1989 and the Politics of Democratic Performativity

In light of the fact—despite a widespread impression to the contrary—that the collapse of Communism in the fall of 1989 did not happen overnight, the paper explores the kind of gradual societal work that had led to the emergence of democratic polities in Central Europe but that had generally escaped the notice not only of policy makers and the leaders of the “free world” but also of theorists. The concept and practices of performative democracy as it manifested itself in the period of late Communism (1970s–1989), but also in South Africa at the dusk of apartheid, and the conditions for political performativity, as well as its main features, are then discussed.     

Democratization without Development: Benin 1989–2009

In contrast to a widely held view that sees Benin’s democratic transition in 1989 primarily as the fall-out of global tendencies, this paper focuses specifically on the internal causes of this historical event, which it locates in the context of the history of Dahomey/Benin since 1960 and the country’s political economy. It argues that, while the Renouveau Démocratique doubtlessly represented a significant step towards democracy, it did little to change the country’s deep-rooted political-economic structures. Since Dahomey gained independence in 1960, it has been a structurally deficient rent-based economy. None of the regime changes of the past 50 years—independence in 1960, the adoption of Marxist-Leninism in 1974 or the Renouveau Démocratique of 1989/90—have succeeded in changing anything in relation to this fundamental fact. Thus, the crisis of 1989 was primarily a crisis of a particular pattern of political-economic regulation. None of the regime changes of the last 50 years, however, succeeded in resolving the country’s basic development problem, i.e. how to transform a structurally deficient rent-based economy into a productive one. Likewise, throughout the entire period from 1960 to 2009, basic elements of the political culture of the country remained unchanged. Neopatrimonialism, personalization, authoritarianism, regionalism and generationalism became, at best, more subtly differentiated as a result of the democratic renewal. To this extent, the Beninese democratic renewal of 1989/90 highlights the problematic connection between democracy and economic development.     

To return or not to return? Politics vs. economics in China's brain drain

This study, based on 273 face-to-face interviews with students, scholars, and former residents of China in the United States in 1993, uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to explain people's views about returning to China. Although less than 9 percent of interviewees had concrete plans to return, over 32 percent were positively disposed to returning in the future. Key background variables that affect that decision are people’s age, sex, social background in China, and their views about returning when they first left China. Concern about children’s future was not significant, but having a wife abroad greatly increased the desire to stay abroad. Why people chose not to return varied significantly between people with children and those who didn't. Even four years after the Tiananmen crackdown, concerns about political instability, lack of political freedom, and a lack of trust that the government would let people who returned leave again were significant reasons for not returning. But economic factors—better U.S. housing and incomes—as well as professional concerns about lack of job or career mobility in China and a poor work environment there were equally important. Given the weight attributed to economic factors and political stability, if China weathers Deng Xiaoping’s succession and the economy continues to grow, significant numbers of Chinese may return. David Zweig is Associate Professor, Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is the author ofFreeing China’s Farmers: Rural Restructuring in the Deng Era (forthcoming),Agrarian Radicalism in China, 1968–1981 (1989), co-author ofChina’s Brain Drain to the United States: The Views of Students and Scholars in the 1990s (1995), and co-editor ofChina’s Search for Democracy: The Student and Mass Movement of 1989 (1992) andNew Perspectives on China’s Cultural Revolution (1991). He writes about China’s rural political economy, transnational relations, and domestic politics. He is currently completing a book on the impact of China’s open policy and transnational relations on urban development, rural industry, universities, and recipients of foreign aid.     

Democracy Through the Lens of 1989: Liberal Triumph or Radical Turn?

