Exit, Voice and Legacy: Explaining Patterns of Party Politics in Slovakia

Whilst a number of widely used frameworks for explaining the development of party politics in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe including legacy-based approaches, those stressing the exit from communism, institutional frameworks, the impact of the European Union, and accounts based on cleavages all have their merits, they fall short of a fully satisfactory explanation. An analysis of patterns of party politics in Slovakia highlights both the importance of the politics of independence as the key to the first post-communist decade, but also underlines the need to examine the fate of individual parties and the (lack of) strategic crafting on the part of party leaders.