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COPYRIGHT 2005 East European Quarterly
Introduction
The collapse of communism across the Central and Eastern Europe was one of the final manifestations of a worldwide spread of democratization over a period of twenty years that began with South Europe in 1974, then continued in Latin America in the 1980s and subsequently moved on to Eastern Asia in the late 1980s and 1990s. Political scientists devoted much effort to account for the timing and modalities of the changes of political regimes and the structural conditions and dynamic processes that made possible this "third wave of democratization," as it is called by S. Huntington. Much of the research in political science is still influenced by an almost exclusive concern with the consolidation of basic parameters of democratic regime in the democracies of Third Wave. The debate on the role of political regimes (parliamentarism or presidentialism) for the development of the new democracies may establish correlations between executive-legislative institutional designs and durability of democratic values, but our work aims here not to discuss the typology of regimes in the new democracies, but to concentrate on the transformation of political discourse within the post-ideological transition process. Within this aspect, the study of the change in the political discourse of the former communist parties during the post-Cold War era will no doubt present the empirical originality of the post-Communist transition. For this purpose, this article focuses on identifying the adaptation process of the communist successor parties during the post-communist transition and seeks to investigate the extent to which their discourse have changed over time, particularly in accordance with the external factors (or systemic variables).
The new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have avoided the rise to power of non-liberal forces and, in spite of widespread cynicism and corruption, there is a growing consensus regarding the desirability of markets, free media, and pluralist institutions. However the situation differs from country to country; the transitions seem to turn out to be more difficult and problematic in the south-eastern part of Europe, especially in Romania and Bulgaria, during the 1990s.
As many observers of democratic transitions have noted, the success of democratization in these countries depends on the promotion of political moderation within the major political parties; here, the former communist parties are playing a vital role in conditioning the scope and the development of politics in these new democracies, with their organizational assets and political discourses in the face of current socioeconomic challenges of post-communist transition since 1989.
Linkage between the Discourses of Foreign Policy and Political Parties: Theoretical Assumptions and Methodological Issues
When political scientists aim to analyse the outcomes of foreign policy within the decision-making process, they often take into account the discourse and decisions of the political powers. Even though the ruling bodies find their legitimacy and ideological sources within the structures and components of their national political culture, the leaders and the political bodies in government give such a direction to the foreign policy outputs of the State, by considering officially its environmental circumstances, but from a different status. The political parties' activities and discourse on the foreign policy themes are studied within the framework of "societal variables" of Rosenau's scientific study of foreign policy. (1)
Rosenau and his disciples observe the role of the political parties considered as independent agents of the political culture at the level of societal variables. (2) The political culture comprises the analysis of the traditions, historical perspectives and expectations, perceptions at societal level; within the democratic context, the political parties as structures emerged from the social realities and mosaics try to represent the sensitivity, expectations and interests of the social strata on a legally predefined basis and to develop them into a special "political rhetoric." Even though the discourses of the political parties in opposition seem to be more independent than those of the ruling parties and could contain radical elements of criticism, Rosenau and his disciple study the structural differences between the parties in power and in opposition with different levels of analysis. The correlation between the political parties as foreign policy makers and the concept of power (government) influences directly the levels of analysis, because the political discourse of a "ruling party" does not reflect only the interests of the social strata that it represents electorally, but also the special interests of the public institutions and the bureaucracy.
Trying to express and to integrate the interests, expectations and objectives of the circles of popular mass or cadre within their political discourse, the political parties should be studied as the independent societal agents of the process of foreign policy-making. However when they arrive the power after elections or other legitimate means, they are defined as governmental actors with their restrained rhetoric, which should be suitable for the survival cause of the State logic within the specific pre-defined institutional norms and traditions. The ruling parties as governmental variables should perceive the foreign policy inputs in an officially restricted environment and use specific channels of information approved by the bureaucratic mechanisms; meanwhile they have the responsibility to represent and to orient the State interests as full decision-makers, by excluding the private expectations of the electorate strata from which they have found the source of their political legitimacy. Within this status, all the private interests and expectations should be left in favour of public objectives and the autonomy of the political discourse and the radical tendencies that it could include become limited by the general conceptions in the State language.
In this work, we will take into consideration the political parties that manage to become governmental actors. Within this context, our study will focus only on the neo-communist parties that were in power. The transformation of their political discourse will be observed in the light of systemic variables, because our problematic concentrates on the reasons of this change in discourse and organization during the post-communist transition era. We ask these following questions in order to guide our problematic: is the liberalization of the political culture influenced by the external factors? Are all the post-communist parties independent within this new period of transformation? What is the change in the communist tones of their political discourses: social-democratization or radicalization? Could the change in party organizations be considered independent from the domestic circumstances? To answer all these questions, we choose as our primary actor the communist successor parties in the CEE geography, but at the beginning we should underline that all the communist successor parties did not adopt such "neo-communist tone" to reform their infrastructures and to win the elections.
