Moderation alone cannot rehabilitate discredited parties competing against credible anticommunist rivals

Evidence

If the successor parties continued with their old communist appeals, they were likely to retain a core group of orthodox supporters, but were unlikely to convince the broader electorate. If they moderated their policy appeals, the successors depended on voters with similar priorities and stances for the core of their support, but still had to compete with other parties whose origins in the anticommunist opposition often made them more credible. Finally, too radical a programmatic turnaround might be perceived as an opportunistic “whitewashing” rather than an indication of real commitments. Creating credible new appeals that transcended existing cleavages, on the other hand, got around the problem of taking unpopular or noncredible stances on existing issues. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 652

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s core question about threat-hardened beliefs and correction backfiring — the ‘too radical a turnaround reads as whitewashing’ finding parallels rational correction against a discredited ideology backfiring. — connects to: Parties most needing to repudiate their past are least able to do it — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 433; Discredited ancien regime parties can survive collapse and win power through regeneration — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 46; Proportional electoral rules enable even discredited parties to return — John T. Ishiyama, Party Organization and the Political…, 46 (+5 more)
• QUESTION: Does the whitewashing problem for communist successors mirror the backfire experienced when attempting rational correction of threat-hardened beliefs generally?

Broader Connections

• Discredited ancien regime parties can survive collapse and win power through regeneration #contradicts (0.85) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 46
• Proportional electoral rules enable even discredited parties to return #corroborates (0.80) — John T. Ishiyama, Party Organization and the Political…, 46
• Organizational form determines successor-party survival only under left-wing competitive threat. #qualifies (0.80) — John T. Ishiyama, Party Organization and the Political…, 86
• Party survival in competitive postcommunist politics requires organizational adaptation, not weak rivals. #qualifies (0.75) — John T. Ishiyama, Party Organization and the Political…, 97
• Parties may refuse to moderate one core issue that is nonnegotiable to supporters #qualifies (0.75) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 907