Learned elites, not centralization alone, determine whether a party can read an electorate

Evidence

Content analysis shows that of the four parties under consideration, the Slovak party was overall the most supportive of free market competition, and the most willing to lower welfare state provisions. In 1995, however, the programs returned to greater criticism of the market, and of private property, stances last seen in 1990 (see Table 3.10). … This inconstancy led to accusations of l’avirovanie, perhaps best translated as “fishtailing” or “slaloming,” by both domestic and international critics. There were two reasons for this constant shifting. First, the SDL’ elites did not have earlier experience in negotiating with or addressing the opposition prior to 1989. As a result, the SDL’ elites were unable to “read” the broad electorate’s underlying concerns, and instead pursued the conflicting economic interests of one group after another. Second, as a result of the dominant divide between democratic and nondemocratic parties, the electorate’s economic views were both secondary and shifting. The SDL’ did have the centralization to mirror these changes, and did so avidly. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 834

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s causal question about what replacement parties can and cannot do when their constitutive ideological anchor vanishes; parallels party-adaptation literature. — connects to: Explaining election swings assumes elite-level ideology mirrors in the mass public — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1883; An elite handful drove the national literacy-test campaign — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 605; Party centralization backfires unless elites have skill responding to voters — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 414

Broader Connections

• Explaining election swings assumes elite-level ideology mirrors in the mass public #corroborates (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1883