Institutions, Legacies, and Strategies of Regime Formation: a Comparative Study of Albania, Czech Republic and Romania
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Inescapable Past: Institutions, Legacies, and Strategies of Regime Formation: A comparative study of Albania, Czech Republic and Romania By Sokol Lleshi Submitted to Central European University Doctoral School of Political Science International Relations and Public Policy In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: Professor András Bozóki Budapest, Hungary 2015 September 30 Word Count: 76174 Abstract The emergence of particular institutional sites generically known as Institutes of Memory have been part of the political project of center-right parties in East Central Europe to make an effective break with the state socialist past. The thesis addresses the question of what explains the variation of the institutionalization of the political projects and their effect in breaking with the state socialist institutional legacies and the inheritors of the past regime. The thesis uses a small-N case study in combination with within-case analysis focusing on the cases of Czech Republic, Albania, and Romania. The findings of the thesis produce a theoretical typology of the three cases across the institutional and the legacy dimension. The Czech case is a case of robust institutionalization and transformation of the state socialist legacies. The Romanian case has a factionalized institutionalization and partial transformation of the legacy and the Albanian case is case of weak institutionalization and fixed legacy. i Dedication To my parents ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... i Dedication ................................................................................................................................. ii Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 : Institutional Emergence and Institutionalization ............................................. 8 1.1 A multi-layered conceptualization of institution ............................................................. 8 1.2 Existing theoretical frameworks on institutional emergence and formation ................. 22 1.3 An explanatory model of institutional emergence and institutionalization: Balance of forces, institutional priors, field effects, and institutional structures and practices ............. 33 1.4 Degrees of Institutionalization ....................................................................................... 42 Chapter 2: Transition, State Socialism, Legacies and Regime .......................................... 46 2.1 Configuration of the field of power during late socialism, the shifting alliances at the transition juncture ................................................................................................................ 46 2.2. Transition to a new regime: the framework of emergent democratic regime and its consolidation ........................................................................................................................ 52 2.3 The post-authoritarian/post-communist condition: institutional legacies of state socialism .............................................................................................................................. 57 2.4 Dealing with the past: strategies of regime formation ................................................... 60 Chapter 3: Method ................................................................................................................. 64 3.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 64 3.2 Case Selection ................................................................................................................ 66 3.3 Process-tracing method to determine the causal mechanisms of institutional emergence and degrees of institutionalization ....................................................................................... 70 3.4 Data Collection: Qualitative Interviewing, Discourse Analysis and other textual data 72 3.5 Field work experience in three institutional sites: limitations and possibilities ............ 75 Chapter 4: Institutionalization Compared: Albania, Czech Republic and Romania ..... 78 4.1 The Albanian case: Weak Institutionalization ............................................................... 78 4.1.1 Coalition formation: shifting of the center -right to the anti-communist discourse and the ambivalent alliance with the ex-politically persecuted social class .................... 78 4.1.2 Institutional emergence ........................................................................................... 88 4.1.3 The post-authoritarian social formation: the dynamics of struggles and strategies for domination between competing social groups in the political and cultural field ....... 97 4.1.4 Cohesive internal dominant faction at the Institute devoid of embedded iii accumulated structures, division of labor and sedimented institutional practices ......... 109 4.1.5 Porous boundaries: narrative transferal and the civic role .................................... 119 4.2 The Czech case: robust institutionalization ................................................................. 127 4.2.1 Coalition-formation: anti-communist conservatives in alliance with anti- communist state functionaries........................................................................................ 127 4.2.2 Contestation on the center-right political project by political opponents, associations and institutions of the cultural field: Possible Alternative Institutions ..... 142 4.2.3 Processes of institutional formation: antecedent organizational units, institutional priors, accumulated organizational structures and practices .......................................... 150 4.2.4 Explaining robust institutionalization in the Czech case: sedimentation of institutional practice, expected institutional roles, contending institutional faction and division of labor ............................................................................................................. 159 4.2.5 Institutional change: organizational reconstruction, layering of the institutional practice, dislodging the Institute from the bureaucratic field ........................................ 174 4.3 The Romanian Case: factional institutionalization ...................................................... 178 4.3.1 Institutional formation coalition(s): calling civil society to arms ......................... 178 4.3.2 Existing institutions, alternative institutional formations and factional institutionalization.......................................................................................................... 185 Chapter 5: Strategies of Regime formation ....................................................................... 193 5.1 Case study: Albania ..................................................................................................... 193 5.1.1 The partial congruence between the democratic opposition and the reformed communists .................................................................................................................... 193 5.1.2 Tackling the legacies of the state socialist regime: exclusionary ideological- normative boundaries of the democratic regime ............................................................ 203 5.1.3 The recurring policy on the past: anti-communist narrative and legacy as remnant ........................................................................................................................................ 208 5.2 Czech Case ................................................................................................................... 212 5.2.1 Inclusive democratic regime, rule of law, proselytizing the inheritors and material legacies of state socialism as inoperative remnants ....................................................... 212 5.2.2 Instituting a rupture with the past regime ............................................................. 220 5.3 Case Study Romania Piecemeal Transformation of Legacies ..................................... 227 5.3.1 Absence of foundational legitimacy of the democratic regime, polarized political field, the inertia of the practice civil society vs. the state .............................................. 227 5.3.2 Tackling the institutionalist legacies of state socialism: a partial transformation 234 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 238 Reference List ....................................................................................................................... 240 iv Introduction The recurring political project of the center-right parties in most post-communist countries, centered on breaking with the state socialist regime by continuing the unfinished revolution and aiming to efface the past regime's residuals was linked with the establishment of a particular institutional arrangement. The research question that this dissertation addresses is twofold: What explains the variance of the institutionalization of these political projects and what is their effect in breaking with the state socialist pasts' legacies and inheritors? This type of institutional arrangement was nominally referred to as an Institute of Memory, albeit