An interesting trend is developing across recent elections in post-communist “Visegrad-4” of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. More specifically, it now seems possible that the right could hold power in all four of these countries simultaneously for the first time since the Polish communist successor party returned to power in 1993.
Poland has had a stable right-wing government since the “2007 parliamentary elections”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_parliamentary_election,_2007, and indeed one could largely claim that the 2005-2007 government was also by and large right wing (although it certainly had its populist elements as well). Moreover, the ruling party center-right party looks likely to get its presidential candidate elected this month provided the election is not “rained out”:http://www.euronews.net/2010/06/08/poland-to-go-ahead-with-election-despite-floods/. The more recent trend “began in Hungary”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/04/political_scientist_gets_it_ri.html in April, where the right-wing Fidesz swept into power with a commanding 2/3 majority of the parliament. It then “continued in the Czech Republic”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/06/2010_czech_parliamentary_elect_1.html last month, where, despite the fact that social democratic party won the most seats in election, three right wing parties now control 118 out of 200 seats in the parliament and “look likely to form a coalition government”:http://praguemonitor.com/2010/06/09/schwarzenberg-grand-coalition-still-possible.
Intriguingly, the Slovak Spectator now suggests that Slovakia “could follow the Czech example”:http://spectator.sme.sk/articles/view/39101/2/polls_leave_hzds_out_in_the_cold.html and possibly produce a center-right government as well. What makes this case different from the Czech one, though, is that the center-left (and incumbent) SMER party looks likely to enjoy a substantial “victory” in the election, as opinion polls suggest it will win more than “twice as many votes”:http://www.pozorblog.com/2010/06/bureau-of-meaningless-statistics-the-noneffect-of-undecided-voters/ as its nearest competitor (in contrast, the Czech left-wing party “won” the election “by less than 2% of the vote”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_Czech_Republic). While it is still probably an unlikely scenario that SMER will be left out of the post-election government, this raises an interesting question in terms of legitimacy: are voters in Slovakia going to be ready to accept the fact that a party that wins such a commanding victory could _not_ be part of the government? This has happened before in Slovakia – when Vladimir Meciar’s MZDS won the 1998 Slovak elections but was kept out of government – but the margin of victory was tiny, with a single percentage point of vote “separating the top two parties”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_parliamentary_election,_1998.
As for the larger question of this rightward trend in Central Europe, I’m sure it will be easy to write it off (no pun intended) to idiosyncratic factors in each country, e.g., the scandals that plagued the SLD in Poland and MSzP in Hungary, the success of new right wing parties in the Czech Republic, etc. Interestingly, what does not seem to be the case is that “it is a bad time to be an incumbent in an economic crisis” is explaining everything. Post-communist countries are notorious for voting incumbents out of office with a startling degree of consistency (see in particular Andrew Roberts’ piece on “hyperaccountability” in _Electoral Studies_, available ungated “here”:http://2286817485029600279-a-1802744773732722657-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/robertspolisci/hyperaccountability.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7crPTwW1KVdI74qq7Jd7t7aCHCO7C_DKFX7vbIz281b4Es8UwECO8fAafFk9t9F7mZmfp2sZ0s51hgULMzX5ipBuwSwZr5O1ta5KKe5MXjGuIaUffzvOMtUssCw9UZ6clPrAPVNYHPkmuHdQ2sBGw3xxJP6LBQrQ_ajDmG_tlMrnGEMi9XIl6HhTPw7OfL-wSdKm71HGCvsQBK-7AUyTobUyFZf1Eg%3D%3D&attredirects=0), and yet the Poles appear to be on the verge of electing a president from the ruling party (although it should be noted that Poland has weathered the economic downturn better than “any other European country”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gvt593Lreo6d_QfV9Mct_XaXqqZgD9G1O3QO1). Moreover – despite what may happen in post-election coalition negotiations – the Slovaks look very likely to hand a decisive electoral victory to the center-left incumbent SMER.
So it may well turn out to be the case that these are just idiosyncratic events that all happen to produce right-wing governments. On the other hand, as we know from the literature on Latin America, when enough governments in a region trend to either the left or the right, scholars tend to take notice and start trying to explain the trend. I wonder if we are on the edge of such a period in Central Europe.