Electoral Systems and Party System Stability in Post-Communist Europe

This paper analyses the impact of electoral institutions on party system stability and change in twelve countries of post-communist Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. It argues that in the post-communist context it is necessary to break party system change down into two components: volatility and replacement. Volatility, a concept already well developed in the literature, refers to changes over successive elections in the balance of party support. Replacement is understood as the extent to which new political formations are successful in drawing support. Empirical analysis of these two variables demonstrates that they exhibit different patterns and that they are influenced by separate sets of factors. Electoral institution variables are found to have a strong impact on volatility by not replacement, which is influenced instead by sub-regional location and rates of electoral participation.