Endre Borbáth

While party system volatility remains high in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), less is known about whether electoral competition has become programmatically structured. This paper examines the extent and evolution of programmatic differentiation across four CEE countries, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, and Romania, between the 1990s and 2023. Relying on quantitative content analysis of newspaper coverage during parliamentary election campaigns, it investigates system-level trends in programmatic competition, issue salience, and politicization, as well as party-level patterns of issue salience and entrepreneurship. The results show that programmatic competition is substantial and relatively stable over time, but varies across countries depending on historical legacies and regime trajectories. Cultural conflicts have gained importance, particularly under democratic backsliding. While established parties exhibit routinized and distinct programmatic profiles, new parties expand the issue agenda by politicizing less emphasized conflicts. The findings underscore the continued relevance of cleavage theory for understanding party competition in post-communist Europe.

This symposium examines how European parties mobilize electorally in an era of recurrent crises and rapid political transformation. Building on the updated PolDem dataset, which tracks media coverage of national election campaigns across fifteen European countries from 1972 to 2023, the symposium investigates how issue salience, party positioning, and voter behaviour interact under turbulent conditions. The introduction situates the contributions around three core themes: (1) measuring and comparing party communication across media and manifestos; (2) mapping cross-national and longitudinal variation in political conflict lines; and (3) identifying the drivers of politicization across economic, cultural, and political dimensions. Together, the articles offer an integrated, content-based perspective on campaign dynamics that links short-term issue emphasis to long-term party-system structuration. The collection advances our understanding of how crises reshape electoral competition and democratic representation in Europe.

Political parties in Europe are undergoing profound transformations, with many abandoning traditional brands. This study analyzes party names as indicators of ideological and organizational change, combining an original content analysis across 28 European countries (1945–2023) with two conjoint survey experiments. We find that “nonparty” names have become the majority, reflecting a shift away from ideology toward alternative forms of identification. While movement names appear in wavelike patterns linked to protest cycles, such as after the 2008 Great Recession, nonclassical names are especially prevalent among new, opposition, and right-wing parties. However, a paradox emerges: despite their growing adoption, nonclassical names do not easily yield the anticipated electoral benefits, as new parties seem to gain little from abandoning classical naming conventions. By tracing long-term naming trends and integrating survey-based experimental evidence, we advance debates on party transformation, political branding, and the evolving interplay between electoral and movement politics in contemporary democracies.

Politicization—the expansion of conflict in the political system—is often assumed to be associated with high levels of participation. Yet, this is not necessarily the case, especially in contexts of democratic backsliding. This study investigates how politicization of protest events affects individuals’ willingness to participate in protests, using Hungary as a most likely case. We examine three causal mechanisms that may mediate this effect: perceived risks of participation, political efficacy, and public support. Empirically, we rely on a pre-registered survey experiment conducted in August 2024. To operationalize politicization, we manipulated the issue’s salience, the polarization of positions presented, and the number of actors involved in the protest. Our findings challenge the prevailing assumption by demonstrating that increasing politicization leads to lower levels of protest participation. In addition, causal mediation analysis shows that this demobilizing effect is primarily due to reduced perceived political efficacy and expected public support.

How does civil society shape the development of cleavages? While intermediary organisations, such as trade unions and churches, featured heavily in historical accounts, neo-cleavage theory tends to ignore the meso-level dynamics of the new ‘transnational’ divide beyond party politics. This agenda-setting article introduces a general framework for studying the relationship between civil society and cleavages, capable of facilitating comparisons across contexts. Specifically, the article identifies two mechanisms through which civil society – in different forms – can shape emerging cleavages: by structuring patterns of group-party linkage on the supply-side and by deepening social closure on the demand-side. The article develops hypotheses about how the changing structure of civil society in Western Europe affects its capacity to perform these functions. Empirical evidence from expert and population surveys, complemented by illustrative case studies, suggests that civil society continues to influence cleavage politics, albeit in more differentiated and volatile ways.