The Failure of Democratization in Russia: a Comparative Perspective

Journal of Eurasian Studies 2 (2011) 40–51 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Eurasian Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/euras The failure of democratization in Russia: A comparative perspective Alfred B. Evans California State Univ., Dept. of Political Science, United States article info abstract Article history: During the 1990s American leaders and many others in the West viewed Russia as the Received 6 September 2009 most important test case for a transition to democracy. Today the consensus of scholarly Accepted 19 December 2009 analyses in the West concludes that, if Russia did enter a transition to democracy, that transition was not successful. This article attempts to suggest some of the main lessons about democratization that may be derived from the study of the experience of post- communist Russia, seen in a comparative perspective. The thesis that the first competitive national election after the downfall of an authoritarian regime marks a decisive breakthrough for forces striving for democratization has not proved true for Russia. Yet the withering of democracy and the consolidation of a semi- authoritarian regime followed the period of competitive elections in Russia. In the early and mid-1990s scholars who had specialized in the study of communist regimes warned that the post-communist states would need to carry out radical economic and social changes as well as sweeping political transformation. In Russia, however, the consequences of a corrupted process of privatization of state assets were enormously damaging for the institutionalization of democracy. As was shown in a number of countries in the 1970s and 1980s, a strong civil society can play an important role in a nation’s transition to democracy. The barriers to the devel- opment of civil society within the Soviet system and the conditions causing weakness in social organizations in post-communist Russia made it easier for members of the elite to subvert reform and guaranteed that there would be fewer restraints on the tendency toward more authoritarian control after 2000. Among post-communist nations, those in which a consensus of most segments of the elite and the public was committed to a radical break with the old system have been much more successful in carrying out marketization and democratization. The combination of historical conditions that had created a strong anti-communist consensus in most of Eastern Europe had not taken shape in Russia. The absence of a fusion of democratization and national liberation in Russia explained the lack of a clear national consensus in favor of political and economic transformation. One of the main lessons from the course of events in Russia from the early 1990s to the present is that change away from one form of authoritarian rule, which usually has been labeled as a transition to democracy, is not irreversible. Some democratic transitions may prove to be shallow, and the changes in post-communist Russia have provided a good example of a shallow transition. The scholarly literature on transitions to democracy that E-mail address: [email protected]. 1879-3665/$ – see front matter Copyright Ó 2010, Asia-Pacific Research Center, Hanyang University. Produced and distributed by Elsevier Limited. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.euras.2010.10.001 A.B. Evans / Journal of Eurasian Studies 2 (2011) 40–51 41 appeared after the early 1980s departed from earlier writings’ emphasis on the growth of social, economic, and cultural conditions for the institutionalization of democracy in the political system. The experience of Russia may encourage us to return to the study of the long-term trends facilitating or inhibiting the growth of democratic institutions. Copyright Ó 2010, Asia-Pacific Research Center, Hanyang University. Produced and distributed by Elsevier Limited. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction1 ‘something else,’” which could consist of democracy or “a new, and possibly more severe, form of authoritarian rule” After the middle of the 1970s authoritarian regimes (O’Donnell and Schmitter, 1986, 3).2 Perhaps those scholars were replaced in many countries, and the political systems should not be held responsible for the policy decisions of in a number of those countries showed signs of becoming the political leaders who chose to interpret the nuanced more democratic, in some cases experiencing changes of findings of academic research in an oversimplified manner. apparently fundamental importance. Most of the nations Nevertheless, as Thomas Carothers attests, at the height that experienced the dramatic growth of democratic of enthusiasm for democratization in the 1980s and 1990s, features in their governmental institutions and political Western advocates of democracy promotion “embraced processes in the 1970s and 1980s were in Southern Europe the view that democracy could succeed anywhere, and (Spain, Portugal, and Greece) and South America (Brazil, could do so quickly” (Carothers, 2007, 24), and were willing Chile, and others). A large number of scholarly writings to believe that any country whose leaders offered any attempted to develop comparative generalizations about political opening was in a “transition to democracy” transitions to democracy based on the evidence gleaned (Carothers, 1997, 92). We should recognize that optimism from the transformations that had taken place in those about the potential (if not the inevitability) of imitation countries. Then in the late 1980s startling changes began of the values of American democracy by other nations had in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In the 1990s, after been a traditional theme in the political culture of the the Soviet bloc disappeared and the Soviet Union itself United States (Kagan, 2008) since the late eighteenth fragmented, the leaders of many states that had been century. It is obvious that the discussion of transitions to under communist rule announced that they were deter- democracy by political scientists had not created such mined to institutionalize the principles of democracy. As hopes, but it did help to heighten expectations among a result there was a burst of unbounded optimism con- politicians and the public for the rapid spread of cerning the prospects for the triumph of democracy in democracy until it would be overwhelmingly dominant in most of the nations of the world. As Martin Dimitrov has the world. reported, “When the Berlin Wall fell, political scientists During the 1990s the country that was viewed by were wildly optimistic about the global spread of democ- American leaders and many others in the West as the most racy” (Dimitrov, 2008, 24). Samuel Huntington believed important test case for a transition to democracy was that scores of countries in different regions of the world Russia. The Clinton administration emphasized that one had been swept up in a “third wave” of democratization of its highest priorities in foreign policy was the success of (Huntington, 1991). Francis Fukuyama argued that there the movement to democracy and a market economy in was no longer any viable alternative to the liberal demo- the states of the former Soviet Union (Christopher, 1993; cratic model for political and economic institutions Talbott, 1993a). US Secretary of State Warren Christopher (Fukuyama, 1992). Larry Diamond published an article asserted that “helping the Russian people to build a free titled, “The Global Imperative: Building a Democratic World society and market economy is the greatest strategic chal- Order” (1994), and some scholars envisioned a world in lenge of our time,” and that “Russia was the single most which all major states would be liberal democracies (Smith, important foreign policy priority” of the Clinton adminis- 2007, 116). tration (Marsden, 2005, 47). Russia is by far the largest of Such optimism proved infectious, and political leaders the former republics of the USSR in both population and in the USA were receptive to the influence of superficial land area; indeed, it is the largest country in the world in interpretations of the writings of academic specialists. It terms of territory. In addition, its geographical location should be noted that the scholars in the field of political gives it influence on issues in several regions in which the science who produced the most influential writings on USA is interested, and it has greater strategic military transitions to democracy (the so-called “transitologists”) capability than any other country except the United States. hedged their generalizations with qualifications that often On a deeper level, psychologically, as the main successor were disregarded by journalists and politicians. For of Soviet Union, Russia represents the core of the former example, Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter said superpower that had been the main geopolitical and that a volume they authored dealt with “transitions from ideological rival of the USA from the late 1940s until the certain authoritarian regimes toward an uncertain 2 It is worth noting that the subtitle of that volume, the single most 1 The author would like to thank Valerie Sperling and Andrei Tsy- widely quoted book about democratization by “transitologists,” is gankov for their comments on an earlier version of this essay. “Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies.” 42 A.B. Evans / Journal of Eurasian Studies 2 (2011) 40–51 early 1990s. If the state that had been the core of the light on that question. Also, there is now a substantial superpower that was the main adversary

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