Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats: Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space [1 ed.] 1409412504, 9781409412502

Citation preview

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space

Edited by Susan Stewart, Margarete Klein, Andrea Schmitz and Hans-Henning Schröder

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

This page has been left blank intentionally

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space

Edited by Susan Stewart, Margarete Klein, Andrea Schmitz AND Hans-Henning Schröder German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), Berlin

© Susan Stewart, Margarete Klein, Andrea Schmitz and Hans-Henning Schröder 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Susan Stewart, Margarete Klein, Andrea Schmitz and Hans-Henning Schröder have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Presidents, oligarchs and bureaucrats : forms of rule in the post-Soviet space. 1. Former Soviet republics--Politics and government. 2. Post-communism--Former Soviet republics. 3. Legitimacy of governments--Former Soviet republics. 4. Comparative government. I. Stewart, Susan, 1967320.9'47'09051-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Presidents, oligarchs and bureaucrats : forms of rule in the post-Soviet space / [edited] by Susan Stewart ... [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-1250-2 (hbk) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-1251-9 (ebk) 1. Russia (Federation)--Politics and government--1991- I. Stewart, Susan, 1982JN6695.P735 2012 320.947--dc23 2011035098 ISBN 9781409412502 (hbk) ISBN 9781409412519 (ebk) III

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, UK.

Contents List of Figures and Tables   List of Contributors   Acknowledgements   Foreword by Richard Sakwa   Introduction   Susan Stewart, Margarete Klein, Andrea Schmitz and Hans-Henning Schröder

vii ix xiii xv 1

Part I Theory 1

Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space: Hybrid Regimes   Timm Beichelt

15

2

Democracy and a Level Playing Field   Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way

29

3

Neopatrimonialism: Problems of a Catch-all Concept?   Gero Erdmann

43

Part II  Case Studies: Russia 4

Russia’s Political Regime: Neo-Soviet Authoritarianism and Patronal Presidentialism   Margareta Mommsen

63



Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia: Trajectories of Political Evolution   Vladimir Gel’man

89

6

Fascistoid Russia: Putin’s Political System in Comparative Context 107 Alexander J. Motyl

5

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

vi

part iiI  Case Studies: Ukraine and Georgia 7

From Competitive Authoritarianism to Defective Democracy: Political Regimes in Ukraine before and after the Orange Revolution   Heiko Pleines

8

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia  139 Pamela Jawad

9

From Corruption to Rotation: Politics in Georgia before and after the Rose Revolution   Christian Timm



125

167

Part IV  Case Studies: Central Asia 10 11 12

Changing Political Systems and Regime Types: In between the Neopatrimonial and the Bureaucratic-Developmental State in Central Asia   Paul Georg Geiss

187

Seeing Like a President: The Dilemma of Inclusion in Kazakhstan   Sebastian Schiek and Stephan Hensell

203

The Loss of Difference: The Conditions of Modern Politics in Kyrgyzstan   Alexander Wolters

223

Conclusion   Susan Stewart, Margarete Klein, Andrea Schmitz and Hans-Henning Schröder

241

Index  

251

List of Figures and Tables Figures 1.1 1.2 8.1

Pure Types Versus Fuzzy Types   Regime Development of Hybrid Post-Soviet Cases According to Freedom House Ratings, 1991-2009   Trust in Various Institutions in Georgia (in per cent of Respondents that Answered with ‘Agreeable’)  

17

152

A Typology of Subnational Authoritarianisms (SNA)   Political Systems and Their Features   Rating of Various Institutions (2003 and 2004)  

92 110 150

23

Tables 5.1 6.1 8.1

This page has been left blank intentionally

List of Contributors Timm Beichelt is Professor for European Studies at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder, Germany and has been researching regime character and democratization processes in Eastern Europe for over a decade. He has written a monograph on the role of political institutions in processes of democratic consolidation in Eastern Europe (2001). He and co-author, Claudia Eicher, were responsible for covering Eastern European regime development in a multi-volume work on defective democracy, edited by Wolfgang Merkel et al. (2006). In addition, he has published on related topics in the journals Democratization and Comparative European Politics. Gero Erdmann is Senior Research Associate at the Institute of African Affairs within the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and heads the GIGA Berlin Office. He has been conducting research on forms of rule and statesociety relations in African contexts for over two decades. Among his publications relevant to the following volume is: Neopatrimonialism Reconsidered: Critical Review and Elaboration of an Elusive Concept (with Ulf Engel). Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Studies, 45(1), 95-119. Paul Georg Geiss is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna and has worked extensively on the problem of political change in Central Asia. He graduated from the London School of Economics in 1996, holds a PhD fellowship from the Austrian Academy of Science and previously worked as a research fellow at the German Institute of Middle East Studies in Hamburg. His publications include Pre-Tsarist and Tsarist Central Asia: Communal Commitment and Political Order in Change (2003) and various articles on social history and politics in Central Asia. Vladimir Gel’man is Professor at the Department of Political Sciences and Sociology of the European University in St Petersburg, Russia. He has been a Visiting Professor at Central European University, Budapest and the University of Texas at Austin, and Research Fellow at St Anthony’s College, the University of Oxford. He is author and/or editor of numerous books in Russian and English, including Making and Breaking Democratic Transitions: The Comparative Politics of Russia’s Regions (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), Elites and Democratic Development in Russia (Routledge, 2003) and The Politics of Local Government in Russia (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). He has also authored as well as co-authored

