ABSTRACT
Stable parties that successfully perform their representative function and connect to citizens are essential for democratic consolidation (Innes, 2002; Kreuzer and Pettai, 2004; Roberts, 2010; Tavits, 2013). Whether such parties will form in new European democracies has been questioned previously (see Mair, 1997), but some degree of democratic stability has been achieved in the new East European EU member states – particularly if we contrast them to most of the former Soviet Union or Western Balkans. This chapter focuses on the development of political parties in countries that joined the EU in the first wave of Eastern enlargement in 2004 and 2007; trends elsewhere in other post-communist countries differ considerably because of much lower levels of political stability or political freedoms.
