Keywords

Parties and Democracy: Not a Straightforward Relationship

When we talk about parties and democracy, it is usually within the representative democracy framework. However, it has been forgotten that democracy–party linkages were not part of the early philosophical basis of liberal–democratic thought (as we show in Chapter 2). Theoretical adaptations including references to parties evolved later under the pressure of real-life processes. Philosophical linkages with establishing the ideational basis for modern capitalist development had also impacted on the understanding of politics in line with rationalism and a (political) market, where choices are made.

Historically, it had been in British and American philosophical milieus where the distinction had been made between parties and factions. Parties are organizations, which fruitfully debate between belief systems. Factions, on the other hand, are recognized as organizations that primarily promote private interests. For such a definition the size of factions does not matter. Rather, what is important is that factions are organizations that unite citizens based on ‘some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community’ (Madison 1787). Such distinctions have been too often forgotten both in the political science literature on democracy and in the party literature. So has the understanding of the initial evolution of parties as intermediary institutions between society and the state. In real life, representative (indirect) representation via political parties has been dissociated from the accountability of the government to the political community and control over parties/factions (Mair 2005).

More broadly, the literature on democracy has appeared to have evolved without the systematic development of the party politics aspect of democracy, including its dynamics. Rather, democracy has been generally equated with party governing. Post World War Two, the model of liberal democracy with parties at its core had been developed based on empirical studies of democracy in the Western world. This practice had evolved particularly in the United States of America in the frame of a set of literature that had been nicknamed ‘empirical liberalism’. Since then, it has been a globally promoted model of democracy. What is particularly important is that the globally exported definition of a polyarchy (democracy for a big share of society) (Dahl 1971) included conditions for liberal democracy with a stress on the minimal conditions for democracy. The minimal conditions had been set as low as to only include continuous political competitions among individuals, parties or both in the frame of regular elections. The original sin of this definition is in creating a basis for satisfaction with the minimalistic, elitist electoral democracy in political practice within a nation state and too often also in political science.

Besides this, at least five trends can be observed in political thought since the 1970s. The first is the reductionism of ideas developed in the frame of classical democratic theory. The key reductionism is replacing the idea of consent with primarily a retrospective control over government and taking interest groups rather than political individuals as fundamental actors in the political system (Goodwin 2001, 283). In the post-electoral democracy, bases for democracy have even multiplied and include ‘one person, many interests, many votes, many representatives, both at home and abroad’ (Keane 2015, 514–515). Nevertheless, in this framework political parties don’t seem to be disappearing. They keep playing various roles in political decision-making directly or indirectly at various levels of governing. However, in practice, models of governing have gone beyond the classical liberal–democratic model.

Second, the liberal philosophy’s linking with rationalism and particularly the American understanding of the democratic process in line with the economic process have contributed to the increasing reductionism in studying parties. Competition among parties has often been seen as a political game while parties have been increasingly detached from society. Political science has proliferated and fragmented into very narrow subfields. Reductionist approaches in studying party politics and democracy have lost sight of the bigger picture.

Third, models of democracy have evolved since the Second World War within and beyond national borders. We present a short overview of them in Chapter 2. What is worth mentioning here is that different models of democracy also include different understandings of the role of parties. Some don’t explicitly mention political parties at all.

Fourth, a large amount of literature has developed over the last few decades that is based on the understanding of the steering (of societies, various international and transnational political communities) as governance rather than governing. Networks of various actors, rather than the state and political parties, are brought into focus. In this frame, issues of power seem to have lost their place on the political science radar.

Fifth, ideas of illiberal democracy from the beginning of the twentieth century had started resurfacing again since the 1990s. Real-life undemocratic and anti-democratic trends have been flourishing, particularly during the last decade, both in new and old democracies. They even triggered the development of a thesis on the new global autocratization wave (Lührmann and Lindberg 2019). Illiberalism and the related changes in political systems have often been closely associated with democratic backsliding led by particular parties and their leaders (Zakaria 1997; Bermeo 2016; Runciman 2019).

