Post-Communist Civil Society and the Soviet Legacy

Challenges of Democratisation and Reform in the Caucasus

Huseyn Aliyev

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781137489142
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137489159
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book argues that the weakness of civil society in the post-Soviet Caucasus is a result not only of post-communist political and economic problems, but also of the effects of historical legacies. These influence both formal and informal civil societies and weaken the countries' ability to facilitate democratisation.

1

Democratisation, Civil Society and Communist Legacies

In broader terms, this book aims to explain why the post-communist civil society fails at facilitating democratisation in the Caucasus. This study considers civil society to be a feature of democracy and a contributing factor to democratisation. Yet, it does not attempt to investigate why democracy does not work in the Caucasus. It is the role of civil society in democratic transition or lack thereof that is of particular interest for this book. First and foremost, this study does not consider democratisation as either expected or inevitable, but rather as one of the possible outcomes of the post-communist transformation. This book also does not assume consolidated, participatory or representative democracy as the most desirable, righteous or correct form of political governance. Rather, it is the establishment of equalitarian, transparent and free-from-corruption state and civil institutions that is crucial for effective post-communist state- and society-building.

The minimalist understanding of democracy employed in this book is synonymous with the classic Schmitter and Karl’s (1991: 76) definition of democracy as ‘a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives’. Furthermore, democracy as a political system needs to be distinguished from democratisation as a process which includes not only a transition to democracy but also consolidation and continuity of a democratic system (Ranker et al., 2007: 8). This book perceives as necessary, yet not sufficient, for democracy a synthesis of ‘three minimal conditions’, described by Linz and Stepan (1996b: 15) as: (1) quintessential existence and legal presence of the state; (2) opportunities for free and uncontested election; and (3) ruling elites’ support for democratic governance, represented in the respect for constitution, rule of law, human rights, ‘the legitimate function of the legislature’, and equal participation in political and social processes of the state. As general as it is fundamental, the above formulation provides a basic description of democracy and allows this book to avoid in-depth discussions on the conceptual definition of the term ‘democracy’, rather emphasising the need for the closer inspection of the dimensions of democratisation as a process. Yet, before indulging in theoretical debates on varieties of democratisation, this chapter presents a brief analysis of what happened to democracy-building in the Caucasus and why it is claimed in this book that no democratic transition occurred in the region.

Democracy in the Caucasus and the former Soviet Union

Political regimes of the contemporary Caucasus, similarly to those of other post-Soviet states, are the successors of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and accordingly are the survivors of the Soviet political system, described by scholars as either totalitarian or post-totalitarian. In this book the USSR’s political system is described as a mixture of totalitarianism and post-totalitarianism. Adopting the classification suggested by a prominent scholar of Soviet and post-communist society, Vladimir Shlapentokh (2001: 11–12), the Soviet Union under Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev is described in this study as a totalitarian state and the USSR during the New Economic Policy (NEP) under Khrushchev and Gorbachev as a post-totalitarian regime. The definition of totalitarianism employed throughout this research is borrowed from Linz (2000: 70), who presents such regimes as ‘a monistic but not monolithic centre of power with an exclusive and elaborate ideology employed by its leaders to control the masses, and collective involuntary citizen mobilization and participation in political and social life’.

The break-up of the USSR led to the ultimate demise of both totalitarianism and post-totalitarianism across the former Soviet Union. Yet, the collapse of the Soviet state did not result in the democratisation of the non-Baltic former Soviet republics. The failure of democracy in the Caucasus is well documented in the academic literature (Bunce and Wolchik, 2011; Levitsky and Way, 2010), and is also evident in numerous reports and democracy ratings, annually compiled by authoritative organizations in the field. Often cited in academic studies, the reports by Freedom House (Habdank-Kołaczkowska, 2014; Walker and Habdank-Kołaczkowska, 2013) and The Economist suggest that only a handful of post-Soviet states managed to embark on post-communist democratisation, transforming themselves into hybrid or transitional regimes (Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine). The majority, however, devolved into paternalistic authoritarian regimes or remained in between as semi-consolidated autocracies. Indeed, patrimonial authoritarianism appears to be the dominant form of governance across the Caucasus. The studies on regime types have an abundance of definitions for non-democratic governments. For instance, the terms competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky and Way, 2010), delegative (O’Donnell, 1994) or façade democracy (Gill, 2002) and sultanistic regimes (Linz, 2000: 151) are the most widely used among the plethora of labels employed by the contemporary academic literature to describe authoritarian regimes. To avoid ambiguities, this book borrows Linz’s (1964: 255) famous definition of authoritarian states as:

political systems with limited, not responsible, political pluralism, without elaborate and guiding ideology, but with distinctive mentalities, without extensive nor intensive political mobilization, except at some point in their development, and in which a leader or occasionally a small group exercises power within formally ill-defined limits but actually quite predictable ones.

