Examines democratic party competition in four post-communist polities in the mid-1990s, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The book shows developments within the four countries with regard to different voter appeal of parties, patterns of voter representation and dispositions to join other parties in legislative or executive alliances.

Acknowledgments; Introduction Democracy and Party Competition; Part I. Theory, Party Systems and the Procedural Quality of Post-Communist Democracy: 1. Historical legacies and strategies of democratization: pathways toward post-communist polities; 2. The quality of post-communist democracy: patterns of party competition, interest representation and governance; Part II. Setting and Research Strategy: 3. From communist rule to democracy: four central and East European countries; 4. Empirical research strategy; Part III. The Structuring of Party Competition: 5. Programmatic citizen-elite linkage strategies across post-communist polities; 6. Linkage strategies within party systems: diversity among parties; Part IV. Political Alignments and Dimensions of Competition: 7. Political divides and alignments: the politicians; 8. Electoral constituency alignments: emerging political cleavages?; Part V. Political Representation and the Quality of Democratic Governance: 9. Political representation; 10. The governability of post-communist democracies: collation politics between passions and policy interests; Part VI. Conclusion: 11. The diversity of post-communist democratic governance; Appendices; Bibliography.