Candidate recruitment, party organisation and the communist successor parties: the cases of the MSzP, the KPRF and the LDDP
ENIn this article I investigate the consequences of the candidate recruitment behaviour for three communist successor parties, or those parties which were formerly the governing party in the communist regime and which inherited the preponderance of the former ruling parties' resources and personnel. Specifically, I examine: (1) the candidate recruitment behaviour of the Hungarian Socialist Party (Magyar Szocialista Part-MSzP), the Lithuanian Democratic Labour Party (Lietuvos Demockratines Darbo Partijos-LDDP), and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Rossiiskoi Federatsii-KPRF); and (2) the voting behaviour of deputies once elected. These cases were selected for three reasons. First, unlike 'new parties', the communist successor parties are not merely clubs of notables. They are, by any definition, 'real' political parties. Second, the MSzP, the LDDP and the KPRF represent relatively successful examples of communist successor parties and an investigation into their development as organisations may render clues as to what they have done to survive and prosper in post-communist politics. Finally, these cases were selected because Lithuania, Hungary and Russia employ electoral systems for elections to the lower (and more powerful) house of parliament in which a portion of the seats is elected according to a proportional representation list system and the rest via single member districts. This allows the examination of differences between candidates elected from the list and those candidates elected from the single mandate districts.