x

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

articles, published in Europe-Asia Studies, International Political Science Review, Post-Soviet Affairs and Democratization. Stephan Hensell holds a PhD from the Humboldt University zu Berlin and a Diploma in Political Science from the University of Hamburg. He is a senior researcher at the Working Group on the Causes of War at the University of Hamburg, where he is doing research on civil wars, peace-building and the transformation of the state. From 2009 to 2010, he was a visiting research fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, and from 2000 until 2005, researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg. His regional expertise focuses on the Balkans and Eurasia and he has conducted field research in Georgia, Albania and Kosovo. Stephan has lectured on International Relations and Comparative Politics and has published on armed groups and civil wars, the post-socialist state and police apparatuses in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Pamela Jawad has been a Research Associate at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) since 2005 and co-editor-in-chief of the annual Conflict Barometer since 2001. Her main research interest concerns democratization processes and their ‘external’ promotion, political crises and conflicts, and their prevention and resolution. Most recently she has published: Conflict Resolution through Democracy Promotion? The Role of the OSCE in Georgia. Democratization, 15(3), 2008. Margarete Klein (co-editor) is Senior Research Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. In her doctoral work, she focused on the functioning of the Russian parliament, and more recently has also published on political regime development in Georgia. She has written numerous articles for German-language political science journals and edited volumes comparing the evolution of various post-Communist political systems in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus. Steven Levitsky is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at the Department of Government, Harvard University (USA). He specializes on political transition in Latin America and co-authored a book with Lucan A. Way entitled Competitive Authoritarianism: The Origins and Evolution of Hybrid Regimes in the Post-Cold War Era. New York: Cambridge University Press (2010). Margareta Mommsen is Professor Emeritus in Comparative Politics at the University of Munich (Germany), where she specialized in research and teaching on political regimes in Eastern Europe. Her publications focus in particular on the political transformations during Gorbachev’s perestroika and in post-Soviet Russia. She has written three monographs on the Russian political system and Russian regime development following the collapse of the USSR.

List of Contributors

xi

Alexander J. Motyl is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University in Newark. He served as Associate Director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in 1992-1998. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, he is the author of Imperial Ends: The Decline, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (Columbia University Press, 2001) as well as of numerous academic and policy-oriented articles, including: The Myth of Russian Resurgence. The American Interest, MarchApril 2007. Heiko Pleines is Head of the Department of Politics and Economics at the Research Centre for East European Studies and Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Bremen. His research focuses on the role of non-state actors in political decision-making in Central and Eastern Europe. He also acts as an external country expert for Transparency International, Public Integrity and the Bertelsmann Transformation Index. He has written a monograph addressing the role of informality in the nexus between politics and economics in Ukraine (2005), and recently published the following article: Manipulating politics: Domestic investors in Ukrainian privatization auctions 2000-2004. Europe-Asia Studies, 60(7), 2008. Sebastian Schiek is a doctoral candidate and research fellow at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Politics at the University of Hamburg. He studied political science at the Freie Universität Berlin where he received his Diplom degree in 2005. In 2007 and 2008, he conducted field research in Kazakhstan and was a visiting lecturer at the Kazakh German University in Almaty. His research was aided by a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Andrea Schmitz (co-editor) is deputy head of the Research Division ‘Russian Federation/CIS’ at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin. Trained as an ethnologist, she is a specialist on Central Asia with significant practical experience in the region. In her publications, she focuses on comparative regime development in Central Asia, as well as on international development policy towards the region. Hans-Henning Schröder (co-editor) is head of the Research Division ‘Russian Federation/CIS’ at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin, as well as a Professor of East European History at the University of Bremen. He has several decades of experience in teaching, editing, and research on various aspects of Soviet/Russian domestic and foreign policy, with a particular focus on the evolution of Russian elites since 1991. Most recently he has published: What Kind of Political Regime Does Russia Have?, in Politics and the Ruling Group in Putin’s Russia, edited by S. White (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2008), 1-27.

xii

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Susan Stewart (co-editor) is a Senior Research Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin. In her doctoral work, she focuses on Ukrainian domestic policy in the realm of ethnopolitics, and has since published widely on political and civil society development in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, in particular as it concerns the relationship of these regions to the European Union. She guest-edited a special issue of the journal Democratization, 16(4), August 2009 on democracy promotion before and after the ‘colour revolutions’. Christian Timm is a PhD candidate based at the Institute for Social Sciences, Humboldt University zu Berlin. In his research on Georgia and the wider Southern Caucasus he takes interest in the crucial relationship between politics, administration and economy. For his PhD thesis Christian Timm conducts comparative in-depth studies on administrative and economic reforms to sound out the potentials and dilemmas of political development in the region. Lucan A. Way is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His research interests include regime change, hybrid regimes, weak states, corruption, and post-Communist politics. He has published articles in numerous journals, including: Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Comparative Politics, Journal of Democracy, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Post-Soviet Affairs and World Politics. He is currently completing two books: Failed Authoritarianism and the Sources of Political Competition in the Former Soviet Union and Competitive Authoritarianism: International Linkage, Organizational Power and the Fate of Hybrid Rule (with Steven Levitsky). Alexander Wolters is a doctoral candidate at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder, Germany. His diploma thesis (2004) deals with the social embeddedness of conflict in Kyrgyzstan and examined the interplay between power and ethnicity. In 2006-2007, he was a lecturer at the Department of International and Comparative Political Science at the American University of Central Asia, in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. His doctoral work focuses on a comparison of political systems in Central Asia.