To summarize: a long-term simplistic view of the relationship between parties and democracy has been challenged. In times of democratic backsliding, it is particularly important to gain a better understanding of the relationship between parties and democracy. Why and how does this relationship change? Are party and party system characteristics causing democratic backsliding? If so, under what circumstances? Can parties do that in any social circumstances?

Puzzles from the Real World and from the Political Science View

At the empirical level, there are several important issues—direct triggers of our research.

First, in the last several decades, the quality of democracy has not changed in the same direction in all countries at the same time. A decline in democracy is only one of the trends in the current world, albeit a very important one (Coppedge et al. 2020). Moreover, there is little consensus on when, where and why democratic backsliding occurs (Jee et al. 2022).

Second, democratic backsliding tends to be studied in isolation from other periods/stages of governing models. The longer-term fluidity of democracy seems to be overlooked. So have been the questions on whether/how various periods/stages of changes in democracy may be interconnected. Such isolationist studies of democratic backsliding are in contrast to stagist analysis and the conceptualization of stages in transitions to democracy. Also, this contrasts with findings that sudden changes in democracy are quite rare.

Third, studies of democratic backsliding are often focused on the role of individual politicians with autocratic tendencies in spite of other, rather obvious factors. At least the dependency of individual’s role on the support of other actors (who support such a leader for various reasons) can be acknowledged together with existing analysis of relevant social structures (economy, socio-economic characteristics) over time.

Furthermore, there are several grey areas in the party literature that call for more attention.

There are also several puzzles that relate directly to party literature. For example, in the literature on party systems we find the expectation that party system characteristics may impact on democracy (Mainwaring and Torcal 2006). This is often presented as a thesis on a very abstract level without substantial elaboration. In research, the relationship between studying party politics and studying democracy has varied, but such research hasn’t been substantial or systematic.

In the party literature, a thesis has evolved that party system deinstitutionalization (to some extent also including fractionalization) and polarization are the key factors impacting on democratic decline. However, it is unclear exactly how, in what ways and when this happens.

In the context of a post-socialist party system, party and party system institutionalization has been believed to be linked to the consolidation of democracy. Based on that assumption, it could be hypothesized that party system instability is not compatible with the consolidation of democracy. However, institutionalization of party systems in several post-socialist countries had been linked to the freezing of either democratic transition (as in Montenegro) or democratic consolidation (as in Croatia).

Past research had found that the destabilization of party systems does not endanger democracy in Western countries. On the other hand, more recent research also points at examples—but not the overall rule—of a potential interconnection between party system instability and decline in democracy in Western countries. More precisely, there are processes of weakening of democratic norms and institutions, which resonate with Bermeo’s definition of democratic backsliding as state-led debilitation of the political institutions sustaining an existing democracy (Bermeo 2016). Such processes may happen in very different contexts.

Fragmentation has often been included in studying institutionalization in order to determine the scope of the party system. However, many decades ago, political scientists had revealed that the number of parties in itself does not say much about party system characteristics (Mair 1999). To the best of our knowledge, no research has shown that there is a significant relationship between party fractionalization and the level of democracy. However, there are party sizes and qualities of relationships among parties that really matter.

In the context of studying democratic backsliding it has been polarization that has been exposed as a factor that may harm democracy (McCoy et al. 2018), particularly when linked with populism (Kaltwasser et al. 2017; Orenstein and Bugarič 2020). However, there is also research that has found that a higher level of party polarization can produce behaviour among citizens that contributes to democracy (an increase in party identification, a rise in election turnout due to clearer voters’ choices) (C. Wang 2014; Lupu 2015; A. Wang 2019; Dalton 2021).

In addition to the above-mentioned political science challenges, we understand that our research takes place in the context of several contradictory treatments of political parties in relation to democracy. The Western-based political science and global political teaching that parties are critical actors in democracy and that there is no democracy without political parties only presents one stream. There are also political science warnings that political parties have been replacing their connections with demos through other linkages. These shifts make political parties problematic for democracy. Similarly, the role of personalities, their wealth and global power above institutions (including political parties) are becoming a threat to democracy. So too is the role of international networks of actors acting beyond, and hidden from, the state.

