CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Silagadze, Givi |
|---|---|
| Title | The Role of Structural Factors and Party Agency in Shaping Post-Soviet Party Systems |
| Summary | Is the social world primarily determined by superstructure or individual agents have the capacity to construct and reconstruct the environment around them? The following thesis addresses this broad debate in the domain of post-Soviet party politics. Scholars typically try to explain party systems with societal and institutional (structural) variables. As a result, the role of elite choices (agency) is somewhat neglected. The thesis focuses on six post-Soviet countries and aims to examine structural- as well as agency-approaches. Its contribution can be divided into three parts. Firstly, party systems of six post-Soviet countries are systematically described. Secondly, through the analysis of six post-Soviet countries, this thesis illustrates that societal and institutional factors leave party system differences largely unexplained. This finding is grounded on regression analysis of electoral volatility and associations between various societal and institutional factors on the one hand, and party system fragmentation and stability on the other. Thirdly, the party system of Georgia is focused upon as it is not very different from the other 5 countries in respect to structural factors, but displays markedly dissimilar party system characteristics. Through the analysis of the Georgian case, it is demonstrated how agency can make a difference – i.e. choices of party elite in the middle of 2000s shaped the cleavage structure of society which has had a decisive impact on the party system. These findings are based on secondary literature, expert interviews and most importantly, directed acyclic graphical (DAG) and path models. The latter method relies on survey data and has not been used extensively to examine party-related questions (partly because of its novelty). It is shown how useful such methods can be in addressing questions which reside at the intersection of sociology and party politics. |
| Supervisor | Rudas, Tamás; Enyedi, Zsolt |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/silagadze_givi.pdf |
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