Acknowledgements This volume began as a concept for a conference, which was held in December 2009 at the Europäische Akademie Berlin. The four editors, who were the convenors of the conference, would like to thank our colleagues at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde, and in particular its Executive Director, Gabriele Freitag, for vital assistance in organizing and funding the event. Our gratitude also goes to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which generously supported the conference, as well as to all conference participants (including most of the authors in this volume), who helped advance our thinking on the issues the book addresses. Most of all, we would like to express our appreciation to Franziska Smolnik, who from day one of our concept development and planning provided invaluable help in a wide variety of ways, from research to organization to desperately needed moral support during the crises which invariably accompany the production of such a volume. In addition, we would like to thank Mariko Higuchi, who, despite joining the project at a late date, quickly and capably performed the remaining tasks at a crucial stage in the preparation of the manuscript. Without the assistance of Franziska and Mariko, this volume would certainly not have been completed. Finally, we are very grateful to Stefan Halling for dealing with the tricky business of generating the index in the final phase of the project.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Foreword Richard Sakwa

This collection of chapters provides an original and innovative contribution to research on systems in transition by exploring the character of post-Soviet regimes with reference to a range of key theoretical concepts. It does so by drawing on and carrying further the debates within the transition literature on regime type, as well as linking this theoretical discussion to empirical material via a series of case studies from the post-Soviet space. In the past decade the ‘transition paradigm’, assuming a shift from authoritarianism to democracy on the territory of the post-Soviet space and elsewhere, has been subjected to serious and justified criticism. The complex political and societal developments in the post-Soviet countries have made it clear that a transition to democracy is far from given. Rather a ‘grey zone’, to use Thomas Carothers’ term, has developed, including many regimes which neither fit the traditional democratic nor the classic authoritarian mould. Numerous attempts have therefore been made to devise new categories or to modify existing ones in order to account for the diversity of post-Soviet regimes. These have included many variants of ‘democracy with adjectives’, such as illiberal democracy, delegative democracy and so on, as well as the development of permutations of authoritarianism (competitive, electoral and many more). Much of the literature to date has consisted either of studies focusing on the theoretical side of the debate or on individual analyses of specific post-Soviet countries which utilize one of the newly devised regime types to explore the character of a particular regime or system. This volume goes beyond these formats to offer, first, a combination of theoretical approaches used to analyse regime development and case studies which apply them and second, wide-ranging geographical coverage of the post-Soviet space (excluding the Baltic republics). In this way, it provides the basis for a theoretically grounded comparison of developments across the region, which in turn advances the theoretical debate on regime character and transition paths. In particular, the volume includes a chapter on neopatrimonialism, which has so far been neglected in the discussion of hybrid regimes, but has been shown empirically to have some utility when analysing parts of the post-Soviet space. The systematic incorporation of neopatrimonialism as a category in both the theoretical and empirical sections represents a step forward in transition research. This volume demonstrates the continued importance of some form of transitional paradigm of analysis, even though the transition paradigm that predominated in the ‘third wave’ does indeed need to be modified. The democratization agenda

