Institutional Theories

The research question that the authors present is "whether the structure of party competition emerging in the new democracies of Eastern Europe will resemble that commonly found in the west." Basically the question is whether or not the new systems of Eastern Europe will be similar to most the systems of democracy in the West. The new systems of democracy that the authors focus on were countries that were formerly communist. The main focuses of the article are explaining party formation and party competition in Eastern Europe.

First the author identifies three approaches to analyzing party formation in the post-communist democracies. These approaches are the Ð''Missing Middle' approach, the Ð''Modernization' approach, and the Ð''Comparative Communist' approach. The authors detail each approach and give their opinion on which system will provide the most helpful information. Under the Ð''Missing Middle' approach the objective is to analyze systems that have an absence of a stable social split or "cleavage." The result of the Ð''missing method' theory is an absence of different interests among voters. Individuals have no connection or attachment to political organizations and some citizens were unable to categorize themselves in the traditional left and right spectrums. The Modernization approach focuses on the effect of modernization on important expression. Under this approach the idea is that occupation creates autonomy and stability in political systems. Basing this on socio-economic status would result in parties quickly forming and people being able to identify themselves very quickly. The Ð''Comparative Communist' approach looks at country specific factors such as cultural, social and institutional differences. The authors dismiss both the Ð''missing middle' and Ð''modernization' approaches. Their claim is that the best approach is the comparative communist approach because it focuses on specific countries and both those theories do not apply to every communist country. Country-specific factors are vital when explaining the creation of interests in communist societies. The authors detail Kitschelt's anaylsis of social bases and dimensions. They dissect Kitschelt's framework on the basis that it is to vague and not helpful in comparing parties and analyzing competition.

The thesis of the article is "the distribution across east European countries of patterns of social bases and issue dimensions in conditioned by three national-level explanatory variables; economic development, levels of ethnic homogeneity, and the historic status of the state. Depending on the presence or absence of these conditioning factors three general