Organization and the structure of opportunities: Understanding the success of ethnic parties in postcommunist Europe

Abstract

In this article, we formulate a theoretical framework that examines the “internal” organizational characteristics of ethnic minority political parties, the characteristics of the ethnic minority group they purport to represent, and the external environment that these parties face, to explain the political success of these parties. As an empirical plausibility probe of this framework, we use data from 1991 to 2016 for 41 ethnic minority parties across 12 countries and 89 national legislative elections. Using a logistic regression analysis, our findings suggest that party organizational capability is most associated with ethnic minority party success in postcommunist politics when compared to other “supply” and “structure of opportunity” variables.

Keywords

East Central Europe ethnic parties party organization postcommunist politics structure of opportunities

Introduction

This article deals with “ethnic parties,” which are in many ways different from other “fringe parties.” Unlike other fringe parties, many of which operate out of the “mainstream” (as noted by the introductory article in this symposium by Gherghina and Fagan, 2021), ethnic parties are only “fringe” parties in that they represent (or at least purport to represent) specific segments of the population in terms of identity, and not the entire population. In other words, ethnic parties are fringe in the sense they do not necessarily appeal broadly to the electorate, and do not act as agents of national integration. However, ethnic parties are not necessarily “fringe” in terms of ideology, and many are quite close to mainstream socialist or liberal ideological orientations in Europe

Nonetheless, ethnic parties are a prominent feature of political life in many countries in Eastern, Central, and Southeast Europe. In countries such as Romania, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia, multiple political parties represent minority groups such as Hungarians, Albanians, and Croats. A quick glance at parliamentary election results indicates that some ethnic minority parties are quite successful and regularly attain parliamentary representation while others do not. Take as an example Most-Híd, a party that represents the interests of Slovakia’s Hungarian minority while attempting to “bridge” ethnic divisions between Hungarians and Slovaks. In the 2010 parliamentary elections, Most-Híd received approximately 8% of the vote and was awarded 14 seats in parliament, while the Party of the Hungarian Community (SMK-MKP) only received 4% of the vote and failed to win any parliamentary seats. In 2012, Most-Híd once again won seats in parliament, while SMK-MKP, again, failed to win any seats.

Although there certainly has been greater attention paid to the “success” of ethnic parties in postcommunist politics (see, for instance, Bernauer and Boeschler, 2011; Higashijima and Nakai, 2016), these have either focused only on explaining voter choice, rather than party performance per se or concentrated on regarding party entry based on assessments of success. Others such as Bilinksi (2015) have examined the success of ethnic parties, as the result of cultural legacies, but only a few studies examine ethnic party success broadly, and none have examined systematically the impact of party organization on success.¹ Indeed, as Bilinksi (2015: 729) notes, “although there are numerous contributions on ethnic electoral politics, relatively little research has been devoted to explain the scope of success of ethnic minority parties.”

This lack of attention to the political success of ethnic parties is surprising, given that the recent literature suggests that the political success of such parties plays an important political role in developing democracies. For instance, Chandra (2005) argues that ethnic parties play a constructive role in giving voice to groups and access to the political process, thus increasing their success in “patronage democracies.” Ishiyama (2001) and Ishiyama and Breuning (2011) also point to the positive role played by ethnic parties in drawing their supporters into acceptance of the democratic rules of the game (although some parties are better at this than others). Perhaps the most significant work on the topic in postcommunist politics, Stroschein (2012) suggests that ethnic parties play an important role in democratic consolidation because they engaged in confrontation and sustained protest. For example, in Romania and Slovakia, such protest led by ethnic Hungarian parties brought concessions on policies, but also made each side become accustomed to the other’s claims—this ultimately led to a deliberative process that fostered a moderation of group claims and promoted democratic consolidation. Thus, understanding the political success of ethnic parties in East Central Europe is a critical part of understanding the overall process of democratic consolidation in the region.

In this article, we formulate a theoretical framework that examines the “internal” organizational characteristics of ethnic minority political parties, the characteristics of the ethnic minority group they purport to represent, and the external environment that these parties face, to explain the political success of such parties. We offer a set of hypotheses related to the internal or organizational characteristics of these parties, the characteristics of the political support, and the competitive environment these parties face (including the effects of political institutions and the competitive party space) and test them in this article. We use data from 1991 to 2016 for 41 ethnic minority parties across 12 countries and 89 national legislative elections and conduct a logit analysis as an empirical probe as to the viability of our framework. We find that that party organizational capability is most associated with ethnic minority party success in postcommunist politics when compared to “other supply” and “structure of opportunity” variables.

In the following sections, we lay out the literature, theoretical framework, design and methodology, and results that produced the findings stated above.

The general literature on ethnic parties and democratization

The role of ethnic parties in democracies has long been of interest to scholars of democratization. A long-standing view of ethnic parties is that they are simply bad for democracy—this is largely because of their penchant for ethnic outbidding, creating greater interethnic intolerance and promoting political polarization (Horowitz, 1985; Rabushka and Shepsle, 1972). As Gunther and Diamond (2003: 13) note

the electoral logic of the ethnic party is to harden and mobilize its ethnic base with exclusive, often polarizing appeals to ethnic group opportunity and threat…the ethnic party’s particularistic, exclusivist, and often polarizing political appeals make its overall contribution to society divisive and even disintegrative.

However, more recently, scholars have come to view the role of ethnic parties more positively, suggesting that ethnic parties may not necessarily promote conflict (Ishiyama, 2009) but may in fact help promote political stability and democracy by giving voice to important constituencies (Birnir, 2007; Chandra, 2005), drawing them into an acceptance of democratic norms (Ishiyama, 2001)—although different kinds of ethnic parties may do this more effectively than others (Ishiyama and Breuning, 2011). Still others note that ethnic parties have had a role in accommodation and the acceptance of European norms in postcommunist politics (Gherghina and Jiglau, 2008).