xvi

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

was sometimes used instrumentally in the post-Cold War world and this provoked something of a backlash against the whole notion of transition. This has forced us to reconsider the relevance of the transition paradigm, devised primarily for Southern Europe and Latin America, for the East European case. The all-encompassing nature of the post-Soviet changes render them ‘total transitions’, in which every aspect of society, politics and international relations are transformed, including in some cases, the state itself. The ‘legacy’ argument is particularly important, since communism was more than a political system but a whole way of life. It is for this reason that the post-communist transitions are sometimes designated as part of a ‘fourth wave’. The ‘wave’ approach, however disaggregated it may be, nevertheless retains the teleological implications of the transitional approach – that democracy is a foreordained part of the destiny of humanity and that the countries, in a wave, share certain fundamental characteristics as shaped by the demands of the epoch. It is for this reason that we should distinguish between distinct approaches to the application of theories of democratization. The first we can label as typological, where a concept is devised that tries to encompass the features of the hybrid political systems that have emerged in post-Soviet Eurasia. The typological approach is typically accompanied by shades of the teleological, the belief that the end point of a transition is knowable in advance. Taken together, these two give rise to the typological/teleological form of comparative democratization. Although very few scholars studying the region actually employed teleological transitology, a degree of teleology is inherent in the typological approach; otherwise it becomes little more than a mechanical exercise in classification. The typological approach is a normative-evaluative exercise in which a whole bestiary of terms (as noted above) has been devised in an attempt to capture the hybrid nature of post-Soviet reality, including ‘managed democracy’, ‘managed pluralism’, ‘liberal authoritarianism’, ‘semi-authoritarianism’, ‘soft authoritarianism’ and many more. Following the ‘orange revolution’ in Ukraine in late 2004 the Kremlin advanced the term ‘sovereign democracy’, to indicate that Russia would find its own path to democracy and that democracy in the country would have Russian characteristics. This approach tends to reduce analysis to essentialist statements of the sort that ‘Russia is ...’, endowing a country with certain determinative characteristics. The sociology of power relations and the political anthropology of emergence, political processes and relations are thus occluded. The second approach we can label as genealogical or evolutionary. Here the emphasis shifts from normative evaluations of the fundamental character of a regime to examining the factors that shape a particular system, how that system operates in a particular environment and the distinctive forms of engagement with the ‘civilisation of modernity’, to use S.N. Eisenstadt’s term. This historical-structural approach helps frame a number of specific questions and in particular the factors shaping a particular polity. It also takes into account the role of leadership (agency) as an independent variable, yet constrained by historical legacies and contextual factors (structure). The evolutionary approach also encourages a shift away from the discourse of transition and consolidation

Foreword

xvii

towards a greater emphasis on the ‘quality of democracy’ and thus reprises debates about substantive notions of democracy. The new concern entails a move away from a focus on institutions and regime types towards the quality of democratic citizenship, emphasizing in particular a bundle of individual rights, including effective access to justice, social and human rights. Thus the extension of political rights from this perspective has to be complemented by civil and social rights within the framework of a stable state structure. Democracy cannot function without a state, yet the ‘stateness’ factor has too often been over-shadowed by technical discussions over crafting institutions or a romantic appreciation of an idealized Tocquevillean characterization of civil society. While the classical typological ‘transition paradigm’ as such may be exhausted, the problem of how countries negotiate regime change, the logic of transitional paths and the appropriate methodology and conceptual apparatus to study them remain extremely pertinent questions. The fall of communism, after all, is equally about the reconstitution of viable post-communist orders. The substantive agenda of research on comparative regime change is far from exhausted. For example, the relationship between economic development and democracy remains contested, despite the extensive literature on the subject, while the relationship between democratization and religion (and political spirituality more broadly) remains substantially underresearched. Equally, the most appropriate institutional framework to sustain democratization remains a matter of controversy. There remains, for example, much debate over at least two key aspects of institutional design: the effect of different electoral systems and in particular the role of proportional representation in fostering an effective multiparty system; and the comparative impact of presidential and parliamentary systems in fostering democracy. There is much evidence that strong legislatures are conducive for democracy, but this is not the same as saying that strong presidencies inhibit democratic development (a common assertion in the study of contemporary Russia). The broader question of the regularities governing contingent outcomes remains at the centre of transition studies. The path dependency established at the moment of breakdown of old regimes and the forms in which new political orders were reconstituted is no less a matter of debate today than at the beginning of the study of comparative transitions. The technical transition in the post-Soviet states is largely over, with the fundamental decisions on the design of political institutions settled through the adoption of constitutions and the structuring of political practices, but the ‘transitions’ writ large clearly are not over, as this book demonstrates, since too many political and geo-political questions remain to be resolved. It is the political issues that are the heart of this study, bringing together a range of leading experts. The work combines theoretical analysis with empirical case studies and thus provides a unique insight into the complex and evolving reality of the countries in the post-Soviet region. The lessons learned for theory-building from a comparative look at the cases of Russia, Georgia, Ukraine and Central Asia undoubtedly have wider implications and open upon new avenues for further research.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Introduction Susan Stewart, Margarete Klein, Andrea Schmitz and Hans-Henning Schröder

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in the emergence of 15 new states. All of them inherited the traditions of a totalitarian (and in some phases arguably authoritarian) form of rule. Authoritarianism and totalitarianism have been extensively researched and their characteristics are relatively well defined (Linz 1975). However, the states and societies which emerged from the USSR appear to have created many more puzzles for the theoretical literature on forms of rule than did the system from which they came. These puzzles have also called into question the adequacy of the concepts of ‘democracy,’ ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘totalitarianism’ for exploring developments since the fall of the Soviet Union. It is the goal of this volume to address some of these puzzles and thereby to make a contribution to comprehending the evolution of states, regimes and societies in the post-Soviet space. Scholars turned to the existing literature on political, economic and societal transformations as a theoretical and comparative empirical basis for investigating developments on the territory of the former USSR. Analyses of the wave of transition from authoritarian to democratic rule in Latin America in the late 1970s offered an opportunity for comparison and for conceptual borrowing. The experience of Southern Europe (Spain, Portugal, Greece) provided another series of related examples, this time with a European background common to parts of the former Soviet Union (Linz and Stepan 1996, O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986, Pridham 1995). These examples, as well as the general euphoria which pervaded much of Europe following the collapse of the USSR, led to certain conclusions about transition paths which later turned out to be premature. It was assumed that the totalitarian/authoritarian regime present in the Soviet context would give way to numerous democracies. While this was understood to be a complex process, involving several phases, the overall outcome was not generally called into doubt. Other developments in formerly socialist Europe seemed to confirm this optimism. In particular, the clear and rapid democratization of the former Soviet satellites to the west of the USSR, and their ensuing accession to both NATO and the EU, made it seem likely that their eastern neighbours would follow the same path with regard to regime type. On the other hand, the brutal violence and repression in the former Yugoslavia indicated another kind of model in post-socialist Europe. While

