About the necessity of scientific research concerning regional and ethnoregional parties in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The history of states situated in Central and Eastern Europe in nineteenth and twentieth centuries differs significantly from the history of contemporary than western democracies. In nineteenth century, when the majority of states in Western Europe have shaped their own models of horizontal and vertical division of powers, states in Central and Eastern part of the continent have fought for their political position in the context of larger, complex states or didn`t exist at the map of the world at all. The short period of peace between the First and the Second World War has allowed for some experiments with democratic institutions and procedures, but there was no time for their consolidation. After the Second World War that part of Europe has fallen under the influence of the Soviet Union, losing the chance to implement political solutions known by the Western Europeans for more than 150 years. The democratic transition, started symbolically in 1989, has allowed to undertake new efforts to establish democratic orders in states of Central and Eastern Europe. However, the horizontal division of powers was far more important than the reflection on necessity of vertical organization of the public authority. Mentioned problems have decisively caused difficulties in defining relations between political centres and peripheries in states of the Central and Eastern Europe. But it does not mean that politically significant processes in these states are taking place only in political centres and their only actors are state-wide-parties. For that reason the main aim of this paper will be to justify the necessity of scientific research concerning regional and ethnoregional parties as well as proto-parties in Central and Eastern Europe.