Although most of the existing literature has focused on the impact of ethnic parties, a smaller but important strand of work has investigated the political success of ethnic parties. Kanchan Chandra (2005) was one of the first scholars to examine the question of why some ethnic parties succeed better than other ethnic parties. Conceptualizing success as “electoral success,” she argues that in successful ethnic parties, political entrepreneurs are able to convince voters that co-ethnic candidates will best be able to secure patronage resources for members of the group. Ethnicity becomes a shortcut for voters to evaluate which candidates will best represent their interests (much like the role played by partisanship or ideology in western democracies). As a result, elections become “ethnic headcounts” rather than a competition between political programs or ideologies. What differentiates successful from unsuccessful ethnic parties is the size of the ethnic group and the type of party organization that exists. Successful parties that have internally competitive meritocracies succeed (provided their ethnic group is big enough to mobilize sufficient voter support) because such meritocracies allow for the promotion of representatives of ethnic subdivisions within the party hierarchy, credibly signaling the party’s commitment to ethnic patronage.

Others have focused on the characteristics of the political environment and the characteristics of the ethnic group to explain the success of ethnic parties, rather than on the ethnic party as an organization (Stroschein, 2012). Jiglau and Gherghina (2011), for instance, argue, based upon their careful analysis of three postcommunist countries, that the context of political volatility, coupled with size of the ethnic minority group, create the conditions for ethnic minority parties to be influential. They argue that this provided the opportunity for the ethnic minority party (like the Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms in Bulgaria) to be “pivotal” in affecting the balance of power (making them an attractive coalition partner for both the Bulgarian Center-Right and Center-Left (Gherghina and Jiglau, 2016).

An important additional perspective on ethnic party success is offered by Koev (2014). Explicitly defining political success as gaining representation in the national legislature, he argues that what really explains the success of ethnic minority parties are the characteristics of the ethnic minority group, particularly its level of geographic concentration. He proposes that many minority groups have a sociopsychological attachment to a particular territory. If this attachment existed prior to the emergence of the current state and the group had previous experiences with autonomy and self-rule, these groups are more likely to form parties to represent them and are more likely to enjoy electoral success than ethnic minority groups that do not have such characteristics. Groups that have these traits are more likely to believe in the distinctiveness of their group and share a set of grievances, thus feeling it necessary to create a party that will represent its interests, and also be able to generate electoral support for this party. On the other hand, groups that do not have these characteristics are more likely to seek participation within the mainstream political parties.

So what might explain the political success of ethnic minority parties in postcommunist politics? In the following sections, we formulate a theoretical framework that emphasizes three dimensions that have been cited as affecting party success—(1) the characteristics of the party organization as an “agent,” (2) the characteristics of the minority ethnic group as a “supply” of political support, and (3) the “structure of opportunities” or openings provided to political parties by the political environment.

What explains ethnic minority party political success?

To assist in the development of our theoretical framework, we tap into both the literature on the political success of the communist successor parties in postcommunist politics and the recent literature that has sought to explain the success of extreme right-wing parties in Europe. The former tends to emphasize the “external” and “internal” dimensions when explaining party electoral success, and the latter focuses on “demand” and “supply” factors (Eatwell, 2003; Ishiyama, 1995, 1997, 2001; Mudde, 2007; Werkmann and Gherghina, 2016).

Although using somewhat different labels, both approaches focus on similar dynamics—the interaction between the characteristics of the ethnic party as an agent (or the internal dimension which is generally part of the supply side) with the characteristics of the group that this party represents and the structure of opportunities facing the party (or the “external dimension”). As Werkmann and Gherghina point out, all three of these dimensions identify as “supply-side” factors (although they differentiate between the “internal” and “external” supply-side factors). The “demand-side” factors include macro-level features as modernization, economic, and political crisis and the impact of immigration (Eatwell, 2003; Lubbers et al., 2002). Although potentially important, we discount these demand-side explanations for two reasons. First although these may be important in explaining far-right party emergence and success, we are less convinced theoretically (and are in agreement with Koev on this) that these factors play an important role in explaining the emergence and success of ethnic minority parties (Koev, 2014). Further, a quite substantial body of work suggests that demand-side explanations do not really predict much in terms of the electoral success of far-right parties (Eatwell, 2003; Mudde, 2007, 2014; Norris, 2005; Van der Brug et al., 2000). Thus, we do not include (at least for the purposes of this draft of the article) the demand side as part of the analysis.

Party organization

Several scholars have argued that a key element in explaining political party success is the party organization itself (Grzymala-Busse, 2002; Ishiyama, 1995, 1997; van Biezen, 2003). Van Biezen (2003) and Ishiyama (2001) point to the internal organizational structure of a party, particularly the overlap between electoral office and the internal party executive as explaining the electoral success of political parties in the new democracies of postcommunist Europe. Grzymala-Busse (2002) underlines the role played by human capital in the electoral success of the communist successor parties, particularly the existence of trained cadres with managerial and other “portable skills” inherited from the past communist regime.

Still others such as Janda (1980) emphasize the importance of parties being able to communicate a common and consistent set of values or “identity” in order to appeal to an electorate. In this regard, parties that have a common set of values help to unify a party leadership. Gherghina (2014) also underlines the importance of a party communicating a consistent and homogenous message to stabilize electoral preferences in the electorate, which improves the credibility of the party and increases its electoral support.