2

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

some concerns were voiced that this model could have implications for the former Soviet republics, this was considered less likely than a peaceful democratization. In time, however, it became evident that some of the initial assumptions were false. Instead of evolving slowly but unmistakably into democracies, most of the post-Soviet regimes either became mired in a ‘grey zone’ between democracy and authoritarianism or acquired an overtly autocratic character. The turning point in the literature can best be marked by Thomas Carothers’ article on the ‘end of the transition paradigm’ in the Journal of Democracy in 2002. In that article he listed five assumptions present in the bulk of the transition literature which had been debunked by actual developments in several regions of the world. Although Carothers was most concerned with the consequences of the failure of the transition paradigm for democracy promotion, his arguments resonated with a wide group of scholars and practitioners. By the time his article appeared, a number of academics had turned to an empirically more grounded approach in exploring the development of states and regimes in the post-Soviet space and were trying to explain the patterns they found (Bremmer and Taras 1997, Colton and Tucker 1995, Dawisha and Parrott 1994, Jones Luong 2002, Segbers and DeSpiegeleire 1996). This exploration eventually led to the emergence of two directions of research, as outlined by Timm Beichelt in his conceptual chapter for this volume. One is to divide the entire spectrum of regimes into democratic or authoritarian and then qualify them with adjectives emphasizing ways in which they are ‘less democratic’ or ‘less authoritarian’ (see also Collier and Levitsky 1997, Merkel 2004, Schedler 2006). Another is to use the category of ‘hybrid regimes’ as a middle ground between democracy and authoritarianism and containing elements of both. Beichelt addresses the advantages and disadvantages of creating a ‘hybrid regime’ category in his contribution, while Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way present one way of classifying ‘less authoritarian’ regimes in their chapter on competitive authoritarianism and one of its characteristic features, the uneven playing field. While the question of the ‘grey zone’ was being addressed in this manner, other scholars began to refer to the concept of neopatrimonialism in their analysis of post-Soviet politics and society, and this trend has continued (Fisun 2003, Franke, Gawrich and Alakbarov 2009, Whitmore 2010, Zimmer 2004). Several reasons can be posited for this increasing interest in neopatrimonialist logic. First, there is the question of discipline. Those outside the field of political science (sociologists in particular) were more likely to have come in contact with the neopatrimonialist approach and to see it as potentially fruitful for an analysis of the post-Soviet space. However, there has now been significant spillover into the political science realm (see for example, Brownlee 2002, Snyder 1992). Second, a certain disillusionment with the transition literature set in, as reflected inter alia by the Carother’s article mentioned above. A growing awareness that the assumptions of the substantial literature on democratization had proved inadequate to address the developments in the post-Soviet space also contributed to the desire to profit from other conceptual approaches. Finally, the choice of neopatrimonialism as

Introduction

3

a theoretical basis allowed for a greater emphasis on the distinction between formal and informal institutions and modes of behaviour, which were regarded as crucial for understanding the functioning of post-Soviet regimes and societies. In fact, neopatrimonialism arguably provides a better opportunity for including societal developments in an analysis of regime character than do the analytical constructs involving hybrid regimes or ‘diminished’ subtypes of democracy and autocracy. It also shifts the focus away from the ‘regime’ to the ‘authority’ level, allowing certain aspects to be emphasized which might otherwise be neglected, such as the role of the bureaucracy or the question of system stability (Timm 2010). Nonetheless, as Gero Erdmann demonstrates in his conceptual chapter in this volume, analytical frameworks based on the concept of neopatrimonialism are still very much ‘work in progress’. The idea behind this volume emerged from a need to take stock of both theoretical and empirical developments in transition research since the apparent failure of the transition paradigm, in particular as they relate to the post-Soviet space. In the course of this stocktaking, we became increasingly aware of the role the concept of neopatrimonialism has come to play in the analysis of the evolving situation in the former Soviet republics. At the same time, it became clear that analyses with a neopatrimonialist approach exist alongside those with a more ‘traditional’ transition approach based on the distinction between authoritarianism and democracy and/or on the concept of hybrid regimes, with virtually no attempts at cross-fertilization. A few authors actually draw on both approaches, but without necessarily making this explicit. Our goal for this edited volume was thus to provide an opportunity for both types of approach to be explored with regard to the countries of the post-Soviet space, and then to draw conclusions about the relative advantages and shortcomings of each, as well as the ways in which they complement or contradict one another. In order to do justice to each of the approaches, we opted to include three theoretical chapters presenting the relevant concepts. In the first chapter, Timm Beichelt describes the two ways of conceptualizing hybrid regimes indicated above. He argues that each approach has its merits. While creating diminished subtypes helps direct attention to certain key departures from the pure models of democracy and autocracy, seeing hybridity as a separate regime type emphasizes the consequences of a specific mix of characteristics for regime development. Based on an analysis of hybrid regimes in Eastern Europe, Beichelt argues that they are more than transitory exceptions. Indeed, occupying the space between democracy and autocracy can be quite an enduring situation. In this respect, the study of hybrid regimes challenges the assumption of a general return of autocracy in Eastern Europe found in some of the recent literature, presenting instead a much more nuanced picture. In order to make the concept of hybrid regimes less abstract, and because this concept has become well established in the literature and has spawned a variety of specific types, we chose to have one of these types represented in the conceptual section. We opted for ‘comparative authoritarianism’ as developed

