
example, the empirical studies of parliamentary party switching in Russia have focused ex-
clusively on the rst legislative term from 1993 to 1995.14
Depending on the direction, we can distinguish in-switching and out-switching. De-
pending on the changes of the party system, it is possible to examine party switching based
on the ssion or fusion of political parties, switching between existing parties, and switch-
ing to a brand-new party.15 Finally, depending on the point in time (at the beginning, dur-
ing, and at the end of legislative term), various incentives for party switching can be identi-
ed and studied separately.16
e spread of party switching depends on the institutional framework, the organiza-
tional structure of parties, and the unstable preferences of the voters. In this article, the fo-
cus lies on its micro-foundations. e major research question is directed at the individual
incentives. ree major causes for the disloyalty of individual parliamentarians have been
dened. e rst is the increase of electoral chances i.e., MPs switch to the political party
with the highest electoral prospects. is usually takes place at the end of term when they
are better able to assess the electoral prospects of the parties and blocs that intend to cam-
paign.17 e second cause for changing parties is conict over policy issues. In this case,
parliamentarians who are unhappy with policy decisions made by their own parliamentary
parties switch to a PPG that better represents policies that are important to them.18 e
third cause is careerism; in other words, MPs desire to ascend the parliamentary career lad-
der. In order to progress, they search for the party that provides opportunities for career
12 See Octavio Amorim Neto / Kaare Strøm, Breaking the Parliamentary Chain of Delegation: Presi-
dents and Non-Partisan Cabinet Members in European Democracies, in: British Journal of Polit-
ical Science, vol. 36 (2006), no. 4, pp. 619 – 643, p. 636.
13 See Carol Mershon / Olga Shvetsova, Party System Change in Legislatures Worldwide: Moving
Outside the Electoral Arena, Cambridge University Press 2013, p. 9.
14 See ibid., pp. 59 – 90; Stephen White / Richard Rose / Ian McAllister, op. cit. (fn. 4), p. 237 f.
15 See Marcus Kreuzer / Vello Pettai, op. cit. (fn. 4).
16 See Carol Mershon / Olga Shvetsova, Parliamentary Cycles and Party Switching in Legislatures, in:
Comparative Political Studies, vol. 41 (2007), no. 1, pp. 99 – 127.
17 See Christian R. Grose / Antoine Yoshinaka, e Electoral Consequences of Party Switching by
Incumbent Members of Congress, 1947–2000, in: Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 28 (2003),
no. 1, pp. 55 – 75; Scott Desposato, Parties for Rent? Ambition, Ideology, and Party Switching in
Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, in: American Journal of Political Science, vol. 50 (2006), no. 1,
pp. 62 – 80; Carol Mershon / Olga Shvetsova, op. cit. (fn. 16), 2007.
18 See Timothy P. Nokken, Dynamics of Congressional Loyalty: Party Defection and Roll-Call Be-
havior, 1947–97, in: Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 25 (2000), no. 3, pp. 417 – 444.
Dokumentation und Analysen
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275
advancement (e.g., a committee chair).19 Usually, however, the decision to switch parties is
based on several factors, which are assessed by an MP from the perspective of costs and
benets.20
e three forms of party switching (i.e., election-driven, policy-driven, and career-driv-
en) are dicult to study to various extents. In order to understand policy-driven party
switching, a roll-call analysis is necessary. Such analysis allows to measure the ideological
distance between the party position and the position of an MP to be identied before and
after the change of party aliation. In many CEE countries, however, roll-call data is not
available or incomplete. In the case of electorally motivated party switching, we need to
consider the organizational developments of party systems in the respective countries. is
includes identifying whether the existing political label represents the initial party or a
newly-organized one. Our data set does not allow us to systematically compare the organi-
zational changes of party systems in ten CEE countries. It is, however, possible to identify
whether an MP switched party groups and whether he was re-elected on the ticket of the
party, to which he had previously switched. In this article, the eect of party switching on
the parliamentary tenure shall be determined. For this purpose, party switching is opera-
tionalized as any change in PPG aliation during the parliamentary term. e major hy-
pothesis is that MPs switch parliamentary party groups in order to remain in parliament
(H1). e expected direction of the party switching eect is positive, i.e., MPs who change
their PPGs remain in parliament longer than those who did not change their party align-
ments. e reason why the MP changes his or her parliamentary party group is the result of
“a legislator’s utility function”21, i.e., the results of “strategic interactions between the MPs,
party leaders, the various political parties, legislative and party systems and also the
electorate”22.
It will be compared with the eect of political experience on the parliamentary tenure.
Two types of political experience should be of particular importance, i.e., party leadership
experience and local/regional experience.23 In Western European countries, “[p]arties must
19 See Stephen A. Meserve / Daniel Pemstein / William Bernhard, Political Ambition and Legislative
Behavior in the European Parliament, in: Journal of Politics, vol. 71 (2009), no. 3, pp. 1015 –
1032; Sarah A. Treul, Ambition and Party Loyalty in the US Senate, in: American Politics
Research, vol. 37 (2009), no. 3, pp. 449 – 464.
20 See Carol Mershon / Olga Shvetsova, op. cit. (fn. 13), pp. 32 – 43.
21 Carol Mershon / Olga Shvetsova, op. cit. (fn. 4), p. 101.
22 Jordi Xuclà, op. cit. (fn. 1), p. 5.
23 Party leadership experience is operationalized as the position of a party leader at any territorial
level (i.e., local, regional, and national, including women’s and party youth organizations) that
the MP had held before or at the time of his rst election to the national parliament. e variable
was coded as following: 0 if the MP had not have this experience, 1 if the MP had led a party
organization at the local level, 2 if the MP had led a party organization at the regional level, 3 if
the MP had led a party organization at the national level. For the purpose of this analysis, the
variable “Leading party experience” was coded as a dummy variable i.e., 1 if the MP had led a
party organization at the national level and 0 otherwise. Local/regional experience was operation-
alized as any elected political positions at the local (and if applicable, regional) level (including
municipality and mayor positions) that the MP had held before or at the time of his rst election
to the national parliament. For the purpose of this analysis, local/regional experience was coded
as a dummy variable, i.e., 1 if the MP had held such a position and 0 otherwise. e initial cod-
ing of these experiences was conducted by the experts of the respective countries and included the
data from the rst democratically elected parliaments (usually 1991) until 2007–2009 (see Elena
Semenova: Parliamentary Party Switching in Central and East European Countries
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276
actively seek out, screen, and designate candidates who will compete in elections under
their label. Many of the parties’ internal structures, such as youth groups and internal party
oces, are designed to identify and nurture future candidates”24. Consequently, candidates
for political oces go through a screening process in which parties scrutinize them with
respect to their knowledge and professional abilities. In Western Europe, a candidate’s
chances of being nominated depend on political experience and years spent in a local and/
or regional party organization.25 Based on this nding two additional hypotheses are put
forward, both of which represent an alternative to the party switching hypothesis (H1). e
rst is that parliamentarians who led party organizations remain in parliament longer be-
cause they possess resources and networks and can inuence the nomination procedure
(H2). e second is that local politicians remain in parliament longer because political in-
volvement at the local/regional level allows candidates to build networks and gain experi-
ence (H3). Because political parties have time to screen candidates in the local party or-
ganization, candidates with extensive experience at this level will have longer tenures in the
national parliament.