As Werkmann and Gherghina (2016) point out, party leadership, and especially the continuity of party leadership, is important in explaining political success. First, charismatic leaders are often an important attraction for voters in as much they are recognizable symbols of the party’s policies (Eatwell, 2005). Second, consistent with Brichta and Pedahzur’s (2002) argument regarding the building of party organization, charismatic leaders are an important part of the building process. Leaders attract followers and consolidate lines of authority in the early stages of party organizational development. Thus, leaders should remain in office for a sufficient amount of time to consolidate her authority, and organizations with stable leadership are more likely to be political successful than those that have less stable or identifiable leaders (Gherghina, 2014).

Finally, the extent to which an ethnic minority party can communicate broadly its message is crucial to mobilizing electoral support (Mudde, 2007). Smaller parties that do not have access to mainstream media often rely on electronic media such as websites to reach their constituents and potential voters. Some parties have well-developed websites and others do not. In many ways having such well-developed means of communication also reflects greater organizational capability.

Taken together, each of the above dimensions represents an organizational “capability” that improves the party’s ability to win votes. It is also likely that these capabilities cluster together. For instance, if a party is more organizationally complex, it is likely to develop or attract the professional human capital that allows for the development of a coherent message via well-developed propaganda medial platforms. Thus, we consider each of these dimensions as an aspect of a party organizations capability. Organizations that have more of these characteristics are more capable organizations than those that have fewer or none of these characteristics. We also expect that more capable organizations will be more politically successful, or:

H1: More organizationally capable ethnic minority parties will be more politically successful than less organizationally capable parties.

Characteristics of the ethnic group

In addition to the organizational characteristics of the ethnic minority party, there are also the characteristics of the ethnic group they purport to represent. This represents the other “supply side” factors, such as the level of political support for the ethnic minority party, which will affect the extent to which it is politically successful. There are two characteristics of groups that are particularly important as suggested by the literature above. The first is the size of the group. The larger the group, the greater the number of voters that can be mobilized, and the more likely the party will win representation in government (Chandra, 2005; Jiglau and Gherghina, 2011).

The second is whether the group is geographically concentrated (Koev, 2014). If the group is geographically concentrated, the more likely that group has developed the kind of sociopsychological attachment to territory as described by Koev. This is likely to translate into greater mobilization of the electorate (even if it is small) and translate into greater electoral success than ethnic minority groups that do not have such attachment to a particular territory. This suggests the following hypotheses:

H2: The larger the ethnic group, the more likely the ethnic minority party will be politically successful.

H3: The more geographically concentrated a group, the more likely the ethnic minority party will be politically successful.

Structure of opportunities

In general, as Ishiyama (1997) notes, there are both “openings” created in the political system by electoral and political institutions (such as office open to competition and the method of election), and by the structure of competition (or how many competitors compete for the same electoral space). Electoral systems and territorial arrangements (such as the provision of regional autonomy) have long been cited as influencing political party success generally and ethnic and minority party success in particular (Ishiyama, 2000, 2006; Lijphart, 1977; Shugart and Carey, 1992). The most noteworthy distinction in this body of literature is the impact of proportional representation on party success. In general, the more proportional an electoral system, the more openings available to even small political parties. Another institutional feature that affects the likelihood of success of ethnic minority parties is the degree to which a political system is decentralized, particularly if there is regional political autonomy. There are two reasons why regional political autonomy should promote the success of ethnic parties. First, the existence of empowered regional administrative units provides opportunities for ethnic groups, particularly those that are regionally concentrated, to capture local offices that can act as “springboards” for bids for national power later. Second, local administration intensifies the attachment an ethnic group has for a particular territory, heightening the social–psychological dynamic identified by Koev (2014).

A final characteristic of the structure of opportunities is the competitive space facing ethnic minority parties. As Cox (1987) and Waller (1995) note, the presence of several parties competing for the same ideological or political space can “squeeze out” parties, causing them to fold. Rydgren (2005) notes that for smaller parties, like far-right parties, the limited pool of voters will be split up when there are more competitors, thus lowering the probability that any of them are politically successful. Thus, we would expect that when there are more competitors, this will reduce the likelihood for the political success of a given ethnic minority party.

The above suggests the following hypotheses:

H4: The more proportional is the electoral system, the more likely ethnic minority parties will be politically successful.

H5: In countries that have regional autonomy, the greater is the likelihood that ethnic minority parties will be politically successful than in countries that do not offer regional autonomy.

H6: The more co-ethnic competitors in a country in a given election year, the less likely a particular ethnic minority party will be politically successful.

Design and methodology

To test the above hypotheses, we first discuss how the data set is constructed, particularly the criteria used to identify an “ethnic minority party.” We then operationalize the variables in the analyses, discuss the method employed to analyze the data, and finally present the results of the empirical inquiry.

Defining “ethnic minority party”

To construct the data set, we need to define “ethnic minority party.” First, such a party represents a group that is a numerical minority in the population. But what is meant by “ethnic party”? Ethnic parties are often seen as special cases in as much that, unlike other types of parties, ethnic parties do not try to broaden their appeal to win election but focus on a limited constituency. Indeed, their defining feature is that they limit their appeal to a particular ethnic or regional constituency and “explicitly seek to draw boundaries” between ethnic “friends” and “foes” (Kitschelt, 1995). Unlike other type of political parties, electoral mobilization is not intended to attract additional voters outside of the group but to more intensely mobilize an ethnic community (see also Horowitz, 1985: 294–297). Thus, for Gunther and Diamond (2003: 183), a “purely ethnic party seeks only to mobilize the votes of its own ethnic group” (see also Brass, 1991:106; for an extended discussion, see Ishiyama and Breuning, 2011).

