Political Systems Of Central And Eastern Europe

Introduction

I. The breakdown of the communist regime and the transition to democracy in Eastern and Central Europe

A. Main approaches

Basically there are 3 main key approaches how to understand the transitions from authoritarian regime to democracy: modernisation approach; structural approach; transitional approach.

Modernisation approach was developed by Martin Lipset; it is based on social and economical changes in society. The democratisation is a consequence of those changes. It is based on the statement that democracy is connected with social and economical development. It means that in general democracy is working better in modern industrial countries with strong middle class, educated society. When those conditions are fulfilled, the country is ready to be a democracy. There are exceptions in the world, the main one is India, and another exception is Costa Rica. Example of this rule: South Korea, Taiwan.

Structural approach works with some changes of structure of the society on internal or international level, for example, non democratic leader dies and there is non successor; lost of the war; etc. Examples: Germany, Italy, Japan.

Transitional approach means that the main actors of the process are politicians. This approach is the widest and lead to many typologies. This is the more useful to study the case of Eastern and Central Europe. All those typologies are based on the founding theory developed by L. Morlino in 1980, he distinguished two models: reform and discontinuous models.

Reform model means long and peaceful model of transition to democracy initiates by leaders of non-democratic regimes. We can find often some contracts, negotiations between the leaders and the opponents to the regime. There are no activities of masses; society doesn’t participate into this transition. Very often there is some continuity between old and new regime.

Discontinuous model is the opposite: the motive power is anti system opposition. The process is short, very often violent, activity of the masses is high and there is non-continuation between old and new regime. led by the opposition leaders. Short process, violent, with victims, and a high activity level of the mass

B. Concretes transitions to democracy in Eastern and Central Europe

Regarding Eastern and Central Europe two others typologies has been developed by Huntington (USA) and Wiatr (Poland).

Huntington wrote a lot of respected works and books in the 1950s and 1960s (Political order in changing societies; The third wave, democratisation in the late 20th Century, 1991). He distinguishes three waves of democratisation: 19th century; after WWII; and 1980s-1990s. The third way of democratisation started in Europe 1974 with Portugal in Western Europe. In Central and Eastern Europe there were three models of transition: transformation, replacement and transplacement.

For transformation, the key role was played by the authoritarian rulers, they are moderates and not so dogmatic, anti system opposition doesn’t take part in the process. Democratisation is peaceful, quite, and the former leaders are not punished. According to Huntington, three countries corresponded to this model: Hungary, Russia, and partly Bulgaria.

Replacement is completely different. Reformers don’t exist inside the regime; leaders are dogmatic, against any existing democratic regime. Democratisation is realised in the moment when anti system opposition became so strong that it can take all by itself. Important point is civil disobedience, people start to demonstrate, call for the change of regime. The masses are active against regime. Former dictators are punished after the fall of the regime. According to Huntington there were two countries corresponding to this model: Romania and Eastern Germany.

Transplacement means that democratisation is a common deal between rulers and opposition. The governors decide to make some reforms and start to lose control of the situation, to lose power. Opposition is becoming stronger. As a consequence government wants to stop the reforms and make repression to limit opposition. The main issue is that government isn't strong enough to keep power, and the opposition isn't strong enough to take it : dead end > The result is a deadlock. The only way is negotiation between authoritarian rulers and pro democratic opposition. Condition of success is a non-radical opposition of both sides. They all have to be moderate, and have a will to risk those negotiations because the result isn’t known. According to Huntington, examples are Czechoslovakia and Poland.

Huntington also analyse the following question: why the third wave covered also communist regime/central and eastern europe?

1) communist leaders lost their legitimacy. The fist legitimacy was Marxism-Leninism ideology, which disappeared, nobody believed in it anymore + economic weaknesses of communist model.

2) change of international politics. Policies of external actors changed. The most important actors were: M. Gorbatchev who abolished the Brejnev’s doctrine, afterward, opposition started being less afraid to be active; The opposition understood that there wasn't anymore threats from the Soviet Union.

R. Reagan and his new foreign policy, he became very anti-Sovietic, he very actively military supported anti-communist movements around the world (star wars, block evil) ; the Pope Jean-Paul II who supported democracy everywhere. They very evilly influenced the transition to democracy.

3) In Eastern and Central Europe, transition has the form of the snowballing effect: the first was Poland and became an inspiration for other countries. The process get faster and faster. Timothy Garton Ash has this wonderful line in his book The Magic Lantern where he reports having said to Vaclav Havel that “in Poland it took ten years; in Hungary 10 months; in East Germany 10 weeks; perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take 10 days!”

Jerzy Wiatr (polish political scientist) distinguished five models of transition: negotiation reform of the regime; capitulation; revolution; reform without negotiation; and the breakdown of federative or multiethnic state.

1) Negotiation reform is almost the same model as Huntington’s transplacement. But according to Wiatr there are two examples of this model: Hungary and Poland. It is true that in Hungary there were negotiation between leaders and opposition. The first stimulus came from communist, but democratisation was a consequence

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