What makes studying the relationship between political parties and democracy particularly important is the increasingly frequent international crises, which have been noted as potential factors of democracy. Democracy’s failure has been believed to be caused by economic disasters such as those of the 1930s and the Great Recession of 2007/2008 (Haas 2019), severe economic inequalities (Offe and Schmitter 1996) and also changes in capitalism (Bermeo 2022). However, a complex range of socio-economic and political actors from within and beyond the nation state has not been systematically included in research on factors impacting on democracy.

The Novelty of the Book and the Thesis

This book contains several novelties.

First, we bring together literature and research efforts from three fields: (1) political philosophy and political thought on democracy and political parties; (2) literature on democracy and democratization in relation to parties; and (3) party literature.

Secondly, we systemize party literature related to issues of democracy, which is scattered over several research streams (particularly research into institutionalization, polarization, personalization and populism).

Thirdly, the book reconnects agency, the process approach and the structural approach.

Fourthly, as the time dimension is lacking in studying relationships between parties and democracy, we take it into account both in theoretical chapters and in a case study.

The case study offers a longitudinal comparative analysis of the dynamic changes in parties, democracy and the relationships between parties and democracy in the changing domestic (with the exception of the constitutional and electoral system) and international context. We believe that Slovenia’s case study contributes to theoretical developments in understanding party–democracy relationships.

The main thesis of the book is that party and party system characteristics are just one segment of dynamic multiple factors in a dynamic relationship between politics, economy and society converging into particular forms of government at certain points in time. So, there are no particular party and party system characteristics per se, but rather a combination of various factors that may together lead to particular changes in democracy.

The thesis is developed based on a broader theoretical framing, presented in chapters on the theory of democracy and the relationship between parties and democracy.

Research Questions

The goal of the book is to systematically reveal the relationship between parties and democracy in general and party systems and democracy in particular. We shall fulfil this goal by (1) analysing political philosophical and social science literature presented in the previous section and by (2) taking a comparative research approach in the empirical study of a variety of party (party system)-democracy relationships in a dynamic context. There is one post-socialist country where it is possible to conduct such a longitudinal study while having continuously stable institutional variables (constitutional and electoral system): Slovenia.

We seek to explain how the backsliding had been produced in Slovenia and why, in 32 years, it has only happened once and for a very short period. Such a political pattern evolved in spite of dynamic party system changes since the first free multiparty elections in 1990 and polarization varying within the same period of time.

The described complexities in Slovenia of the relationship between party system characteristics and democracy raise the main question: What enables the overlap of party system characteristics with a decline in democracy? More precisely, we deal with several puzzling sub-questions: To what extent do contextual variations matter when studying the relationship between party system characteristics and democracy? Does the party system institutionalization matter? Does the persistence of parties with roots in the previous regime matter? Does the polar structure of the party system matter? Do answers to these questions differ at various points in time?

In relation to the main thesis presented at the beginning of this chapter, we hypothesize that party and party system characteristics are not a sufficient factor for such an erosion of democracy. Rather, there must be a combination of other party system characteristics, particular political processes and contextual factors of democracy. Furthermore, we point out that political parties are not the sole group of agents impacting on democracy, and that a strong civil society (interest groups and social movements) along with international actors can make a critical difference in times of weak party opposition to de-democratization trends. We expect that empirical research will show that it is the combination of various factors (structures and agencies) and their timing that together lead to changes in democracy.

Research Approach

In this book we engage in the current debate on the decline of democracy and party system characteristics. As we recognize the serious limitations of a narrow party system approach, our research is based on a combination of: (1) findings from analysing philosophical and political thought on relations between democracy and political parties; (2) findings from democracy-focused literature, particularly the importance of taking into account other political, social and economic factors co-producing challenges to democracy; (3) findings from the party literature, which in various segments reveals a variety of party and party system characteristics believed to be factors of democracy; and (4) a time factor (dynamics of the studied phenomena in the changing context).

Three chapters are devoted to theoretical analysis of contributions tackling the relations among parties and democracy in three segments of literature: philosophical and political thought, democracy literature and party literature.

In frame of the case study, we search for answers to the research questions. Comparative aspects come to the fore in two ways: first, we look comparatively at a variety of periods in Slovenia’s democracy, from transition to democracy, consolidation of democracy to its challenged period and a short democratic backsliding episode by the time of its based on election results; second, comparative inserts into the research include references to other countries. This is particularly done with comparative notes related to Hungary and Poland, which (together with Slovenia) entered the ranks of liberal democracies during the first decade after the transition to democracy during the 1990s.

The multi-method research approach (including data on political and socio-economic variables, social survey data and a review of other relevant research) is presented in more detail in Chapter 5.

Selection of Slovenia as Case Study

In line with Dogan and Pélassy’s (Dogan and Pélassy 1990, 107–110) case study methodological strategy, the case of Slovenia is not selected as an illustration but rather as a case study with comparative elements, and in some aspects as a deviant case study that brings about new theoretical insights.

Detailed arguments on the selection of Slovenia as a case study are presented in Chapter 5. Here we only focus on a few that show Slovenia’s main differences from Central European post-socialist countries.

First, Slovenia’s democracy trajectory is quite unique, even when compared to other Central European countries. Hungary and Poland have moved towards illiberal democracy, while the Czech and Slovak experiences have varied. In 2021 in Slovenia, the quality of democracy was reduced for a short period of time quite sharply and more than in any other country in Eastern Europe and Central Asia after several decades of stable democracy (Freedom House 2022b). Analysis by Repucci and Slipowitz (Freedom House 2022a, 27) summarized changes in Slovenia with these words: ‘[the] country suffered a significant decline in civil liberties as Prime Minister Janez Janša’s populist government increased its hostility toward civil society groups and the media and continued to undermine independent institutions and the rule of law’.

Second, unlike many post-socialist countries, the Slovenian institutional framework has been stable for more than three decades. Slovenia’s case study is valuable due to the extraordinary stability of the 1991 constitutional system and electoral rules. This includes the parliamentary constitutional system and proportional electoral system. Long-term institutional stability allows for a longitudinal analysis of a changing party system as well as a broader socio-economic and international context.

Third, in comparison with post-socialist Europe (Vachudova 2021), Slovenia’s party system (understood as a system of interactions formed by inter-party interactions) has been dynamic since its establishment, while at the same time democracy has persisted continuously for three decades. Slovenia is also interesting as an example of a long-term low party system institutionalization and high democracy, in contrast to Hungary’s case of a high party system institutionalization and democratic backsliding (Casal Bértoa and Enyedi 2021).

At first sight, Slovenia’s developments may be explained, at least to some extent, by the party system. However, in order to get as full an insight as possible, it is important to take into account insights from both party system literature and democracy literature, in which the importance of agency and context is stressed.

The Slovenian case speaks against both: (1) the understanding of democracy as an inevitable consequence of modernization, a linear process of democratization; and (2) the notion that democratic backsliding is a linear process from democracy to an authoritarian system (Hanley and Cianetti 2021). Rather, the Slovenian experience captures a fluid pattern of democracy.

The case study of Slovenia reveals that both dynamic changes in the party system and the consolidation of democracy may also be feasible in the post-socialist context and that there are factors additional to party system instability that may together produce a shift away from democracy. Indeed, it happened in 2021, after several decades of stable democracy, that the quality of democracy in Slovenia was reduced by the weakening of democratic norms and institutions quite sharply and more than in any other country in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Freedom House 2022b). These processes are in line with Bermeo’s (2016) definition of democratic backsliding as state-led debilitation of the political institutions sustaining an existing democracy.

Democratic backsliding overlapped with the period of Slovenian Democratic Party government led by Janez Janša (from March 2019 to March 2022). However, the path to it had been paved by changes in parties and the party system since the beginning of the 2000s. Janša’s government was not formed based on elections, but due to Šarec (the centre-left government’s Prime Minister) stepping down. In the circumstances of taking extraordinary measures to manage the COVID-19 crisis Janša’s government paid special attention to implementing the programme of the Second Republic, based on ideas resonating Orbán's authoritarian political views. However, the 2022 national elections brought about the unprecedented victory of a new party, Movement Svoboda, which promised a substantial return to liberal democracy. Svoboda also formed the centre-left government.

