Showing papers in "Communist and Post-communist Studies in 2010"

History as a propaganda tool in Putin’s Russia

Abstract: This paper analyzes the propaganda campaign orchestrated by the Russian authorities with the aim of promoting a version of the country’s history for political purposes. This version puts the accent on the exceptionality of Russian historical development, and is geared to endowing the figure of Vladimir Putin – seen as the person who has succeeded in carrying out a number of national projects that have been frequently abandoned throughout Russian history. The analysis presented here centres on two channels used in the campaign: school textbooks and the film industry.

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

Abstract: 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.

Nationalism, identity and civil society in Ukraine: Understanding the Orange Revolution

Abstract: This article is the first to study the positive correlation between nationalism and democratic revolutions using Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution as a case study. The Orange Revolution mobilized the largest number of participants of any democratic revolution and lasted the longest, 17 days. But, the Orange Revolution was also the most regionally divided of democratic revolutions with western and central Ukrainians dominating the protestors and eastern Ukrainians opposing the protests. The civic nationalism that underpinned the Orange Revolution is rooted in Ukraine’s path dependence that has made civil society stronger in western Ukraine where Austro-Hungarian rule permitted the emergence of a Ukrainian national identity that was stymied in eastern Ukraine by the Tsarist empire.

The Europeanization of Social Movements in the Czech Republic: The EU and Local Women's Groups

Abstract: The goal of this paper is to analyze the impact the EU has had on Czech womens groups since the 1990s. Drawing on both Europeanization and social movement theories, the first section defines the theoretical framework of the paper. The second section is focused on the impact of changes in the funding of womens groups which, since the end of the 1990s, have relied more than before on European funding. The third section analyzes the shift in the political context and the domestic political opportunity structure in the Czech Republic that has occurred in connection with the accession process. The fourth section analyzes transnational cooperation for which new opportunities have appeared with the EUs eastward expansion. The paper concludes by summarizing its main findings.

Authoritarian legality and informal practices: Judges, lawyers and the state in Russia and China

Abstract: To participate in the global economy authoritarian states are pressed to offer international business a legal order that protects the interests of investors, customers, and sellers, but the creation of a modern legal order threatens to undermine the leaders’ control of public life. An increasingly common way to resolve this dilemma, I argue, is developing formal legal institutions that appear to meet world standards, while using informal practices to maintain control over the administration of justice when needed. In this paper I show how the governments of post-Soviet Russia (with its hybrid or competitive authoritarian regime) and the fully authoritarian People’s Republic of China as well, have used this approach in their relations with judges and defense lawyers in their respective countries. The analysis underscores the utility of investigating informal practices along with the reform of formal legal institutions, especially in the context of transition.

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

Abstract: 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.

Plus ça change: Electoral law reform and the 2008 Romanian parliamentary elections

Abstract: Romania reformed the law governing its parliamentary elections between 2004 and 2008, shifting from a complex proportional representation system based on county-level party lists to a complex uninominal system in which each district for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate elects one representative. The change in law emerged after more than a year of heated political controversies, including partisan and personal animosity between President Basescu and Prime Minister Tariceanu, a failed attempt at impeachment, a deadlocked special electoral commission, a failed popular referendum, an unfavorable constitutional court ruling, and a confusing final accord brokered under deadline. Qualitative comparison of the 2004 and 2008 laws reveals that the heralded reform merely added an additional layer of calculation to the previous electoral system. Quantitative analysis using counterfactual estimation reveals that the new law had absolutely zero effect on the partisan outcome. In the conclusion, we explore the implications of these findings for Romanian politics and the politics of electoral reform more generally.

War of textbooks: History education in Russia and Ukraine

Abstract: Many scholars stress that teaching about the shared past plays a major role in the formation of national, ethnic, religious, and regional identities, in addition to influencing intergroup perceptions and relations. Through the analysis of historic narratives in history textbooks this paper shows how the governments of the Russian Federation and Ukraine uses state-controlled history education to define their national identity and to present themselves in relations to each other. For example, history education in Ukraine portrays Russia as oppressive and aggressive enemy and emphasizes the idea of own victimhood as a core of national identity. History education in the Russian Federation condemns Ukrainian nationalism and proclaims commonality and unity of history and culture with Russian dominance over “younger brother, Ukraine”. An exploration of the mechanisms that state-controlled history education employs to define social identities in secondary school textbooks can provide an early warning of potential problems being created between the two states.

