Democracy, Democratization, and its Process in Post Communist Countries

 

Introduction

We live in a world which is divided into almost two hundred sovereign nation-states and many more political entities claiming to be independent or fighting to achieve sovereign status. And no two political units are ruled in identical manner. Every entity has a regime which is unique to itself. Since the evolution of tribes and settlements ways and institutions have been devised to rule and govern the members of the society. Thus, the socio-cultural and economic aspects shape the politics and political system of the entity. Among the various regimes that the world has witnessed, democracy is the most sought after. Even those countries which aren’t democratic in the substantial sense, call themselves as democracy for namesake to appear legitimate.

 

 

Democracy

Going back to the origins of the word itself, the word democracy comes from the Greek words demos, meaning “the common people,” and kratia, meaning “power” or “rule.” Democracy at its most fundamental is a system in which power resides with the people. Based on this origin, we can begin by defining democracy as a system in which political power resides with the people. The people, in turn, may exercise that power either directly or indirectly, and the exercise of power typically takes three forms: participation, such as through voting and elections; competition, such as that between political parties; and liberty, such as freedom of speech or of assembly. Democracy, then, can be fully defined as political power exercised either directly or indirectly through participation, competition, and liberty. (Patrick H. O’ Neil,2010)

Origin of Democracy

Liberal democratic institutions and practices have their roots in ancient Greece and Rome, each contributing to modern democracy in different ways. Ancient Greek democracy allowed the public (excluding women, children, and slaves) to participate directly in the affairs of government, choosing policies and making governing decisions. In this sense, the people were the state. In contrast, the Roman Empire laid out the concept of republicanism, which emphasized the separation of powers within a state and the representation of the public through elected officials (as opposed to the unaccountable powers of a monarchy or the direct participation of the people). Thus, while Greece gives us the idea of popular sovereignty, it is from Rome that we derive the notion of legislative bodies like a senate.

Roman republicanism was quite different from Greek participatory democracy, and in time both collapsed. Yet democratic institutions and practices slowly reemerged, most notably in thirteenth-century England. At that time, English nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, a document that curbed the rights of the king and laid the foundation for an early form of legislature, a key element of republicanism. In addition, the Magna Carta asserted that all freemen (at the time, only the aristocracy) should enjoy due process before the law; this assertion set the stage for the idea of liberty.

  

Democratization

In the simplest of terms, democratization refers to the continual process of transforming a political system towards more democratic arrangements. Democratization is not historically inevitable and its progress cannot be   taken for granted. Some countries have never created democratic forms of government, some have partially succeeded, and some have failed and slipped back into dictatorship and autocracy. Understanding democratization requires a careful consideration of the circumstances in which it takes root or fails in different countries.

 As democracy spread across the world so it seemed to be the final, natural and inevitable point of political development. In this way, democratization in many countries has been a long, long process lasting for decades – or even centuries. In other countries, however, revolutions, wars and foreign intervention have brought about rapid change. Each country has followed its own path, and just as with the rise of the state, complex historical processes and unique constellations seem to account for democratic transitions. And just as with the rise of the state, there are many different explanations of the process of democratization.

The factors that cause the shift of a regime and country, from non democratic sytem to one having democratic features and values, range from political, social, cultural, institutional dimensions. Internal unrest leading to a crisis as well as external influences could very well trigger transition towards democracy.

Consolidation of Democracy

A democracy has consolidated when it provides an accepted framework for political competition. democratic consolidation requires more than creating appropriate institutions. The standard definition comes from Przeworski (1991,p.26): Democracy is consolidated when under given political and economic conditions a particular system of institutions becomes the only game in town and when no-one can imagine acting outside the democratic institutions.

Several phases can be discerned between the breakdown of an old system and the consolidation of the new one:

1. Initial phase - Opposition towards the ruling elite and undemocratic arrangements are mobilized; demands for more liberty are broadly accepted and generally seen as the main goal of political reform.

2.  Emerging phase - The old undemocratic arrangements no longer function and new ones are set up; liberty is still the main common concern; a new constitution is declared and general elections are introduced for the first time; return to the old system is no longer easily feasible.

