STRUCTURE AND CHOICE - THE ROLE OF ORGANIZATIONS, PATRONAGE AND THE MEDIA IN PARTY FORMATION

This paper represents part of an ongoing attempt to understand the nat ure of party formation and change in electoral democracies. The origin al goal was to account for the weakness of East European parties and p arty systems. This remains an important topic because weak parties are thought to be indicative of weaknesses in the democratic regimes them selves. Finding the theories of area specialists lacking, the author t urned to traditional theories of party formation and change, which wer e created to explain these phenomena in the western setting. These the ories, combined with the contextual insights provided by area speciali sts, provide considerable leverage on the question of party formation and change in Eastern Europe. In this paper, the author attempts to de velop and provide evidence in support of a theory of party formation b ased on political choice in which actors operate not in a vacuum, but in a context that both constrains and provides resources for agency.