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The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Michael McFaul
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Stanford University
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The transition from communism in Europe and the former Soviet Union has only sometimes produced a transition to democracy. Since the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, most of the twenty-eight new states have abandoned communism, but only nine of these have entered the ranks of liberal democracies. The remaining majority of new postcommunist states are various shades of dictatorships or unconsolidated “transitional regimes.” This article seeks to explain why some states abandoned communism for democracy while others turned to authoritarian rule. In endorsing actorcentric approaches that have dominated analyses of the third wave of democratization, this argument nonetheless offers an alternative set of causal paths from ancien regime to new regime that can account for both democracy and dictatorship as outcomes. Situations of unequal distributions of power produced the quickest and most stable transitions from communist rule. In countries with asymmetrical balances of power, the regime to emerge depends almost entirely on the ideological orientation of the most powerful. In countries where democrats enjoyed a decisive power advantage, democracy emerged. Conversely, in countries in which dictators maintained a decisive power advantage, dictatorship emerged. In between these two extremes were countries in which the distribution of power between the old regime and its challengers was relatively equal. Rather than producing stalemate, compromise, and parted transitions to democracy, however, such situations in the postcommunist world resulted in protracted confrontation between relatively balanced powers. The regimes that emerged from these modes of transitions are not the most successful democracies but rather are unconsolidated, unstable, partial democracies.

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Research Article
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Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2002

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References

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10 I am grateful to Terry Karl for this observation. On “transition from above,” or “transformation,” as the most common mode of transition to democracy, see Karl (fn. 3), 9; and Huntington (fn. 2), 124.

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40 Only one reformist from the old regime, Mikhail Gorbachev, plays a central role in all the postcommunist transitions, since his reforms in the Soviet Union produce the opportunity for liberalization or new dictatorship in every country. There is no similar person or parallel dynamic in cases of democratization in Latin American and Southern Europe.

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50 Steven Fish uses a similar method (with slightly different results); see Fish, , “The Determinants of Economic Reform in the Post-Communist World,” East European Politics and Society 12 (Winter 1998)Google Scholar. Polling data would add a nice complement to these election results, but unfortunately such data were not collected at the time.

51 In certain cases it is not so clear that the most temporally proximate election should be used, because the results were overhauled within the next year or so. Albania and Azerbaijan are coded as more balanced cases and not clear victories over the ancien regime due to the tremendous change in the balance of power immediately following first votes. In Albania the parliament elected in 1991 fell into discord. In new general elections held in March 1992 the democratic challengers (the PDS) won a twothirds majority. In Azerbaijan the Supreme Soviet elected in 1990 voted to disband after independence (in May 1992) in favor of a new National Assembly, which was then split equally between communists and the Popular Front opposition. Georgia is coded as a case in which the anticommunist challengers enjoyed overwhelming support due to the landslide victory of Zviad Gamsakhurdia in May 1991.

52 CPSU party membership is not always a sufficient guide for coding “communist.” In many cases Popular Front leaders were still members of the CPSU. Yet they are coded as anticommunist.

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54 Why were these challengers democrats and not fascists or communists? Why did they have societal support in some places and not others? The explanation cannot simply be culture, history, or location, since much of East-Central Europe and the Baltic states also produced autocratic leaders with fascist ideas earlier in the century. A full exploration of the origins of democracy as the ideology of opposition at this particular moment in this region is beyond the scope of this article. As a preliminary hypothesis, however, it is important to remember the balance of ideologies in the international system at the time. The enemies of communism called themselves democracies. Therefore, the challengers to communism within these regimes adopted the ideological orientation of the international enemies of their internal enemies.

55 In an argument in the same spirit as that advanced here, Bunce prefers the term “breakage” to distinguish transitions in the “east” from the bridging transitions in the “south.” See Bunce, Valerie, “Regional Differences in Democratization: The East versus the South,” Post-Soviet Affairs 14, no. 3 (1998)Google Scholar.

56 Karl (fn. 3), 11.

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58 The central committee wisely vetoed the idea on November 24,1989.

59 In Lithuania the moderate Communist Party leader, Algirdas Brazauskas, tried to negotiate a transition and even split with the Soviet Communist Party. This did not distinguish the Lithuanian transition from that of Latvia or Estonia in any appreciable way, however. In some respects, his appointment was the result of popular mobilization, making him the result of the shifting balance of power, not the cause.

60 Huntington (fn. 2); and Karl (fn. 3).

61 The leaders in these countries had to cut deals with regional leaders to maintain autocracy, but these pacts preserved continuity with the past, rather than navigating a path to a new regime. See Pauline Jones Luong, “Institutional Change through Continuity: Shifting Power and Prospects for Democracy in Post-Soviet Central Asia” (Manuscript, May 2000).

62 Just over 50 percent of deputies in the Kyrgyz Supreme Soviet supported Akaev for president, allowing him to inch out the communist candidate. See Kathleen Collins, “Clans, Pacts, and Politics: Understanding Regime Transitions in Central Asia” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1999), 193.

63 Karimov came to power before the Soviet collapse as a compromise between Uzbek clans. In Uzbekistan the period of political instability occurred in the early Gorbachev years, but was over by the time of transition after Karimov had consolidated his political power. See Collins (fn. 62).

64 Mongolia might be a close second. See Fish, M. Steven, “Mongolia: Democracy without Prerequisites,” Journal of Democracy 9 (July 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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66 For elaboration, see McFaul (fn. 46), chaps. 9,10.

67 Collins (fn. 62), 231.

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71 Imagine the counterfactual. If Armenia were not at war over Nagorno-Karabakh, then the military and intelligence services would not enjoy the prominence that they do and hard-liners like Kocharian would not have risen to power. Public-opinion surveys in Armenia show that “providing for defense” is the area for in which the government enjoys its highest approval rating. See Office of Research, Department of State, “Armenians More Hopeful, Despite Killings,” no. M-13–00 (February 11, 2000), 3.

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73 Ackerman, Bruce, We the People: Transformations, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998)Google Scholar. To be sure, negotiations between liberal and antiliberal (slave-owning) elites in the United States helped to produce partial democratic institutions. These compromises, however, were not negotiated with moderates from the British ancien régime.

74 Huntington (fn. 2), 112.

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76 Every independent variable can become the dependent variable of another study. In journal articles especially, as Michael Taylor argues, the “explanatory buck has to stop somewhere”; Taylor, , “Structure, Culture and Action in the Explanation of Social Change,” Politics and Society 17 (1989), 199CrossRefGoogle Scholar. To avoid tautology and claim causal significance of more proximate variables, however, requires the researcher to demonstrate that the independent variables selected are not endogenous to more important prior variables but rather that they have some independent causal impact.

77 Recent studies that have pushed the causal arrow back one step prior include Wood (fn. 22); Bunce, Valerie, Subversive Institutions: The Design and Destruction of Socialism and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Geddes, Barbara, “What Do We Know about Democratization after Twenty Years?” Annual Review of Political Science 2 (1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Motyl, Alexander, Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Ekiert, Grzegorz, The State against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East-Central Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bratton and van de Walle (fn. 41).