4

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, for several reasons. First, of the new regime types suggested so far, it is perhaps the best developed conceptually and most recognized in the literature. Second, it constitutes a ‘diminished type’ of authoritarianism rather than of democracy. This corresponds better to our focus on the post-Soviet space, where the emergence of or return to authoritarian regimes has been the prevailing trend. Third, some of the authors in this volume utilize the concept of competitive authoritarianism, indicating that it is indeed a suitable tool for exploring developments in the former USSR. Finally, as Beichelt points out in his chapter, studies on autocracy harbor the greatest potential for further conceptual developments. In their contribution Levitsky and Way briefly summarize the concept of ‘competitive authoritarianism’ and then go on to elaborate on a key aspect of it, namely the attempts by political leaders to ensure their continuation in power despite the existence of (more or less) competitive elections. These attempts are characterized as measures to ensure that there is no ‘level playing field’ on which all actors (candidates, parties etc.) can compete equally. Rather, the field is skewed due to disparities in access to resources, media and the law. Levitsky and Way argue that these disparities have such significant consequences for regime development that a level playing field should be treated as a ‘defining feature of democracy’. They explore the reasons for the emergence of an uneven playing field and its consequences with reference to numerous empirical examples. Finally, they discuss strategies for overcoming an uneven playing field, including potential roles external actors can play in this process. As a counterpoint to the hybrid regimes approach, we have included an assessment of the concept of neopatrimonialism by Gero Erdmann in the theoretical section. He presents us with an overview of the conceptual development of neopatrimonialism and an explication of the concept, which is characterized by the interaction of two types of domination conceived by Max Weber as ‘patrimonial’ and ‘legal-rational’ forms of rule. Crucial for any neopatrimonial setting is the creation of systematic insecurity about the rules of a particular (political) game and the motives behind both organizational and individual behaviour. Actors try to overcome this insecurity, but they do so by operating according to both formal and informal logics, thus reproducing the systematic insecurity so typical for neopatrimonialism. Erdmann points to four conceptual challenges connected with the study of neopatrimonialism, one of which is the relationship between the concept and regime types such as democracy and authoritarianism. He asserts that neopatrimonialism should not be conceived of as a regime type of its own but rather as a set of distinctive features that make it possible to give a more precise picture of the ‘hybridity’ attributed to contemporary post-colonial forms of rule such as those that have developed in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus two concepts often utilized to understand political and societal developments in the post-Soviet space – hybrid regimes and neopatrimonialism – are juxtaposed here on the theoretical level. Certain potential advantages and shortcomings of each concept begin to emerge from this initial abstract

Introduction

5

engagement with them. For example, Erdmann’s contribution points to a possible complementarity of the two approaches, which would allow for mutual enrichment. However, their relative strengths and weaknesses become somewhat clearer when the empirical level is added, which here takes the form of nine case studies. For these we devised three overarching questions, at least one of which was to be addressed by each author. First, the authors were asked to explore decisionmaking processes in their respective countries, devoting special emphasis to the role of formal and informal elements therein. Second, the relationship between state and society (that is, between rulers and ruled) was to be investigated. Third, we enquired about the sources of legitimacy drawn upon by the rulers. However, the degree of attention paid to each question and the approach used to tackle it were left to each individual contributor. These questions emerged from our decision to focus on ‘forms of rule’ in the post-Soviet space. This choice was intended to set the stage for an exploration of developments including, but going beyond the level of political regime. While an analysis of decision-making processes is quite typical for regime studies, the emphasis on the interaction between the formal and informal levels opens up space for the inclusion of a broad set of actors and a glimpse behind the scenes of the official legal framework to explore who is actually involved in the process of ruling and which mechanisms are involved. By enquiring into the relationship between state and society we make clear that the societal level deserves a place in the analysis, given that where there are ‘rulers’ there are also ‘ruled’. Finally, an investigation into how (or whether) legitimacy is achieved again emphasizes the connection between those ruled, who often provide and at times dispute such legitimacy, and their rulers. It also supplies insights into the relative stability (or instability) of both the elite and societal levels, indicating where likely challenges to the current rulers might lie. In the conclusion, we present the results of the research, both on the empirical level, providing comparative answers to the three questions above, and on the theoretical level, assessing the use made of the hybrid regime and the neopatrimonialist approaches. In a final step, we return to the issue of advantages and disadvantages, enquiring whether it is possible to ascertain the relative benefits of each approach with regard to our research questions. This can not only help to distinguish the approaches from one another and inform further research by suggesting which approach can be more appropriate when, but can also assist in determining the potential value and feasibility of a future synthesis of the two approaches, which could provide a more complete framework for analysing developments in the post-Soviet space (and elsewhere). On the level of each approach separately, our conclusions point to useful refinements or alternative approaches which can enrich each evolving theoretical framework. On the empirical level the research has generated new and interesting findings as well, since the three questions covered by the authors have rarely been explored systematically across the post-Soviet space.

