Social contracts and authoritarian projects in post-Soviet space: The use of administrative resource

Drawing on evidence from Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, this article analyses the use of a tool of political coercion known in the post-communist world as adminresurs, or administrative resource. Administrative resource is characterized by the pre-election capture of bureaucratic hierarchies by an incumbent regime in order to secure electoral success at the margins. In contrast to other forms of political corruption, administrative resource fundamentally rewrites existing social contracts. It redefines access to settled entitlements—public infrastructure, social services, and labor compensation—as rewards for political support. It is thus explicitly negative for publics, who stand to lose access to existing entitlements if they do not support incumbents. The geography of its success in post-communist states suggests that this tool of authoritarian capacity building could be deployed anywhere two conditions are present: where there are economically vulnerable populations, and where economic and political spheres of life overlap.     

Media corruption and issues of journalistic and institutional integrity in post-communist countries: The case of Bulgaria

From a normative standpoint the media are usually seen as one of the pillars of a national integrity system, entrusted with the tasks of exposing and preventing acts of corruption and educating the public of the harm caused by corruption. Nevertheless, corruption continues to be one of the most significant challenges that Europe faces, undermining citizens' trust in democratic institutions and weakening the accountability of political leadership. Evidence suggests that in fragile EU democracies such as Bulgaria, despite more than eight years of full membership and numerous preventive measures, corruption is rife and the press is hardly capable of exposing abuses of power or authority. On the contrary - drawing on in-depth interviews with 35 Bulgarian journalists - this paper argues that since communism collapsed in the late 1980s the media in post-communist societies such as Bulgaria has gradually become an instrument to promote and defend private vested interests, and is plagued by corruption. Senior journalists and editors cast serious doubt over the ability of the post-communist free press and journalism to act as a watchdog for society.     

When the center can hold: The primacy of politics in shaping Russian democracy

Violations of rights, a weak Duma, political parties dominated by bureaucrats, and corrupt privatization are ordinarily taken as signs or even causes of the failure of democracy in Russia or at best as normal traits of electoral politics in a middle-income state. Yet all of these are natural consequences of introducing democracy in a country with the Russian electorate’s distinctive recent experience of a loss of a third of the state’s territory and half its population. In such a democracy only a centrist, not a liberal, strategy can block a return to authoritarianism, and such a strategy in Russia will subordinate rights to the task of privatization that a Duma weakened by ideological, demographic and geographic impediments to party development cannot conduct. Consequently what are taken as signs or causes of democratic failure in Russia are instead necessary effects of introducing democracy in Russia’s special circumstances.     

Legal change in post-communist states: Contradictions and explanations. Introduction

Reformers had high hopes that the end of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union would lead to significant improvements in legal institutions and the role of law in public administration. However, the cumulative experience of 25 years of legal change since communism has been mixed, marked by achievements and failures, advances and moves backward. This special issue of the journal Communist and Post-Communist Studies documents the nuances of this process and starts the process of explaining them. This introductory essay draws on the findings of the articles in this issue to explore the impact of three potential explanatory factors: regime type, international influences, and legal (or political) culture. Regime type matters, but allows for considerable variation within authoritarian and democratic states alike and the possibility of reversals. The influence of international organizations (like the European Union) is also far from predictable, especially once states have joined the organization. Finally, legal cultures and political traditions play a large role in explaining developments in individual countries, but there is nothing inevitable about their impact.     

“Survival of the fittest:” Domestic and international dimensions of the authoritarian reaction in the former Soviet Union following the colored revolutions

This article examines the internal and external reactions by post-Soviet autocrats to the colored revolutions. First, the colored revolutions provoked incumbents in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and other post-Soviet countries to strengthen domestic efforts to preempt opposition challenges. Preemptive measures included restrictions on independent civil society, disruptions of independent electoral monitoring, promotion of pro-government civil society groups, and assaults on opposition and democracy assistance. Such actions, together with already existing endowments, allowed these regimes to survive. Next, the colored revolutions stimulated increased coordination among non-democratic states to squash opposition. Measures included counter-monitoring of elections to offset Western claims of fraud, and increased efforts at military and economic cooperation such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Simultaneously, Russia sought to destabilize Georgia and Ukraine through economic and, in Georgia, military pressure. This authoritarian backlash following the colored revolutions buttressed the surviving autocracies, which prospects for democratization have become even more bleak and distant.     

