The End of Transitological Paradigm? Debate on Non-Democratic Regimes and Post-Communist Experience Jan Holzer Faculty of Social Studies Institute for Comparative Political Research Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic e-mail: holzer@fss.muni.cz Paper prepared for the 20th IPSA World Congress (Section SS01.567) Fukuoka, 9-13 July 2006 This paper has been elaborated as part of the Research Project Political Parties and Representation of Interests in Contemporary European Democracies (code MSM0021622407).
The aim of my presentation is to comment on current trends in the research of nondemocratic regimes. My presumption is for the research in this field we need to consider significant the data that were obtained from examination of non-democratic regimes in the socalled post-communist area. By post-communist area I mean a group of countries defined by shared experience of communism. By the term communism I will here refer to a system of legitimisation of political domination in these countries, namely in the period before 1989. The term (post)communism I will on the other hand use to refer mainly to the social political mentality of the corresponding political communities in the period after 1989, after the fall of the Soviet bloc. That is to say, not a political system. My aim is to talk mainly about two topics: (1) about the key features that were or still are characteristic of the debate on post-communist regimes; i.e. about their transitions from totalitarian or post-totalitarian systems, and about current results of these processes. And (2), about the influence of this debate on the state of general theory of non-democratic regimes and the methodology of their research. The empirical basis for my paper is formed by the data I have obtained as the researcher in the grant project called Non-Democratic Regimes in Post-Communist Area, which was financed by the Czech Science Foundation. The research, which was done together with my colleagues from the Department of Political Science of the Faculty of Social Studies, particularly with Stanislav Balík, and from the Comparative Political Research Institute of Masaryk University in Brno, was discussed with a number of specialists in the given topic, such as the team of professor Jerzy Mackow from the Regensburg University. *** 1
Let us proceed to my topic. The issue of non-democratic regimes has always been accompanied by certain dissatisfaction with how the issue had been treated. Even in the coldest period of the Cold War there were heated discussions about the scientific relevance of the term totalitarianism. Many authors criticised the disordered current terminology and evident ideological bias of authors dealing with this topic. It is thanks to José J. Linz that political science had been offered a methodological way out of the possibly blind alley: I talk about his empirically based, coherent, practical, and above all non-ideological methodology of studying non-democratic regimes. That is why Linz s methodology and classification of non-democratic regimes also forms the basis of my paper. The year 1989 and the fall of the communist bloc saw the start of the so-called transitological studies in political science. What became popular was not only the research of the fall of non-democratic regimes, but soon mainly the conditions of the desired success of democratic regimes. There was even a short period of enthusiasm that the era of nondemocracy was finally nearing its end. The real development however took a different direction; a direction that brought disappointment and profound disillusionment to the optimists (or rather idealists). The falls of non-democratic models didn t automatically mean triumphs of democratic systems. It was necessary to react to these facts. The newly oriented and restored research offered a number of new concepts: let me mention the terms uncertain regimes, semidemocratic regimes, electoral, delegative or illiberal democracies. Their authors, such as Philippe Schmitter (Schmitter 1991), Guillermo O Donnell (O Donnell 1994), Fareed Zakaria (Zakaria 1997) or Larry Diamond (Diamond 2002), tired to name the current transformations of non-democracies. However, most of them didn t primarily seek a revision of preceding typologies of non-democracies in the spirit of the preceding optimistic expectation. Their aim was mainly to explain why liberal democratic systems don t succeed globally even after the fall of communism. In other words, their 2
