Negotiation with opponents during a regime’s crisis shapes post-regime party alignment

Evidence

Finally, negotiation with the opposition and answering societal demands allowed the party mid-level elites to identify societal priorities, formulate responsive appeals, and convincingly address opponents within the party and within society. Such negotiation could even result in a tacit consensus between the more moderate elements within both the party and the opposition, as we will see in the Hungarian case and the aftermath of the revolution of 1956. The more consistently conflictual this relationship, on the other hand, the deeper and more persistent the post-1989 divide between the postcommunist and the postopposition camps. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 171

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reading purpose: distinguishes parties that negotiated (Poland, Hungary) from those that stayed conflictual (Czechoslovakia) — a pre-1989 predictor of which postcommunist parties could build bridges and survive regime collapse. — connects to: Authoritarian coalition-building approaches shape post-transition political incentives. — Johan Brosché and Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, Electoral violence and the legacy of…, 30; Preexisting liberal policies let Hungarian reformists cooperate with opposition before regime change — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 358; Regime change and contentious politics mutually shape one another — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 38 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Does the tacit-consensus mechanism resemble what some post-1989 communist successor parties achieved with a new external threat, and does it predict survival better than threat-manufacture?

Broader Connections

• Authoritarian coalition-building approaches shape post-transition political incentives. #expands (0.75) — Johan Brosché and Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, Electoral violence and the legacy of…, 30