Although there is some consensus that ethnic parties are different from other parties, there is nonetheless considerable debate as to how to operationally define the concept. Some argue that ethnic parties are defined by its membership—in other words, ethnic parties are defined by the support it receives from an ethnic group. For Horowitz, an ethnically based party is a party that derives its support overwhelmingly from an identifiable ethnic group (or cluster of ethnic groups) and serves the interests of that group (Horowitz, 1985: 291). An ethnic party does not have to be the exclusive party of that group, as the group might split their political support among more than one political party. It is the group’s cohesion and division that determines how many ethnic parties emerge (Horowitz, 2000: 293). However, for all ethnic parties, ethnicity becomes the principal source of support (Horowitz, 2000: 293). Further, even parties that proclaim not to be ethnic such as MOST-Hid in Slovakia or the DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) Bulgaria, and even include candidates who are not either ethnic Hungarians of Turks, rely mostly on electoral support from one ethnic group. For scholars like Horowitz (2000) and Cheeseman and Ford (2007), this is a defining feature of an “ethnic party.”

However, others define ethnic parties in terms of how they represent themselves publicly. Thus, Chandra and Metz (2002: 5) define an ethnic party as a “party that overtly represents itself to the voters as the champion of the interests of one ethnic group or a set of groups to the exclusion of another or others and makes such a representation central to its mobilizing strategy.” According to Chandra, the key to an ethnic party is that it “appeals to voters as the champion of the interests of one ethnic category or set of categories to the exclusion of others” (2004: 4).

For the purposes of this article, we define an ethnic party as an organization that seeks to explicitly represent the interests of the ethnic group. We use the operationalization proposed by Ishiyama (2009: 64–65)—that an ethnic party is identified as a party that either (a) proclaims itself as the primary representative of the ethnic group and only that group or (b) is widely regarded as a party to represent the interests of that group and only that group. Thus, this definition would include parties that identify themselves as the representative of a particular group (such as the Party of the Hungarian Community in Slovakia) as well as parties that are widely regarded as ethnic despite proclaiming themselves officially as nonethnic (such as the Movement for Rights and Freedoms in Bulgaria, which is largely a party of ethnic Turks).

Further, we are primarily interested in ethnic minority groups that are large enough to be politically relevant. We use the threshold of 2% of the population as a cut-off point. Finally, we collected data on as many ethnic parties whose information was publicly available (so there may be some smaller ethnic parties which were not included in the data set, whose information is not readily available).

Based on these criteria (the definition of ethnic party offered above and that the group the party represented had to comprise at least 2% of the population), we constructed a data set that included 41 ethnic parties, in 89 elections across 12 countries, for a total of 212 cases (based on party/election year as the unit of analysis). The list of parties is provided in Table 1.²

Table 1.

List of ethnic minority parties and ethnic groups.

Party name	Country	Ethnic group	Ethnic group’s share of total population (%)
Unity for Human Rights Party	Albania	Greeks	4
Serbian Democratic Party	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Serbs	32
Serbian Radical Party	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Serbs	32
Croatian Democratic Union	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Croatians	17
New Croatian Initiative	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Croatians	17
Croatian Peasants Party	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Croatians	17
Croatian Peasants Party	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Croatians	17
Croatian Party of Rights	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Croatians	17
Movement for Rights and Freedoms	Bulgaria	Turks	9
Evroroma	Bulgaria	Roma	5
Serb People’s Party	Croatia	Serbs	5
Independent Democratic Serb Party	Croatia	Serbs	5
Russian Party in Estonia 1996	Estonia	Russians/Russophones	26
Gypsy Solidarity Party	Hungary	Roma	5
Hungarian Gypsies Democratic Party	Hungary	Roma	5
Hungarian Roma Party	Hungary	Roma	5
Democratic Roma Party	Hungary	Roma	5
Party of Roma Solidarity	Hungary	Roma	5
Equal Rights	Latvia	Russians/Russophones	27
Party of Russian Citizens in Latvia	Latvia	Russians/Russophones	27
For Human Rights in United Latvia	Latvia	Russians/Russophones	27
Harmony Centre	Latvia	Russians/Russophones	27
Election Action of Lithuania’s Poles	Lithuania	Poles	6
Lithuanian Russian Union	Lithuania	Russians/Russophones	5
Party for Democratic Prosperity	Macedonia	Albanians	23
Democratic Union for Integration	Macedonia	Albanians	23
Democratic Party of Albanians	Macedonia	Albanians	23
National Democratic Revival	Macedonia	Albanians	23
Democratic Party of Turks	Macedonia	Turks	4
Democratic Party of Serbs in Macedonia	Macedonia	Serbs	2
Union of Roma of Macedonia	Macedonia	Roma	2
United Party of the Roma in Macedonia	Macedonia	Roma	2
Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania	Romania	Hungarians	7
Party of the Roma	Romania	Roma	3
Party of Democratic Action of Sandzak	Serbia	Turks	2
Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians	Serbia	Hungarians	4
Party of the Hungarian Community	Slovakia	Hungarians	9
Hungarian Civic Party	Slovakia	Hungarians	9
Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement	Slovakia	Hungarians	9
MOST Hid	Slovakia	Hungarians	9
Roma Civic Initiative	Slovakia	Roma	2

Variables

In this article, we use two dependent variables. First, like Koev (2014), we examine whether or not a party in a particular year is able to win a seat in parliament (beyond any guaranteed seats based on an ethnic quota, as is the case in Romania for instance) in an election year.³ We use this instead of the percentage of seats won, because the latter would reflect the size of the ethnic group’s population. We agree with Koev’s (2014) contention that setting winning a seat as the mark of success makes more sense than the percentage of the vote, or the percentage of seats won. This is because in contrast to nonethnic parties, ethnic parties are faced with a “ceiling” of voter support and thus cannot be expected to be able to win as many seats or votes as other nonethnic parties. For Koev (2014: 101), since

the primary purpose of a minority party is to give its ethnic group a voice in the country’s law-making body…it seems that asking whether the party obtained legislative representation is the best way to determine whether the minority party project can be considered a success.