Sources of social support for China’s current political order: The “thick embeddedness” of private capital holders

Abstract: In recent years, scholars have puzzled over the fact that China’s increased economic privatization and marketization since the early 1990s have not triggered a simultaneous advance in political liberalization. Many have sought to explain why – despite a marked upsurge in popular unrest – sources of social support for the political order have remained sizeable. Seeking to shed light on this debate, this article investigates the nature and implications of the political embeddedness of China’s private capital holders. The embeddedness of these individuals is “thick” in the sense that it encompasses an intertwined amalgam of instrumental ties and affective links to the agents and institutions of the party-state. Thick embeddedness therefore incorporates personal links that bind private capital holders to the party-state through connections that are layered with reciprocal affective components. Such close relations work against the potential interest that private capital holders might have in leading or joining efforts to press for fundamental political liberalization. Drawing on these findings, the article places China’s economic and political development in comparative perspective, and lays out the most likely scenarios for China’s future.

Elite recruitment and state-society relations in technocratic authoritarian regimes: The Russian case

Abstract: This article argues that Russia has a peculiar form of authoritarianism that exhibits pronounced technocratic features. The analysis places in a comparative frame the bases of regime legitimacy and the paths to political, administrative, and economic power in Russia. By locating the Russian state in a matrix that considers the ideology of governance on one axis and the backgrounds of elites on the other, the article highlights areas of overlap and separation between state–society relations in Russia and other regimes in the developed and developing world. It also illustrates the ways in which technocratic elites in Russia differ from their counterparts in other parts of the world.

The future of housing systems after the transition – The case of the Czech Republic

Abstract: The article attempts to answer the question about the future of housing system in the Czech Republic. As other transition countries, the Czech Republic underwent the substantial reform of housing system leading to the change in tenure structure in favour of owner-occupied housing. The authors discuss the basis and implicit aspects of tenure reform. The change in tenure structure was more gradual than in most other transition countries and together with other specific conditions it gave the chance to rental housing becoming a real alternative to homeownership tenure in the future. Using the results from several attitude surveys and unique experiment, the authors tried to find out whether there is any chance of deviating from the path leading towards a housing system unilaterally based on homeownership tenure. The empirical results, however, show that people’s tenure preferences remain strongly skewed in favour of owner-occupation.

The radical right in Romania: Political party evolution and the distancing of Romania from Europe

Abstract: Increasingly, European radical right parties have capitalized on citizen dissatisfaction with the European Union institutions. As a new EU member, to what extent have supporters of the radical right in Romania turned away from Europe? I evaluate this question by tracking the evolution of radical right parties in Romania. I find that supporters of the radical right in Romania are generally do not support or do not trust the EU. The Greater Romania Party is well-positioned to expand its electoral base in the foreseeable future if it can widen its appeal to those Romanians who are ambivalent to the EU.

Perceived corruption, distributive justice, and the legitimacy of the system of social stratification in the Czech Republic

Abstract: This article examines the relationship between social justice norms and the perceived legitimacy of the social stratification system in the Czech Republic. Despite the fact that meritocratic values have remained the dominant part of ideology in the Czech Republic throughout the transformation process, those values have played only a very minor role in fostering evaluations of system legitimacy, such as perceptions of system closure and widespread inequality. This article argues that perceived corruption is the key factor that negatively mediates the relationship between norms of distributive justice and beliefs about social legitimacy, and ultimately plays a major role in reducing the legitimacy of the social stratification system. The main analysis uses a structural equation model based on Czech data from the ISSP Role of Government Survey in 2006. The evidence lends support to the path dependency view of the social transformation process, according to which rampant corruption, which was a core legacy of the market transformation process, continues to shape system legitimacy even in the face of relative economic prosperity of the mid 2000s.

History education and historical remembrance in contemporary Russia: Sources of political attitudes of pro-Kremlin youth

Abstract: Why during the last decade have many young Russians become politically active well beyond simply voting? Particularly striking among youth activists is their enthusiastic support for Putinism and a resounding rejection of the policies, symbols and political figures of the era of President Boris Yeltsin (1992–2000). The vast majority of youth activists are of college age (18–24), which means they were far too young to be aware of what was happening in the country in the 1990s, the period that while democratic and pro-Western, also represents a failure of the Russian state in their imagery. To what degree do the opinions and world views of politically active pro-Kremlin youth reflect the recently emerged, nearly ubiquitous interpretation of recent history as presented in the high school curriculum? To that end, we undertake a content analysis of 47 high school textbooks in Russian history, followed by open-ended interviews with 37 activists from the three most visible youth organizations, all of whom are pro-Kremlin in their orientation. Although demonstrating a causal relationship is methodologically unfeasible, we find a marked correlation between the views of both the Yeltsin and Putin eras presented in those textbooks and in the political beliefs of the youth groups.

