Historical legacies and the size of the red-brown vote in post-communist politics

In this paper I examine the relatively under-investigated topic of how historical legacies shaped the emergence of the “Red-brown” political tendency in East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union – which is sometimes referred to as “National Bolshevism” or “National Communism” or “Strasserism.” More specifically I ask the question, how do historical legacies help explain why extreme right wing voters support the successors to the formerly dominant communist parties (or what I refer to as the “red-brown” vote)? I find that the most important legacy variable that affects the red brown phenomenon is the legacy of the previous communist regime.     

Judicious choices: designing courts in post-communist politics

One area which has been generally overlooked in the literature on institutional choice in post communist politics has been the design of judicial institutions. This paper seeks to evaluate a number of different explanations for judicial systems choice in post communist politics, especially those which emphasize the influence of socio-cultural factors, economic factors, the judicial legacies of the past, and political bargaining. As an empirical test of these explanations, we examine variations in the amount of judicial power that constitution makers granted to the constitutional courts in the countries of the former Soviet Union, Mongolia, and Eastern Europe.     

The historical foundations of party politics in post-communist East Central Europe

This article gauges how plausible deep historical explanations are in accounting for the emergence of particular types of parties in post-communist Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Generating and testing hypotheses from the centuries-long historical logic of Lipset and Rokkan's model of cleavage and party development, it finds that the historical foundations of post-communist parties may be deeper than most analyses assume and that the influence of the communist era may be less than is often believed. While a full understanding of the emergence of post-communist party types requires both historical and non-historical explanations, historical ones should not be underestimated.     

Party identity change in post-communist politics: the cases of the successor parties in Hungary, Poland and Russia

In recent years much has been written on the communist successor parties. Although much of the existent work focuses on the electoral performance of these parties or has described, in great detail, the development of single parties, this paper evaluates the utility of theories of party identity change in application to the successor parties. As an initial exploration we investigate the successor parties' programs before and after the initial competitive parliamentary elections in Hungary (in 1990), Poland (in 1991) and Russia (in 1993) to determine the extent to which poor electoral performance in initial competitive elections compelled the successor parties to alter their political identities.     

俄罗斯政党政治的演变及其特点

苏联解体后,原来的高度集中、不平衡的社会关系向新型多元化社会组织结构转变.各种力量、各种运动群雄并起,相生相克,形成了各种各样的新型社会关系,使得转型中的俄罗斯社会结构非常脆弱.     

Diasporas and democratization in the post-communist world

If diaspora communities are socialized with democratic values in Western societies, they could be expected to be sympathetic to the democratization of their home countries. However, there is a high degree of variation in their behavior. Contrary to the predominant understanding in the literature that diasporas act in exclusively nationalist ways, this article argues that they do engage with the democratization of their home countries. Various challenges to the sovereignty of their homelands explain whether diasporas involve with procedural or liberal aspects of democratization. Drawing evidence from the activities of the Ukrainian, Serbian, Albanian and Armenian diasporas after the end of communism, I argue that unless diasporas are linked to home countries that enjoy both international legal and domestic sovereignty, they will involve only with procedural aspects of democratization. Diasporas filter international pressure to democratize post-communist societies by utilizing democratic procedures to advance unresolved nationalist goals.     

Revisiting Russian and Polish elite value orientations: Are the elites still committed to the original goals of post-communist transitions?

This article investigates the extent of continuity and discontinuity of the original political, economic, and foreign policy value orientations of Russian and Polish post-Communist elites. I conclude that during the post-Communist period the Russian elite shifted the priorities from pro-democratic to authoritarian positions, engaged in a debate over the most desirable foreign policy course, and ultimately chose a pragmatically independent direction, but remained loyal to original beliefs in the free market. In Poland, with its cyclical rotation of governments, original pro-democratic and pro-Western elite value orientations survive to this day, while the issue of preferred economic model is contested and highly sensitive to electoral cycles.     

Putin's militocracy? An alternative interpretation of Siloviki in contemporary Russian politics

This article challenges the perception of the rising numbers of siloviki in Russian politics as a conscious strategy and expression of a more authoritarian policy direction pursued by President Putin. Contextualising the phenomenon within the framework of the system of elite recruitment in contemporary Russia, and engaging in a micro-level study of individual siloviki, the article argues that the role of these figures is more modest than often asserted and the possibility of a coordinated ‘siloviki project’ is unlikely.     

Explaining the success and failure of post-communist revolutions

Since 1999, the post-Communist states have seen a series of attempts to overthrow semi-authoritarian governments, with the successful attempts known as the “colored revolutions.” However, not all such attempts have succeeded. This paper seeks to explain the variation in outcomes. Most accounts have focused on the development of grass-roots activist movements. The central argument here is that elites, and in particular security services, play a much more significant role in these revolutions than has generally been appreciated. This hypothesis is elaborated through a threshold model of protest, in which the central question is whether protests achieve a “tipping point” that makes them continue to grow larger until success is inevitable. The actions of elites, it is argued, play a decisive role in whether mass protests reach a tipping point. The argument is examined through a paired comparison of two failed attempts to overthrow governments through street protests (Serbia 1996–1997 and Ukraine 2001) with two successful cases (Serbia 1999 and Ukraine 2004). By studying cases with variation on the dependent variable, this paper seeks to improve the empirical and methodological basis of research on post-communist revolutions.     

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.     

Socio-economic status and political support in post-communist Romania

How is socio-economic status linked to political support? The analysis of a Romanian national probability sample suggests that there are two distinct and opposite routes. On the one hand, status is positively associated to political support, via well-being and, on the other hand, it is negatively associated to political support, probably via expectations and values. Whereas the negative route implies that upper status Romanians are more critical of current politics without questioning democratic principles, the positive route reveals that Romanians' discontent erodes not only trust in political actors but also more diffuse levels of political support, and leads to positive attitudes toward communism.     

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).