Slovenia is among the few post-socialist countries in terms of the organizational strength of old parties as a legacy of the past. While researchers have pointed at the negative impact of a legacy on the consolidation of parties (van Biezen 2003), in Slovenia two parties evolving from political organizations of the old regime had actually been successful with their adaptation by moving toward the centre during the first decade after the transition.

This case study also presents a dynamic view on all three main segments under research: democracy, political parties and the context. It reveals domestic and external factors that together co-create particular outcomes of a fluid democracy, including several meso variables not yet revealed in the literature as relevant. The findings encourage further comparative qualitative and quantitative research into factors not only of democratic decline, but also of the success of transition and democratic stability in the context of multiple external shocks.

Although Central European post-communist countries in particular share many similar features, there are in fact quite distinct country trajectories. Slovenia in comparison to Poland and Hungary not only illustrates the variety but also offers some insights relevant to other countries outside the Central European region.

For the reasons presented above (and in more detail in Chapter 5), Slovenia serves as a very good case for exploring potential answers to the under-researched issues of political party-democracy relationships in order to contribute to the development of further large-scale comparative research.

It also offers additional empirical insights that may feed back into theoretization of the relationships between party system characteristics and challenges to democracy today. The empirical part in particular focuses predominantly on the research issues in the post-socialist context.

The time scope of the case study covers more than thirty years. In order to answer our research questions, we include in the empirical research the whole period from 1988, when opposition political parties emerged, until the overturn of Janša’s third government in 2022 and the establishment of the new government based on the 2022 parliamentary elections. This allows us to analyse the dynamics of parties, the party system, democracy and their relationship.

Democratic backsliding in Slovenia overlapped with the period of managing the COVID-19 crisis under the Slovenian Democratic Party government led by Janez Janša (from March 2019 to March 2022). Janša’s party had used the second half of the mandate after the dismissing of the centre-left government due to internal problems (the Prime Minister, Šarec, stepped down). The managing of the health crisis had been amended by measures in line with Janša’s party programme of the Second Republic. Ideas in this programme echo Orbán’s authoritarian political views. In a very short period of time, the introduced changes had been limited to changes in the dimensions and not an overall regime change. Also, these changes appeared to be at least partly reversible. Democratic backsliding was stopped by the 2022 national elections. Since then, a centre-left government has been comprised of parties promising a full return to liberal democracy.

Outline of the Book

The book proceeds as follows. We start with Chapter 2, where we analyse political thought on democracy in relation to political parties. As relations between democracy and political parties are more directly addressed in literature on democracy developed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we dedicate to this literature a separate chapter, Chapter 3. More recently, party literature has been increasingly engaged in research on party and party system characteristics and challenges to democracy. Chapter 4 systematically summarizes endeavours from several party research streams. This chapter also includes a systematic overview of pertinent variables and indicators relevant to empirical research into relations between party system characteristics and characteristics of democracy.

The empirical part of the book, which is dedicated to Slovenia’s case study, includes several chapters. Chapter 5 presents both a more detailed argumentation for the case selection and a more thorough methodological framework for the Slovenian case study. Empirical findings on Slovenia’s context and evaluation of democracy over time are included in Chapter 6. We proceed with a detailed analysis of changes in party system characteristics since the transition to democracy in Slovenia until the last 2022 parliamentary elections (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 brings together a summary of empirical findings from both empirical chapters. So, we empirically document and analyse how Slovenia’s party politics has changed, in what context, in what time frame and with what consequences for democracy. However, the conclusions subsection goes beyond Slovenia’s case study. We end with a discussion on the relevance of our findings for further, particularly comparative, research on the relationship between party system change and a change in democracy while recalling the bigger political philosophical picture of parties in relation to democracy.