Politics, justice and the new Russian strike

Abstract: After almost a decade of passivity, Russian workers are once again striking. For the first time since the 1990s, labor unrest has spread across the country, affecting foreign and domestic investors, well-to-do industrial and natural-resource enterprises and infrastructural installations. But unlike in the 1990s, these strikes have accompanied an economic boom, suggesting that patterns of Russian labor unrest are beginning to resemble those in other countries. Analysis of several recent strikes, meanwhile, suggests the early emergence of a new labor proto-movement, characterized by feelings of entitlement and injustice that stem in part from government rhetoric, while pushed into opposition by the state's refusal to accommodate genuine labor mobilization.

Electoral rules and minority representation in Romania

Abstract: This paper explores the effects that different institutional mechanisms for legislative representation have on ethnic diversity in the lower chamber of the Romanian parliament. It uses an original data set to examine representational outcomes generated by a combination of proportional representation and reserved seats provisions. The findings highlight the benefits that Romania's choice of electoral rules generated for smaller minority communities and limitations that these rules impose on the nature and extent of legislative representation of large minority groups. The paper provides evidence for qualifying the scholarly support in favour of proportional representation. It also draws attention to potential trade-offs between communal representation and ethnic inclusiveness of main political parties that the use of special mechanisms for minority representation might encourage.

The rise and fall of the Third Site of Ballistic Missile Defense

Abstract: The present article examines the tumultuous development in the issue of the Third Site (also known as the Third Pillar) of the US Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) that was planned to be hosted by the Czech Republic and Poland. The article analyzes the entire ‘life cycle’ of the project, from its formal proposal in 2007 by the former U.S. President George W. Bush to its cancellation in 2009 by the current U.S. President Barak Obama. Without any doubts, the Third Site of BMD put Poland and the Czech Republic at the centre of international-security politics and as such allows one to see how the two post-communist countries acted and reacted to related international positions, expectations and challenges. A detailed analysis of this issue, nevertheless, does not exhaust aims of this article. Whether brief or detailed, any look at the coverage of the issue reveals that the Czech Republic and Poland have invariably been lumped together through the construction of the imagery of the New Europe as a homogeneous political bloc. It will be argued that such a view is flawed and needs refinement. In order to back the claim, the issue of the Third Site is put into a historical context, revealing that the differences between the Czech and Polish international-security preferences and expectations after the end of the Cold War have been quite stable – including the most recent development after the project has been shelved by the United States, and can thus be conceived of in dialectical terms.

Continuities and changes in left-right orientations in new democracies: The cases of Croatia and Slovenia

Abstract: The left–right schema has long been used in analyzing political cleavages in established democracies. This study applies the schema in a post-communist context by examining the structuring of political attitudes in Slovenia and Croatia. Findings from six public opinion surveys in each country during the 1990s demonstrate that left–right orientations in both countries are consistently influenced by religious beliefs, while an additional dimension focusing on democratization is found in Croatia. Economic issues did not constitute a significant axis of political competition. Changes and continuities in party locations and the basis of vote choice according to party supporters' left–right placements are also discussed.

Power-loss or power-transition? Assessing the limits of using the energy sector in reviving Russia’s geopolitical stature

Abstract: The paper seeks to evaluate the scope and limits of the Russian state’s capacity to use oil and natural gas as strategic resources to revive Russia’s fortunes as a credible global power. It offers an analysis of the evolution of state-markets interactions in the energy sector from the late Gorbachev era to the present day. The paper briefly documents how Russian foreign policy became more assertive using energy as a strategic resource, particularly in crafting its relations with the European Union. Subsequently, the paper analyzes Russia’s limits of using energy as leverage in securing foreign policy objectives. Finally, it points to the impediments to normalizing a Russo-EU energy dialog.

Post-communist regime types: Hierarchies across attributes and space

Abstract: In this article we order the 28 post-communist countries in a theoretically informed typology of political regime forms. Our theoretical expectation is that a hierarchy exists in the extent to which the post-communist countries fulfill democratic criteria concerning electoral rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law. More particularly, we expect that the countries are doing better with respect to electoral rights than civil liberties and that they fare worst regarding the rule of law. The analyses confirm three – ever stricter – versions of this hypothesis, in the end establishing the presence of an almost perfect hierarchy across the attributes in the form of a Guttman scale. Furthermore, a systematic cross-spatial distribution is identified, which lends support to the notion that the present political differences must be traced back to structural constraints and are, therefore, likely to subsist.