motivation was primarily connected with the question: why do our initial expectations prove to be exaggerated and unrealistic? Various of the above-mentioned terms at the same time to a various degree respected or didn t respect the basic theorems of general transitological theory. For instance the fact that not every transition from a non-democratic regime must necessarily end by establishing a democratic system; which is by the way and unfortunately an often neglected observation. Or the theorem about the key role of elites, including former elites, from the point of view of realization of the transition and the subsequent political consolidation. However, the essence of the transitological paradigm prevailing in the 1990s in this field of political research can be seen in the belief in the existence of a certain, as if historically necessary, period that follows after the actual transition. This period was named after the just elapsed period and distinguished from it by the prefix post: I talk about postcommunism. It was this belief in the specific character of an era showing features of long-term detachment from the preceding era of (post)totalitarianism that represented and still represents the basic, even determining factor of studying the post-transitive era. In this we see a strong presence of the classical characteristic feature of transitology: that the condition for studying the processes of transition and consolidation is the knowledge of the model being removed; in our case communism, or totalitarianism. In simple terms: we cannot understand the process of parting with communism unless we really well understand what communism in fact was. The discussions outlined above lead among other things to the attempts to think over and evaluate the experience with creating new non-democratic post-communist models. The result of these debates was the more ore less generally accepted category of the so-called hybrid regimes. This category is to represent those regimes whose transitions from the nondemocratic model haven t been finished. These regimes supposedly either stopped somewhere 3
midway between democracy and (post)totalitarianism or authoritarianism, or they even underwent non-democratic regression. The debate on hybrid regimes even resulted in a new typology of non-democracies. Its decisive classification criterion is mostly the character of elections, particularly the degree of their freedom and fair play, the ability of the opposition to conduct an election campaign, and the process of vote counting; by the way, this approach basically corresponds to the Freedom House method. The scale of individual types of hybrid regimes has settled between semi-open models, such as electoral authoritarianism and pseudodemocracy, and closed models, such as the concepts of competitive authoritarianism by Stephen Levitsky and Lucas A. Way (Levitsky - Way 2002) or hegemonic noncompetitive authoritarianism by Andreas Schedler (Schedler 2002). At the same time, the political science community again intensified the discussion about the essence of democracy itself. The disputes over what exactly democracy is became topical again (Schmitter - Karl 1991). Whether it is mainly the way of formulating the majority opinion and then realizing it effectively, or whether it is rather a sum of normative and value conditions for the functioning of a good society, or even a unique lifestyle, etc. By this development, however, the given debates left the framework of postcommunist studies. There was a clearly formulated ambition to aim at forming categories that could be used generally; i.e. not only in the post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, or the Caucasia and Central Asia, but also in Latin America, Africa or Asia. This however ignored the above-mentioned transitological paradigm about the decisive influence of the regime that is being removed. This brings me to the two main questions of this paper: 1. Is the theory of hybrid regimes, which is based on transitological paradigm, a suitable tool for analysing and evaluating the imperfections that are typical of postcommunist countries from the point of view of the theory of democracy? Isn t classical 4
theory and methodology of non-democratic regimes, such as that by J. J. Linz, a more adequate research tool? 2. Do post-communist non-democratic regimes constitute a special type? *** Let me first talk about the first question about the relevance of the theory of hybrid regimes from the point of view of the current state of post-communist political models. Certain distancing from the enthusiasm about its dominance was already evident in the first reactions to the texts by G. O Donnell, F. Zakaria or L. Diamond. Subsequently, even some authors connected in the 1990s with the paradigm of hybrid regimes gradually started discovering the possibilities offered by classical theories of non-democratic regimes. This comment doesn t necessarily need to be viewed as critical; I think that it is natural that the development of events is accompanied by changes in how these events are viewed, and in the method of their evaluation. >From this group of political sciences I would mention for instance Lilia Shevtsova. Her brilliant evaluations of post-soviet Russian politics have developed from more or less respecting the theory of hybrid regimes (Ševcova 1999) to using the classical theory of non-democratic regimes (Shevtsova 2004). After all, similar attitudes were assumed also by Vladimir Ryzhkov (Ryzhkov 2004) or Jurij Levada (Levada 2004) in Journal of Democracy. The typical text indicating the limits of the theory of hybrid regimes is the article by Thomas Carothers The End of The Transition Paradigm (Carothers 2002). The basis of Carothers approach is scepticism. According to him it is basically not appropriate to suppose that (1) most countries that are labelled as transitional countries are currently in transition towards democracy. (2) That the countries leaving authoritarian or post-totalitarian models 5
