Centralized parties with experienced elites adapted best to postcommunist elections.
Evidence
Centralized parties could more readily orchestrate electoral campaigns that effectively disseminated the party’s message, and hand-pick party candidates, by enforcing cohesion and privileging top leaders in decision making within the party. Those elites with earlier political experience of negotiating and bargaining with the opposition could then run effective campaigns that responded to the electorate’s needs. Professional, moderate candidates, meanwhile, increased the party’s appeal, and reinforced the message that the new successor had little in common with the stereotypical communist party hacks in bad suits. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 71
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Successful democratic party regeneration required rapid centralization and undemocratic means — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 376; Post-1989 context rewards streamlined centralized parties over mass-membership ones — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 413; Party centralization backfires unless elites have skill responding to voters — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 414 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Elite skills and party cohesion drive successful postcommunist transformation.
#corroborates(0.95) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 72 - Elite skill and pragmatism, not ideology, drove successful party transformation.
#qualifies(0.85) - Successful party reform requires new leaders able to centralize decisively and rapidly.
#qualifies(0.80) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 93