In a political reading, 1989 has been predominantly interpreted from a liberal point of view, and its impact has primarily been taken as strengthening the liberal-democratic idea of a political community. The year 1989 is, however, not reducible to a mere confirmation of a universal status of liberal democracy, rather, a reverse reading—i.e., the recognition of the emergence of innovative, radical democratic ideas and practices from the East—is equally important to do full justice to the complex events of 1989. As a set of ideas (more specifically, dissident thought) as well as a set of practices (negotiation, self-limitation, and constitution-making), 1989 has provided important inspiration for innovation in the normative political theory of democracy, even if on the margins. The essay starts with a brief enquiry into the widespread triumphalist thesis of liberal democracy and continues by arguing that a more radical reading of 1989—in particular in the form of the radical notions of civil society and dissidence—is equally possible. The notion of “self-democratizing civil society” offers important ways of preserving the radical legacy of East-Central European dissidence. The idea of self-democratizing civil society should, however, be read together with the ideas of radical self-limitation, an anti-revolutionary understanding of revolution, pluralistic sovereignty, and an ethic of dissent in order for one to fully appreciate its innovative potential for the radical reinvigoration of modern democracies.     

The Polish Solidarity Movement in Retrospect: In Search of a Mnemonic Mirror

The legacy of the Solidarity movement of the 1980s, which was a leading force in the region’s 1989 revolutions, culminating most symbolically with the fall of the Berlin Wall, has yet to be institutionalized in Polish social memory. A spate of official commemorations marking the movement’s 25th anniversary in 2005 provided a palette on which Poles projected—or refused to project—their memories. The movement’s legacy continues to play out in current and contentious electoral politics, since the leaders of the top contending parties are former Solidarity activists. Despite and partly because of this active presence of Solidarity movement players, Polish civil society appears to be in a liminal state of active hesitation over the task of concretizing this movement’s past in commemorative forms. This article proposes six cultural and political explanations for this hesitation. It also recommends that social scientists disaggregate the concept of memory work into various manifestations on a continuum from hesitation to deliberation and agitation to institutionalization. As the article illustrates, hesitation can constitute action. At stake in this exercise is a larger discourse—over the direction of the post-1989 socio-political changes vis-à-vis the aims of the 1989 revolutions and the meaning of democracy and transitional justice in a posttotalitarian context.     

The birth of the memory of Communism: memorial museums in Europe

This article argues that the memory of Communism emerged in Europe not due to the public recognition of pre-given historical experiences of peoples previously under Communist regimes, but to the particularities of the post-Cold War transnational political context. As a reaction to the uniqueness claim of the Holocaust in the power field structured by the European enlargement process, Communism memory was reclaimed according to the European normative and value system prescribed by the memory of the Holocaust. Since in the political context of European enlargement refusing to cultivate the memory of the Holocaust was highly illegitimate, the memory of Communism was born as the “twin brother” of Holocaust memory. The Europeanized memory of Communism produced a legitimate differentia specifica of the newcomers in relation to old member states. It has been publicly reclaimed as an Eastern European experience in relation to universal Holocaust memory perceived as Western. By the analysis of memorial museums of Communism, the article provides a transnational, historical, and sociological account on Communism memory. It argues that the main elements of the discursive repertoire applied in post-accession political debates about the definition of Europe were elaborated before 2004 in a pan-European way.     

Macroeconomic conditions and political instability: An empirical analysis

This article uses statistical methods to examine the relationship between two key macroeconomic indicators—inflation and economic growth—and four measures of political instability—peaceful unrest, violent unrest, coups d’etat, and changes of government. Using a panel research design and fixed effects regression analysis, I examine first whether contemporaneous relationships exist between these two groups of variables and then the direction of causality between them. Peaceful unrest clearly produces higher inflation and slower growth. Oddly, coups d’etat seem to producelower inflation, and there is some evidence that reverse causation may operate here as well—that high inflation mayreduce the likelihood of coups. Slow economic growth is associated with higher levels of violent unrest and a higher likelihood of coups and changes of government, but the direction of causality in these relationships is not clear. These findings, taken together, suggest that the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and political instability runs primarily from the latter to the former, raising doubts about the widely held view that poor economic conditions generally produce unrest and instability. Mark J. Gasiorowski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University. He is currently working on a project focusing on the relationship between democracy and macroeconomic conditions.     

