Engineering Revolution. Marlene Spoerri
In semi-authoritarian regimes, including Vladimir Meciar’s Slovakia and Milošević’s Serbia, these authors argue that political parties helped pave the way toward regime change by forming inclusive antiregime electoral coalitions, as well as by mobilizing citizens in the aftermath of electoral fraud.
But political parties’ bearing on democratization processes need not end there. In the aftermath of regime change, political parties can help to deepen and consolidate democratic gains by, among other things, organizing their nations’ first free and fair elections and helping to channel popular democratic sentiment into official institution. They can also oversee policies of lustration. Where necessary, they can support societal cohesion and socialize the electorate on the rights and responsibilities associated with democracy. Authors such as Tordoff (2002), Burnell (2006), and de Zeeuw (2008) have shown that, particularly in divided, post-conflict societies, political parties can play a vital role in mediating conflict through the aggregation of interests and the articulation of political preferences.
Political parties can also contribute to stability and legitimacy in newly democratic systems by respecting electoral laws and playing by the rules of the democratic game (Huntington 1968, Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Van Biezen 2003). They help instill attitudes and expectations in the public about the norms and routines of democratic practice, thereby contributing to the institutionalization and consolidation of democracy (Randall 2007: 638). According to Van Biezen (2003: 4), though their role in democratic transitions may be “relatively undervalued, the positive contribution of political parties to the consolidation of democracy is more generally acknowledged. In fact, parties are seen to make a relevant, if not crucial, contribution to the consolidation of a newly established democratic polity.”
But if parties’ import for democracy and democratization is potentially great, their impact in practice is often far more circumscribed. As political parties have mushroomed across the globe, their rise has been met not only by democratic aspirations but also by a “dark underside” (Carothers 2006a: 4). Almost universally, political parties are lambasted as ineffectual and self-serving, corrupt and power-hungry.6 Their failure to fulfill citizens’ expectations risk rendering parties an impediment to—rather than a promoter of—democratization processes in the polities that arguably need them most: new democracies and those on the cusp of democratic breakthrough.
The Trouble with Parties
Political parties in authoritarian and newly democratic regimes commonly suffer from a host of ailments that leave them ill equipped to forge the path to democracy. One such ailment is that they are too personalistic. At their best, they are well intentioned but thinly institutionalized and leader-centric. At their worst, they serve as vehicles for the self-aggrandizement of power-hungry party leaders. Even nominally pro-democratic parties in such regimes often lack clear ideological grounding: their identity is wrapped in their leader’s persona, not in a coherent party program.
This can have potentially devastating consequences, especially in non-democratic settings. Parties in such regimes frequently engage in cross-party rivalry, lack internal transparency, and participate in political infighting. As a result, when they seek to unseat a sitting regime collectively, they often struggle to forge coalitions and maintain a united front. Parties’ contribution to regime change through pact-making and coalition unity is therefore often limited. Their contribution is further curtailed by their miniscule financial resources and paltry physical infrastructure, which rarely extends beyond the state capital. Chronic underfunding frequently forces opposition parties to rely on external sources of wealth—most notably, tycoons and even foreign governments—which state authorities exploit to undermine their opponents’ credibility in the eyes of the public, thus making it difficult for parties to win the public support needed to mobilize citizens against the regime.
The troubles that plague parties and party systems in authoritarian contexts often continue in the aftermath of regime change. In most cases, parties in new democracies are unresponsive to citizens’ needs and desires, playing only a marginal role outside of the electoral arena. In the postcommunist context, “They often seem to lack strong organizational structures and to have weak electoral and partisan links with society” (Spirova 2005: 602). As a result, they commonly suffer from what Carothers (2006a: 3–2) has called a “standard lament,” according to which they are perceived as corrupt, self-serving, ideologically indistinct, and leader-centric.
It is thus not surprising that political parties are often the institution least trusted in new democracies—a fact that Van Biezen (2003: 38) says “discourages the creation of stable linkages between parties and society.” Indeed, in many newly democratic contexts, multiple new parties flow into and out of power during any given election cycle. They frequently suffer from low levels of institutionalization, high polarization, extreme fragmentation, and weak ideological patterning. The consequences of such weaknesses extend beyond parties and party systems. According to Enyedi (2006: 229), “The lack of members and loyal supporters makes it difficult for parties to articulate and aggregate preferences” in new democracies. Similarly, Tóka (1997) maintains that high rates of volatility undermine the accountability and responsiveness of parties in power, while Mainwaring (1998) argues that low levels of institutionalization impede democratic consolidation.
Precisely because weak parties and party systems are believed to impede democratization processes, both the United States and European Union (EU) member states provide millions of dollars in foreign assistance to political parties abroad.
Aiding Parties Abroad
Like democracy assistance, political party assistance first materialized in the early 1970s, in concert with the unfolding of democracy’s Third Wave, when the German Stiftungen channeled support to political parties in Southern Europe. It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, that party aid became a hallmark of the democracy promotion agenda. The emergence of multiparty life throughout Europe’s central and eastern quarters presented the world’s democracy promoters with newly fertile terrain. A strong ideological and organizational resemblance to, as well as geographic proximately with, Western Europe, made Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Baltics a natural first destination for party aid. Throughout the next twenty years, party aid would proliferate across the globe, emerging into what is now a multi-million dollar enterprise.
Political party assistance is designed to foster democratic processes in new democracies and in nondemocracies by enabling political parties to better carry out their representative functions. As a form of foreign aid, party assistance roots itself in the (highly contested) premise that external actors can and do make a difference in propelling countries’ democratic trajectories. Even more controversially, it rests on the assumption that external actors can influence political parties’ internal workings—for the better.
Today political party assistance is the prerogative of several dozen organizations based primarily—though not exclusively—in Western Europe and the United States. Foremost among these are the two American party institutes—NDI and IRI—and the six German Stiftungen—FES, KAS, the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung (FNS), the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung (HSS), the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (HBS), and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (RLS). In recent years, other established European democracies have followed suit, including Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, and Spain, each of which has established organizations such as the Olof Palme International Center, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD), Fondation Jean-Jaurès, and the Fundación Pablo Iglesias, respectively. A handful of young postcommunist democracies—themselves former recipients of democracy assistance—have also undertaken efforts to distribute political party assistance, as have several multilateral organizations such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Others, like the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), have opted to serve as knowledge banks on political party development and party aid.
Of direct implementers, American and German party aid organizations are not only the oldest but also the largest, working in more than eighty countries across the globe. Their combined annual budgets exceed $550 million.7 By contrast, the budgets of Europe’s smaller party aid providers run from just under $1 million to $4