Abstract

It is analyzed the social and political cleavages as a factor of party-political development of Slovakia after the collapse of the communist regime. The author used the analytical toolkit for the theory of social and political cleavages for the study of social splits and their party representation. The analogical conformity of the classical socio-political cleavages is traced to the Slovak socio-structural context. Non-standard conflict lines that were situationally and conjuncture aggravated in the conditions of Slovakia's transition to democracy were singled out: «communism – anti-communism», «radical – moderate economic reform», «meciarismus – anti-meciarismus», «slovaks – hungarians», «eurooptimizm – euroskepticism», «mainstream – protest parties», etc. The fall of the communist regime and the pluralization of socio-political life in the beginning of the 1990's had led to the institutionalization of numerous socio-political cleavages. The operation of the hybrid political regime in the Slovak Republic in the mid-1990s contributed to the domination of the non-standard conflict line «meciarismus – anti-meciarismus». Consolidation of the democratic political regime contributed to the easing of social and political tension in Slovakia and updated the standard contradictions in the socio-economic, ethnic, liberal-conservative level. The standardization of lines of separation, reduction of their severity in the 2000's showed that the Slovak Republic is approaching the countries of liberal democracy. It was concluded that the presence of traditional and non-standard conflicting social lines, their mutual plating and situational updating led to the complexity of the post-communist social and political development of the Slovak Republic and the risks to stabilize its party system.