3.  Advanced phase - Liberty is now taken for granted and attention shifts towards the achievements of the new democracy; providing liberty is no longer sufficient; group interests have to be satisfied; economic and public service performance become important; there is increasing stress on equality of rights and opportunities.

4.  Phase of consolidation - The new arrangements are institutionalised and the system is able to meet the demands and expectations of large parts of the population. A balance between liberty and equality is reached and broadly accepted.

It is clear from this that successful democratization depends on many factors and that progress can be halted, slowed or reversed at every stage

 Theories of Democratization

There are competing explanations for democratization and democratic institutionalization, which have fallen in and out of favor over time. Some of this is the result of changes in contemporary politics that force scholars to reevaluate their theories, but it may also be that explanations that were acc curate at one point in time lose their explanatory power as the world changes.

1.     Development and Democratization

For a long time as proposed in a seminal article on the ‘social requisites of democracy’ published in 1959, Seymour Martin Lipset stressed the importance of economic development and prosperity for democracy and its consolidation. Economic prosperity and ownership of property gives rise to a demand for individual rights and security. It also calls for minimal interference of state in the lives of the citizen.

2.    Modernization and Democratization

Modernization refers to the dual processes of technological and economic development and the societal responses to these changes. This argues that economic and technological developments are closely linked and result in fundamental changes in every area of society (e.g. industrialisation, urbanisation, social and geographical mobility, rise of property owning middle class and education), including the ways that people think about themselves and the social, economic and political world around them. The theory suggests that as societies become more economically and societally sophisticated, they would need and desire greater control over the state in order to achieve and defend their own interests, which eventually leads to democratization.

3.    Elites and Democratization

Central to modernization theory is the idea that a middle class is essential for democratization—a significant segment of the population with both the resources and desire to advance and demand their own rights. While poverty is considered as an obstacle to democracy—where people have little, they have little to fight for. But it is not simply poverty but also inequality that may be a central factor. Where economic wealth is concentrated in the hands of those in power, political change is much less likely, as change would mean those in power are likely to lose not just control over the state but over their assets as well. However, where resources are more equally distributed among the population, political change may be more likely, since those in power have less to lose. This was the case in early Britain, and also much more recently in Communist Europe.

4.    Society and Democratization

Scholars more interested in the role of society have in the past stressed the importance of public organization, or specifically what is called civil society. Basically, civil society can be defined as organized life outside the state, or what the French scholar Tocqueville called the “art of association”. Although such groups may be inherently apolitical, they serve as a vehicle for democratization and democracy by allowing people to articulate, promote, and defend what is important to them. Where civil society has been able to take root, it is argued, democratization is more likely, as it provides both the ideas and the tools of political action and mobilization—the tools of small-scale democratic practice that soon begin to spread.

5.     International Relations and Democratization

the international community plays a role in less obvious ways. Modernization can be the result of foreign investment, globalization, and trade, which may push democratization forward. Elites, too, may favor democracy as a result of international pressure or incentives. Civil society, too, can be strengthened by the transmission of ideas across borders by education, media, and nongovernmental organizations. How influential the international community may be probably depends on a number of factors, including the degree to which that society is open to and dependent on the outside world. For example, some have suggested that the institutionalization of democracy in Eastern Europe came partly because democracy was a prerequisite for eventual membership in the European Union.

6.    Culture and Democratization

Cultural theories stress the fact that the expectations and demands of citizens are crucial for democracy. The basis for this approach has been laid out by Gabriel Almond (1911–2002) and Sidney Verba (1932–) in The Civic Culture, published in 1963. In their view, democracy can only survive when citizens are characterised by a mixture of political and social orientations. A democracy will survive with a mixture of pragmatism and commitment.

7.     Institution and Democratization

Institutional theory argues that citizens do not develop their attitudes and behaviour in a vacuum or by sitting down and working them out for themselves. They respond to the possibilities, opportunities and restrictions created by the institutional framework of government and politics. Institutional theories emphasise the relevance of these institutional arrangements for democracy and especially for democratic transformation and consolidation. Institutional theories are based on the idea that people make certain choices and develop certain attitudes and values because of the alternatives available, and these are strongly conditioned by the institutions of government and politics.

