The metamorphosis of the communist party: from entity to system and from system towards an entity

A complex analytical framework, the Interactive Party state model (IPS), is offered for revealing the structural and dynamic background of opposite processes: first, the development of the communist party as a political entity into a politically monopolized regime and then to a social system; second, the retreat of the party as a social system towards a politically monopolized regime or a political entity during the process of transformation into another system. We shall point to the fact that it is the structural background of the differences of the transformation process that brings about the different sequence of the retreat of the party as a social system from economic or political sub-fields first. The different sequence will be accompanied by different economic conditions for political transformation contributing to the complete or partial retreat of the party to either a political entity or to an authoritarian political regime.