Revolution in East-Central Europe: The Rise and Fall of Communism and the Cold War by David S Mason

Author:David S Mason [Mason, David S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781000310030
Google: i02fDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 52880371
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

Theories of Democratization

The democratization of the postcommunist states faced a daunting number of obstacles: the large number and the complexity of institutions, legal structures, and patterns of behavior necessary for a stable democracy; the lack of a democratic tradition in most of these states; the unprecedented nature of the transition from state socialism to liberal democracy; and the high degree of ethnic diversity in many of these countries. It is a sobering fact that only about thirty countries in the world have achieved pluralist democracy, and most of those are of quite recent vintage and located in a small corner of the globe (i.e., Western Europe).

Democracy means government of the people, from the Greek words meaning "the people rule." The outpouring of popular participation in 1989 would seem to indicate that this condition had been achieved. As Robert Dahl has pointed out in his book Polyarchy, however, widespread participation must be accompanied by political competition for an effective democracy.17 Dahl and others have identified many procedures and institutions that seem to be necessary to fulfill these two criteria. Dahl posits a "procedural minimum" for democracy that includes secret balloting, universal adult suffrage, regular elections, partisan competition, associational freedom, and executive accountability.18 In terms of institutions, this requires multiple political parties, representative institutions (such as legislatures) with policy-making powers, and an executive who is accountable either to the population (such as the popularly elected U.S. president) or to the legislature (such as the prime minister in the United Kingdom). For all of this to work, there must also be "rule of law," which limits the powers of the government, and legally guaranteed civil liberties, which protect individuals from government power and provide the legal space necessary for political activity and organization.19 In most democracies, the rule of law and civil liberties are provided for in a written constitution.

The communist regimes in Eastern Europe, which called themselves peoples' democracies, actually possessed many of these democratic features: elected legislatures, regular elections, and even constitutions that guaranteed many civil rights. There were several important differences, however. The first of these pertains to civil rights. The constitutions of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe did provide for an extensive array of civil rights, including many social and economic rights (for example, the right to employment) that do not appear in the U.S. Bill of Rights. But whereas the civil liberties guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution are absolute, those in the communist party states were qualified. The Soviet Constitution, for example, guaranteed the right of free speech, press, assembly, and so on, but only "in accordance with the interests of the people and in order to strengthen and develop the socialist system."20 Thus, the interests of the people, represented by the state, had priority over the rights of individuals. It was this escape clause that allowed the governments of the region to persecute dissident individuals or organizations whose activities could be viewed as damaging to the interests of the state or of socialism.

The second major difference

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