2. Methods and data
In order to compare the strength of the party switching eect with the eect of political
experience on tenure, the rst independent variable used in the analysis is party switching,
which describes any change in the aliation to a parliamentary party group that occurred
during the legislative term (“PPG switching”). Another independent variable is a leading
party position at the national level, which an MP held before being recruited to parliament.
e third independent variable used in the analysis is the local political experience of the
candidate.
e dependent variable is the parliamentary tenure, which is operationalized as the
number of terms, which an MP spent in the parliament (= 1, 2, 3…). e Poisson regres-
sion used (a variation of a generalized linear model)26 predicts the number of events that
Semenova / Michael Edinger / Heinrich Best, Parliamentary Elite Formation After Communism:
An Introduction, in: ead. (eds.), Parliamentary Elites in Central and Eastern Europe: Recruit-
ment and Representation, London / New York 2014, pp. 1 – 29, pp. 16 – 20).
24 Russell J. Dalton / Martin P. Wattenberg, Unthinkable Democracy: Political Change in Advanced
Industrial Democracies, in: dies. (eds.), Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced
Industrial Democracies, Oxford University Press 2000, pp. 3 – 18, p. 7.
25 Ibid., p. 7.
26 is regression was chosen because it is most suitable in the cases, in which the dependent vari-
able is a count variable. See Jacob Cohen / Patricia Cohen / Stephen G. West / Leona S. Aiken, Ap-
plied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, Erlbaum Associates
2009, pp. 525 – 531. e regressions were conducted at the country-based level because this ac-
counts for national specics in parliamentary careers. In order to provide comparison between
countries, we used similar determinants in each Poisson regression. ere were no missing values
of the dependent variable; missing values for the categorical predictors were not estimated. Be-
cause of missing values for independent variables, sample size varied slightly for dierent analyses.
In each country, we used various categorical predictors in Poisson regressions, which depended on
the number of occurrences as well as the control of multicollinearity among the variables used in
the models. We also checked the robustness of each Poisson regression by omitting predictors
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277
occur in a specic timeframe; the ratios of the expected counts, computed as exp(B), served
as eect size measures. e results of each Poisson regression will therefore be presented in
the form of exp(B) as well as the upper and lower condence intervals (CI 95 percent).
Geographically, the analysis includes ten CEE countries: Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Es-
tonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Croatia.
27
Longitudinal data for
the period since 1990/1991 were available for the democratically elected parliaments in
these post-communist countries.28 e data used in this article was collected by country
experts within the framework of the EurElite project, which was carried out by researchers
from the University of Jena and the University of Siena. In each country, a single code book
was applied, thereby guaranteeing the comparability of the data. e initial sample of post-
communist countries examined in the EurElite Project included 13 post-communist coun-
tries.
On the basis of geographical proximity and similarities in the social and political frame-
works, we selected the following post-communist sample countries. First, the sample com-
prises Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three gained their independence at the end of
World War I. Since the Second World War they shared a common history of Nazi occupa-
tion followed by half a century of communist domination. ey were the only former So-
viet republics to join NATO and the EU. Despite the similarities in their political systems,
there is considerable variance among them with regard to party system formation and de-
velopment. ey also dier in their treatment of ethnic minorities, especially the large
Russian-speaking population.
e sample also includes Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Romania (i.e., Southeast Euro-
pean countries). Croatia became independent from former Yugoslavia in 1991 and was
subsequently involved in the war with Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. is war not only
had demographic and economic consequences but also delayed democratization.29 Under
Franjo Tuđman, Croatia experienced semi-authoritarian politics and restricted political
competition. Following the end of his regime, the presidential-parliamentary system of
Croatia was transformed into a parliamentary system. Slovenia, after declaring its inde-
pendence from Yugoslavia in 1991, entered into a violent conict with the Yugoslav Peo-
with a low eect size. All Poisson regressions were controlled by basic socio-demographic charac-
teristics of a parliamentarian. As virtually all MPs from CEE countries had studied in universities,
this variable was not used in the models. e type of education (i.e., technical, social science, and
law degrees) had no eect on the length of a parliamentary career and was therefore omitted from
the models presented for each country.
27 For further details, see Elena Semenova / Michael Edinger / Heinrich Best, Parliamentary Elite
Formation After Communism, op. cit. (fn. 23), pp. 16 – 25.
28 e analysis is based on the period after the collapse of communism. 1991 is used as a starting
point for the analysis because by that time, most CEE parliaments were democratically elected. In
these democratically elected parliaments, the Communist parties lost their dominance, thereby
allowing the formation of parties with dierent ideological orientations. is liberalization of the
party landscape was the starting point for parliamentary party switching. In some CEE countries
(i.e., Russia, Moldova, and Ukraine), the rst democratically elected parliaments were formed in
1993/94. erefore, in these countries, these years were used as the starting point for this analysis
of parliamentary party switching.
29 See Danica Fink-Hafner / Robert Ladrech, Introduction: Europeanization and Party Politics in the
Territory of Former Yugoslavia, in: Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, vol. 10 (2008),
no. 2, pp. 135 – 138, p. 137.
Semenova: Parliamentary Party Switching in Central and East European Countries
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278
ple’s Army, which ended after ten days with the Brioni Accord. Slovenia joined both NATO
and the EU and was the rst post-communist country to be accepted in the Eurozone.
Romania has struggled with economic and political problems since the end of the Ceauşescu
regime in 1989. Following the strong economic growth of the early 2000s, it experienced
setbacks. Bulgaria has similarly struggled with severe economic problems. Until the early
2000s, the quality of life and economic performance in the country was lower than it had
been under communism. Both Bulgaria and Romania were “latecomers” with respect to
European integration. In contrast to Slovenia, which is ethnically homogeneous, the other
three countries have substantial numbers of ethnic minorities. e Serbs are the largest
minority group in Croatia, the Hungarians in Romania, and the Turks are the largest ethnic
group in Bulgaria. In the Freedom House index of 2013, only Slovenia is ranked as con-
solidated democracy, while the others are ranked as semi-consolidated.