necessarily tend towards all three levels of democracy: openness, progress, and consolidation. (3) That establishing regular and proper elections is really enough for a new government to obtain sufficient legitimacy, without additional participation of the society. And (4) that the individual countries chance of democratisation is only based on political activities, the courage and inventiveness of the elites, without the presence of adequate economic, social, and institutional conditions. According to Carothers, it is appropriate to talk about a situation where the process of state-building as a big challenge connected with the fall of communism gets into secondary position to the challenge number two - the process of democracy-building. I don t intend to analyze in detail the individual theses of Carothers. However, they all share in my opinion one common feature. And that is the fact that we cannot indefinitely suppose prolonging of transition processes. In the great majority of the so-called postcommunist regimes we have been witnessing for certain time a situation where new rules apply. In other words, the new elites have already defined a new model of legitimising the political domination, which was more or less accepted by the masses. The existence of newly respected rules is at the same time a characteristic that is missing in classical transition processes. They start by questioning the current rules that are in force in the non-democratic era, and finish by defining new rules. The new rules then don t necessarily need to correspond to democratic standards. Not achieving these standards doesn t however mean endless prolonging of the actual transition. In other words, the transition has in my opinion already been finished in most postcommunist countries. In some countries it has resulted in a democratic model - see for instance the Baltic states. Some post-communist countries have even achieved the parameters of consolidated democracy - as in Central European countries. In other countries, on the other hand, non-democratic regimes of various types have been restored. Of course there can be some exceptions; one of them seems to be for instance the specific development in the 6
Ukraine (see texts by Alexander Motyl or Mykola Rjabcuk). Nevertheless, most regimes in post-communist countries that are usually classified as hybrid regimes in my opinion achieve the qualities of non-democratic regimes. The transitological paradigm, which in a sense gave rise to the theory of hybrid regimes, has been exhausted. And now for the second question: do post-communist non-democratic regimes constitute a special type? I tried to find the answer to this question by the method of considering the relevance of classical theory of non-democratic regimes by Juan J. Linz from the point of view of contemporary non-democratic models in the post-communist area. I work on the assumption that its criterion axes, i.e. mentality vs. ideology, limited pluralism vs. monism, and mobilization vs. depoliticization, are still a suitable method for distinguishing the individual non-democratic types from one another. We should also bear in mind that the classical typology by Linz doesn t know hybrid types. It particularly doesn t work with the category of models that would know multiparty elections, i.e. with the so-called pseudomultipartism. Let us now look at Linz s individual axes and try to compare them with the reality in post-communist non-democratic regimes. Let s start with the axis pluralism vs. monism. There is no doubt that in many post-communist countries we cannot talk about fulfilling the conditions of political pluralism. However, it is a question whether we can do with a pure axis defined by the difference between lack of freedom only in political sphere (limited pluralism) and the ambition to control all spheres of the life of a society (monism). What is particularly interesting in this respect is the comparison with the category of classical authoritarian regimes. Considering the reality in post-communist countries it is appropriate to pay attention to the occurrence of the following three variables: (1) the course of elections, (2) degree of freedom of the media, and (3) degree of freedom in economic sphere. 7
In contradiction to many texts on hybrid regimes, I have to say here that focusing on the course of elections or the situation of the media doesn t lead to clear classification of individual types of non-democratic regimes. Not every inequality in access to election candidacy really means meeting the parameters of limited pluralism. The same goes for the frequently mentioned and often criticised presence of state-privileged media. If the rival candidate isn t directly criminalised, or if there are also other media, we can say that we cannot talk about limited pluralism in Linz s classical sense. In these spheres of analysis, post-communist reality doesn t seem to bring any change to the theory of non-democratic regimes. On the other hand, what seems crucial for this theory is the degree of freedom in economic sphere. This is obviously related to the communist legacy; the removed posttotalitarian regimes constituted a different category than the authoritarian regimes removed for instance in the 1970s in the Mediterranean or Latin America. I