POLITICS
3. BOOK REVIEW. Richard D. Anderson, Jr., M. Steven Fish, Stephen E. Hanson, and Philip G. Roeder, Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2001)
The authors of this book, who belong to the rising generation of American scholars of postcommunism, set themselves a dual task. They seek to explain the successes and failures of democratization in postcommunist countries, and at the same time to explore the implications of these countries' experience for existing theories of democracy and democratization.
Each author has his own focus and approach. Anderson and Hanson assess alternative theories in the light of Russian developments, while Fish and Roeder start from a comparative statistical analysis of data pertaining to a large number of countries. Nevertheless, their contributions are mutually complementary and they reach common conclusions.
Most startling is the authors' rejection of many popular theories which turn out to be unsupported by the evidence. "Progress or regress on the road to democracy appears to be independent of a state's economic development, equality of income distribution, size, ethnic diversity, religious tradition, or historical experience of democratic governance" (p. 154). Democracy has survived even in a desperately poor country like Moldova, and it seems able to function even in the absence of a strong civil society, as in Russia and Ukraine.
So what does make a difference? I found three answers in the book.
First, as Fish in particular argues, constitutional arrangements matter. Some give leading politicians ample opportunity to undermine democracy and concentrate dictatorial power in their own hands; others constrain them more effectively. But this takes us only so far. It hardly makes sense to treat choice of constitution, as Fish does, as an independent exogenous factor. Quite a few post-Soviet leaders, having entered office under relatively open constitutions, have introduced new "presidential" constitutions as a means of consolidating power which they have already built up by non-constitutional means.
Second, democratic legal norms take firmer root in those countries which are situated closer to the West and are under the more pervasive influence of Western societies. It is this factor above all which accounts for the greater success of democratization in Central-Eastern Europe by comparison with the former Soviet Union, rather than the different cultural and historical legacies of the two regions.
Third, the chances of democratization depend strongly on the structure of the ruling elite inherited from the communist period. Unified elites got through the postcommunist transition unscathed and maintained the old authoritarian power relations on a new economic basis. Fragmented elites were unable to accomplish this feat, leaving open at least the possibility of democratization.
Indeed, it was the split between conservative and reformist wings of the Soviet elite that jumpstarted the whole process of democratization in the late 1980s. As Anderson shows, the democratic breakthrough became possible in the USSR when some elite actors resorted to a more democratic political discourse in order to mobilize popular support against their conservative opponents, thereby transforming themselves from apparatchiks into politicians. That of course leads on to another question which Anderson does not try to answer. How was it possible for such flexible elite actors to arise within the apparently rigid Soviet system?
Especially interesting is Roeder's analysis of the political consequences of divergent structures of the communist-era elite in various countries. Outcomes have been more democratic in countries where industrial agencies dominated, as the ministerial structure gave industrial managers an autonomy from strict control by party officials which agricultural managers did not enjoy. Here the analysis closely parallels that carried out by Russian and German political scientists (V. Gel'man, S. Ryzhenkov, M. Brie et al.) mainly at the level of regional political regimes in Russia (see RAS Issue 2 item 4). The authors seem quite unaware of this work.
Outcomes have also tended to be more democratic in those post-Soviet republics where party and industrial elites were NOT dominated by members of the titular ethnic group, because this forced indigenous members of the elite to mobilize popular support against their non-titular (mainly Russian) colleagues. Thus outcomes were least democratic in places like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, where the elite was predominantly indigenous and predominantly rural.
One recurring theme of the book is that the same conditions which impede the consolidation of democracy in the postcommunist world also impede the consolidation of authoritarian regimes. Thus initial successes of democratization are often reversed (Fish' primary focus is on these "backsliders"), but the more or less authoritarian regimes which emerge as a result are also fragile and unstable. The most typical political environment of postcommunist countries is neither democracy nor dictatorship but the wide gray zone in between the two.
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