Political elite, civil society, and type of capitalism: Estonia and Slovenia

East European Quarterly, March, 2008 by Frane Adam, Matevz Tomsic, Primoz Kristan

The dynamics of the political arena and the value orientation of elites

At the beginning of and during the transition process, the political leadership was confronted with many dilemmas and challenges concerning the speed and scope of reforms and the building of new institutions and regulations. Its responses were determined by available resources and knowledge and the interests of influential groups. To some extent as well, the vision of the elite, its values and ideological profile, played an important role in searching for the most appropriate developmental model. It is true that the EU provided some general (common) guidelines, but idiosyncratic and country-specific features contributed to institutional arrangements, which in some aspects were quite different.

Slovenia

The Slovenian political space is characterized by a bipolar division into two political blocs. The first is the so-called "left-liberal" and the second the so-called "right" bloc, with neither being fully internally homogenous. They can be most clearly divided relative to their institutional origins. The main two parties of the first camp--the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (LDS) and the Social Democrats (SD) (until 2005, the United List of Social Democrats) have their organizational roots in the old (socialist) regime, and the latter is the successor to the former ruling Communist Party. (4) The other bloc consists of three main parties--the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), which is the dominant party here, the Slovenian People's Party (SLS), and New Slovenia (NSi)--that were established during the process of democratization. The distinction between the "old" and "new" parties, as they are often labelled in public discourse, largely corresponds to the left-right cleavage ("left" as the "old" and "right" as the "new" parties). (5)

At first, the cleavage referred primarily to the positions of the two camps in the past, meaning both the period between the two World Wars and the communist period, as well as to some other positions of a symbolic and ideological nature such as the role of religion and the Catholic Church in society. In this regard, the "left" takes a quite lenient attitude to the communist period while it is suspicious--if not rejective--of the public engagement of the Church, while the "right" is strongly critical of communism yet relatively supportive of the Church's public role. While this "cultural war" still has some potential for political mobilization (although it has declined in the last few years), the issue of socioeconomic regulation is gaining importance and becoming the main point of controversy since the latest government, mostly comprising parties of the "right," has launched a comprehensive program of social and economic reforms directed at liberalization and the reduction of the role of the state, that should enhance the competitiveness and innovativeness of the Slovenian economy and society at large. These reforms are encountering considerable resistance from the opposition, especially the LDS, which warns against an increase in social inequality and the impoverishment of a considerable proportion of the population--meaning it is demonstrating its "leftist nature" in terms of its social orientation and skepticism regarding the "unleashed" capitalism.