6

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

In the remainder of this introductory chapter we present summaries of the case studies as a guide to potential readers and a more specific indication of the type of analysis to be found in this volume. Following the order in which they appear in the volume, we present first the chapters focusing on Russia, then those on Ukraine, Georgia, and Central Asia. This particular mix of case studies is designed to fulfill various aims. First, it is broad enough to ensure that large portions of the post-Soviet space (excluding the Baltics) are covered, permitting us to attempt generalizations about the area in the conclusion, even though numerous countries are not included. Second, it allows us to go into some depth with regard to each country or, in the case of Central Asia, the region as a whole. This ensures that in each case more than one of our guiding questions can be addressed, thereby enhancing the possibility of comparing answers to these questions across countries. Finally, it allows for one country (or region) to be analysed using multiple theoretical approaches. This is helpful with regard to our goal of assessing the achievements and shortcomings of the two theoretical perspectives addressed in this volume and of enquiring into their potential complementarity. Three chapters deal with developments in Russia. In the first, Margareta Mommsen examines the Putin regime and opts to classify it ‘within the traditional typologies of rule’. However, she also places the regime in a historical context and demonstrates the legacy of Soviet rule and the residual patterns of the Yeltsin years. According to Mommsen, Putin changed the rules established by Yeltsin and created a veritable control regime. His authority was, however, not only based on a ‘power vertical’ but also on his role as arbiter within the business and bureaucratic oligarchy, which came into existence under Yeltsin, as well as on the trust he generated in the population. Mommsen evaluates Putin’s use of the media as a return to Soviet forms of political communication, and the interaction between government and business as a surrogate for political parties and civil society. Political decisions are made within an informal oligarchy including bureaucratic elites, creating a system of ‘patronal presidentialism’ (Hale 2006). Mommsen argues for a combination of both ‘normative’ and ‘functional’ approaches in order to capture the nature of the Russian regime as comprehensively as possible. Vladimir Gel’man explores how political regimes in the Russian regions function and places his analysis in a comparative context. He observes that in the 1990s local elites controlled key political and economic resources in the regions and served as veto players influencing electoral behaviour, economic governance, and property rights – thereby affecting the transformation of the economic and political spheres. This regional authoritarianism was a key pattern of the Yeltsin years. Notwithstanding the recentralization of the Putin era, regional elites have continued to play a crucial role and have succeeded in sustaining their influence on the regional level. To analyse this pattern Gel’man draws on the concept of ‘subnational authoritarianism’, which is widely used to discuss the development of political regimes in such different regions and countries as Latin America, the United States, Southeast Asia, Africa and Southern Italy. He investigates why Russia has ‘experienced a pendulum-like swing from centralized party-based SNA

Introduction

7

(subnational authoritarianism) to decentralized SNA, and back again’. Gel’man concludes that the national authoritarian regime and the authoritarianism on the subnational level are mutually supporting and foresees – at least in the short term – the preservation of the current political system. In his exploration of the Russian transition, Alexander Motyl suggests that the changes we observe cannot be explained in terms of a shift from totalitarianism to democracy and authoritarianism. He rediscovers the concept of fascism – not in the sense of totalitarianism theory or the classical fascism theories of August Thalheimer or Ernst Nolte, but as a regime type which he derives from analysing the political structures of Peronism in Argentina, fascism in Italy, national socialism in Germany and the Chávez system in Venezuela. Hence Motyl defines fascism ‘as a non-democratic, non-socialist political system with a domineering party, a supreme leader, a hyper-masculine leader cult, a hyper-nationalist, statist ideology, and an enthusiastically supportive population’. Against this definition, he tests the Russian political system under Putin and concludes that it is not sufficient to describe Russia as an authoritarian state. Rather, one has to look for a concept that integrates the trend towards hyper-nationalism, the cult of a supreme leader and the presence of widespread popular support. Since these tendencies are not yet consolidated and there is still a chance for some form of democracy, Motyl characterizes Russia as ‘fascistoid’. Turning to Ukraine, Heiko Pleines investigates one possible path a political regime can take within the hybrid regimes framework. Through a careful tracing of political decision-making and resource distribution during the presidencies of Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko, he argues that Ukraine has pursued a path from competitive authoritarianism to defective democracy. He pays special attention to the role of the Ukrainian ‘oligarchs’, and informal regional networks more broadly, in this transition. The ‘oligarchs’ used different methods to gain power and influence decision-making in the two periods studied, and made a limited contribution to the creation of pluralism in the Yushchenko phase. The main hallmark of this phase, however, was free and fair elections. These distinguished the Yushchenko period from the Kuchma period and justified the change of category from competitive authoritarianism to defective democracy. In conclusion, Pleines suggests two other potential development paths away from competitive authoritarianism and proposes that future research should attempt to map different paths ‘through the grey zone between authoritarianism and democracy’ and to test their empirical frequency and relevance. In the first of the two case studies on Georgia, Pamela Jawad analyses the Georgian political regime under Shevardnadze and Saakashvili with a special focus on national elections (both parliamentary and presidential) and the treatment of the opposition. She asks which of the concepts within the hybrid regimes framework are suitable to interpret and explain the empirical evidence from Georgia. Jawad begins by exploring whether Georgia under Shevardnadze and Saakashvili can be characterized as a defective democracy (Merkel 2004). In addition to the presence of various defects which would support such a categorization, she finds that a core

