Left, Right and the Others in Central and Eastern Europe: Are They All the Same? Assessing Fragmentation, Volatility and Government Participation.

Party politics in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is generally considered characterized by instability, fragmentation and volatility. However, are these phenomena affecting all parties in the same way or can we see some differences among ‘blocs’ or ‘political families’? Here I search for empirical evidence of specific features of the centre-left in CEE opposed to the other main political blocs, and if and how they changed over almost two decades. The research aims to contribute to the study of parties as well as on the general structure of political competition in CEE, covering six Central and Eastern European countries that have joined the EU between 2004 and 2007 (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary), from the early years after the democratic transition up to 2015.

Building on recent works, I focus on a mid-range comparison of electoral volatility, (intra)bloc fragmentation, as well as the impact of governmental participation, which are considered among the main variables to assess whether there are differences among blocs and/or recurring trends within the systems. In particular, a logistic regression model will be used to search for correlations looking either at party level and at aggregate blocs. Indeed, regardless of the number and name of parties, looking at blocs can provide more comparable results, which, at least for a first scan, are simpler to manage than single parties and might provide insightful findings for further research.