Moreover, the sample includes three post-Soviet republics outside the Baltic region, Rus-
sia, Ukraine, and Moldova. In all three countries, the founding election was not held until
1993/94. e rather incomplete political transformation of these three countries is reected
in their poor Freedom House rankings on civil liberties and political rights. Although the
constitutions of Russia and Ukraine established a presidential – parliamentary political sys-
tem after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a parliamentary – presidential system emerged
after the Orange Revolution of 2004 in Ukraine and lasted until 2010. In Russia, however,
a super-presidential system developed. Whereas democratic performance gradually im-
proved in Ukraine (until 2010), Freedom House has classied Russia as a consolidated au-
thoritarian regime since 2009. In Moldova, the post-communist transformation started
with the conict between the central government of Moldova and the government in
Transnistria. In contrast to Russia and Ukraine, the oce of the president was marginalized
after direct elections were abolished. Moldova and Ukraine inherited a large Russian-speak-
ing minority from the Soviet period, but ethnic conict had not been a dominant topic in
political debates (until the 2013 conict in Ukraine). Multi-ethnic Russia has attempted to
reduce ethnic tension by prohibiting the formation of political parties based on ethnicity
and religion.
e last group consists of the Visegrád states, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic.
ese countries share strong historical ties to Western Europe. ey all have parliamentary
systems, have not been exposed to substantial ethnic conict, and have been classied by
Freedom House as consolidated democracies for many years. All became members of the
European Union in 2004. Unfortunately, only aggregate-level data were available for this
group of countries, making it impossible to assess the eect of parliamentary party switch-
ing, party leadership and local/regional experience on parliamentary tenures. ese coun-
tries were therefore excluded from the sample used in the article.
3. Post-1990 institutional frameworks and party switching in CEE countries
In the late 1980s, the political landscape of CEE countries was dominated by the Commu-
nists, although oppositional movements did exist (e.g., Solidarity in Poland, Sajūdis in
Lithuania, and the Union of Democratic Forces in Bulgaria). By the mid-1990s, however,
parties with various ideological and programmatic orientations were founded throughout
CEE. Only few of them managed to achieve parliamentary representation, especially after
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279
the electoral thresholds were raised in countries with proportional representation or mixed
electoral systems. e emergence of political parties partly diers from the Western Euro-
pean experience because the post-communist societies were characterized by a low degree of
social and political dierentiation.
30
erefore, CEE parties did not usually develop along
cleavage lines but rather as “tabula rasa”: e tabula rasa hypothesis “accentuates the lack of
historic cleavage dimensions, the chaotic social and economic environment, and the unre-
strained opportunities for popular mobilization by new political entrepreneurs”31.
Many developments in CEE countries provided evidence for this hypothesis. For exam-
ple, numerous parties in the CEE countries had a low level of institutionalization, lacked
both a membership base and an organizational infrastructure.32 e exceptions to this are
many of the communist successor parties.33 Moreover, the CEE party landscape was a fruit-
ful ground for “many ‘political entrepreneurs’ to build small parties in order to full their
ambitions. Creation of such parties that were not rooted into the society contributed
to volatility of the party system and ‘impede the consolidation of an eective party
system’”34.
Voters in CEE countries have generally supported this volatility. For example in the
Baltic states, they often shifted their preferences to parties organized through the merge or
split of established ones as well as to newly organized parties.35 e same pattern can be
found in Russia and Ukraine, e.g., approximately 32 percent of the votes cast in the 1998
Ukrainian elections were for newly organized parties. Although electoral support of the
newly organized parties has declined over time, some of these parties have become major
forces in the political process (e.g., the Liberal Union in Lithuania) or retained their popu-
larity (e.g., the Our Home is Estonia/Estonian United People’s Party and the Business Bloc
in Bulgaria).36 Some of these parties have even received prime ministerial positions (e.g.,
the Liberal Union in Lithuania) and ministerial portfolios (e.g., the New Union in Lithua-
nia and Social Democratic Alliance in Latvia).37 Although this success at the cabinet level
has been rather exceptional, the (enduring) success of the newcomers is a strong indicator
of the electoral weakness of parties in CEE countries.
During the 1990s, the position of political parties was also rather weak because some
CEE countries applied an electoral system with a majoritarian component (Table 1). is
resulted in a pronounced proportion of party unaliated parliamentarians, who were not
bound to a specic party label or even ideology and were therefore free to choose the PPG.
Within the national parliament, these MPs sometimes joined existing party-based PPGs,
30 See Bernhard Wessels / Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Democratic Transformation and the Prerequisites
of Democratic Opposition in East and Central Europe, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozial-
forschung, Berlin 1994, pp. 12 – 15.
31 Jack Bielasiak, Substance and Process in the Development of Party Systems in East Central Eu-
rope, in: Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 30 (1997), no. 1, pp. 23 – 44, p. 25.
32 See Paul G. Lewis, Democratization and Party Development in Eastern Europe, in: Democratiza-
tion, vol. 1 (1994), no. 2, pp. 391 – 405.
33 See Jack Bielasiak, op. cit. (fn. 31), p. 37.
34 Ibid., p. 25.
35 See Allan Sikk, How Unstable? Volatility and the Genuinely New Parties in Eastern Europe, in:
European Journal of Political Research, vol. 44 (2005), no. 3, pp 391 – 412, p 401.
36 Ibid., p. 406.
37 Ibid., p. 408.
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thereby aecting the distribution of seats in the house and even of committee chair posi-
tions. In the 1998 Ukrainian Rada, for example, only 37 of 116 independent MPs elected
in single-member districts had not joined one of the eight PPGs by the summer of that
year.
38
Similarly, at the beginning of the 2002 legislative term, the “For a United Ukraine”
bloc had increased its membership from 101 to 175 deputies because independent MPs
had re-aliated with this bloc.39
In addition to electoral and party systems, immature rules of procedure, applied in the
post-communist parliaments of the 1990s and early 2000s, facilitated the PPG switching
of MPs. Specically, in most CEE countries, there existed no strict requirements for build-
ing a PPG. is led to the extensive emergence of PPGs and caused inter-PPG mobility
associated with the development of new parliamentary structures. For example, eight par-
ties and blocs elected to the 1992 Czech parliament formed 12 PPGs.
40
In Croatia, a PPG
could be organized by a minimum of three MPs independent of their party aliation. In
Russia, until the early 2000s, a PPG could be formed by 35 MPs (both party-aliated and
non-partisan), which resulted in high mobility between party-based PPGs and (usually)
non-partisan deputy groups. For instance, in the 1998 State Duma, there were six party-
based PPGs and three deputy groups organized from party-aliated and party-unaliated
MPs. A similar situation existed in the Ukrainian parliament where PPGs coexisted with
small deputy groups that were either built by non-partisans
41
or attached to political par-
ties.42
e electoral and elite-induced volatility (e.g., through the building of new parties) is
reected in the individual careers of parliamentarians. In some CEE countries (e.g., Russia
and Romania), intensive parliamentary party switching occured in the rst post-commu-
nist legislative term. 35.2 percent of Romanian MPs changed their PPG between 1990 and
1992 (Table 1, column “Party switching, 1991”). In Latvia, MPs with three or more legis-
lative terms were members of approximately 2.9 PPGs during their careers.43 Party swit-
ching was even more prominent in Russia: On average, MPs with four or more terms were
members of 4.7 PPGs. Some Russian MPs were even aliated with six or more PPGs.