Overcoming the past: De-communization and reconstruction of post-communist societies

In several of the central and eastern European nations, the fall of Communism has initiated a new round of political intolerance that threatens to destroy the foundations of their fragile democratic regimes. Campaigns of lustration (political “cleansing”) have imposed ideological tests for employment and political participation in the Balkan countries and in parts of the former Soviet Union. The small, poor nation of Albania has been especially seriously impacted by this atmosphere of vengeacean against ex-Communists and their families. Justified by the principles of destructive entitlement—reminiscent of ancient cultural rituals of blood retribution—journalists have been arrested, members of the opposition have been imprisoned, and University programs have been suspended. In response to Albania’s plight, and to a similar pattern of civil rights abuses in neighboring countries, social scientists have begun to analyze the powerful role played by the “past-in-the-present” in current reconstruction efforts. As Jurgen Habermas, Adam Michnik, Seymour Martins Lipset, and others have noted, a new “culture of forgiveness” may well be a necessary condition for the development of stable and authentic democratic societies in the region. Fatos Tarifa is currently at the Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Tirana in 1985. He is director of the New Sociological Research Center (NSRC) in Tirana, Albania, and is the author of several books and journal articles, including a 1991 bookIn Search of the Sociological Fact (published in Albanian). Jay Weinstein is a professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University. He has travelled widely in the Third World and in Central and Eastern Europe. Author of numerous books, journal articles, and chapters, he is currently working on a volume entitledSocial and Cultural Change: Social Science for a Dynamic World (forthcoming in 1997 by Allyn & Bacon Publishers).     

“Time is money,efficiency is life”: The transformation of labor relations in China

The past twenty-five years of economic reform have seen the transformation of labor relations in China, with the widespread adoption of capitalist labor practices by firms of all ownership types. This transformation has occurred in the absence of both large-scale privatization and political change, but was part of a gradual yet dynamic liberalization and “opening up” to foreign trade and investment that occurred across both regions and across types of firms. The first half of this paper details this process of dynamic liberalization that has spawned competition and change in labor practices, including marked increases in managerial autonomy and labor flexibility. This explanation goes beyond the regional emphasis to also examine changes across types of ownership; the gradual liberalization of labor policies and convergence with capitalist practices can only be understood as part of a more general trend ofownership expansion, through the introduction of new types of firms, andownership recombination, which is the fusing of the public and non-state sectors through novel forms of organization. The much-needed panacea to this shift to capitalism—a state regulatory and legal regime that is capable of mitigating its excesses and effective organizations to represent labor—is not yet well established. The second half of this paper explores two institutions, the labor contract system and the official trade union organization, to show how labor relations have shifted dramatically toward flexibility, insecurity, and managerial control. The author would like to thank those who offered comments and criticisms, including Mark Frazier, Jaeyoun Won, Bill Hurst, Jacob Eyferth, Elizabeth Remick, Mark Selden, Ruth Collier, and two anonymous reviewers.     

Urban growth in India: Demographic and sociocultural prospects

This paper explores some of the complexities of India’s urban growth since its first post-Independence census of 1951. Two levels of analysis are pursued as they affect one another: numerical or demographic changes, on one hand, and changes in living conditions, or sociocultural trends, on the other. The general conclusion of the study is that a process of “erosion” of traditional society is occurring, but it is occurring slowly— as a population more than twice the size of the entire United States continues to live in the countryside (and to increase at about twice the U.S. growth rate). Moreover, the sociocultural change is occurring in a non-linear fashion, as much that is traditional endures along side of the modern—rather than being replaced or obliterated by it. Finally, while the growth is occurring in cities of all sizes, the intermediate, regional capitals like Hyderabad and ahmedabad—rather than the largest cities such as Bombay or Calcutta—are experiencing the most rapid growth. Jay Weinstein is a professor of sociology and faculty research fellow at Eastern Michigan University. He has also taught at the University of Iowa (1972–77) and Georgia Institute of Technology (1977–86). He has been involved in comparative development studies for over twenty years, beginning with his Ph.D. fieldwork in India in 1971. His current interests include Canadian Studies and Eastern Europe. He visited Bulgaria in February–March, 1991 as a member of a U.S. Information Agency Citizen Exchange Project.     