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

Abstract: 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.

Ethnic competition, radical Islam, and challenges to stability in the Republic of Dagestan

Abstract: Previous academic work on stability in Dagestan has focused on two potential cleavages, the republic’s ethnic diversity and the challenge from radical Islamist groups. Using results from a December 2005 survey, and focusing on Dagestan’s six main ethnic groups, this paper investigates attitudes towards the dual topics of the politicization of ethnicity and the relationship between terrorism and Islamism. We find that Dagestanis maintain layered conceptions of identity, and do not attribute violence predominantly to radical Islam in the republic or the wider North Caucasus. Scholars should be aware of Rogers Brubaker’s concept of groupism in analyzing not just ethnic groups, but religious movements as well.

Ethnic peace, ethnic conflict: Complexity theory on why the Baltic is not the Balkans

Abstract: As Communist rule weakened across East Central Europe and new governments emerged, the Baltic region differed from the Balkans in two ways that need to be explained. The first difference was the near absence of ethnic violence in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – compared to civil and cross-border war in most of the former Yugoslavia. The second contrast was the rapid consolidation of democracy and market economics in the Baltic countries compared to halting movements toward political and economic freedom in most Balkan polities.

Lustration after Totalitarianism: Poland's attempt to reconcile with its Communist past

Abstract: The former Communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe have attempted to reconcile their Communist past in different ways. It is in Poland, however, where the issue of dealing with its Communist past through attempts at lustration has been especially fraught. It will be argued here that Poland’s lustration problems are caused primarily by a failure to understand the specific nature of totalitarian dictatorship that existed in Poland under Communist rule.

Dealing with the communist past: Its role in the disintegration of the Czech Civic Forum and in the emergence of the Civic Democratic Party

Abstract: The end of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1989 has opened the thorny question of how to deal with the communist legacy. This paper focuses on important aspects of decommunization at the beginning of the 1990s and analyzes the role they played in the disintegration of the Civic Forum and in the emergence of the Civic Democratic Party. The paper shows that the decommunization agenda gradually became a significant divisive factor within the Civic Forum and served as one of the key issues through which the Civic Democratic Party defined itself. It also provided an opportunity for politicians skilled enough to grasp this issue to do so and to incorporate it into their wider political agendas.

The new authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union

Abstract: D ow naded rom http://online.ucpress.edupdf/43/4/335/4400/cpcs_43_4_335.pdf by gest on 25 D ecem er 2019 The end of the Cold War generated fundamentally new constraints on authoritarian rule. Autocrats were no longer able to attract the kind of patronage frommajor superpowers that had bolstered regimes in Africa, the Americas, and Eastern Europe in the 1950s–1980s. Simultaneously, the fall of communism and the emergence of the United States in the 1990s as the world’s only superpower helped to generate a democratic “Zeitgeist” whereby democracy became the only internationally legitimate form of government (Diamond, 2008: 6). Autocrats also confronted Western democracy promotion. Donors began to scrutinize human rights abuses more intensively than in the past. In 1990, France, Great Britain, the United States, and other Western powers announced that democratization – including free elections, freedom of the press, multipartyism, and the abolition of censorship – would become conditions for future economic assistance (Callaghy, 1991; Lawson, 1999: 5–6; McFaul, 2005; Diamond, 2008). In 1993, the European Union formally introduced democracy as a condition for entry. As a result, the European Union became a powerful force for democratization in Eastern Europe (Pridham, 2005; Vachudova, 2005; Levitsky and Way, 2010). Simultaneously, the U.S. and Western Europe provided assistance for civil society, independent media, and domestic election monitoring (Diamond, 2008: 120–133). By the end of the 20th century, it also becamemuch harder for leaders to hide authoritarian abuses from the outsideworld. In the 1990s both multilateral and international non-governmental organizations became increasingly active in monitoring authoritarian behaviour. Thus, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) undertook an extensive program of election monitoring – sending hundreds of short term and long term observers to scrutinize elections; while groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, the European Institute of Media, Freedom House, and Human Rights Watch wrote regular reports on government harassment of media and opposition (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Boonstra, 2010). Finally, and perhaps most significantly, advances in communications technologies, like emergence of global cable television, the Internet, and cell phone technology, opened autocrats to far more scrutiny than in the past (Diamond, 2010). Thus, while Joseph Stalin was able to cover up the murder of millions in the 1930s, Americans could watch Boris Yeltsin’s bombing of parliament in 1993 live on CNN. In 2009, cell phone technology allowed opposition in Iran to broadcast daily images of protest despite strenuous efforts by Iranian authorities to shut out the Western media. Yet, in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, authoritarian leaders have successfully adapted to these new constraints. Indeed, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and roughly thirty five years since the start of the “Third Wave” of democratization in 1974, nearly half of the world’s countries remained authoritarian (Diamond, 2008: 372; Levitsky andWay, 2010). Outside of Eastern Europe and Latin America where ties to the West were strong, Western pressure was often inconsistently applied and domestic actors had insufficient stake in goodWestern relations to fully democratize (Levitsky and Way, 2006; Diamond, 2008: 125–6). Despite nominal commitment to democracy, Western governments frequently provided significant aid to authoritarian leaders in Armenia, Russia, Ukraine, and other countries (Levitsky andWay, 2010). As a result, many regimes in the post-Cold War era combined regular, and often competitive, elections with widespread democratic abuses – including significant electoral fraud, and harassment of journalists and opposition (Levitsky and Way, 2002; Schedler, 2006a). In response to the persistence of authoritarianism, a significant literature on authoritarianism emerged in the 2000s (Geddes, 1999; Levitsky andWay, 2002, 2010; Slater, 2003, 2010; Way, 2005a,b; Brownlee, 2007a; Greene, 2007; Gandhi and Przeworski, 2007; Magaloni, 2008). However, much of this literature (Geddes, 1999; Gandhi and Przeworski, 2007; Magaloni, 2008) has operated at a high level of abstraction and generality – based on formalizedmodels of elite interaction; or analyses of large-n country datasets.We are only now just beginning to gain a nuanced and detailed empirical understanding of howpostCold War authoritarian institutions work in practice (Wilson, 2005a; Darden, 2008). Our understanding of contemporary

