Political Parties and the Study of Political Development: New Insights from the Postcommunist Democracies

This article reviews the literature on postcommunist parties, which, by applying old Western-based theories to a new and very different context, makes two important contributions to comparative politics. First, the literature stresses the importance of long-term and short-term historical legacies for the institutionalization of parties and electoral alignments; in trying to incorporate such legacies, it offers refinements to works on path dependency and political development. Second, the literature highlights the underinstitutionalization of postcommunist parties and thereby offers new insights—particularly on the party switching of electoral candidates—for studying the formation and consolidation of political parties.