Staying Alive: Factors Promoting Party Survival in Volatile Political Environments

Democracy has survived and even thrived in post-communist Europe but few of the political parties that dominated the 1990s are still around in the 2010s.  Whilst scholarly attention has rightly shifted to the emergence and collapse of parties, it is essential to understand how and why some parties survive in volatile environments.  After deriving a typology of party survival and identifying representative cases within Central and Eastern Europe, this paper identifies three common elements: substantial investment in party organization and infrastructure (as opposed to strategies driven primarily by mass media or social media), commitment to programmatic appeals with deep roots in society (as opposed to unsustainable appeals related to novelty or corruption) and mechanisms for leadership change (as opposed to the high-reward and high-risk strategies associated with a leader-dominated party organization).  Through a combination of election results, expert surveys, voter surveys and party programs and statues, the paper assesses the impact of each of these elements and the impact on parties that fail to sustain all three elements. The paper concludes by drawing out the wider comparative lessons from the experience of Central and Eastern Europe.