Challenges to Democracies in East Central Europe

Jan Holzer, Miroslav Mareš, Jan Holzer, Miroslav Mareš

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138488243
• eBook ISBN: 9781317222279
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Democratic development in Central and Eastern Europe is not a finished project, nor is its progress immune to internal and external threats. The current social, economic, ethnic and political situation within the region presents new dangers.

This text identifies and analyses challenges to current East-Central European democracies in terms of potential deconsolidation of democracy reflected in the changes in the institutional and procedural framework (polity), and in the choice of instruments and strategies in the policy area. Specifically examining the regimes of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, these challenges include political extremism and violence, corruption, ethnic and religious conflicts. Presenting original Central European data and utilising the concept of consolidation of democracy from von Beyme and Merkel's concept, the book demonstrates that these challenges are as much influenced by imported phenomena, such as immigration, organized crime, and other potential systemic undemocratic volatilities, as the domestic situation.

This text will be of key interest to scholars and students East European politics, post-Soviet politics, EU Studies, security and strategic studies, international relations, area studies, modern history and sociology.

1 Challenges to democracy in East Central European politics

Introductory remarks

Pavel Dufek, Jan Holzer and Miroslav Mareš

The story of democracy in East Central Europe is not a long one and is full of twists and turns, uncertainties, and even dead ends. As such, it is very much in line with what trajectories of democratization usually look like (Tilly, 2007), and it is therefore particularly surprising that political elites and the general public in the region shared relatively optimistic expectations about the rapid establishment of democratic standards. According to Dryzek and Holmes (2002), at the beginning of the 1990s, developed Western democracies may have had even higher hopes for the democratization of post-communist countries than the countries themselves. This was partly due to a belief that the ‘Eastern’ experience could refresh and inspire the established democratic regimes which were somewhat exhausted from the routine management of democratic politics (Beyme, 2013). During this wave of public optimism, a range of cautious arguments emphasising the historical fragility of democracy were sidelined. On the other hand, it appears logical that the half-century experience of undemocratic rule was so strongly negative that it justified the widely shared hope for a better, democratic future.

The optimism of this era has naturally impacted both political practice and its theoretical reflection. By the mid-1990s, the theoretical paradigm of Post-Communist Studies was swiftly modified, and, instead of transformation or transition, scholars began to focus on the extent of consolidation of the local democracies. The new academic focus was on the criteria for a successful transition, at the expense of the conditions, processes and mechanisms making the transition from an undemocratic to a democratic regime easier or more difficult. In short, transitology was replaced by theories of consolidation (Linz and Stepan, 1996a; Beyme, 1999). It is important to add that in the view of many authors working from within normative democratic theory, this shift was caused by a methodological choice – that is, by a preference for the minimalistic (or electoral) definition of democracy whose criteria are easiest to fulfil or at least easiest to measure (Dryzek and Holmes, 2002; Blokker, 2014).

In this context, a number of authors (referring to much older texts, e.g. Rustow, 1970) contemplated the issue of how to distinguish between where processes of transition and democratization end and where consolidated democratic politics begins. In other words, what are the indicators of complete transitions? Research on unsuccessful transitions which culminated in so-called hybrid regimes became another attractive topic of comparative studies. Guillermo O’Donnell (1994), David Collier and Steven Levitsky (1997), Fareed Zakaria (1997), Larry Diamond (2002) and Thomas Carothers (2002) turned their attention to political regimes which resisted democratization trends and either hovered somewhere between democracies and undemocratic regimes or even began a backslide towards authoritarian practices. This hybrid paradigm, however, did not refer to the East Central European region, with the notable exception of Slovakia during Vladimír Mečiar’s governments (between 1994 and 1998; cf. Ágh, 1998). The dominant topic of research on the political systems of East Central Europe in the 1990s was consolidation. The reason for this was the then undisputed success of the transitions from local variations of communism. This was interpreted through the lens of the hypothesis (which has meanwhile come under criticism) that democracy within the region was not being formed from scratch but that older democratic traditions were being revived, thus avoiding the need of a complete rebuilding of the polity.

There is a long tradition of research seeking a relevant theoretical framework to measure the actual state of democratic consolidation. The earliest comparative studies within particular regions (especially Latin America and Southern Europe) were published in the mid-1980s. These studies – by scholars like Enrique Baylor (1987), Juan J. Linz and Larry Diamond (1989; employing the concept of democratic stability), Geoffrey Pridham (1990), Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O´Donnell and Samuel J. Valenzuela (1992) and Phillippe C. Schmitter (1993) – are now regarded as classics. Further studies on this topic were published in the early to mid-1990s: for example, Leonardo Morlino (1995), Richard Gunther, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros and Hans-Jürgen Puhle (1996) and Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan (1996a). All of these have attempted to develop a framework for measuring the consolidation of democracy.

