Electoral Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 149–174, 1998 Pergamon  1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0261-3794/98 $19.00+ 0.00 PII: S0261-3794(98)00018-3 The Electoral Connection and Democratic Consolidation Raymond M. Duch* University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-3474, USA Political parties are accorded an important role in the historical development of demo- cratic institutions. This article explores the contribution of political parties to the consolidation of the democratic process in the recent post-communist regimes. Three general perspectives on how parties might affect the democratization process are evaluated. One argument is that there is an absence of "civil society" in these countries and hence cleavages or group identifications have little relevance for party prefer- ences. A second argument is that party preferences in these post-communist democ- racies are based on opposition to democratic or market institutions and hence pose a threat to the democratic consolidation. I argue that the party issue space in post- communist regimes tends to be multidimensional reflecting a variety of different sali- ent cleavages and that opposition to the institutions of democratic capitalism are either inconsequential or counterbalanced by a number of other salient socio-political cleav- ages. The analysis is based on survey data from the Times–Mirror surveys conducted in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia during 1990 and 1991.  1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Keywords: Democratic consolidation, democratic transition, democratization, post- communist, political parties, support for democracy, support for free markets, civil society, cleavages Introduction Political parties are accorded an important role in the historical development of democratic institutions. One of the important ways in which parties contributed to the transition to democ- racy in European countries was by effectively representing or mobilizing the interests of spe- cific segments of society when the franchise was expanded (Lipset, 1960; Lipset and Rokkan, 1967; Franklin et al., 1992). A critical feature of the development of European democracies is political parties responding to what Kitschelt (1994) labelled ‘clusters’ of preferences in their efforts to build electoral coalitions. The recent transition of the former communist regimes *Tel: + 1 713 743 3890; Fax: + 1 713 743 3927; E-mail: rduch@uh.edu