Considering the average degree of party switching, there is a noticeable variation across the
national parliaments of CEE countries (Table 1). For example, in the Southeast European
and post-Yugoslav countries (Croatia, Slovenia, and Bulgaria), the average proportion of
MPs who had changed their PPG during the legislative term was approximately ve
38 See Andrew Wilson / Sarah Birch, Voting Stability, Political Gridlock: Ukraine’s 1998 Parliamen-
tary Elections, in: Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 51 (1999), no. 6, pp. 1039 – 1068, p. 1058.
39 See Sarah Birch, e Parliamentary Elections in Ukraine, March 2002, in: Electoral Studies, vol.
22 (2003), no. 3, pp. 524 – 531, p. 530.
40 See Zdenka Mansfeldová, e Czech Parliament on the Road to Professionalization and Stabiliza-
tion, in: Elena Semenova / Michael Edinger / Heinrich Best (eds.), op. cit. (fn. 23), pp. 33 – 53, p.
41.
41 See Frank ames, op. cit. (fn. 4), p. 224.
42 See Vladimir Pigenko / Charles R. Wise / Trevor L. Brown, Elite Attitudes and Democratic Stabili-
ty: Analysing Legislators’ Attitudes towards the Separation of Powers in Ukraine, in: Europe-Asia
Studies, vol. 54 (2002), no. 1, pp. 87 – 107.
43 See Mindaugas Kuklys, Transformation of Parliamentary Elites: Recruitment and Careers of Leg-
islators in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, 1990–2012, University of Jena, unpublished PhD-e-
sis 2013, p. 193.
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281
percent, the lowest of all parliaments analyzed. In other CEE parliaments (e.g., in Roma-
nia), the occurrence of party switching has declined over time.
e degree of PPG switching has also been underestimated because most MPs changed
their allegiances within the same party family, as was the case in Croatia and Slovenia.44 In
Russia, most PPG changes occurred within the pro-presidential party family.45 Because
there were always two pro-presidential parties that participated in the elections, many MPs
elected to the list of one party switched to another of the same party family (e.g., from the
Unity party to the Fatherland-All Russia bloc during the 1999–2003 term). In Lithuania,
the right-wing parties had a less stable membership than their left-wing counterparts.46
Also oppositional PPGs as well as PPGs built by newly organized political parties have usu-
44 See Uroš Pinteric, Developing a Parliamentary Seniority System: A Case Study of Slovenia, in:
Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 58 (2011), no. 6, pp. 36 – 47.
45 See Elena Semenova, Ministerial and Parliamentary Elites in an Executive-Dominated System:
Post-Soviet Russia 1991–2009, in: Comparative Sociology, vol. 10 (2011), no. 6, pp. 908 – 927,
p. 920.
46 See Irmina Matonytė / Gintaras Šumkas, Lithuanian Parliamentary Elites after 1990: Dilemmas of
Political Representation and Political Professionalism, in: Elena Semenova / Michael Edinger /
Heinrich Best (eds.), op. cit. (fn. 23), pp. 145 – 168, pp. 150 .
Semenova: Parliamentary Party Switching in Central and East European Countries
Table 1: Electoral systems, parliamentary party switching and political experience of MPs
in CEE countries
Electoral system
Party
switching
(in %)
Leading party
experience
(in %)
Local political
experience
(in %)
N
1991 2009 1991 2009 1991 2009 1991 2009 1991 2009
UA* Majoritarian Proportional 19.0 0.0 29.8 38.0 28.9 36.9 338 450
RU** Segmented Proportional 21.2 0.0 32.2 12.0 20.0 19.0 444 450
MD*** Majoritarian Proportional 7.7 15.7 7.7 6.9 5.8 0.0 104 101
EE Majoritarian Two-tier
compensatory 0.0 12.8 27.6 19.8 41.0 77.2 105 101
LA Majoritarian Proportional 0.0 3.0 13.9 37.0 18.9 45.0 201 100
LT Majoritarian Segmented 14.8 6.4 0.0 11.3 0.0 45.4 135 141
RO Proportional Proportional 35.1 4.2 30.8 74.3 26.3 51.2 396 334
HR Majoritarian Proportional 3.8 6.5 43.8 73.2 0.0 45.1 80 153
BG Proportional Proportional 1.7 6.3 18.3 22.9 3.3 17.9 240 240
SI Proportional Proportional 5.0 1.1 23.8 5.6 3.8 11.1 80 90
Notes: Country codes: Ukraine (UA), Russia (RU), Moldova (MD), Estonia (EE), Latvia (LA), Lithua-
nia (LT), Romania (RO), Croatia (HR), Bulgaria (BG), Slovenia (SI).
* e rst post-communist legislative term for Ukraine is 1994.
** e rst post-communist legislative term for Russia is 1993.
*** e rst post-communist legislative term for Moldova is 1994.
Source: author’s own calculations.
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ally had less stable membership than governing coalitions and PPGs built by established
parties. ese patterns can be seen in the Czech Republic as well. Because of mobility from
the oppositional parties, the governing coalition of 1992–1996 increased from the initial
105 MPs to 112 by the end of the legislative term.47
roughout the 2000s, the situation has slowly changed in many CEE parliaments.
More specically, many CEE countries changed their electoral systems towards propor-
tional representation and installed greater electoral thresholds. is made it more dicult
for independents to run for seats, which increased the signicance of parties.
48
In addition,
legal measures such as limiting or even prohibiting party realignment among MPs were
adopted in order to curb parliamentary volatility49, as was the case in Ukraine after the
Orange Revolution (from 2004 until 2008).50 e increasing importance of parties is also
evident in the growing number of party leaders elected to national parliaments in most of
the CEE countries analyzed (Table 1). e number of MPs with local and regional politi-
cal experience has increased to an even greater extent, although this engagement might
include positions in both local party organizations and other authorities. ese develop-
ments could be found in all but three parliaments, which have been characterized by
the increasing de-professionalization of political personnel, i.e., in Russia, Moldova, and
Slovenia.
4. Party switching and parliamentary tenures in CEE countries: empirical analysis of
alternative hypotheses
e instability of the party landscape in CEE countries was accompanied by the volatility
of parliamentary parties and reinforced by the shifting preferences of voters. It is unclear
how this instability aected parliamentary careers.
In all ten parliaments, the Poisson regressions revealed the positive eect of party leader-
ship on parliamentary tenure (Table 2). Parliamentarians with experience in leading a po-
litical party remained in their positions longer than those without such experience. Reasons
for this career advantage include the centralized procedure of party list formation
51
as well
as the growing role of parties as the major selectorates for political positions.
