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60th Anniversary Edition THE BEST OF FPRI’S ESSAYS ON Democratic Transitions 2005-2015 FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE The Best of FPRI’s Essays on Democratic Transitions, 2006-2015 Project on Democratic Transitions Edited by: Maia Otarashvili July 2015 FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE www.fpri.org FOREWORD By Ambassador Adrian A. Basora Director of FPRI’s Project on Democratic Transitions July 2015 To judge by the headlines of recent months, democracy might seem to be in prolonged retreat throughout the world. Rather than “democratic transitions,” perhaps we should instead speak of authoritarian regression or, some would argue, the futility of America’s attempts to promote the spread of democracy abroad. Certainly, the global picture is far less rosy today than when we launched the Project on Democratic Transitions a decade ago. Yet, in the longer sweep of history, the story is not black- and-white; the lessons from the attempted democratic transitions of the past three decades are instead nuanced. When we began the PDT in early 2005, there had been fifteen years of dramatic progress after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The stifling communist dictatorships of Europe and Eurasia had crumbled, leading to rapid democratization in much of the region and culminating in Ukraine’s 2004 “Orange Revolution.” At the time, many analysts saw this as the wave of the future, not just in Europe/Eurasia but globally. Instead, the past decade has produced many disappointed hopes and significant regression in some countries. This is true not only in the post-communist region but also in the Arab world, in Latin America and elsewhere. Moscow is now pursuing an undeclared war in Ukraine with the clear purpose of stifling democracy in its “Near Abroad.” There has been regression even in some of the transitional countries of Central Europe that had earlier seemed to be on a promising path – most notably Hungary. And early dreams of quickly democratizing the Middle East, starting with the Iraq intervention, have been dashed. Even in America’s own backyard, democracy has suffered worrisome setbacks, particularly in Venezuela. So, what has gone wrong and what does the future hold? As eminent political scientist Samuel Huntington pointed out, the history of democratic progress is one of centuries, not decades; there have been multi-decade waves of democratization, as well as “reverse waves.” Clearly, the road from authoritarianism to consolidated democracy is a long and winding one, and it contains i | FPRI many pitfalls. And there is nothing inevitable about societies choosing that road at all. External encouragement or example can sometimes help, but there are important limits on what the U.S and other democracies can do to lure other countries onto the road to democracy and to ensure their journeys’ success. These have been the PDT’s core issues from the start. The Project’s goal has been to analyze the successes and the failures of transition in the post-communist region and in other selected countries, to learn what has or has not worked to assist democratization, and to disseminate the practical policy conclusions that flow from this analysis. And, as the geopolitical situation has changed over the past decade, we have focused increasingly on the external forces influencing these attempted transformations. Of late, we have paid particular attention to the role of a resurgent authoritarian Russian regime that is seeking to reverse the successes of democratization in its vicinity. In honor of FPRI’s 60th anniversary, the present compilation is meant to provide the reader with a sampling of the writings that the Project on Democratic Transitions has produced for publication on FPRI’s website over the past decade. If these works pique your interests, then I invite you to visit our website at www.fpri.org/research/transitions to learn more about our project, to become a member of FPRI, or a member or partner at a higher level, and thus to support the sustained production of high quality scholarship on these key issues. ii | FPRI Volumes of Related Interest FPRI’s Project on Democratic Transitions has produced several articles of related interest over the years, published with FPRI’s journal Orbis and other scholarly journals. Readers of this volume on democratic transitions may also be interested in the select PDT publications below: Bunce, Valerie and Sharon Wolchik. “Youth and Electoral Revolutions in Slovakia, Serbia, and Georgia.” SAIS Review of International Affairs 26 (Summer-Fall 2006): 55-65. Bunce, Valerie and Sharon Wolchik. “Favorable Conditions and Electoral Revolutions.” Journal of Democracy 17 (October 2006): 5-18. Bunce, Valerie. “Global Patterns and Postcommunist Dynamics.” Orbis 50 (Fall 2006): 