Federalism and democratization in Russia

The scholarly literature on democratic transitions has largely ignored developments at the local level and the relationship between federalism and democracy. In this work I examine the development of federalism in Russia and I assess the impact of Russia's highly asymmetrical form of federalism on democratisation. The study shows that federalism far from promoting democracy has allowed authoritarianism to flourish in many of Russia's eighty nine regions and republics. Federalism and democratization in Russia exist in contradiction rather than harmony. In a vicious circle, authoritarianism at the centre has been nourished by authoritarianism in the region and vice versa. “Elective dictatorships” and “delegative democracies” are now well entrenched in many republics, and mini-presidential systems are firmly established in a majority of the regions.     

Democracy and Gender Equality

This article examines the relationship between democracy and gender equality. In particular, it contrasts the impact of long-term stocks of democracy with the contemporary level of democracy and the participation of women in democracy. It contends that democracy should be thought of as a historical phenomenon with consequences that develop over many years and decades and that women’s participation should be included as an important component of democracy. The main argument is that long-term democracy together with women’s suffrage should provide new opportunities for women to promote their interests through mobilization and elections. A cross-national time-series statistical analysis finds that countries with greater stocks of democracy and longer experience of women’s suffrage have a higher proportion of the population that is female, a greater ratio of female life expectancy to male life expectancy, lower fertility rates, and higher rates of female labor force participation.

E-Government to Combat Corruption: The Case of Seoul Metropolitan Government

Abstract

The Seoul Metropolitan Government adopted a reform measure to combat corruption, called the “OPEN” system, an acronym for the “Online Procedures ENhancement for civil applications,” in January 1999, and the new system went into operation in April 1999. The OPEN system is a Web-based internet service to transact civil applications for permits, registrations, procurements, contracts, and approvals submitted online by citizens. It places transparency and accountability in the core of the management system of civil applications by providing open access for anybody, anytime, and anywhere to file applications and monitor the review and approval processes on real time online until the decision on the applications is finalized according to the timetable set by the officials in charge. The citizens accepted the OPEN system instantly and the users of the service and visitors to the site have grown rapidly. More importantly, both the citizens who used the system and the city officials who were involved in managing the system tended to have favorable opinions on its corruption control effect as attested by the survey findings. The OPEN system is an e-government innovation with a rich potential for diffusion, for corruption in government (or in business as well) is believed to be prevalent and it neither respects geographical boundaries nor discriminates cultural differences.     

Playing the regional card: why and how authoritarian gravity centres exploit regional organisations

The evidence of regional authoritarian clustering across different world regions goes together with the finding that after the end of the bipolar world regional patterns of interaction became more important. Especially in the 2000s a process of revitalisation of regional organisations and even the creation of new regional organisations took place. Interestingly, these newly founded organisations consist predominantly of authoritarian regimes. Due to the emergence and resilience of authoritarianism in the world, the question arises: To what extent do regional organisations (ROs) play a role in this phenomenon? We argue that authoritarian protagonists which we call authoritarian gravity centres (AGCs) constitute a force of attraction for countries in geopolitical proximity – and use ROs as a transmission belt and a learning room for disseminating autocratic elements. In a cross-regional comparison, based on extensive field work, we provide empirical analysis on two AGCs (Saudi Arabia and Venezuela) within their respective ROs Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP) and tackle the questions of why and how autocracies decide to move forward multilaterally within the RO.     

Why do voters forgive corrupt mayors? Implicit exchange,credibility of information and clean alternatives

Corruption cases have limited electoral consequences in many countries. Why do voters often fail to punish corrupt politicians at the polls? Previous research has focused on the role of lack of information, weak institutions and partisanship in explaining this phenomenon. In this paper, we propose three micro-mechanisms that can help understand why voters support corrupt mayors even in contexts with high information and strong institutions: implicit exchange (good performance can make up for corruption), credibility of information (accusations from opposition parties are not credible) and the lack of credible alternatives (the belief that all politicians are corrupt). We test these mechanisms using three survey experiments conducted in Catalonia. Our results suggest that implicit exchange and credibility of information help explain voters’ support for corrupt politicians.