52
In contrast,
in all countries except for Slovenia, the tenures of local politicians were slightly shorter than
that of their colleagues without this experience. In this case, three major explanations were
identied: First, in all CEE countries except for Slovenia, local party organizations have
47 See Zdenka Mansfeldová, op. cit. (fn. 40), p. 41.
48 See Elena Semenova / Michael Edinger / Heinrich Best, Patterns of Parliamentary Elite Recruitment
in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Analysis, in: ead. (eds.), op. cit. (fn. 23), pp. 284
– 307, p. 296.
49 See Jordi Xuclà, op. cit. (fn. 1), p. 5.
50 is decision was overruled by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine in 2008 (Decision 12 –
rp/2008 from July 25, 2008), http://www.ccu.gov.ua/doccatalog/document?id=38345 (ac-
cessed on April 27, 2015).
51 See Vlasta Ilišin / Goran Čular, Croatian Parliamentary Elites: Toward Professionalization and
Homogenization, in: Elena Semenova / Michael Edinger / Heinrich Best (eds.), op. cit. (fn. 23), pp.
171 – 193.
52 See Elena Semenova / Michael Edinger / Heinrich Best, op. cit. (fn. 48), p. 296.
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little, if any, inuence on the nomination of parliamentary candidates.53 Second, parties
active at the local level often do not have any electoral prospects at the national level and
are, therefore, unable to promote their members to the national parliament.54 Finally, in
some countries (e.g., Romania), careers at the local level (e.g., mayor) are viewed as more
prestigious than a position in a national parliament.55
e hypothesis read that party switching would prolong parliamentary tenures. In most
CEE parliaments, this is indeed the case. As is evident from Table 2, for example, the num-
ber of legislative terms for Latvian MPs who changed their PPGs is 1.502 times higher than
for those MPs who remained loyal to their initial PPG. In other words, the ratios of the
expected counts (i.e., the number of legislative terms) for Latvian MPs who changed their
PPGs is 50 percent higher than that of their loyal colleagues. e ratios of the expected
counts for Latvian MPs who held a leadership position in a party organization is approxi-
mately four percent higher than that of their colleagues without such oce. In contrast, the
number of terms for Latvian MPs who were politically active at the local/regional level
is 0.994 times lower than that of their colleagues without such experience; therefore, the
ratios of the expected counts for Latvian MPs with local political experience is approxi-
mately one percent lower than that of their colleagues without such experience.
53 See Alenka Krašovec / Tim Haughton, Money, Organization and the State: e Partial Carteliza-
tion of Party Politics in Slovenia, in: Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 44 (2011),
no. 3, pp. 199 – 209.
54 See Elena Semenova, Parliamentary Representation in Post-Communist Ukraine: Change and
Stability, in: Elena Semenova / Michael Edinger / Heinrich Best (eds.), op. cit. (fn. 23), pp. 261 –
283.
55 See Laurentiu Ştefan / Razvan Grecu, e “waiting room”: Romanian parliament after 1989, in:
Elena Semenova / Michael Edinger / Heinrich Best (eds.), op. cit. (fn. 23), pp. 194 – 215.
Semenova: Parliamentary Party Switching in Central and East European Countries
Table 2: e effect sizes of party switching, leading party experience, and local experience on
parliamentary tenures (Poisson regressions, in exp(B))
Party
switching
Leading party
position
Local
experience Age Gender
Russia 1.296 1.114 0.921 1.011 1.112
Ukraine 1.287 1.093 0.947 1.014 1.037
Moldova 1.323 1.184 N/A 1.015 1.020
Estonia 1.267 1.109 0.922 1.009 N/A
Latvia 1.502 1.042 0.994 1.003 1.072
Lithuania 1.392 1.184 0.983 1.006 1.076
Croatia N/A 1.192 0.782 1.018 1.068
Slovenia N/A 1.351 1.059 1.015 1.016
Bulgaria N/A 1.242 0.938 1.013 1.023
Romania 1.167 1.133 0.935 1.013 1.068
Source: author’s own calculations.
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Detailed empirical analysis of the results has revealed three types of eects that party swit-
ching has on parliamentary tenures. As expected, the rst eect is that MPs who changed
their PPGs remain in the parliament longer than those who did not (Type I). e second
eect is a specic form of the rst one, whereby party switching increases parliamentary
tenure but not for all MPs (Type II). e third eect of party switching is completely the
opposite, i.e., those who changed parties are not re-elected (Type III).
4.1. Type I: Party switching as career strategy
In ve CEE parliaments (i.e., Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Moldova, and Romania), the
parliamentary tenures of MPs who changed their initial PPG have been longer than tenures
of those who remained with their PPG. Here, the Ukrainian parliament will be presented
as a “typical” case with respect to the eects of party switching as well as party leadership
and local experience on parliamentary tenures.
In the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the average number of legislative terms for MPs who
changed their PPGs is 1.3 times higher than that of their loyal colleagues (Table 3). PPG
switching was primarily stimulated by institutional incentives. First, because of the mixed
electoral system, many MPs elected in single member districts were non-partisan. During
the 1990s, non-partisan MPs could decide whether to join a PPG. Second, PPGs could be
established by both political parties and deputy groups. For example, 20 PPGs were formed
in the 1998–2002 legislative term, and twelve of them had little to no party organizational
structure outside of parliament.56 Because the threshold for building a PPG was only 25
MPs, voting discipline was low and intra-parliamentary volatility was high.57 In order to
decrease the latter, changing a PPG was legally prohibited after the Orange Revolution of
2004.58
In addition to institutional incentives, party switching in the Ukrainian parliament
stemmed from the individual ambitions of MPs. For instance, MPs who participated in the
constituting session of the parliament changed their PPGs more often than substitute MPs
(i.e., those who entered the national parliament only during the legislative term as a repla
-
cement for another MP) because the former were in a better bargaining position and had
more possibilities for searching a PPG best suited to their political and career interests. Af-
ter analyzing party switching in the Ukrainian Rada from 1998 to 2002, Frank C. ames59
discovered that the changes in PPGs had followed electoral logic; MPs switched from their
PPG to a PPG that was built by a party with strong electoral prospects.
Compared with the eect of party switching, the eect size of leadership experience on
parliamentary tenures is smaller. e number of legislative terms for former party leaders is
1.093 times higher than that of those without such oce. In contrast, local experience
56 See Frank C. ames, Searching for the Electoral Connection: Parliamentary Party Switching in
the Ukrainian Rada, 1998-2002, in: Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 32 (2007), no. 2, pp. 223
– 246, p. 224.
57 See Charles R. Wise / Trevor L. Brown, e Internal Development of the Ukrainian Parliament, in:
Public Administration and Development, vol. 16 (1996), no. 3, pp. 265 – 279, p. 276.
