The return of politics

Date: 22/11/03

Freedom to choose in the Visegrad countries. But to choose what?

IF YOU plan a political career in central Europe, then hang on to your day job. Countries in the region changed their governments every 20 months, on average, in the first decade after communism. When Mikulas Dzurinda won last year's election in Slovakia with a centre-right coalition, it marked the first time a prime minister in any of the Visegrad countries had won two elections in a row. And even Mr Dzurinda's success may be short-lived. The squabbling inside his four-party coalition suggests it may have trouble holding together for a full term.

The right to change governments peaceably is one of the principal benefits that countries won for themselves by overthrowing communism. But the exercise of it does not seem to have yielded them all that much satisfaction. Campaigns are rancorous affairs in which political parties treat one another more as deadly enemies than as legitimate rivals. Business interests capture political parties, politicians seek bribes, programmes are incoherent or non-existent. Turn-outs are low, scandals are frequent. Racism, xenophobia and anti-globalisation are rarely far from the mainstream. No government holds its popularity for long.

So long as EU accession has been the biggest issue on national agendas, many voters may have judged political parties less on their professed ideology than on their competence in managing the necessary reforms. By and large, voters chose reasonably well on that basis. Mr Dzurinda's first government in Slovakia, elected in 1998, was the clearest example of the EU as a determining factor in national politics. A heterogeneous coalition, its main rationale was to shut out of power the country's previous leader, Vladimir Meciar, whose arbitrary rule was derailing Slovakia's EU hopes.

Once EU entry has been achieved, ideology may play a bigger part in central Europe's politics, and perceived competence a smaller one, which is not necessarily a happy thought. Euroscepticism will be more easily expressed when politicians can attack the EU without fear of upsetting accession talks.

The consolidation of national politics into durable party blocks continues at varying speeds across Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (known as the Visegrad countries after a declaration of co-operation signed at Visegrad, Hungary, in 1991). It is most advanced in Hungary, where the political system is dominated by two big parties, one nominally of the right and the other nominally of the left. The Czech Republic may also be moving in that direction. Poland and Slovakia will each need at least one more election to discover which among their many turbulent parties has real staying power.

In Poland and Hungary alike, post-communist parties (that is to say, parties linked to communist predecessors by a continuity of personnel but not of ideology) lead the current governments. Poland's prime minister today, Leszek Miller, was a member of General Jaruzelski's Politburo in 1989. Poland was first to vote post-communists into power, in 1993. They lost in 1997, and won again in 2001. Hungary followed a similar pattern, but with elections one year later in each case. The post-communists won power in 1994, lost it in 1998, and won it back last year.

It is easy now to see how the ex-communists in Poland and Hungary reformed themselves so quickly and did so well. As the elite of the old regime they had more than their share of clever, cynical and ambitious young people. They knew how propaganda and political parties worked. They could reach out to ex-party colleagues in the public service and in private business. By re-occupying the left of the new political spectrum they could appeal to millions of voters who felt poorer, or just less secure, in the market economy. Their experience reassured businessmen, especially those with old communist ties.

The question was more one of how other political forces would arrange themselves against the post-communists. Here Poland and Hungary diverged.

The Hungarian anti-communists who took power in 1990 were finished by their defeat in 1994. Leadership passed to a younger generation, the 30-somethings of the Federation of Young Democrats (Fidesz). Their leader, Viktor Orban, became prime minister when Fidesz won the next election in 1998.

In Poland there was no such renewal. The Solidarity generation, an awkward mix of conservatives and liberals, went back into government a second time in 1997 and fell apart. The Polish right is still recovering from that debacle. Its supporters are scattered almost equally among recently founded nationalist, liberal and law-and-order parties. The main consolation for them is that the left is in at least as big a mess. Mr Miller is a tough political operator, but scandals and high unemployment have halved his government's popularity in the past year. Poland has yet to find its next generation of leaders.

The Czech Republic has gone a different route. Its Communist Party is an unreformed one fixed broodingly in place by the Soviet invasion of 1968. It attracts mainly protest votes, but in Czech politics there are plenty of those - enough to make the Communists the third-biggest party in parliament after the soft-left Social Democrats and the right-wing Civic Democrats. The election this year of Vaclav Klaus, a Civic Democrat, as state president, has restored the fortunes of the Czech right, and the Social Democrats are a divided and declining force. The time may be ripe for a realignment of parties. By holding its nose and allying with the Communists, the left wing of the Social Democrats could hope to create a strong party of the left. The Civic Democrats, if allied with the remaining Social Democrats, would emerge as an even stronger party of the right.

Mr Klaus's return has earned him a new respect. But of all central Europe's politicians, the one most worthy of study is Mr Orban, leader of Fidesz, who at 40 presumably has most of his life in politics ahead of him yet. He dislikes being called a nationalist, but the Hungarian national identity is at the centre of his politics. George Schopflin, a British-Hungarian academic sympathetic to Fidesz, says Mr Orban speaks for a Hungarian identity that is “hard-edged but not self-destructive”. The message is that “Hungarians have no need to be ashamed of being Hungarian”, says Mr Schopflin - which would be an uncontroversial point, save for the hangover of communist thinking in Hungary which links national identity to nationalism, and nationalism to fascism, a logic used still against Fidesz by its opponents.

The party disturbs many, in Budapest and Brussels and beyond, who see its focus on national identity as a challenge to European integration, even a retreat towards the politics of ethnicity. Fidesz worries neighbouring countries when it offers moral and financial support to their Hungarian minorities. But many Hungarians approve, and Fidesz is reaching out to those who hesitate. It is redefining itself as a Christian Democrat party, and not a “liberal” one, to reassure centrist voters. The opinion polls suggest that if an election were held in Hungary tomorrow, Fidesz would be back in power.

Moderate nationalism is a feature of politics almost everywhere in Europe. If it becomes immoderate, then peer-pressure within the EU can act as a check on the behaviour, and even the composition, of governments. When Joerg Haider's fairly far right Freedom Party joined the Austrian government in 1999, the hostile reaction of other EU leaders helped weaken the Freedomites' influence and moderate their policies, despite the clumsiness with which that reaction was expressed and the backlash it risked provoking in Austria. The unpasteurised politics of central Europe is sure to throw up more such challenges to EU orthodoxies, from the left as well as the right, and that may not be altogether a bad thing. It will at least put some life into the European Parliament.

Freedom to choose in the Visegrad countries. But to choose what? Article is part of a survey 'When east meets west: a survey of EU enlargement'.

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