Chainbuilding: A New Building for the New New School

Until a souring national and local economy led them to scale back their plans in 2008, The New School in New York City had been designing a new, 500,000-ft² “signature building” intended to embody what administrators were calling The new New School, a university committed to progressive, interdisciplinary, urban, global education. The building was to offer glimpses of the horizon of academic infrastructure and media and their potential impact—structural, pedagogic, and symbolic—on the university and its communities. Although the building will not be realized in the form presented to the public in spring 2008, the design deliberations that generated that proposal offer valuable insights into how a university might reembody its ideals in a time of intense globalization and mediatization. Complementing Robert Kirkbride’s paper on the pedagogical practice of chainmaking and its historical relationship to learning spaces, we examine in this paper how media can be instrumental in wayfinding, how they can help to organize a building into various “processual” paths that reflect different approaches to learning, and how their presence in learning spaces can enhance teaching and learning. We also discuss how the building can serve as a mediator within the community, reflecting the institution’s identity and its pedagogical philosophy.

Access to Power Versus Exercise of Power Reconceptualizing the Quality of Democracy in Latin America

Research on comparative democratization has recently expanded its focus to issues of institutional quality: clientelism, corruption, abuse of executive decree authority, and weak checks and balances. However, problems of institutional quality are so different from those involved in regime transitions that it is unproductive to treat them as part of the same macro-process, democratization. Whereas regime transitions are changes in the form of access to power, problems of institutional quality involve the exercise of power. Abuses in the exercise of power affecting institutional quality are best characterized not as indicators of authoritarianism and deficiencies in democratization but as reflecting—in Weberian terms—patrimonialism and failures in bureaucratization. Moreover, struggles over the exercise of power involve causes, mechanisms, and actors that can be quite distinct from those at play in conflicts over access to power. The proposed analytical framework centered on the distinction between access and exercise enhances conceptual clarity and provides a stronger theoretical basis for tackling fundamental questions about politics in Latin America, including the failure of democratization to curb clientelism and foster other improvements of institutional quality, and the prospects of democratic stability under patrimonial administrations.     

The New Commons vs. The Second Enclosure Movement: Comments on an Emerging Agenda for Development Research

The relationship between property rights and development has always been a central concern for both theorists and policy makers. The growing role of information and communications technology in the economies of both North and South intensifies the salience of this issue. This commentary extends the discussion of the two visions of property rights that are introduced by Weber and Bussell (2005). In one, property rights are restructured along the lines pioneered by the open-source software community to create a “new commons” of productive tools; in the other, Northern corporations successfully defend their politically protected monopoly rights over intangible assets and even extend them through a “second enclosure movement” to an ever larger set of ideas, information, and images. Currently, the second enclosure movement remains dominant, but which of these visions is likely to predominate in the longer run depends on the interests and potential power of key actors and on the possibilities for alliances among them—not just Northern corporations, but Southern states and private entrepreneurs, as well. Peter Evans is professor of sociology and Marjorie Meyer Eliaser Chair of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research has focused on the comparative political economy of developing countries, particularly industrialization and the role of the state, as exemplified byEmbedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). He has also worked urban environmental issues, producing the edited volumeLivable Cities: Urban Struggles for Livelihood and Sustainability (University of California Press, 2002). His current interest in the politics of globalization is reflected in his chapter, “Counter-hegemonic Globalization: Transnational Social Movements in the Contemporary Global Political Economy,” forthcoming in theHandbook of Political Sociology (Cambridge University Press).     

