The party systems of Central and Eastern Europe are highly volatile due to a high rate of party turnover. Yet, research has shown that, much like Western Europe, the underlying structure of party competition is surprisingly stable and organized along an economic and a cultural dimension. This raises the question whether our theories of party position change (or stability) in established party systems can help explain the positional shifts of parties in more unstable settings as well. We argue that the high risk of party death and the large number of (new) competitors increase the incentives for political parties to change their positions, even on their most salient dimension. However, parties differ with regard to the perceived risk of such shifts. Particularly young parties, which are not strongly rooted in society, and parties that rely on clientelist party-voter linkages, can more easily adjust their positions. To test these claims, we compile a data set that combines expert survey estimates of party positions with party manifesto data for the period 2002-2019. The analysis confirms our expectations. This study thus shows that the nature of party-voter linkages is crucial to understand party position change in a context of high electoral volatility.