Anna Grzymala-Busse, "Authoritarian Determinants of Democratic Party Competition: The Communist Successor Parties in East Central Europe," Party Politics, 12 (May, 2006), 415-437.

First Paragraph:
How does the continued presence of authoritarian actors affect political party competition in new democracies? As major historical holdovers from the authoritarian ancien régime, what continuing impact do they have on democratic competition, and how do their choices and actions affect other democratic actors?

Figures and Tables:
Table 1. Freedom House rating of fairness in elections and political freedoms (1: free, 7: fully repressive13)
Table 2. Variation in party competition
Figure 1. Post-1989 competitive pathways

Last Paragraph:
Finally, the large and important literature on party transformation has understandably focused on the changes in party organizations, programs and policies as its analytical endpoint. Yet the influence of the communist successors on the robustness of party competition in East Central Europe suggests that it may be useful to examine party transformation as an independent causal variable and trace its effects on other parties and party competition. The transformation of major parties is likely to affect the calculations of other actors: the electoral choices of voters, the coalition preferences of other parties, etc. If changes in the competitive situation prompt parties to transform, their actions then feed back into party competition, and the extent to which it offers a credible threat of replacement to governing parties.