Among the most frequently cited conceptions of consolidation in Central European (and to a degree Eastern European) political systems were those put forward (virtually at the same time) by two German political scientists: Klaus von Beyme and Wolfgang Merkel. Widely accepted and frequently applied, their analytical frameworks for understanding the development of democratic governance in Central and Eastern Europe outlined the criteria for the consolidation of democracy as well as the phases of consolidation. The two concepts are very similar: Merkel talks about a multilevel model of democratic consolidation¹, while von Beyme describes four basic levels or phases of consolidation.² These levels or phases are quite general, and so other authors have added further criteria for comparison of transforming and consolidating countries, such as whether (a) at least two parliamentary elections took place without violence from ‘above or below’; (b) a turnover in governments is accepted by the main political camps; (c) electoral volatility is increasing; (d) there are significant anti-system parties; or (e) the majority of citizens accept democracy as the ‘only game in town’. The last point then consists of indicators such as (i) cabinet solidarity and a clear structure of responsibilities within the cabinet; (ii) acceptance of political responsibilities by elected officials and resolution of political conflicts without recourse to the judiciary; (iii) limited powers of the head of state in forming and dissolving the government and in naming judges; (iv) a limited role for hereditary second chambers of parliament; (v) democratization of the electoral system; (vi) political parties serving as the key linkage between the government and the parliamentary majority; and (vii) recognition of MPs as professional politicians rather than amateur enthusiasts (Linz and Stepan, 1996b).

However, many of the established Western democracies would, no doubt, have trouble satisfying all the criteria of consolidation.³ A realistic take on the existing flaws of Western as well East Central and Eastern democracies resulted in a shift in how the concept of democratization was construed in theoretical discourse. Originally, it was used to describe the second stage of transition which followed the liberalization stage (Przeworski, 1991). Gradually, a broader and more process-oriented conception prevailed, which emphasised not only that democratic standards in any given country were not currently being met but that such incompleteness or open-endedness of democracy was a matter of principle. The term degreeism is sometimes used in this context. Over the past fifteen years, a renewed interest in the tension between the democratic ideal and the ‘polyarchic’ practice (Dahl, 1989) was also apparent in the field of normative political theory, or, more specifically, democratic theory. Accordingly, several wide-ranging indices have been developed in order to measure the quality of democracy and/or democratic consolidation. Their rationale was to capture both the extent of progress (i.e. establishment, deepening etc.) in the countries’ democratic consolidation (which is regarded by a significant section of the political science community as not only desirable but also teleologically necessary)⁴ and the amount of backsliding. However, a number of questions immediately arise, such as the following: What does backsliding actually mean? What is de-democratization, and are any of the existing models relevant for conceptualizing this process? How would a country return to an undemocratic regime? As the book strives to show, answers to questions are highly pertinent to understanding the recent political history of the East Central European region.

Deconsolidating democracies: first approximation

There are a number of approaches to these questions. First, it is worth noting that there are surprisingly few texts focused on this topic (and this book thus fills a certain gap), with one major exception discussed below. The field of Democratization Studies is dominated by debates on the quality of democracy, which is a spin-off of the previously mentioned degreeism. This discourse takes for granted that the quality of democracy varies across countries. In other words, there are different kinds of democracy which can be distinguished by a wide range of adjectives. This method was used, for instance, in a study by Jørgen Møller and Svend-Erik Skaaning (2013) to distinguish types of political regimes. Combining the classic concepts of Joseph Schumpeter, Larry Diamond and Robert A. Dahl, they distinguish between minimalist, electoral, polyarchic and liberal democratic regimes. Their distinction is based on the presence or absence of four key features in a given system: competitive elections, inclusive elections with high integrity, civil liberties and rule of law.

Such an approach to democracy, based on a delineation of its various sub-types, refers implicitly or explicitly to Giovanni Sartori’s classic book on concepts and concept formation as it preserves the integrity of democracy as one of two key regime categories (democracy vs. non-democracy; cf. Sartori, 1987). The key question is how to understand the sub-types of democracy. The standard approach treats these sub-types as developmental models leading naturally to the ideal of genuine democracy – whether this means regular liberal democracy as understood by Møller and Skaaning and other empirically oriented researchers or its alternatives as explored, for example, in extensive normative debates on deliberative democracy. However, what about the previously mentioned possibility of displacement of the democratic model of governance as such – that is, the threat of backsliding to inferior forms of democracy or even to non-democracy?