601-620. Mitchell, Lincoln A. “Democracy in Georgia Since the Rose Revolution.” Orbis 50 (Fall 2006): 669-676. Basora, Adrian A. “Must Democracy Continue to Retreat in Postcommunist Europe and Eurasia?” Orbis 52 (Winter 2008): 1-24. Bunce, Valerie. “The Tasks of Democratic Transition and Transferability.” Orbis 52 (Winter 2008): 25-40. Bunce, Valerie and Sharon Wolchik. “Getting Real About ‘Real Causes’.” Journal of Democracy 20 (January 2009): 69-73. Bunce, Valerie and Sharon Wolchik. “Postcommunist Ambiguities.” Journal of Democracy 20 (July 2009): 93-107. Basora, Adrian A. and Jean F. Boone. “A New U.S. Policy Towards Democracy in Postcommunist Europe/Eurasia.” Problems of Post-Communism 57 (January 2010): 1-19. Bunce, Valerie and Sharon Wolchik. “Defeating Dictators: Electoral Change and Stability in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes.” World Politics 62 (January 2010): 43-86. Wolchik, Sharon. “Can There Be a Color Revolution?” Journal of Democracy 23 (July 2012): 63-70. Basora, Adrian A. “Can the Post-Communist Democracies Survive a Continuation of the Euro- Crisis?” Orbis 57 (Spring 2013): 217-231. iii | FPRI Table of Contents Foreword ......................................................................................................................................... i By Ambassador Adrian A. Basora, Director of FPRI’s Project on Democratic Transitions (June 2015) Understanding Democratic Transitions ...................................................................................... 1 By Adrian A Basora (October 2006) The Continued Retreat of Democracy in Post-communist Europe and Eurasia? .................. 7 By Adrian A. Basora (November 2007) The Georgia Crisis and Continuing Democratic Erosion in Europe/Eurasia ....................... 17 By Adrian A. Basora and Jean F. Boone (November 2008) Countering Democratic Regression in Europe and Eurasia ................................................... 23 Findings from an FPRI-SAIS Conference (October 16, 2009) The Value of Visegrad Four ....................................................................................................... 36 By Adrian A. Basora (March 2011) Do the Post-Communist Transitions Offer Lessons for the Arab World? ............................ 42 By Adrian A. Basora (August 2011) The Arab Uprisings of 2011: Ibn Khaldun Encounters Civil Society .................................... 50 By Theodore Friend (July 2011) Has Democracy Met the Stress Test in Post-Communist Europe? ........................................ 64 By Adrian A. Basora (September 2012) Georgia’s Elections: Lessons for Democratic Transitions ...................................................... 71 By Michael Hikari Cecire (November 2012) Reforming the Democracy Bureaucracy .................................................................................. 78 By Melinda A. Haring (June 2013) Revamping the Nagorny Karabakh Peace Process.................................................................. 95 By Thomas de Waal (July 2013) Can the EU Rescue Democracy in Hungary?......................................................................... 100 By Alexandra Wiktorek and Maia Otarashvili (July 2013) Ukraine and the Future of the Western Democratization Agenda ...................................... 109 By Adrian A Basora, Maia Otarashvili, and Hannah Lidicker (February 2014) Geopolitical Implications of the Ukraine Crisis: What is at Stake for Georgia and Moldova? ................................................................................................................................... 113 By Maia Otarashvili and Hannah Lidicker (March 2014) The Russian Invasion of Ukraine ............................................................................................ 117 By Michael Cecire (March 2014) Putin’s “Greater Novorossiya” – the Dismemberment of Ukraine? .................................... 123 By Adrian A. Basora and Aleksandr Fisher (April 2014) Geopolitical Implications of the Ukraine Crisis ..................................................................... 134 By Richard Kraemer and Maia Otarashvili (May 2014) Ukraine’s Struggle for Democracy: Severe Challenges Ahead ............................................ 144 By Adrian A Basora and Aleksandr Fisher (July 2014) Can Afghanistan Survive Its Presidential Election?.............................................................. 158 By Richard Kraemer (August 2014) Does Democracy Matter? ......................................................................................................... 167 An FPRI Conference Report by Richard Kraemer (October 2014) Russia’s Frozen Economy ........................................................................................................ 180 By Chris Miller (December 2014)
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