58 See Elena Semenova, op. cit. (fn. 54).
59 See Frank C. ames 2011, op. cit. (fn. 56), p. 223.
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tended to impede the length of a parliamentary career in the Rada. During the 1990s,
a parliamentary candidate could have easily gained leadership experience in a political party
because parties rapidly emerged, disappeared, and split. Because of the high level of party
and electoral volatility, a small number of candidates with leadership experience were di-
rectly drawn from parties and trade unions. A larger proportion of former party leaders
changed their occupational aliation (e.g., moved to business) and was drawn from other
occupational groups.
60
In contrast to former party leaders, local politicians have remained
in the Ukrainian parliament for a slightly shorter time than their colleagues have. is nd-
ing can be explained by the low importance of the local political arena for national poli-
tics61 and the regionalized patterns of party recruitment. For example, the blocs Our
Ukraine and Fatherland, which had an electoral stronghold in Western and Central
Ukraine, consistently recruited approximately 30 percent of MPs with local and regional
experience, whereas the Party of Regions, which had an electoral stronghold in Eastern
Ukraine, was true to its name: It had the highest proportion of MPs with regional and local
experience, i.e., more than 40 percent in the 2006 and 2007 elections.62
Similarly, an increasing eect of party switching and party leadership experience as well
as the decreasing eect of local political experience on parliamentary tenures can be found
in Russia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Romania. In these countries, party switching was par-
ticularly pronounced in the 1990s and early 2000s but has since been decreasing because of
institutional measures (e.g., prohibition of party switching or the adoption of a propor-
tional electoral system) (Table 1). e institutional framework has been able to prevent the
change in parliamentary party groups during the legislative term. However, it has been
useless in preventing party switching in the form of the change of party aliation that takes
place shortly before the coming elections. For example, since the late 2000s, MPs in the
Russian parliament have switched PPGs formed by the established parties (particularly be-
tween the United Russia and the Just Russia) between elections, i.e., they remained with
the initial party until the end of the legislative term but were then nominated to the list of
another party. A similar situation exists in the Lithuanian and Romanian parliament.
60 See Elena Semenova, Patterns of Parliamentary Representation and Careers in Ukraine: 1990–
2007, in: East European Politics and Societies, vol. 26 (2012), no. 3, pp. 538 – 560.
61 See Elena Semenova, op. cit. (fn. 54), pp. 276 f.
62 See Elena Semenova, op. cit. (fn. 60), p. 547.
Semenova: Parliamentary Party Switching in Central and East European Countries
Table 3: e determinants of the parliamentary tenure in the Ukrainian parliament
(Poisson regression, 1994–2008)
exp(B) Lower CI95% Higher CI95%
Age 1.014 1.012 1.017
Females (= 1) 1.037 0.924 1.164
Substitute MPs (= 1) 0.699 0.651 0.752
Local/regional political experience (= 1) 0.947 0.892 1.006
Leading party position (= 1) 1.093 1.020 1.172
PPG switching (= 1) 1.287 1.218 1.360
Source: author’s own calculations.
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4.2. Type II: Party switching as an increasing factor for all MPs but ethnic minorities
In the Latvian and Estonian parliament, party switching prolonged parliamentary tenure
but only for ethnic Latvians and Estonians. e eect of party switching for ethnic MPs is
completely the opposite, i.e., they are not re-elected to the national parliament.
Russians made up the largest minority group in the Baltic countries. Although they were
overrepresented in political positions during the Soviet period; their representation in par-
liament dropped drastically after the collapse of the Soviet Union.63 Reasons for this dra-
matic decline in the number of ethnic minorities among the Estonian and Latvian elites
included public discontent with the communist past and unfavorable citizenship laws. Ac-
cording to these laws, many Russian-speaking minorities who came to Estonia and Latvia
after 1945 were disenfranchised.64 e empirical results of parliamentary tenures revealed
that ethnic minorities were disadvantaged both during candidate nomination and within
parliament. is specic interaction between ethnic background and party switching will
be examined using the example of the Estonian national parliament.
e rst model we calculated included the determinants of leading party experience and
local experience, while the second model included the additional predictor “PPG swit-
ching” (Table 4). e number of elections for MPs who had changed their PPG is 1.3
times higher than that of their colleagues who remained loyal to their original PPG (Table
4, Model II). Indeed, parliamentary mobility was widespread in the Baltic countries.65
Most Estonian MPs (77.1 percent) stayed with their PPGs, 18.6 percent changed once, and
the remainder did it two or more times.66 During the 1990s and early 2000s, the basic
pattern of parliamentary party switching was the mobility between PPGs formed by estab-
lished parties as well as the mobility between PPGs organized because of the recongurati-
on of established parties (e.g., ssion or fusion PPGs).67 Compared to the other Baltic
countries, Estonian fusion parties performed better in elections, thereby reinforcing party
switching among politicians.68 Ethnic Estonians and ethnic Russian-speaking minorities
have followed dierent patterns of party switching. In contrast to ethnic Estonians, ethnic
minority MPs have rarely changed their PPG aliation and usually remained with the
same PPG.
In both countries, the eect size of party switching is stronger than the eect sizes of
party and local experience on parliamentary tenures. e ethnic divide is also visible in the
eects of ethnic minority background and local political experience on parliamentary ten-
ures in the Estonian Riigikogu (Table 4, Model I). With political parties as major selector-
ates for a parliamentary position, Russian-speaking minorities have been disadvantaged
63 See Michael Edinger / Mindaugas Kuklys, Ethnische Minderheiten im Parlament. Repräsentation
im osteuropäischen Vergleich, in: Osteuropa, vol. 57 (2007), no. 11, pp. 163 – 175, p. 170.
64 See Pål Kolsto, e New Russian Diaspora – Minority Protection in the Soviet Successor States,
in: Journal of Peace Research, vol. 30 (1993), no. 2, pp. 197 – 217.
65 See. Marcus Kreuzer / Vello Pettai, op. cit. (fn. 4), pp. 85 – 86.
66 See Mindaugas Kuklys, op. cit. (fn. 43), p. 193.
67 See Marcus Kreuzer / Vello Pettai, op. cit. (fn. 4), pp. 85 – 86.
68 Ibid., p. 92.
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287
since the early 1990s.69 Nationwide Estonian parties were not particularly open toward
ethnic candidates70, although they started to nominate them to their lists in the 2000s.71
e low interest of Estonian parties to promote Russian-speaking candidates led to a con-
centration of ethnic Russian politicians at the local level.72 As a result, ethnic Estonians
tend to have more experience in political parties (also at the national level), while ethnic
minority MPs had usually more experience at the local level and less experience in leading a
political party. Although candidates with local experience tended to be more successful
electorally73, weak ties within political parties have forced ethnic minorities to leave na-
tional politics within a relatively short time. Moreover, ethnic Russian-speaking minorities
had low chances of being promoted to a leadership position within parliament. From 1992
to 2003, only four minority MPs held leadership positions in the Riigikogu.74
In summary, analyzing the careers of Estonian and Latvian parliamentarians reveals that
the strategy of party switching is not only motivated by the individual ambitions of MPs
and the electoral prospects of political parties but also by the opportunities provided by the
selectorates (i.e., political parties) to party switchers. When PPGs were not interested in
increasing their membership and the selectorates did not have strong incentives to promote
ethnic candidates, MPs remained loyal to their initial PPG, as was the case with ethnic Rus-
sian parliamentarians.