Even in those post-Soviet regimes that have succeeded in embarking on democratisation, such as Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, the results of democratic reforms are so fragile and so easily reversible, as could be seen from the case of Ukraine under Viktor Yanukovich, that such regimes are most commonly described in the literature as ‘hybrid’ or ‘transitional’ regimes (Bunce and Wolchik, 2011; Levitsky and Way, 2010). The political regimes of the Caucasus’s states clearly fall short of the definition of democracy presented above. It is noteworthy that, almost two decades after the end of Soviet rule, all the regimes in the Caucasus have only managed to reach the first condition for the achievement of democracy – the creation of a state. However, as seen from the democracy ratings in the former Soviet Union, democratic failure is not intrinsic to the Caucasus. A voluminous body of studies on post-communist democratisation in the former Soviet Union concede that the majority of post-Soviet states ended up as regimes with little or no resemblance to a democracy (Gel’man, 2003; Gill, 2002; Lewis, 2010; Petrova, 2007). Accordingly, it is safe to assume that the break-up of the Soviet Union, with the exception of the Baltic countries, did not result in a transition to democracy either in the Caucasus or anywhere else in the former USSR.

Whereas the collapse of communism resulted in the democratisation of many Central European and Baltic post-communist states, there were only limited democratic reforms in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. By contrast, Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Central Asia remain controlled by authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes. In order to answer the question of why civil societies in most of the non-Soviet countries of the communist bloc, including Mongolia, largely succeeded in facilitating democratisation and civil societies of the majority of former Soviet states did not, this study suggests that democratisation has failed in the Caucasus owing to the presence of a legacy from the Soviet era. Continuity of norms and attitudes, as well as the lack of structural social change coupled with the persistence of the legacy, are central for this book. The agent-induced changes and transitions, albeit significant, nonetheless depend on structural environment. Therefore, determining the relevant theoretical approach is a crucial starting point for this research.

Given there was no transition to democracy in the Caucasus and in other parts of the former Soviet Union, compared with other post-communist states, how might democratisation theories account for this puzzle? There are two major theoretical approaches to democratisation. The structural approach emphasises socio-economic determinants, historical legacies, geo-political location and socio-cultural factors as decisive variables in democratic transformation (Bernhard, 1993; Bunce, 1995; Carothers, 2002). In contrast, the genetic or transition theories (O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986; Rustow, 1970; Schmitter and Karl, 1994) concentrate on actor-centrist models of democratisation.

Structural democratisation

Structural approaches are not only the oldest tenets of democratisation but also the most versatile. Originating from a classic theory of ‘modernisation’, prioritising socio-economic causes of democratisation, structural explanations of democratic transitions devolved into a broader array of theoretical strands encompassing geo-political, socio-cultural and historical factors.

The first structural school of democratisation was closely associated with the ‘modernisation’ theory, prioritising the essential linkage between socio-economic development and democratisation. From Weber to Rostow (1960), the scholarship on democracy identified the key factor to be the correlation between economic well-being and functioning democracy (Diamond, 1992; Lipset, 1959; Marks and Diamond, 1992). The advocates of ‘modernisation’ theory argued that the achievement of democratic forms of government was unfeasible without the essential prerequisites of modernisation – a competitive market economy, industrialisation, urbanisation and higher living standards (Burkhart and Lewis-Beck, 1994; Lerner, 1958; Lipset, 1960). For instance, Lipset (1959) posited that economic development and its associated industrialisation unavoidably lead to urbanisation, educational improvements and higher living standards. All of these encourage the emergence and growth of democratic institutions and increase citizens’ awareness of the advantages of democratic governance. Rostow (1960) went even further suggesting that the Western experience of socio-economic development and transitions to democracy could be emulated in the developing world.

Yet, ‘modernisation’ theory received a fatal blow in the late 1980s and early 1990s – the emergence of new democracies, not only in post-communist Eastern Europe, but also in Latin America and Asia, irreversibly shattered the connection between economic well-being and democracy. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of authoritarian regimes throughout Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia resulted in the spread of democracy to countries and regions with lower socio-economic standards than the traditional ‘old’ democracies of Western Europe and North America. As mentioned by Levitsky and Way (2010: 77) ‘economic booms and crises do not affect all regimes equally’ and economic growth is not necessarily followed by democratisation. The Persian Gulf states and China are among the examples of economically successful non-democratic regimes.

In the former Soviet Union, economic growth, or lack thereof, did not spur democratic developments. Whereas according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), all post-Soviet states are classified as emerging economies, significant disparities in income and economic growth divide these countries into rapidly growing, mainly fossil fuels-based economies and less successful, usually deprived of natural resources states with struggling Soviet-styled industries. According to the World Bank (see Table 1.1), the gross domestic product of the non-Baltic former Soviet Union ranges from over US$10,000 per capita in the Russian Federation to just around US$800 in Tajikistan.

The deviations between gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national income (GNI) in each country are generally insignificant. The GINI Index figures, which measure the income distribution or consumption expenditure among individuals and households, show that, with slight divergences, the cross-regional income distribution and consumption expenditures are between 26.5 in Belarus and 42.1 in Georgia. However, considerable gaps exist in country-specific differences between GDP, GNI and GINI. For instance, both Tajikistan and Ukraine with relatively low GDP per capita have markedly high income distribution equality. By contrast, despite having the highest GDP per capita among non-Baltic former Soviet states, the Russian Federation has the lowest income distribution equality among individuals and households.