During the post-communist transition, the direct links of the political parties with their potential electorate are shaped by their ideological sources within the economic and cultural sub-cultures. The change in parties' discourse reflects no doubt the process of evolution within the political culture; this trend represents the real aspects of the democratization in the country. On the other side, this change has a very important meaning for the political elites, which find their own legitimacy on the basis of these discourses. Perceived as the main decision-makers at top level, the party elites and leaders define themselves how to draw the limits of these discourses and represent the party's interests by generalizing the expectations of their members. As the party elites take part in an institutionalized process of decision-making, the party discourse should unavoidably include the governmental arguments and be open to all proposals. With the importance of systemic variables within the post-communist transition period, the elected governments could not act freely in their domestic and foreign policies' outputs. For the CEE countries, the imposition of Copenhagen criteria for the EU integration could be given as a very spectacular example to explain how the anti-reformist parties could not be totally free in their strategies.
The political regimes, living such process of transition, are always open to systemic influences. In a model of analysis, where each level translates its field of activity with its own means and tries to restructure its own policy inputs and outputs, it is very understandable to accept the interaction between the levels. However, as Rosenau suggests in his theoretical assumptions, the autonomization of each level in its own field of specialization is an unavoidable priority for the independent character of the State-actor whose foreign policy acts will be the matter of analysis. If the State-actor is unlikely to produce independently its own decisions and acts, it could not be studied theoretically for empirical purposes in Rosenau's work. With the democratization of the political life and the administrative stabilization of the State, each level (system, society, government, bureaucracy, and leaders) will clearly define its own scope of legitimacy and functions and differ in its activities for the foreign policy-making process. In Rosenau's theoretical conclusion, this differentiation puts into agenda the "foreign policy strategies," by taking into consideration the degree of influence and frequency of each level during the decision process. (3) As a result, the openness of the political regimes in structural transformation necessitates that each actor should give a relative answer to the systemic expectations, by admitting its own restructuring. Within this aspect, the political elites and leaders in power are confronted with the conditionality to redefine their political environment in order to adapt the State interests into the models of alliance at international level and not to provoke a crisis of legitimacy in domestic politics.
While observing the political dimension of the post-communist transition, it is possible to consider the change of the political parties both in theirs infrastructures and in their discourses between two poles: liberalization or radicalization. The liberalizing parties are slipping toward the centre during the post-ideological transformation, while the parties representing the orthodox leanings prefer to adopt the extremist perspectives. Within this aspect, the correlation between the change of discourses of political parties and the systemic variables could be explained as a model of open-closed relationship; as the centre parties have more relaxed tones toward the external dynamics, the conservative structures expose reactionary tendencies against the initiatives from the international system. As a result, this model of correlation could be better observed within the stage of transformation of the discourse of the political parties, which assume executive responsibility in the State apparatus after being elected to govern the country. It is very likely to witness that many actors, efficient with their own capacities in the political system, would not be excluded from the post-ideological transformation process. However, the desire to be included within the power mechanism necessitates unavoidably the transformation of the political discourse according to the systemic realities. Even after the end of the Cold War, the systemic variables (external factors) have showed very well their ambitions to intervene in the transition modalities of the countries in post-socialist researches by proposing technical assistance and financial aids; by this means, they demonstrate that they would not authorize the proper liberalization of the former Eastern bloc's countries out of their own control. The presentation of special economic means (foreign aid policies, foreign investment movements, foreign trade relations, economic integration opportunities, advantages on customs union, etc.) by the Western countries create certain advantages for the ruling forces which concern directly the social tensions due to the economic liberalization policies, but the imposition of conditionality of the economic assistance modalities on the progress of democratization for the CEE countries made more efficient this logic of control-influence according to the perspectives of Western countries.
The Post-Communist Transition after the Velvet Revolutions and its Implications on the Neo-Communist Parties in Central and Eastern Europe
As it is very likely to find in every work on the post-communist transition in CEE, we can present such a typology of post-ideological transformation: a) the Central European countries with successful democratic experiments where political parties, free media, markets, civil society formations and independent legal structures have developed with positive results; b) the Eastern European countries with protracted and gradualized transitions where the presence of former communists and neo-populists, and the weakness of pluralist forces have prevented the rapid economic, legal and political reforms; c) the quasi-democracies with strong authoritarian potential continuous attempts to control the freedom of information, strong neo-Communist formations and a controlled judiciary system. (4) There is a direct linkage between the typology of democratic transition and the development of party discourses; within the restructuring of the political regime, all the actors of the political culture at national level are no doubt under influence and need to revise their own outputs or to adopt reforms in order to adapt themselves to the expectations of the civil society.
Opting for semi-presidential regimes with their constitutional amendments in the mid-1990s, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania have differed their political and state restructuring from the other countries of CEE from the point of view of the election of presidents by universal suffrage. Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia have preferred to continue the unicameral legislative system, while the remaining states have bicameral systems. Within this diversity of constitutional organs in CEE, the political parties have remained the main sources of...
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