A successor party that renounces its communist identity gains coalition access but unstable support.

Evidence

The Slovak Party of the Democratic Left (Strana Demokratickej L’avici, SDL’) followed a different path after 1989. The SDL’ denounced communist ideology and appeals, and became widely accepted as committed to upholding democracy in Slovakia. It gained almost 15% of the vote in 1992 and in 1998. The party had a relatively easy time joining coalitions, and was courted by both the government and opposition parties throughout the post-1989 era. On the other hand, its support remained highly unstable, and the party was accused of “fishtailing,” of political inconsistency and programmatic ambiguity, as the party pursued shifting constituencies, often with radically different appeals. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 52

Categorization

• XREF: Direct comparative evidence for the reader’s question about how post-1989 successor parties handled their constitutive ideological threat — this ad hoc, vote-chasing path (vs. finding a fresh organizing narrative or decaying) is one of the survival strategies to catalogue.