69 See Vadim Poleshchuk (ed.), Chance to Survive. Minority Rights in Estonia and Latvia, Moscow /
Paris / Tallinn, Foundation for Historical Outlook 2009, http://www.lichr.ee/main/
assets/L-3-eng.pdf (accessed on April 28, 2015), p. 62.
70 Ibid., p. 58.
71 See Leonas Tolvaišis, Ethnic Minority Policies and Political Parties’ Appeal to Ethnic Voters: A
Case Study of Estonia’s Russians, in: Baltic Journal of Law and Politics, vol. 4 (2011), no. 1, pp.
106 – 133, p. 115.
72 Ibid., p. 122.
73 See Margit Tavits, Eect of Local Ties on Electoral Success and Parliamentary Behaviour the Case
of Estonia, in: Party Politics, vol. 16 (2010), no. 2, pp. 215 – 235.
74 See William Crowther / Irmina Matonyte, Parliamentary Elites as a Democratic ermometer:
Estonia, Lithuania and Moldova Compared, in: Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol.
40 (2007), no. 3, pp. 281 – 299, p. 289.
Semenova: Parliamentary Party Switching in Central and East European Countries
Table 4: e determinants of tenure in the Estonian parliament (Poisson regression, 1994–2011)
Model I Model II
exp(B) Lower
CI95%
Higher
CI95% exp(B) Lower
CI95%
Higher
CI95%
Age 1.016 1.010 1.022 1.009 1.005 1.013
Ethnic Background (= 1) 0.728 0.608 0.873 0.961 0.813 1.134
Local political experience (= 1) .817 .702 .951 .922 .832 1.022
Leading party position (= 1) 1.227 1.060 1.421 1.109 .998 1.232
PPG switching (= 1) – – – 1.267 1.048 1.509
Source: author’s own calculations.
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4.3. Type III: Party switching as the stumbling block
In contrast to other CEE parliaments, party switching was less pronounced in the Sloveni-
an, Bulgarian, and Croatian parliament. e major explanation is that disloyal MPs were
punished by their parties. For example, from 1990 until 2008, only 28 Slovenian parlia-
mentarians of all 440 elected (6.4 percent) have changed their PPG; most of them have not
been re-nominated for the next election.75 Similarly, less than ten percent of Croatian MPs
have changed their PPG alignments since the early 1990s.76 is number is far below the
average level of CEE countries. Other factors that facilitated loyalty include the centralized
system of parliamentary nomination and the pivotal importance of party leaders as the
major selectorates.
In Croatia, Bulgaria, and Slovenia, party systems were very volatile during the 1990s
and were marked by substantial party splitting.77 Since the late 1990s, these countries
have slowly curbed party switching.78 In Croatia and Bulgaria, parties have been using
highly centralized nomination procedures for political positions. ese are exclusively con-
trolled by leaders of the national party organizations.79 Like in Western European coun-
tries, parties in Croatia and Bulgaria have preferred to nominate parliamentary candidates
with extensive experience in party organizations.80 Because nomination itself requires a
long-standing career in a political party and parties were the only selectorates for national
parliamentary positions, candidates remained loyal to their parties both before the elec-
tions and within the national parliament. e systematic punishment of party switchers
by parties forced elected MPs to conform to party standards. For example, in Slovenia, out
of twelve MPs who had changed parliamentary party groups during the 1992–1996 legis-
lative term, none was re-nominated and therefore, not a single of these MPs was re-elect-
ed.
In contrast to Bulgaria and Croatia, the nomination procedures applied by most Slove
-
nian parties have been decentralized and strongly inuenced by territorial party organiza-
tions.81 ese have often nominated candidates with strong local political ties82, although
75 See Uros Pinterič, Developing a Parliamentary Seniority System A Case Study of Slovenia, in:
Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 58 (2011), no. 6, pp. 36 – 47, pp. 42 f.
76 See Vlasta Ilišin, e Social Structure of the Croatian Parliament in Five Mandates, in: Politička
misao 2007, XLIV, p. 63.
77 See Vlasta Ilišin / Goran Čular, op. cit. (fn. 51), p. 176; Georgi Karasimeonov, Internal Party
Democracy. e Case of Four Major Political Parties in Bulgaria, in: id. (ed.) Organizational
Structures and Internal Party Democracy in South Eastern Europe, GorexPress 2005, pp. 96 –
113, p. 109.
78 See Vlasta Ilišin, op. cit. (fn. 76), p. 48.
79 See Goran Čular, Organizational Development of Parties and Internal Party Democracy in Croa-
tia, in: Georgi Karasimeonov (ed.), op. cit. (fn. 77), pp. 62 – 95, pp. 70 .; Vlasta Ilišin / Goran
Čular, op. cit. (fn. 51), p. 173.
80 See Mirjana Kasapović, Kandidacijski postupci u demokratskim političkim sustavima, in: Politič-
ka misao, vol. 38 (2002), no. 4, pp. 3 – 20, pp. 15 f.; Tatiana Kostadinova, Women’s Legislative
Representation in Post-Communist Bulgaria, in: Richard E. Matland / Kathleen A. Montgomery
(eds.), Women’s Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe, Oxford University Press
2003, pp. 304 – 320, p. 312.
81 See Alenka Krašovec / Tim Haughton, op. cit. (fn. 53), pp. 203 f.
82 See Uros Pinterič, op. cit. (fn. 75), p. 43.
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the overall proportion of MPs with local experience was relatively low (Table 1). Like in
Bulgaria and Croatia, however, Slovenian party switchers have not been re-nominated to
any party list. Although Slovenian parties were able to nominate non-partisan candidates to
their lists, the electoral chances of party switchers who were nominated as non-partisans
were almost non-existent.83
In all three countries, previous party leadership is the strongest determinant that in-
creases parliamentary tenure. e eect of local political experience, however, corresponds
to the type of the nomination procedure. In Croatia and Bulgaria, the tenure of local politi
-
cians has been shorter than that of their other colleagues. In Slovenia, local politicians have
remained in parliament slightly longer than those without such experience. In Bulgaria,
because local party organizations have had little inuence on the formation of candidate
lists, local politicians have often been placed on lower positions on the lists, whereas party
leaders have received the list position with the highest probability of being elected.84 It is
therefore not surprising that party leaders enjoy longer parliamentary careers than their col-
leagues with previous local activity.
e moderate proportion of former local politicians in the Croatian parliament reects
the low inuence of local politics in Croatia because it hardly aects politics at the national
level.85 Furthermore, politicians at the local level rarely belonged to established political
parties86 or were non-partisan87; this decreased their chances of being nominated in the
national parliamentary elections. For most Croatian parties, the role of local organizations
in the formation of a national parliamentary party list has been negligible.88 Local politi-
cians have therefore had lower chances of being promoted to the national parliament and
have remained there. In contrast, party leaders have enjoyed greater prospects for a long-
standing parliamentary career.
