Parties most needing to repudiate their past are least able to do it

Evidence

The more a party had earlier refused to transform public policy or enter into negotiations, the more it needed to break with the past and centralize, to signal change and to gain the flexibility necessary to change its unpopular stances. However, the practices of policy stagnation and the failure to negotiate with the opposition also gave rise to limited elite skills and experiences. This lack of skill in turn meant a lower likelihood of either a break with the past or centralization, as such elites turned to the party members and organizational continuity to compensate. The ironic result was that the more tainted the party’s past, and the greater the necessity of a break, the less likely the party was to apologize for this history. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 433

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: An inversion paradox: the necessity of change is inversely correlated with the capacity to execute it, because the very rigidity that tainted the party starved it of the reform skills needed to break.
• XREF: Core comparative evidence for the reader’s question: the structural conditions that harden a party against its external threat also imprison it — predicts which parties cannot retool when the threat disappears. — connects to: Discredited successor parties must break with the past early to regain power; Proportional electoral rules enable even discredited parties to return — John T. Ishiyama, Party Organization and the Political…, 46; Moderation alone cannot rehabilitate discredited parties competing against credible anticommunist rivals — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 652 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Discredited successor parties must break with the past early to regain power #responds-to (0.80)
• Proportional electoral rules enable even discredited parties to return #qualifies (0.72) — John T. Ishiyama, Party Organization and the Political…, 46
• Moderation alone cannot rehabilitate discredited parties competing against credible anticommunist rivals #corroborates (0.72) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 652