Some political science concepts take the possibility of democratic backsliding into account or at least attempt to capture some attributes which may accompany, signal or symbolise this possibility. One example is Gerry Stoker’s concept of political disenchantment, which captures the changes in participation and representation in current democracies – namely, the decrease in voter participation in elections at all levels. However, Stoker focuses just on a single attribute within this issue (Stoker, 2006).

Charles Tilly’s (2007) work on historical trajectories of democracies and non-democracies is the one important exception in that it attempts to systematically identify medium-level processes whose combinations in differing contexts result in democratization or de-democratization of a given political system (as an aside, Tilly was a keen degreeist). These include integration of trust networks into public politics, insulation of public politics from ‘categorical inequalities’ (status- or material-based), and the scope of political autonomy of major alternative power centres. Tilly’s approach is useful at one level as it acknowledges that trends of democratic deterioration or outright collapse have been as common in recent (and not-so-recent) history as those of democratic strengthening. Besides his skilful interweaving of the issues of democracy and state capacity, Tilly’s discussion of the relationship between entrenchment of categorical inequalities and de-democratization is particularly instructive. First, its mostly egalitarian overtones overlap with public debates about the legacy of post-communist economic transformation towards capitalism, and generally about the necessity of the connection between democracy and market capitalism. Second, the issue of status-based inequalities relates (among others) to ethnic and religious tensions which are apparent in East Central European countries, representing one of the causes of the rise of populist and extremist political forces.

On the other hand, Tilly’s perspective still remains too ‘macro’ for our purposes, for in order to assess the impact of various processes, we need more retrospection than recent history can provide. Another reason is that none of the five post-communist East Central European countries had to deal with low state capacity, arguably one of the most significant obstacles to lasting democratization. Despite these drawbacks, Tilly expands the analysis of de-democratizing trajectories well beyond the focus on elections and/or formal institutions, and this is the point where the present volume fits in.

Other approaches or concepts depart from more overtly normative considerations. This is the case with the concepts of post-politics⁵ and post-democracy (Crouch, 2004), which have been discussed extensively not only among political scientists but also in the media and public debates. Although they have differing intellectual backgrounds, these concepts no doubt represent a significant (critical) perspective on the present and future of modern democracies. Although the sources of this ‘democratic malaise’ are numerous, the ‘usual suspects’ almost always include the capitalist economic system (fuelled by globalisation) and its attendant injustices, and the decrease in citizen participation in most representative democracies (Buchstein and Jörke, 2007). These approaches enable a variety of predictions about the likely evolution of modern democracies as well as of recommendations regarding the desirable responses: from the demise of most of the key attributes of democracy and their gradual replacement by novel amorphous social structures which transcend the contradiction between democratic and undemocratic models, through attempts at strengthening of existing and more proactive introduction of new participative, deliberative and control mechanisms – that is, at moving ‘beyond’ the model of consolidated liberal democracy (Rosanvallon, 2011), all the way to revolutionary calls for a radical political change.⁶

Indeed, many authors concur that contemporary democracies are in crisis. Paul Blokker has recently expressed this belief about the new post-communist democracies. He specifically focuses on what he takes to be a pathological dominance of a rigid, technocratic constitutionalism, as well as of a formal, electoral understanding of democracy, over the normative democratic ideal of maximizing public involvement in decision-making on constitutional rules (Blokker, 2014). This can be contrasted to the more cautious observation by another foundational scholar of democracy, Klaus von Beyme (2001), who argues that, given the excessive expectations which stemmed from erroneous beliefs about an ‘idyllic West’, the perceived deficits of Central European democracies and the related disappointments and frustrations of their citizens were virtually predetermined and thus should not surprise anyone. Freeing ourselves from the over-optimistic visions of transformation inherent in transitological theory may reduce the appeal of overly pessimistic predictions of an unstoppable onset of post-democracy or even worse (Beyme, 2013). In any case, a gap is starting to emerge between the expected evolution of democracy towards more mature forms, on the one hand, and – as critics would claim – its increasingly systemic deficits, on the other.

Despite sceptical voices pointing out the blurring of the standard types of democracy, the authors believe that it is premature to speak about the loss of validity of standard conceptual tools. Democracy is an open and changeable phenomenon which is anything but reducible to a single pure model. The fact that democracy represents an ov...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Challenges to democracy in East Central European politics: introductory remarks
• 2 Debating democracy in East Central Europe: the issues and their origins
• 3 Populism as a threat to liberal democracy in East Central Europe
• 4 Extremism and East Central European politics
• 5 Democracy and organised crime in East Central Europe
• 6 Corruption and democracy in East Central Europe
• 7 External actors and their influences on the quality of democracy in East Central Europe
• Epilogue: the deconsolidation of democracy and democratic quality
• Index