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Economy, corruption or promiscuous voters? Explaining the success of Anti-Establishment Reform Parties in Eastern Europe

We discuss an emerging group of successful parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) that combine anti-establishment appeals with support for moderate policies of political and social reform, which we term anti-establishment reform parties (AERPs). Examples include the Simeon II National Movement (Bulgaria), Res Publica (Estonia), New Era (Latvia), Freedom and Solidarity (Slovakia), TOP09 and Public Affairs (Czech Republic) and Positive Slovenia. We carry out a comparative analysis using the Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) technique to identify the conditions under which AERPs made electoral breakthroughs in the period 1997-2013. We identify five sufficient paths for AERP breakthrough representing distinct combinations of several causal conditions: high corruption, rising corruption, rising unemployment, previous success of new parties and the previous success of new parties. We conclude by reviewing the implications of our findings for further research.