Rectification at three: Impact on the Cuban economy

Since 1986, Cuba has been engaged in a national effort to redirect its polity and economy; this effort, spearheaded by President Castro, is generally known as the “rectification” campaign. Although occurring at roughly the same time as reforms in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Cuban process—which emphasizes dismantling market-oriented mechanisms and enhancing economic centralization—differs radically from the others. An impressionistic assessment of the economic effects of rectification after its first three years (focusing on the behavior of macroeconomic indicators and of the construction sector) suggests that rectification has not turned the Cuban economy around. Moreover, it is questionable that rectification could do so in the medium term, considering the reforms that are taking place in Cuba's main trading partners, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Jorge F. Pérez-López is an international economist with the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor. This article presents only his personal views. He has written on different aspects of the Cuban economy, including economic growth, the sugar industry, international trade and energy balances. His book,Measuring Cuban Economic Performance, was published by the University of Texas Press in 1987.     

Democracy, Law, and Comparative Politics

This article offers a revision of democratic theory in light of the experience of recently democratized countries, located outside of the northwestern quadrant of the world. First, various definitions of democracy that claim to follow Schumpeter and are usually considered to be “minimalist” or “processualist” are critically examined. Building upon but clarifying these conceptual efforts, a realistic and restricted, but not minimalist, definition of a democratic regime is proposed. Thereafter, this article argues that democracy should be analyzed not only at the level of the political regime but also in relation to the state—especially the state qua legal system—and to certain aspects of the overall social context. The main underlying theme that runs through this article is the concept of agency, especially as it is expressed in the legal system of existing democracies. I dedicate this article to my daughter Julia, for the metonymy and much love Guillermo O'Donnell is the Helen Kellogg Professor of Government at the University of Notre Dame. He has written many books and articles on authoritarianism, political transitions, democratization, and democratic theory. His latest book,Counterpoints, was published in 1998 by the University of Notre Dame Press. O'Donnell is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I presented previous versions of this paper and received useful comments at seminars held in April and May 1999 at the University of North Carolina; Cornell University; Berlin's Wissenschaftszentrum; the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, August 1999; and in September 1999 at the Kellogg Institute. I also appreciate the comments and criticisms received from Michael Brie, Maxwell Cameron, Jorgen Elklit, Robert Fishman, Ernesto Garzón Valdés, Jonathan Hartlyn, Osvaldo Iazzetta, Gabriela Ippolito-O'Donnell, Iván Jaksić, Oscar Landi, Hans-Joachim Lauth, Steven Levitsky, Juan Linz, Scott Mainwaring, Juan M. Abal Medina, Martha Merritt, Peter Moody, Gerardo Munck, Luis Pásara, Timothy Power, Adam Przeworski, Héctor Schamis, Sidney Tarrow. Charles Tilly, Ashutosh Varshney, and Ruth Zimmerling. I am particularly grateful for the careful revision and editing undertaken by Gerardo Munck and Ruth Collier for the present issue ofSCID.     

Limitations of rational-choice institutionalism for the study of Latin American politics

This article analyzes the analytical limitations of rational-choice institutionalism for the study of Latin American politics. Adherents of this approach have made important contributions by analyzing topics that Latin Americanists traditionally neglected, such as the political impact of electoral rules and the processes of legislative decision-making. But rational-choice institutionalism has difficulty explaining the complicated, variegated, and fluid patterns of Latin American politics. It overemphasizes the electoral and legislative arenas and—in general—the input side of politics; it overestimates the importance and causal impact of formal rules and institutions; it does not explain the origins of political change and often suggests a static image of political development; it offers an incomplete analysis of institutional creation by neglecting the importance of political beliefs; it cannot fully account for crisis politics; and it puts excessive, analytically arbitrary emphasis on “microfoundations.” The article questions whether these limitations can successfully be overcome, arguing that rational-choice institutionalism—while an important addition to the debate—is not inherently superior to other approaches applied in Latin American Studies. Kurt Weyland is associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of two books—Democracy without Equity: Failures of Reform in Brazil (Pittsburgh, 1996) andThe Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela (Princeton, 2002)—and of numerous journal articles on democratization, market reform, social policy, and populism in Latin America. His current research focuses on the diffusion of policy innovations across countries. I would like to thank Barry Ames, James Booth, Ruth Collier, Marcelo Costa Ferriera, Wendy Hunter, Mark Jones, Fabrice Lehoucq, Scott Mainwaring, Gerardo Munck, Anthony Pereira, Tim Power, Ken Roberts, Charles Shipan, Richard Snyder, Donna van Cott, and two anonymous reviewers for excellent comments.     