Table 1.1 Economic development and democracy in the non-Baltic former Soviet Union

Comparing the GDP, GNI and GINI with democracy scores we notice that the less economically developed countries are also often the more democratic. For instance, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia are good examples of (semi-)democratic government types without having made strong economic progress. In contrast, the well-performing economies of Belarus and Russia have not resulted in democratic reforms and these states are still ruled by elites who channel financial assets into consolidating their grasp on power. In Central Asia, Kazakhstan and particularly Turkmenistan, despite experiencing economic booms during the last decade, remain authoritarian.

The South Caucasus’s countries present yet another example of modernisation theory’s inapplicability to the former Soviet Union. Azerbaijan, more economically developed than Armenia and Georgia, also has higher living standards but fares much worse in terms of democratic development. Thus, it seems that neither in the Caucasus nor in other parts of the former Soviet Union does socio-economic development correlate with more effective democratisation.

In the early 1990s, the majority of structural democratisation proponents abandoned the ‘modernisation’ theory in favour of a diversity of theoretical strands emphasising the importance of long-term factors such as historical legacies. Although the scholars of structural democratisation continued to insist on the centrality of socio-economic factors as underlying causes for democracy to occur (Diamond, 1992), the overall approach to democratisation became more heterogeneous (Neto et al., 1996). As explained by Toomstra et al. (2010: 10), the structural theorists now tend to assert that:

a certain level or process of socio-economic development is not a precondition for democratisation or indeed the presence and stability of democracy. A successful transition can occur at any level of development, as in Mongolia, while relatively poor states can have quite stable democratic systems, for example Benin and Botswana. At the same time, socio-economic development is no guarantee of democratisation or the presence of democracy, as various examples in the Middle East and Kazakhstan illustrate.

The fundamental assumption of present-day structural democratisation is that democracy cannot come into being all of a sudden – rather it is a multifaceted process, the efficacy of which depends on an interplay of variables (Elster et al., 1998; Kopstein and Reilly, 2000; McFaul and Stoner-Weiss, 2004). Accordingly, the economic progress even coupled with the transformation of institutions is not sufficient to facilitate efficient democratic transition and consolidation, particularly in regions with no prior experience of democratic governance. Owing to the lack of societal and institutional preparedness for democratic transition, democratisation needs to be facilitated by social and political transformation that includes, but is not limited to, changes in attitudes, behaviours and values. The structural school of democratisation studies encompasses a vast array of theoretical approaches that both have been applied to the post-communist democratisation and to transitional processes elsewhere in the world (Acemoglu, 2001; Barro, 1999; Horowitz, 2003; Inglehart, 2005; Rueschemeyer et al., 1992; Therborn, 1977).

This book follows the structural school of democracy with emphasis on socio-cultural factors as essential causes of democratic transition and consolidation. The centrality of socio-cultural causes is by no means a new strand in democracy studies. From Plato’s Republic to Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, this school of structural studies has been widely used to explain political and social phenomena on a cross-national and cross-cultural scale (Almond and Verba, 1963; Beer, 1982; Eckstein and Gurr, 1975; Putnam, 1993). Whereas socio-economic explanations for the failure of democracy in the Caucasus are inconclusive, it is the cross-regional socio-cultural factors that are emphasised here as crucial for the underperformance of civil society and democracy.

In contrast to the great divergence in political and economic variables across the Caucasus, the socio-cultural background is much more promising as an explanatory variable for the failure of democracy across the region. This follows in line with the leading assumption of the structural approach to democracy that insists that institutions, as well as political agents, do not exist in a vacuum – their behaviour is shaped by the context in which they operate, which makes them dependent on the structural environment (Meyer and Rowan, 1991). Therefore, structural legacy-focused factors can provide explanations not only for the degree of effectiveness or failure of democratisation and the performance of its key agents, but also allow us to examine these phenomena across space and time.

‘Transition’ theories

The ‘transition paradigm’ is a core theoretical approach of the school of ‘transitology’. Transition theories of democratisation, also known as genetic, view democratic transition as elite-driven and dependent on competitive elections promoting democracy through elite consensus, and bargaining by political agents. Transitology as a school of democratisation studies itself originated from a critique on ‘modernisation’ theory. The birth of transitology is often associated with the influential article ‘Transitions to Democracy’ by the founding father of the ‘transition paradigm’, Dankwart Rustow (1970). Along with dismissing the ‘modernisation’ theory, Rustow insisted on the centrality of human actors in democratic transitions – political leaders, elites and factions. Rustow’s ideas were further developed by O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986), who expanded the ‘transition paradigm’ and applied it to regime changes in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Democratisation, Civil Society and Communist Legacies
• 2  History of Civil Society in the Caucasus
• 3  Post-Communist Civil Society
• 4  Soviet Legacy and Civil Society
• 5  Alternative Explanations
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index