Thus, we code as a “1” if the ethnic party won a seat in the lower house of the legislature in a given election year, and “0” if it did not.

The second dependent variable we employ is whether or not the party was able to enter into government/cabinet in a given election year. If the primary purpose of the ethnic minority party is to gain voice to represent the group, then access to the executive would be the penultimate prize for the party. We code as a “1” when the ethnic party entered government subsequent to the legislative election and “0” if they did not enter the governing coalition in the year after the election.

There are several independent and control variables that are employed in this analysis. The first are the measures of the party as an organization, which relate to the internal characteristics mentioned above. Although there have been a number of ways proposed to measure the extent to which party organizations are “strong” (see Poguntke et al., 2016; Werkmann and Gherghina, 2016) or complex and “programmatic” (Ishiyama, 2001; Van Biezen, 2003) or “institutionalized” (Ishiyama, 2005), a particularly interesting measure is the measure of organizational strength developed by Werkmann and Gherghina (2016). They use an indicator that had two components—the extent to which the party’s organization extends beyond the capital city and the extent to which the party is able to field a full list of candidates (or where the number of candidates nominated by the party is equal to the number of seats available in the lower house of the legislature) (Kopecký, 2006). The latter is indicative of the party’s ability to mobilize human resources and thus is an indicator of strength.

Although useful, we choose not to use these measures of party strength to measure the “internal” characteristics of the party as a political agent. There are two reasons why we choose not to use these measures. First, these measures do not apply well to ethnic minority parties, particularly those that represent populations that are geographically concentrated. Given that ethnic minority parties are unlikely to extend their appeal beyond their ethnic base, it makes little sense for them maintain party organizational cells throughout an entire country. Further, it makes little sense for ethnic minority parties to nominate as many candidates as there are seats in parliament—rather, what is more likely is that the party will nominate candidates up to the number its leaders believe are winnable—which will always be far less than the number of seats in the legislature.

A second reason is that we believe that the dimensions discussed above in the literature review can be thought of as various characteristics of an underlying concept—“party capability.” More capable parties that have deployable tools to be electorally competitive (such as identity coherence, strong leadership, and organizational tools needed to communicate and mobilize supporters) are more likely to be electorally successful than those that do not have these characteristics.

As we noted above, organizational capability is indicated by degrees of complexity, its ability to extend its reach beyond a headquarters, the extent to which it is able to communicate its message, the extent to which it remains ideologically coherent, and the extent to which there is a clear leadership. Thus, we propose an aggregate measure of party organizational capability based on six characteristics⁴: (1) whether or not the party reports an organizational structure and identifies individuals who are part of that structure, that is, party chairs, vice chairs, members of the central committee, and so on. Those that do would indicate a higher likelihood of having a viable organization; (2) whether or not the party reports the existence of an organized youth and/or women’s wing. Reporting this indicates a more complex organization; (3) whether or not the party reports regional substructures. This would indicate that the party’s reach extends beyond its headquarters; (4) whether the party has maintained a consistent identity. We use whether the party changed its name since 1990. Although image can mean many things, one fundamental aspect of a party’s image is its name, or the face the organization presents to voters in elections. The name of the party is part of its image, along with other features (such as party programs, manifestos, and party symbols) which are generally much less visible to the public than the party’s name (Ishiyama and Marshall, 2015; Janda et al., 1995).⁵ Thus, we code this dimension as a “1” if some major change in name occurred. (5) Whether the party has the capability to propagate its message, in particular whether or not the party maintains an active website (we excluded websites that were blocked or deactivated). This would indicate the ability of the party to communicate its message to voters. (6) Whether there is continuity in leadership of the party. As Gherghina (2014) and Ghodsee (2008) suggest, a continuously serving leader signals the organizational homogeneity of the party and represents the party’s “face” to the public. Thus, having a strong, charismatic leader who can be the face of the party is an additional characteristic that contributes to the organizational capability of the party.

After conducting a Cronbach’s alpha test, we determined that there was a high degree of inter item covariance (0.71) and high degree of reliability (0.72) between these six items. The alpha score suggests the six items can be combined into a composite scale score. We thus sum the score of the six dimensions and create an aggregate “organizational capability” score that ranges for 0 to 6.

Turning to the other variables related to the “supply” side of the equation, or the characteristics of the ethnic group, we employ two measures. First, we include the relative size of the ethnic group’s population in a given year expressed as a percentage of the total population.⁶ Bilinksi (2015) found this to be a key factor in explaining the success of ethnic parties. The second variable “degree of group concentration” (GROUPCON) is coded from 0 (widely dispersed) to 3 (concentrated in one region) (MAR, 2009). We would expect that both the size of the group population and the degree to which the group is geographically concentrated will both increase the likelihood of political success.

In addition to the organizational and other supply variables, there are the variables associated with the “structure of opportunities.” We include in our analysis two institutional variables that may create openings for ethnic minority parties—namely the natural log of average district magnitude (a commonly used measure to indicate degree to which an electoral system tends toward proportional representation) and the extent to which there is regional autonomy and decentralization in the political system. Both of these measures are from the World Bank’s Database on Political Institutions (Beck et al., 2001). Finally, in order to measure the openings created by party competition, we also include a variable that measures the number of co-ethnic competitor parties in a given election year. The higher the number of co-ethnic competitors, the less likely any one of them will win a seat in the legislature, as they risk dividing the vote.

A summary of the variables used in our analysis, along with descriptive statistics, is reported in Table 2.

Table 2.

Descriptive statistics.

