Forced exit from power in 1989 was needed to compel communist party reform

Evidence

At the same time, these parties share three crucial similarities, thus holding constant several potential explanatory factors. First, all were forced to exit from power in 1989, so neither inertia nor a conversion of one type of political authority for another allowed them to retain access to power, as in Albania and in several former Soviet republics. Second, the parties under consideration faced a strong and capable opposition, which contested the elections and further discredited the communist parties. Finally, these cases share a similar social and economic history: All were under the tight grip of the Soviet Union (unlike Yugoslavia, Albania, or arguably Romania) throughout the communist era, all faced economic difficulties prior to 1989,4 and all had a history of democratic experience prior to World War II. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 112

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s comparative case: parties that exited power under discrediting conditions were forced to adapt, whereas Romanian/Bulgarian/Albanian successors that stayed in power did not need to. Parallels to why some communist successor parties (e.g., Polish SdRP, Hungarian MSzP) regenerated while Romanian ex-communists did not transform. — connects to: Communist parties survived only where leaders grasped that 1989 changed the system itself — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 348; Hungarian party leadership embraced multiparty liberalization before the 1989 collapse. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 358; Communist regimes collapsed in 1989 amid mass hatred and visible economic failure. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 46 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Communist parties survived only where leaders grasped that 1989 changed the system itself #corroborates (0.85) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 348