refer here to the famous term triple transition (Claus Offe), which defined the complexity and multilayer character of post-communist transitions. It therefore seems justified to distinguish the regimes with limited pluralism where lack of freedom concerns classically only the sphere of politics, from the regimes where lack of freedom (controlled) concerns moreover the economic sphere. This is the first conclusion so far. Let us now proceed to the second axis mentality vs. ideology. First we should realize how the ruling elites in some post-communist regimes, for example in Russia under Boris Yeltsin and mainly under Vladimir Putin, or in Belarus under Aleksander Lukashenko, legitimize their power. The way power is exercised in these countries is dictatorial or semidictatorial. However, from the point of view of the axis mentality vs. ideology these are not classical totalitarian models. Let me though add very quickly that the current development in 8
Belarus brings some facts that partly problematize this conclusion of mine, with regard to Lukashenko s efforts to create a new state ideology. Nevertheless, generally speaking, we usually don t encounter classical ideologies in the post-communist area. For their legitimization, the regimes don t use any abstract teaching that would make them feel predetermined to take control over the whole world. On the contrary, the main aim of the elites is usually to neutralize the influence of potential opponents and have enough scope for more or less pragmatic ruling. We can say that the elites more sensitively react to the prevailing social and political reality (or mentality) and don t try to form this reality in a revolutionary manner. It of course isn t simple to identify individual parts of this mentality. It mostly incorporates the belief in the role of the state as the final arbiter, etatism, defensive reactions in the sense of defending the country against foreign influences, and implicit nationalism. This post-communist mentality is typically characterised by a polemic with both democracy and totalitarianism. Communism has missed its historic chance, is what the local elites claim. But it is also necessary to refuse liberal democracy, both rhetorically and practically. This is because its exaggerated openness divides the nation, threatens its identity, and brings about instability. The state, on the other hand, must be active; it must spread and protect traditional local values and secure the nation s interests. That is why these mentalities in post-communist systems also include relics from the communist era, based in Marxism-Leninism. We can say in other words that the original ideology par excellence has turned in four generations into classical political mentality. To give a few examples I can refer to the development in some post-soviet republics, mainly the Slavonic ones. On the other hand in the Baltic states, for example, the influence of communism was shorter, and moreover it had met with the already formed political mentality from the period preceding the World War Two. The post-soviet republics in Central Asia or in the Caucasian region were not as lucky ; communism was externally accepted there. But 9
it was used rather as an external socio-political construction. The everyday life of local communities on the contrary preserved the ancient models of behaviour and identities. And it was these models that the current elites resumed, even though they had mostly been in power already during the Soviet Union. We can therefore talk about these non-democratic regimes in connection with the term sultanism (Brooker 2000). From the point of view of the development in Russia, Belarus, or in eastern Ukraine, communist ideology became part of local mentalities. Or at least it clashed with original mentalities existing before the October Revolution. This clash resulted in their interconnection. We therefore talk about certain differences. For example the Belarusian regime of V. Lukashenko is practically the closest to the Soviet model of government, because the mentality of Belarusian society before the foundation of the USSR had not been complete. The following ideological indoctrination of the population therefore has been relatively easy. The example of the Ukraine, on the other hand, particularly the actual existence of two Ukraines, proves different historical identities of two communities currently forming the Ukrainian nation. The above-described phenomenon of post-communist mentality having many features of the former ruling ideology represents a novelty from the point of view of classical theory of non-democratic regimes. This post-communist mentality has evidently depoliticising effect. Similarly interesting are also some post-communist political mentalities that on the contrary have a repeatedly confirmed ability to mobilise. They are not classical all-explaining ideologies, but at the same time they fulfil a similar role. We can encounter these examples in post-communist studies mainly in the Balkans, for instance in Serbia during the era of Slobodan Milosevic. From the point of view of Linz s classical theory of non-democratic regimes we are thus presented with an interesting puzzle: we have on the one hand described examples of 10
