PARTIES AND SOCIETY IN SLOVAKIA

Where the parliamentary elections in Slovakia in the autumn of 1994 su ggested increasing fragmentation of the political scene, the formation by Vladimir Meciar of a new coalition government in December confirme d that a distinctive feature of the country's party system was its pol arization between 'standard' parties comparable with Western models an d 'non-standard' political forces such as Meciar's own Movement for a Democratic Slovakia. Explanations for Slovakia's divergence from the p attern found among its central European neighbours, where party system s closer to those of Western democracies had begun to develop, are to be found in the severity of communist rule and the absence of an effec tive opposition in the 1970s and 1980s as well as in post-communist de velopments and a popular and elite ambivalence towards reform.