Variable	N	Mean	Std	Min	Max
Won seat in legislature	212	0.43	0.50	0	1
Government inclusion	212	0.15	0.35	0	1
Organizational capability	212	2.91	1.78	0	6
Size of ethnic group	212	10.53	9.29	1.8	31.5
Degree of ethnic group concentration	212	1.79	1.09	0	3
Number of ethnic competitors	212	.83	0.94	0	3
Log of average district magnitude	212	2.64	1.23	0	5.01
Is there regional autonomy?	212	0.08	0.27	0	1
Number of parties	41
Number of countries	12
Number of elections	89

Results

To test the hypotheses identified above, in Table 3, we report the results of regressing our two dependent variables against the explanatory “organizational,” “supply” and “structure of opportunity” variables. Although the data are collected by election year, these are not time series data. Rather the values of most of the explanatory variables are time invariant (such as our measure of party organizational capability). Given the nature of the data, we elect to use a basic cross-sectional logit analysis. We recognize that such an analysis may be fraught with endogeneity concerns—thus we limit our interpretation of the results as evidence of a correlational relationship as opposed to causal one. As a first cut at testing whether there is a relationship between organizational capability and electoral success, the following analysis should be sufficient to establish if such covariance exists.

Table 3.

Factors related to electoral success of ethnic minority parties (all parties included; time series random effects logistic regression, robust standard errors clustered by party).

Variables	Model 1: Won seat in legislature, odds ratio (robust standard error)	Model 2: Government inclusion, odds ratio (robust standard error)	Variance inflation factor
Organizational capability	6.80* (6.41)	7.70*** (4.13)	1.65
Size of ethnic group	0.001 (0.000)	0.002* (0.001)	1.36
Degree of group geographic concentration	20.69 (39.52)	2.71 (1.67)	2.03
Number of ethnic competitors	0.10 (0.16)	0.56 (0.39)	1.32
Log of average district magnitude	0.93 (0.54)	2.24** (0.71)	1.31
Is there regional autonomy?	0.01 (0.04)	20.53* (26.00)	1.35
N	203	203
χ ²	10.46*	29.01***
Log likelihood	−51.90	−48.49

*p ≤ 0.05; **p ≤ 0.01; ***p ≤ 0.001.

Table 3 reports the results including the entire sample of political parties. Table 3 reports odd ratios and robust clustered standard errors by individual political party.⁷ Further, it is important to note that odds ratios are interpreted differently than general coefficients. As with hazard ratios, when an odds ratio is larger than 1, this indicates the percent increase in the dependent variable; when the odds ratio is below 1, this indicates the percent decrease in the dependent variable.

In Table 3, we report the results for all parties listed. However, we acknowledge that many parties, including many Roma parties, did not participate in national elections independently, and only participated in local elections. Nonetheless, we believe that by registering as a party, these parties had the potential to run for national office, but chose not to (for whatever reason). Thus, they had the opportunity to win seats in a national election (and for that matter an opportunity to be included in the governing coalition) but did not. In this sense, they should be considered as part of the sample of ethnic parties. But, we also recognize that including them may bias our results. Therefore, as a robustness check of our empirical results, we also include a table (Table 4) that only considers parties that ran for national-level office.

Table 4.

Factors related to electoral success of ethnic minority parties (only parties that ran for national office; time series random effects logistic regression, robust standard errors clustered by party).

Variables	Model 4: Won seat in legislature, odds ratio (robust standard error)	Model 5: Government inclusion, odds ratio (robust standard error)	Variance inflation factor
Organizational capability	6.84* (6.68)	7.69*** (4.14)	1.65
Size of ethnic group	0.002 (0.003)	0.002* (0.000)	1.36
Degree of group geographic concentration	17.53 (34.68)	2.71 (1.67)	2.03
Number of ethnic competitors	0.10 (0.17)	0.56 (0.39)	1.32
Log of average district magnitude	0.92 (0.54)	2.23** (0.71)	1.31
Is there regional autonomy?	0.01 (0.04)	20.51* (26.00)	1.35
N	166	166
χ ²	9.17*	38.50***
Log likelihood	−51.73	−48.49

*p ≤ 0.05; **p ≤ 0.01; ***p ≤ 0.001.

In Table 3, model 1 reports the results of regressing the dependent variable of whether the ethnic minority party gained legislative representation in a given election year against the explanatory variables. Model 2 reports the results where the dependent variable is whether the party was included in the governing coalition following the election. As indicated by the results in Table 3, the one variable that is both statistically significant and in the predicted direction for both of our measures of electoral success is the organizational capability variable. For every one-point increase on the six-point organization capability measure, the likelihood of obtaining a legislative seat increases by 680%. For the likelihood of entering a coalition government, the probability increases by eightfold. Thus, hypothesis 1 is supported by the above results—organizational capabilities of the ethnic minority party matter a great deal in explaining whether or not that party obtains legislative representation and a voice in government.

The results regarding the relationship between success and the “supply” variables are more mixed. The extent to which an ethnic group is geographically concentrated is positively related to the likelihood of an ethnic minority party gaining access to legislative representation, which does not support hypothesis 3 above. This contradicts the findings of Koev (2014) who suggested that a geographically concentrated constituency raises the likelihood of an ethnic minority party gaining at least one seat in a legislature. Further, the size of the group is not necessarily related to obtaining at least one seat in parliament.