The Plastic Palm and Memories in the Making: Conceptual Art Work on Warsaw's Jerusalem Avenue

In 2001, Joanna Rajkowska, a Polish contemporary artist, made a trip to Israel, after which she decided to make people aware of the significance of Warsaw’s Jerusalem Avenue [Aleje Jerozolimskie], one of the Polish capital’s main streets. She intended to point out the street’s history in a vacuum, as she claimed, caused by the absence of Jewish community after World War II. She “planted” an artificial palm tree—in her view a plant typical of Jerusalem streets—in the middle of a major traffic circle in the center of Warsaw. Even though Rajkowska made a project based on “just” one of the forgotten pasts, it revealed a whole new potential for “other” pasts in that particular space, which suddenly became impossible to be taken for granted as they had been before. Furthermore, the artist opened a new social space in which pasts were brought back to interact with the present. The palm quickly became the object and symbol of much more contemporary Polish struggles: for gay rights, for nurses’ wages, for liberal values, and the right to think differently. Rajkowska’s palm tree managed to bring these and many other issues to the general public, to make it aware of the everyday inhabited space, to make that space visible—with all its ambiguities, different layers of meanings, interpretations of the past, and visions of the future—while transforming that very public along the way.     

Managing economic crises: The role of the state in Bahrain and Kuwait

Bahrain and Kuwait adopted sharply divergent responses to the economic crisis in the Gulf during the 1980s. The Bahraini government reduced the level of state intervention in the local economy, opened up opportunities for private investment and relied on the operation of the unregulated market; Kuwait's government, on the other hand, imposed a greater degree of state supervision over domestic economic affairs and expanded central planning to allocate resources to the most profitable enterprises. Two influential bodies of neo-Marxist writing on the state—the state-derivation school and the writings of Claus Offe—have difficulty accounting for these differences. A more adequate explanation for Bahraini and Kuwaiti policy can be formulated in terms of the strength of each country's indigenous rich merchant community relative to that of the ruling family/central administration and the political activities of the labor movement in each amirate. Fred H. Lawson is associate professor, Department of Government, Mills College, Oakland, CA 94613. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1982 and has also taught at the University of North Carolina and Smith College. His most recent publications include “Political-economic trends in Ba'thi Syria: a reinterpretation,”Orient 29 (December 1988) and “Libéralisation économique en Syrie et Irak,”Maghred/Machrek 128 (April–May 1990). He is currently exploring the connection between class conflict and foreign policy in contemporary Syria and Iraq.     

Cultural and economic prerequisites of democracy: Reassessing recent evidence

The purpose of this article is to reassess two influential theories of democratic development: the theory of democratic culture and the theory of economic development. The leading predecessors in each domain—Ronald Inglehart and Adam Przeworski—are the prime targets of analysis. We take issue with recent evidence presented by these authors on three grounds: the evidence (1) confuses “basic” criteria of democracy with possible “quality” criteria (Inglehart); (2) conceptualizes democracy in dichotomous rather than continuous terms (Przeworski); and (3) fails to account for endogeneity and contingent effects (Inglehart). In correcting for these shortcomings, we present striking results. In the case of democratic culture, the theory lacks support; neither overt support for democracy nor “self-expression values” affect democratic development. In the case of economic development, earlier findings must be refined. Although the largest impact of modernization is found among more democratized countries, we also find an effect among “semi-democracies.” Axel Hadenius is professor of political science at Uppsala University in Sweden. He is the author ofDemocracy and Development (Cambridge University Press, 1992) andInstitutions and Democratic Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2001). Jan Teorell is associated professor of political science at Uppsala University. His articles on intra-party democracy, social capital, and political participation appear in international journals.