Abstract
This paper represents part of an ongoing attempt to understand the nature of party formation and change in electoral democracies. The original goal was to account for the weakness of East European parties and party systems. This remains an important topic because weak parties are thought to be indicative of weaknesses in the democratic regimes themselves. Finding the theories of area specialists lacking, the author turned to traditional theories of party formation and change, which were created to explain these phenomena in the western setting. These theories, combined with the contextual insights provided by area specialists, provide considerable leverage on the question of party formation and change in Eastern Europe. In this paper, the author attempts to develop and provide evidence in support of a theory of party formation based on political choice in which actors operate not in a vacuum, but in a context that both constrains and provides resources for agency.
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