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Explaining the 2000 Lithuanian Parliamentary Elections: An Application of Contextual and New Institutional Approaches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Terry D. Clark  and
Nerijus Prekevičius
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Abstract

Lithuania’s 2000 parliamentary elections were the first in the post-Soviet era to fail to produce a majority government. Further, neither the Homeland Union nor the Democratic Labor Party entered into the ruling coalition. In this article, Terry D. Clark and Nerijus Prekevičius explore two different ways of explaining why this occurred. To answer the broader question, the first approach focuses on the particular events that occurred in the run-up to the elections. To consider why particular parties fared better or worse than expected, the second approach evaluates a set of rational choice approaches, including spatial analysis. Neither approach is preferable to the other; instead, they are complementary, each helping to resolve certain questions that are appropriate to the particular approach. To conclude, they consider the implications of their findings for the consolidation of Lithuania’s party system.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , Fall 2003 , pp. 548 - 569
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2003

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References

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2 For a defense of studies that develop the empirical base, see Terry, Sarah Meiklejohn, “Thinking about Post-Communist Transitions: How Different Are They?” Slavic Review 52, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 333–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a defense of studies that aid in refining theory, see Roeder, Philip G., “The Revolution of 1989: Postcommunism and the Social Sciences,“ Slavic Review 58, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 743–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See Schmitter, Philippe C. with Karl, Terry Lynn, “The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go?” Slavic Review 53, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 173–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karl, Terry Lynn and Schmitter, Philippe C., “From an Iron Curtain to a Paper Curtain: Grounding Transitologists or Students of Postcommunism?” Slavic Review 54, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 965–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Munck, Gerardo, “Bringing Postcommunist Societies into Democratization Studies,” SlavicReview 56, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 542–50Google Scholar.

4 See Bunce, Valerie, “Should Transitologists Be Grounded?” Slavic Review 54, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 111–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bunce, Valerie, “Comparing East and South,” Journal of Democracy 6, no. 3 (1995): 87–100 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bunce, Valerie, “Paper Curtains and Paper Tigers,” Slavic Review 54, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 979–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Valerie Bunce, “The Political Economy of Postsocialism,“ Slavic Review 58, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 756-93; and Wiarda, Howard J., “Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Comparative Politics: ‘Transitology’ and the Need for New Theory,” East European Politics and Societies 15, no. 3 (2001): 485–501 Google Scholar.

5 Although the Centrists never formally declared themselves part of the governing coalition, they occupied ministerial portfolios from 1996 to late 1999. In addition, their votes were critical to the passage of several government economic bills. See Clark, Terry D., “The 1996 Elections to the Lithuanian Seimas and Their Aftermath,” Journal of Baltic Studies 29,no.2 (1998): 135–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The new Social-Democratic Party, which was created from the merger of the Democratic Labor Party and the former Social-Democratic Party, entered into a governing coalition with the New Union (Social Liberals) by mid-2001 following the collapse of the government that had formed immediately after the 2000 election. The Social-Democratic Party did not have a legislative majority, however.

7 Lijphart, Arend, Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies,1945-1990 (Oxford, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rae, Douglas W., The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws, 2d ed. (New Haven, 1971)Google Scholar; William H. Riker, Liberalism against Populism: A Confrontation betiueenthe Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice (Prospect Heights, 111., 1982); Sartori, Giovanni, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge, Eng., 1976)Google Scholar; Taagepera, Rein and Shugart, Matthew Soberg, Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinantsof Electoral Systems (New Haven, 1989)Google Scholar.

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9 Both sets of rules determine the winner in a multicandidate race occurring in an electoral district in which only one winner may be declared (hence the term single-mandatedistrict). Under the former majority run-off rules, the winner was the candidate receiving more than 50 percent of the vote. In the absence of such a candidate in the first round, a second round (or run-off) was required between the top two vote-getters. Under the new plurality rules, only one round is required. The winner is the candidate receiving the most votes. A majority (50 percent) is not required.

10 The reader may protest that such a method assumes that the same number of parties would have contested the election under either majority run-off or plurality rules. While the literature argues that fewer parties should do so under the latter system, as the subsequent discussion makes clear, to a substantial degree this did not happen in the Lithuanian 2000 parliamentary elections.

11 See Duverger, Maurice, Political Parties (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Riker, Liberalism againstPopulism; and Sartori, Parties and Party Systems.

12 See Ordeshook, Peter C. and Shvetsova, Olga V., “Ethnic Heterogeneity, District Magnitude, and the Number of Parties,” Amerian Journal of Political Science 38 (1994): 100–123 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moser, Robert G., “Electoral Systems and the Number of Parties in Post-Communist States,” World Politics 51, no. 3 (1999): 359–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Moser, Robert G., “The Impact of Parliamentary Electoral Systems in Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs 13, no. 3 (1997): 284–302 Google Scholar.

13 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York, 1957)Google Scholar.

14 For an earlier development of this argument, see Clark, Terry D., Beyond Post-Communist Studies: Political Science and the New Democracies of Europe (Armonk, N.Y., 2002)Google Scholar.

15 The survey was conducted by the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University. In order to permit us to better compare responses to these questions, we have standardized the data.

16 For a given party, the standard deviations in responses to other questions on the survey were under .2500.

17 The positions are based on the standardized mean for each party on each dimension. The scores for the economic model are: Social-Democratic Party (0.15), Democratic Labor Party (0.90), Christian Democratic Party (2.15), Peasants’ Party (2.50), Center Union (3.90), Homeland Union (4.60), and Liberal Union (5.00). Those for the defense budget are: Peasants’ Party (0.35), Social-Democratic Party (0.40), Democratic Labor Parry (0.60), Liberal Union (0.85), Center Union (1.65), Christian Democrats (3.75), Homeland Union (4.20).

18 For 2000, we did not have data similar to the 1996 survey of legislative candidates. Therefore, we estimated the parties’ positions based on an analysis of their party platforms. We then corroborated the estimates with leaders of the respective parties over the summer of 2000. The scores for the economic model are: Social-Democratic Party (0.90), Democratic Labor Party (0.90), Peasants’ Party (1.20), New Union (Social Liberals) (2.10), Center Union (2.50), Liberal Union (4.20), Homeland Union (4.60), Christian Democratic Party (4.60). Those for the defense budget are: Peasants’ Party (0.35), Social-Democratic Party (0.60), Democratic Labor Party (0.60), New Union (Social Liberals) (1.55), Center Union (1.60), Liberal Union (2.75), Christian Democrats (4.20), Homeland Union (4.20).

19 On the likelihood that voters tie the two issues together, see Dalton, Russell J., “Political Parties and Political Representation,” Comparative Political Studies 17 (1985): 267–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pierce, Roy, Choosing the Chief: Presidential Elections in France and the United States (Ann Arbor, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the parties’ response to this tendency among voters, see Adams, James and Adams, Ernest W., “The Geometry of Voting Cycles,” Journal of Theoretical Politics 12, no. 2 (2000): 131–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Lietuvos Rytas, 13 November 1999, 3.

21 Lietuvos Rytas, 19 February 2000, 7.

22 Lietuvos Rytas, 15July 2000, 3.

23 Sartori, Parties and Party Systems.

24 See Taagapera and Shugart, Seats and Votes, for the formula used to calculate the index.