 

Waves of Democratization

In the book The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century published by the American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington (1927–) in 1991.  He defines a wave of democratic transition as a group of transitions from non-democratic to democratic regimes that occur within a specified period of time and that significantly outnumber transitions in the opposite direction during that period. He identifies three such waves in world history: the first was 1828–1926; the second 1943–1962; and the third 1974–1989.A return to authoritarian rule after a democratic interlude is termed backsliding. In each ‘wave’ a relatively large number of nondemocratic states make their first moves towards democracy:

1.    The first wave which occurred during 1828-1926 is  a long duration during which almost 30 western nation-states were transformed into mass democracies. Apart of the common processes of economic development and gradual nation building, there aren’t much factors explaining the establishment of democracies. Some of these fledgling democracies were later overthrown by fascist, communist or military dictatorships during Huntington’s ‘first reverse wave’ from 1922 to 1942. However, democracy did consolidate in the earliest nineteenth-century democratizations, including the United States and the United Kingdom.

2.    Huntington’s second wave of democratization began in the Second World War and continued until the 1960s. Processes such as decolonization (India, Pakistan, fall of autocratic regimes, emergence of newly state as a direct aftermath of war(Yugoslavia). Democratization in the second wave depended on political and economic opportunities as well as on the colonial legacies present in many countries. Foreign intervention and wars of independence appear to be important for the rise of democracy in many countries. The second wave ebbed away when some places reverted to authoritarian rule in the 1960s (Greece and several countries in Latin America) either due to military coups or socio-economic instabilities.

3.    The third wave started in the mid-1970s and faded away at the end of the  twentieth century. In this period, some of the non-democratic countries of Latin America and Asia were democratized, frequently on the basis of mass movements opposing ruling cliques and autocrats (for example in South Korea or the Philippines). The disintegration of the Soviet Union resulted in an additional growth of democratic states in Central and eastern Europe. Here, too, mass pressure and opposition groups played a decisive role (for instance in Poland, Ukraine and Hungary).

When several dictatorships in the Middle East and North Africa collapsed, scholars and journalists started to talk about the ‘Arab Spring’ in the 2010s with a ‘fourth wave of democratization’. These democratization processes showed beginnings of transitions, but most of the openings closed with inevitable pullbacks. Hence, there are no clear democratization trends happening in this region, let alone a new wave of democratization. While some scholars showed that it would be better to talk about ‘trendless fluctuations’ (see, e.g., Doorenspleet 2000), the dominant way of thinking still emphasizes global trends, linear moves and worldwide waves.

 

Post Communist States

After 1989,  the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of communist rule in central and eastern europe caused a fresh wave of nation-state creation in places such as Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland and the foundation of new ones (including Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the 1990s.

Post communist countries faced, and continue to face, the challenge of building new political, social, and economic institutions to strike a new balance between freedom and equality. No country had ever made such a dramatic change in all three areas at once, and this task has met with varying degrees of success. These post communist states witnessed a regime change, their socio political system either transitioned to democracy or authoritarian rule either knowingly or unknowingly.

Along with reconstructing state power and the rule of law, post communist countries have faced the prospect of building a democratic regime where authoritarianism has long been the norm. This project requires numerous tasks: revising or rewriting the constitution to establish civil rights and freedoms, creating a separation of powers between branches of government, revamping judicial bodies and high courts, generating electoral laws and regulating political parties, and doing all of this in such a way as to generate support among the majority of actors in society. With the collapse of communism, leaders were faced with deciding how civil liberties should be constitutionally protected.

 A set of master variables that help account for different types of democratic transition and different modes of democratic consolidation. are:-

1. The first macro-variable is ‘stateness’, which captures the degree to which a   country is sovereign and has established a national identity and national cohesion. The second macro-variable is the type of regime that preceded the democratic transition, including authoritarian, totalitarian, post-totalitarian, and sultanistic.

2. The middle-range variables include the leadership base of the previous regime (hierarchical military, non-hierarchical military, civilian, or sultanistic) and who or what, actor/process/event that initiates the democratic transition (civil society, regime collapse, armed revolution, non-hierarchical military coup, or hierarchical state) (ibid.: 66–71).

3. The three contextual variables are international influences, the political economy of regime legitimacy, and the environment in which the new democratic constitution is promulgated.

