NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE PARTY IDENTIFICATION IN POSTCOMMUNIST COUNTRIES

To understand party identification in post-communist Central and Easte rn Europe, we need to give equal attention to negative partisanship-th e identification of a party that an individual would never vote for-as well as positive party identification. Our institutionalist approach posits that in a one-party state the Party will be distrusted, and soc ialization will encourage people to form a negative party identificati on. Survey data from 1995 in Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovenia sho w 77 per cent have a negative identification and only 30 per cent are positive; this produces a fourfold typology of open, closed, apathetic and negative partisans. Discriminant function analysis is used to ide ntify political, economic and social structure influences on this typo logy of partisanship. Negative partisanship is then distinguished betw een the rejection of ideologically polarizing parties, whether Communi st, right-wing, reformist or religious, or the rejection of parties ap pealing exclusively to a limited segment of the electorate, such as a minority ethnic group. Discriminant function analysis identifies leadi ng influences on the reaction against particular types of parties. The conclusion considers whether post-Communist citizens are more likely to move from negative to positive partisanship or become knowledgeable sceptics, aid concludes that the development of knowledgeable sceptic ism is more likely. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved .