Prior policy-innovation experience, not governance experience, made successor elites pragmatic and credible.

Evidence

Prior to 1989, these Slovak mid-level elites could neither implement policy nor build wider consensus around it, but continued to construct reform policy proposals. As we will see in the next chapters, this lack of experience hurt the elites’ ability to compete in democratic politics. They did not appeal to broad groupings in society, nor could they easily persuade the electorate. Nevertheless, their experience in policy innovation made them considerably more pragmatic and cohesive than their older colleagues, convinced them to centralize the party organization immediately, and gave credibility to their reform proposals after 1989. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 347

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Policy-innovation experience without implementation skill hampered successors in democratic competition; Policy-reform experience and prior opposition negotiations gave elites portable skills later rewarded in democracy. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 368

Broader Connections

• Policy-innovation experience without implementation skill hampered successors in democratic competition #qualifies (0.82)
• Policy-reform experience and prior opposition negotiations gave elites portable skills later rewarded in democracy. #corroborates (0.80) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 368