 

Process of Democratization in Post Communist States

The USSR Broke down into 15 units, and the process of transition towards a different regime, either democracy or autocracy has bee a continued process since 1989.  The process which involves democratic transition especially in the eastern European  communist state has been broadly classified or structured in four stages which had been initiated even before the collapse of USSR and has continued even today.

First Stage -  Stagnation and Decline of USSR

After the long period of stagnation and steady decline of communist USSR and the rising difficulties and dangers of Cold War during the 1980s, Gorbachev on coming to power in 1985  proposed reforming international and domestic relations, revitalizing both the Soviet Union and communist thought. At the domestic level, Gorbachev initiated the twin policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), intended to liberalize and reform communism.

In the international arena, To reduce the Soviet Union’s military burdens and improve relations with Western countries, he began to loosen his country’s control over Eastern Europe Gorbachev hoped that some limited liberalization in the region would ease tensions with Europe and the United States, enabling expanded trade and other economic ties.

Similarly, Janos Qader of Hungary also tried to bring economic and political reform to ensure survival of communism. But their plans backfired, as people used these reforms to revolutionize and achieve greater political autonomy.

Second Stage -  Revolutionary Regime Change

Since 1989 the civil society of  Soviet Union’s satellite states rapidly reasserted itself across Eastern Europe and demanded open elections and an end to one-party rule. Eastern European Communist Party leaders, realizing that the Soviet Union would no longer intervene militarily to support them, had little choice but to acquiesce. As a result, by 1990, communists had been swept from their monopolies on power across the region. In most cases, this regime change was largely peaceful.

In the aftermath of the failed coup by hardliners of communist party in 1991,  and in response to their own ethnic constituents, the individual republics that made up the Soviet Union broke up, forming fifteen new independent countries, of which Russia is one.

Third Stage – Post Communist changes

The dissolution of USSR into 15 states in 1991, had constituted the creation of new political regimes out of the ashes of the previous communist regime. The characteristic changes post 1991 was a unique trifold revolution.

It involved transition in the political regime change from that of communism to democracy or autocracy. Many post communist countries opted for pure proportional representation (PR), while some demanded for single-member district (SMD) system but several opted for mixed PR and SMD. Transforming the economy from a centrally planned one to that of a liberalized free market based.  The social transition has not just witnessed a wave of modernization which resulted in the expansion of the middle class but also tried to fill the vaccumm created by the absence of communism through recreating identities on the lines of religion or ethnicity.

Fourth Stage – Regime Dynamics

The fourth stage is ongoing process of political regime change which is proceeding in three streams-

1.      Many post communist countries have made dramatic strides toward democracy and the rule of law, to such an extent that Freedom House now considers them consolidated democracies. The majority of these consolidated democracies can be found in central Europe (such as Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic) and the Baltics

 

2.     In many of the former Soviet states, democracy is illiberal and weakly institutionalized or completely absent. These countries tend to be poorer, with little historical experience of democracy and a long period of Soviet control. In many of these countries, authoritarian leaders have consolidated power, many of them former members of the communist nomenklatura.

3.     Apart from these two categories of states, few also strived towards establishing a democratic system, however, have been able to achieve only procedural democracy. Thus, though they call themselves to be democratic, democracy in the substantive sense and its key essential features are absent in such countries.

 

Conclusion

All of these societies are attempting to grapple again with the dilemma of freedom and equality. New political, economic, and social institutions are needed, but in many cases they must be forged out of the rubble of the old order, a situation that is creating unique difficulties and contradictions. Over the past decade, both individual freedom and collective inequality have grown in many countries. Increased civil liberties have arisen alongside poverty, and the rebirth of society alongside conflict and hostility.

The results of this diverse process have been dramatically different across the communist and post communist world. In some countries, we see the institutionalization of democracy and capitalism; in others, authoritarianism and state-controlled economies remain in place. Moreover, it is apparent that over time, these countries will grow increasingly dissimilar. Democratic consolidation and economic growth in Eastern Europe appear to have placed many of these countries on the path to becoming advanced democracies. Within parts of the former Soviet Union, however, economic stagnation or decline, political instability, and nondemocratic rule are more common; those countries more resemble the less-developed world. China and Russia remain question marks.