former ideologies used by current elites for depoliticization; at the same time we have examples of mentalities usable for mobilization. With regard to this confusion, the question arises whether we shouldn t expand the axis ideology vs. mentality with the concepts of pseudo-ideology or pseudo-mentality. This is the second conclusion so far. Now briefly for J. J. Linz s third axis of mobilization vs. depoliticization. I have mentioned above that the typical feature of post-communist regimes is depoliticization and power pragmatism. However, we witnessed in the post-communist area both in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 21 st century a number of examples of successful political mobilizations. They are of course less frequently aimed at the system internally than externally. This is a phenomenon that naturally attracts much attention in political science. There are two possible interpretations: (1) it is a demonstration of the totalitarianization of the given regimes. Or (2) it is the return to classical imperial strategies that have always had mobilization as their important component. In this context the Great Serbia and Great Russia conceptions are easier to understand. The influence of this observation on classical theory of non-democratic regimes is similar to the preceding axis. Even for the axis mobilization vs. depoliticization the distinguishing between totalitarian and authoritarian regimes on the basis of data from postcommunist studies has become much complicated. We encounter authoritarian regimes that use, even successfully, mobilization practices. I have briefly pointed out the presence of these tendencies in the course of foreign policy, but for instance in the Balkans there are many examples of using mobilizing tools even in internal politics, for example against ethnic minorities. *** 11
And now for the conclusions that in my opinion follow from the observations and comments above. 1. Above all, I think that most regimes in post-communist countries that have so far been classified by most authors as the so-called hybrid regimes now already represent classical non-democratic regimes. The theory of hybrid regimes, this dominant conception of the development of post-totalitarian regimes in the post-communist area, was able to explain the system logics of the functioning of some post-communist models, but only until they were still in the stage of transition. That is however no longer the case in most cases. 2. How should we evaluate the relevance of classical theory of non-democratic regimes in the context of the observation above? In my paper I have tested the methodology of J. J. Linz. And I think that I have presented enough evidence that it is appropriate to distinguish non-democratic regimes in the post-communist area from other non-democratic systems. The experience with communist totalitarianism is too significant for us to be able to talk about its natural relation to the regimes in Africa or Latin America. In this sense I think that the theorem about the influence of the removed regime on the newly established regime is still valid. Nevertheless, it hasn t been my ambition to define here and now a new type of nondemocratic regime. I focused mainly on considering whether we have methodology that is adequate to this field of political research. I think that the application of the three axes by J. J. Linz still brings many observations invaluable to understanding non-democratic regimes. What is more complicated, however, is the situation from the point of view of categories of non-democratic regimes used by Linz. As follows from the figure and the table attached to this text, the former relatively simple and well-arranged range of non-democratic regimes has become complicated due to the data presented by post-communist studies. But after all this is nothing new under the sun of political science. It wasn t the first revision reacting to current 12
events (see e.g. Merkel 1999). This presentation tried to contribute to the given debate at least by several observations that are in my worth considering. Thank you for your attention. 13
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Figure 1. Selected Typology of Non-Democratic Regimes in Post-Communist Area (Spatial Model) White Russia (Belarus) Armenia Mobilisation Serbia Azerbaijan Georgia Albania Ideology Putin`s Russia Yeltsin`s Russia Depoliticization Limited Pluralism Monism Mentality Free Economics Controlled Economics 15
Table 1. Selected Typology of Non-Democratic Regimes in Post-Communist Area Monism Mentality Pseudoideology Ideology Mobilization Totalitarian Regime Depoliticization Posttotalitarian Authoritarian Regime Belarus (1996-2006) Limited Pluralism with Controlled Economics Mentality Pseudoideology Ideology Mobilization Authoritarian Regime National Mobilizational Serbia (1991-2000) Armenia (1998-2006) Depoliticization Authoritarian Regime Bureaucratic-Military- State Oligarchic Yeltsin s Russia (1995-1999), Putin s Russia (1999-2006) Limited Pluralism with Free Economics Mentality Pseudoideology Ideology Mobilization Authoritarian Regime Mobilizational??? Georgia (1992-2004) in Dived Societies Albania (1992-1998), Azerbaijan (1993-2002) Depoliticization Authoritarian Regime Bureaucratic-Military 16