The "Revival of Communism" or the Effect of Institutions?: The 1993 Polish Parliamentary Elections

Marek M Kaminski, Grzegorz Lissowski and Piotr Swistak

Public Choice, 1998, vol. 97, issue 3, 429-49

Abstract: In several Eastern European countries the breakdown of communism in 1989 was followed by a surprising return to power of postcommunist parties. Yet, some electoral victories of postcommunists look puzzling when contrasted with a small size of a shift in voters' preferences that has led to them. Such is the case of the 1993 Polish parliamentary elections. Using partition-function form games and results of simulated elections, the author estimates the impact of three factors that were blamed, in addition to the 'shift to the left' in voters' preferences, for the 1993 victory of the postcommunists in Poland. He shows that the shift to the left was insufficient to assure postcommunists an electoral victory, and that this victory would not have happened under the old electoral law or under a unified coalition of the Right. The author's results show the high sensitivity of emerging democracies to the details of their institutional backbones. Copyright 1998 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1998
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