CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Vukovic, Ivan |
|---|---|
| Title | Party outcomes in hybrid regimes in the Western Balkans and beyond |
| Summary | Most political parties that had been ruling in hybrid regimes lost power as these regimes ceased to exist i.e. democratized. Yet, some of these parties remained politically dominant notwithstanding the regime change. This PhD thesis aims to offer a plausible explanation of their different political fates (here defined as party outcomes). Its main focus is on the incumbent parties in hybrid regimes that existed in Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro during the last decade of the 20th century. In addition, the thesis looks at a larger population of similar cases with the ambition to contribute to a better general understanding of the diverging party outcomes. The thesis puts forward a theoretically innovative model explaining the party outcomes, founded upon the two assumptions: (1) the diverging fates of dominant parties in hybrid regimes are determined by these parties’ (lack of) institutionalization; (2) (the lack of) their institutionalization is determined by the salience of the national question in the process of political mobilization leading to the regime establishment. Process tracing method is employed to test the presence in the three cases under observation of the thus constructed causal mechanism linking the hypothesized conditions (nationalist mobilization and the lack of party institutionalization) and party outcome (the loss of power). The theoretical relevance of the results of the analysis, supported by numerous causal process observations (including, among others, 27 in-depth interviews), is subsequently assessed within a broader empirical domain. Without eliminating the possibility of alternative explanations, albeit challenging some of the most relevant findings of the related literature, the thesis finds the empirical validity of the research model strongly corroborated by the aforementioned three cases. At the same time, the model is found to be applicable to a number of cases beyond the established empirical framework. |
| Supervisor | Zsolt Enyedi |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/vukovic_ivan.pdf |
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