The size of the ethnic group is, however, related to the likelihood of the party entering a government coalition, which supports hypothesis 2. This makes sense. A party that can mobilize a larger block of voters (and presumably seats) makes a far more attractive coalition partner than a smaller group. There are several examples in our set of cases that bear this point out. For instance, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) is consistently one of the three largest parliamentary parties in Bulgaria, given the fact that their core ethnic constituency, Turks, are 9% of the population. The relatively large size of DPS has made them an attractive coalition partner for liberal parties such as the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the National Movement for Stability and Progress. To give another example, ethnic Albanian parties such as the Democratic Union for Integration have served as important coalition partners for mainstream parties in Macedonia in part because Albanians are a large minority group that contribute a significant number of seats to governing coalitions.

The results also find a significant relationship between some of the “structure of opportunity” variables and the measures of electoral success, but only when the dependent variable is inclusion in the governing coalition. Although the number of ethnic competitors is unrelated to either the probability of winning at least one seat in parliament, as is the measure of electoral proportionality, regional autonomy and electoral systems proportionality are related to whether the party enters a coalition government. Thus, evidence does not support hypothesis 4 above, but partially supports hypotheses 5 and 6.

In sum, it appears from the above results that the internal characteristics of parties as agents best explain the electoral success of ethnic minority parties in postcommunist Eastern and Central Europe. However, there is partial support for the notion that the supply variables of group size and inclusion in government and geographic concentration also account for part of the explanation for the electoral success of ethnic minority parties (particularly inclusion in the governing coalition) and that some of the structure of opportunity variables are related to inclusion in the governing coalition. However, the single variable that is consistently significant and in the predicted positive direction across all model specifications is the party organization variable.

Conclusion

This article analyzes a variety of factors that potentially influence the political success of ethnic minority parties in postcommunist Eastern, Central, and Southeast Europe. Specifically, the above work has been a preliminary attempt to examine the relationship between organizational capability, characteristics of the ethnic group, and the structure of opportunities to explain the political success of ethnic minority parties. The above results suggest that organizational capability is the most important factor in explaining the political success of ethnic minority parties in these regions. Although the size of the group, and the proportionality of the electoral system, and whether there is political decentralization and local autonomy, helps explain electoral success in terms of whether the ethnic minority party is included in the governing coalition, only the organizational capability variable is statistically significant across all model specifications. There are several important implications that arise from our analysis. Our findings indicate that party organization is potentially more important than factors such as the size of the ethnic group or the degree of group concentration.

However, as noted above, given the nature of the data we cannot say anything conclusive about the causal relationship between organizational capability and electoral performance. Nonetheless, the fact that the two covary and that this relationship is statistically significant suggests that such a relationship exists. However, to definitively establish a causal relationship will have to wait until we have further developed the analysis, and/or collect data on organizational capability that precedes electoral performance, temporally. This is currently beyond the scope of this article. Nonetheless, these early findings suggest a promising path for future research.

There are, of course, some alternative explanations that should be considered in future iterations of this project. For instance, some may point to the importance of ideology in explaining the success of ethnic parties—that socialist ethnic parties and liberal ethnic parties fare very differently in terms of political success. However, it should be noted that ethnic parties are different from other parties. Unlike other parties, where the primary identity is ideological, for ethnic parties, the primary identity is ethnicity. The parties’ attraction is based largely on appeal to ethnic identity which essentially supplants ideology, a long-standing point made in the literature (see Chandra, 2004; Horowitz, 1985). Also it may be the case that discrete events, like sudden crises (either domestic or international), impact the political success of ethnic parties. Further, cross-border relations may also affect the success of ethnic parties. Ethnic parties that have ethnic kin abroad (especially if they are rich and powerful) may be more politically successful than are ethnic parties without such ties. However, at this point, these and other questions will have to wait for a future iteration of this project.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-ppq-10.1177_1354068819864089 - Organization and the structure of opportunities: Understanding the success of ethnic parties in postcommunist Europe

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-ppq-10.1177_1354068819864089 for Organization and the structure of opportunities: Understanding the success of ethnic parties in postcommunist Europe by John Ishiyama and Brandon Stewart in Party Politics

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

John Ishiyama

Notes

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

References

Beck

Clarke

Groff

, et al. (2001) New tools in comparative political economy: the Database of Political Institutions. World Bank Economic Review 15(1): 165–176.

Bernauer

Bochsler

(2011) Electoral entry and success of ethnic minority parties in central and eastern Europe: a hierarchical selection model. Electoral Studies 20(4): 738–775.

Bilinksi

(2015) Cultural legacies and electoral performance of ethnic minority parties in post-communist Europe. Nations and Nationalism 21(4): 721–740.

Birnir

(2007) Ethnicity and Electoral Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Brass

(1991) Ethnic conflict in multiethnic societies: the consociational solution and its critics. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison. New Delhi: Sage.

Brichta

Pedahzur

(2002) The institutionalization of extreme right-wing charismatic parties: a paradox? Party Politics 8(1): 31–49.

Bugajski

(2002) Political parties of Eastern Europe: A guide to politics in the post-Communist era. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe.

Chandra

(2004) Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Headcounts in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chandra

Metz

(2002) A New Cross-National Database on Ethnic Parties. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Political Science Association, Chicago, IL.

10.

Chandra

(2005) Ethnic parties and democratic stability. Perspectives on Politics 3(2): 235–252.

11.

Cheeseman

Ford

(2007) Ethnicity as a political cleavage. Afrobarometer Working Papers, No. 83. Available at: http://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Working%20paper/AfropaperNo83.pdf (accessed January 2019).

12.

Cox

(1987) Electoral equilibrium under alternative voting institutions. American Journal of Political Science 31: 82–108.

13.

Day

(2005) Political Parties of the World. New York: John Harper.

14.

Eatwell

(2003) Ten theories of the extreme right. In: Merkl

Weinberg

(eds) Right-Wing Extremism in the Twenty-First Century, 2nd revised edn. London: Frank Cass Publishers, pp. 45–70.

15.

Eatwell

(2005) Charisma and the revival of the European extreme right. In: Rydgren

(ed) Movements of Exclusion. Radical Right-Wing Populism in the Western World. Hauppauge: Nova Science, pp. 101–120.

16.

Gherghina

(2014) Party Organization and Electoral Volatility in Central and Eastern Europe. Enhancing Voter Loyalty. London: Routledge.

17.

Gherghina

Fagan

(2021) Fringe political parties of political parties at the fringes? The dynamic of political competition in post-communist Europe. Party Politics 27(1): 3–8.

18.

Gherghina

Jiglau

(2008) The role of ethnic parties in the Europeanization process: the Romanian experience. Romanian Journal of European Affairs 8(2): 82–100.

19.

Gherghina

Jiglau

(2016) Playing their cards right: ethnic parties and government coalitions in Postcommunist Europe. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 22(2): 220–240.

20.

Ghodsee

(2008) Left wing, right wing, everything. Xenophobia, neo-totalitarianism, and populist politics in Bulgaria. Problems of Post-Communism 55(3): 26–39.

21.

Grzymala-Busse

(2002) Redeeming the Communist Past. New York: Cambridge University Press.

22.

Gunther

Diamond

(2003) Types and functions of parties. In: Diamond

Gunther

(eds) Political Parties and Democracy. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 3–39.

23.

Higashijima

Nakai

(2016) Elections, ethnic parties, and ethnic identification in new democracies: evidence from the Baltic. States’Studies in Comparative International Development 51(2): 26–40.

24.

Horowitz

(1985) Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press.

25.

Ishiyama

(1995) Communist parties in transition: structures, leaders and processes of democratization in eastern Europe. Comparative Politics 27: 147–166.

26.

Ishiyama

(1997) The sickle or the rose? Previous regime types and the evolution of the ex-communist parties in post-communist societies. Comparative Political Studies 30: 299–330.

27.

Ishiyama

(2000) Institutions and ethnopolitical conflict in post-communist politics. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 6: 51–67.

28.

Ishiyama

(2001) Ethnopolitical parties and democratic consolidation in post-communist eastern Europe. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 7: 25–45.

29.

Ishiyama

(2005) The former marxist leninist parties in Africa after the end of the cold war. Acta Politica 40, 459–479.

30.

Ishiyama

(2006) Globalization, political institutions and ethnic assertiveness: an empirical study of thirty-two developing countries. Ethnopolitics 5: 167–182.

31.

Ishiyama

(2009) Do ethnic parties promote minority ethnic conflict? Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 15: 56–83.

32.

Ishiyama

Breuning

(2011) What’s in a name? Ethnic party identity and democratic development in post-communist politics. Party Politics 17(2): 223–241.

33.

Ishiyama

Marshall

(2015) What explains former rebel party name changes after a civil conflict ends? External and internal factors and the transition to political competition. Party Politics 23: 364–375.

34.

Janda

(1980) Political Parties: A Cross-National Survey. New York: Free Press.

35.

Janda

Harmel

Edens

, et al. (1995) Changes in party identity: evidence from party manifestos. Party Politics 1: 171–196.

36.

Jiglau

Gherghina

(2011) The divergent paths of the ethnic parties in post-communist transitions. Transition Studies Review 18(2): 445–457.

37.

Kitschelt

(1995) Formation of party cleavages in post-communist democracies: theoretical propositions. Party Politics 1: 447–472.

38.

Koev

(2014) The determinants of ethnic minority party formation and success in Europe. Unpublished Dissertation. University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/50361 (accessed June 2017).

39.

Kopecký

(2006) The rise of the power monopoly. Political parties in the Czech Republic. In: Jungerstam-Mulders

(ed) Post-Communist EU Member States. Parties and Party Systems. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 125–146.

40.

Lijphart

(1977) Democracy in Plural Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press.

41.

Lubbers

Gijsberts

Scheepers

(2002) Extreme right-wing voting in western Europe. European Journal of Political Research 41: 345–378.

42.

Lublin

(2012) Dispersing authority or deepening divisions? Decentralization and ethnoregional party success. Journal of Politics 74(4): 1079–1093.

43.

Minorities at Risk Project (2009) Minorities at Risk Dataset. College Park: Center for International Development and Conflict Management. Available at: http://www.mar.umd.edu/ (accessed June 2017).

44.

Mudde

(2007) Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

45.

Mudde

(2014) The far right and the European elections. Current History 113(761): 98–103.

46.

Norris

(2005) Radical Right. Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

47.

Poguntke

Scarrow

Webb

(2016) Party rules, party resources and the politics of parliamentary democracies: How parties organize in the 21st century. Party Politics 22(6): 661–678.

48.

Rabushka

Shepsle

(1972) Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability. Columbus, OH: Merrill.

49.

Rydgren

(2005) Is extreme right-wing populism contagious? Explaining the emergence of a new party family. European Journal of Political Research 44: 413–437.

50.

Shugart

Carey

(1992) Presidents and Assemblies. New York: Cambridge University Press.

51.

Stroschein

(2012) Ethnic Struggle, Coexistence, and Democratization in Eastern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press.

52.

Van Biezen

(2003) Political Parties in New Democracies Party Organization in Southern and East-Central Europe. New York: Palgrave.

53.

Van der Brug

Fennema

Tillie

(2000) Anti-immigrant parties in Europe: ideological or protest vote? European Journal of Political Research 37(1): 77–102.

54.

Waller

(1995) Adaptation of the former communist parties of East Central Europe: A case of Democratization? Party Politics 1: 373–390.

55.

Werkmann

Gherghina

(2016) Organized for parliament? Explaining the electoral success of radical right parties in post-communist Europe. Government and Opposition 53(3): 461–485.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.36 MB