Differential Voter Turnout in a Post-Communist Muslim Society: The Case of the Kyrgyz Republic

Abstract: Borrowing the dominant theoretical frameworks of studies of voter turnout in the developed world, this paper tests the applicability of these frameworks to a transitional democracy in a Muslim society. Using logistic regression, we estimate an individual’s likelihood of voting in Kyrgyzstan’s 2005 parliamentary and presidential elections. We find that traditional rural networks, rather than networks of voluntary associations, play the central role in the mobilization of voters. In addition, turnout is affected by long-standing cultural cleavages based on religion and ethnicity, and by education, occupation, and trust in government. Our findings suggest that the political behavior of the people of the Kyrgyz Republic is supportive of democracy, in spite of elite-level obstacles to a successful transition.

The environmental management system in the Republic of Macedonia – problems, issues and challenges

Abstract: Starting with the premise that the environmental management system is an integral part of the multidimensional socio-economic, cultural and political system of a country, a critical overview of the existing environmental management system in Macedonia was conducted as a case study in an attempt to identify and evaluate the key problems, challenges, and issues that hinder the transition of post-communist countries. The analysis revealed that the same barriers were present in the different systems of many post-communist counties. These barriers may be overcome only by creating indigenous well educated personnel who understand the specifics of their country.

State-led violence in Ukraine's 2004 elections and orange revolution

Abstract: The Ukrainian opposition faced one of the greatest degrees of state-backed violence in the second wave of democratization of post-communist states with only Serbia experiencing similar cases of assassinations and repression of the youth Otpor NGO. In the 2004 Ukrainian elections the opposition maintained a strategy of non-violence over the longest protest period of 17 days but was prepared to use force if it had been attacked. The regime attempted to suppress the Orange Revolution using security forces. Covert and overt Russian external support was extensive and in the case of Ukraine and Georgia the European Union (EU) did not intervene with a membership offer that had the effect of emboldening the opposition in Central-Eastern Europe. This article surveys five state-backed violent strategies used in Ukraine’s 2004 elections: inciting regional and inter-ethnic conflict, assassinations, violence against the opposition, counter-revolution and use of the security forces. The article does not cover external Russian-backed violence in the 2004 elections unique to Ukraine that the author has covered elsewhere.

Past imperfect: The construction of history in the school curriculum and mass media in post-communist Russia and Ukraine

Abstract: This introduction to the special section on the history education in contemporary Russia and Ukraine discusses selected articles in the context of comparative scholarship. It isolates important implications for the burgeoning field of political socialization in the post-communist societies.