In Slovenia, local politics has been the springboard to the national parliament. Although
the proportion of local politicians recruited to the national parliament was relatively small,
approximately 80 percent of Slovenian MPs have strong local connections, i.e., they were
elected in the same constituency, in which they were born or raised.89 e strong inuence
of territorial party organizations on the formation of candidate lists for parliamentary elec-
tions explains the increasing eect of both local and leadership experience on the number
of legislative terms.
In summary, in all three countries, political parties have gained an ultimate power over
the electoral prospects of candidates and parliamentarians. In this situation, any parliamen-
tary party switching has been disadvantageous for an MP’s career. Strikingly, Slovenia,
83 See Drago Zajc, Razvoj parlamentarizma. Funkcije sodobnih parlamentov, Ljubljana, Fakulteta
za družbene vede 2004, http://knjigarna.fdv.si/s/u/pdf/135.pdf (accessed on April 28, 2015),
p. 124.
84 See Tatiana Kostadinova, op. cit. (fn. 80), p. 312.
85 See Vlasta Ilišin, Mladi u lokalnoj vlasti u Hrvatskoj – Youth in Croatian Local Government,
Zagreb, DIM 2006, http://www.dimonline.hr/wp-content/uploads/mladi-u-lokalnojvlasti.pdf
(accessed on April 28, 2015), p. 70.
86 Ibid., p. 71.
87 See Vlasta Ilišin / Goran Čular, op. cit. (fn. 51), p. 174.
88 See Goran Čular, op. cit. (fn. 79), p. 76.
89 See Uros Pinterič, op. cit. (fn. 75), p. 42.
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Croatia, and Bulgaria had adopted these West European patterns of candidate recruitment
by the end of the 1990s.
5. Conclusion: Party switching and parliamentary careers in a comparative perspective
In Western European countries, parliamentary party switching has indeed been a singular
behavior of individual parliamentarians. In contrast, intra-parliamentary mobility was pro-
nounced in most post-communist countries except for Southeast and Central European
countries (i.e., Slovenia, Croatia, and Bulgaria).90 e intra-parliamentary party move-
ments can be observed in both parliamentary and parliamentary-presidential countries
(e.g., the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Baltic states) as well as in presidential-parlia-
mentary systems (e.g., Russia and Ukraine). In most CEE countries, the peak of parliamen-
tary party switching occurred in the late 1990s (e.g., in Moldova and the Baltic countries).
In contrast, in Russia and Ukraine, parliamentary party mobility has also taken place in the
early 2000s. Based on the individual career data and the occurrence of PPG switching dur-
ing the legislative period, we discovered that the disloyal behavior of MPs allowed them to
remain longer in the national parliaments. For this eect, various factors such as the insti-
tutional framework (e.g., the majoritarian electoral system), the parliamentary rules of pro-
cedure (i.e., allowing the creation of deputy groups), the volatile preferences of voters, and
the electoral volatility of political parties were responsible.
ese macro- and meso-factors were accompanied by the individual career ambitions of
MPs who switched to a PPG with better career perspectives and better electoral prospects.
In addition, many political parties were interested in attracting additional members to
their PPGs in order to increase their number of legislative seats and parliamentary posi-
tions of power. Some parliamentary party groups (e.g., in Russia and Ukraine) were inter-
ested in party switchers because of their political experience, i.e., because of lacking profes-
sionalized personnel, PPGs are keen to attract politicians from other parties. e strong
inuence of opportunities provided by parties on parliamentary party switching was evi-
dent in the cases of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bulgaria, where parties consistently punish any
realignment with party-based PPGs. In the Estonian and Latvian parliament, parties selec-
tively restricted party switching by not re-nominating disloyal MPs from ethnic Russian-
speaking minorities, while ethnic Estonian party switchers enjoyed the prolonging eect
on their tenures.
In all parliaments except for those of Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Croatia, the party switch-
ing hypothesis was conrmed. e eect size of this determinant was also higher than those
of party leadership and local/regional experience on parliamentary tenures. Hypothesis 2
(i.e., party leadership experience prolongs parliamentary tenures) was conrmed in most
CEE countries, although the eect size of this determinant slightly varies across countries.
Hypothesis 3 (local experience prolongs parliamentary tenures) was rejected in virtually all
countries. If we consider the institutional development of parties in CEE countries, the
longer careers of MPs with party leadership experience are particularly interesting. Because
90 See Elena Semenova / Michael Edinger / Heinrich Best, op. cit. (fn. 48), p. 296.
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they were able to install centralized nomination procedures (e.g., in Slovenia), party leaders
(particularly those of the national party organizations) were usually placed at the top of the
party list, which to some extent protected them from the volatile preferences of the voters.
Political experience at the local and regional levels often impedes (or at least does not pro-
long) parliamentary tenure at the national level. e major exception to this rule is Slove-
nia, where local politicians have had slightly longer tenures compared to those MPs without
such experience.
Using the delegation approach, the role of political parties is crucial in stimulating and
preventing parliamentary party switching. In CEE countries, parties screened their parlia-
mentary candidates both during nomination and within parliament. Strikingly, MPs from
other parties were also screened because party-based PPGs sometimes provide incentives for
MPs to switch in order to create a majority or re-distribute parliamentary positions. With
the growing concentration of party systems in CEE, parties have started to protect their
positions at the national arena by punishing party switching during the legislative term. By
the late 2000s, however, all CEE parliaments had restricted parliamentary party switching,
even that which takes place within the same party family. e instruments that parliaments
used in order to restrict PPG defections included the introduction of legal measures e.g.,
the laws against parliamentary party defections (e.g., in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and
Ukraine).91
From the point of view of the individual MP in post-communist countries, parliamen-
tary party switching was expected to decrease electoral uncertainty while increasing career
security. Some parliamentarians were proactive in securing their careers and changed their
parties during the legislative term and before elections. At the aggregate level, the instru-
mental behavior of individual MPs actually augmented uncertainty because it increased
elite-induced party volatility and weakened the party attachment of the voters. With politi-
cal parties strengthening their position as the major career gatekeepers, the opportunities
for MPs to switch PPGs were reduced.
Although it has yielded interesting ndings, this study is not without limitations as only
one form of party switching (i.e., that during the legislative term) was operationalized and
tested. Further studies should focus on the interaction between parliamentary party switch-
ing and the organizational changes of parties (e.g., whether switching to a PPG organized
by an established or a newly-organized party makes a dierence). Another aspect of re-
search should focus on push and pull factors for switching and attracting switchers for po-
litical parties.
91 See Kenneth Janda, op. cit. (fn. 2), p. 4.
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