8

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

regime of democracy – the electoral regime – was and is violated to such a degree that classifying Georgia under Shevardnadze and Saakashvili as a defective democracy is not convincing. Rather, the Georgian political system can be better understood as competitive authoritarianism, with the exception of the late Shevardnadze era during which elections have not been competitive enough to generate considerable uncertainty since the incumbent – Shevardnadze – used massive fraud to eliminate any possibility of genuine competition. Jawad thus prefers to describe the late Shevardnadze era as a ‘hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime’ in which elections and democratic institutions were largely a façade. Christian Timm, who defines Georgia under Shevardnadze and Saakashvili as a hybrid regime, engages less with the question of political regime type and more with potential explanations for the stability of the Georgian regime. In order to explore how the Georgian political system reproduces and stabilizes itself at different points in time he uses the concept of neopatrimonialism. He shows how the ruling elite creates behavioural uncertainty by using both the legal-rational and the traditional-patrimonial type of domination. Shevardnadze and Saakashvili differ only with regard to the mechanisms they established in order to create uncertainty and thus ensure political authority. While Shevardnadze created a ‘comprehensive clientelistic system’ with corruption ‘in a highly institutionalized version’ as the central feature, Saakashvili combated the inherited corruption pyramid – only to replace it with constant cadre rotations and reshufflings as a new means to create uncertainty and thus secure the loyalty of the state administration. Timm clearly demonstrates how strong neopatrimonial inertia is and how effectively it constrains further democratization. In the final case study section on Central Asia, Paul-Georg Geiss provides an overview of developments in that region and embeds it in a theoretical argument. He reviews the types of state prevalent in Central Asia and asks how regime change can affect political system change. In his attempt to overcome the conceptual problems linked to the study of regime change in non-European societies, Geiss refers to sociological theories of the state which do not only analyse the sphere of political exchange relations (that is, the regime level) but also consider the constitutional, legal and administrative institutions and the degree to which they are embedded in societal structures. From this perspective, the ‘neopatrimonial’ and the ‘bureaucratic developmental’ states are analysed as two opposing concepts of political systems – both of which can yield autocratic as well as democratic regimes. According to Geiss, efforts at state reform in Central Asia are designed according to the bureaucratic developmental state model (the most obvious example being Kazakhstan) and should be interpreted as attempts to overcome the political constraints of neopatrimonialism. Sebastian Schiek and Stephan Hensell’s chapter analyses an apparent paradox observable in Kazakhstan. One the one hand, Kazakhstan features typical elements of neopatrimonialism such as pervasive corruption, ‘clan politics’ and a personalization of the state. On the other hand, Kazakhstan is also one of the most successful ‘modernizers’ in the CIS. The authors try to explain this

Introduction

9

paradox by exploring the political project and ambiguous strategies of the longterm Kazakhstani president, Nursultan Nazarbaev. The president is part of a neopatrimonial system he himself has promoted, but at the same time he is also an ambitious political leader who wants to build a strong and modern state. From the perspective of the president, however, the contradiction between neopatrimonial rule and modernization efforts produces a ‘dilemma of inclusion’. In order to stabilize his position, Nazarbaev has to include power circles and networks that are likely to jeopardize his modernization project through their acquisitive practices. Nazarbaev’s response to this dilemma has consisted of various techniques of controlling and containing, which have produced mixed and highly ambiguous results. Alexander Wolters applies systems theory to the conditions of modern politics in environments that can be described as neopatrimonial. Within this framework he describes politics as a function of society which ensures the capacity to make collectively binding decisions. To fulfill its function, ‘politics’ relies on a specific form of interaction with its environment in order to obtain an orientation for the purpose of making readjustments. This interaction, empirically referred to as public opinion, becomes the central focus of investigation. In his analysis of the public discourse on political events in Kyrgyzstan since the Tulip Revolution, he singles out two ‘scripts’ that structure public observation: one that describes politics as conflict between government and opposition, and another that interprets politics in terms of a conflict of interests between exclusive social units such as kinship and residential groups. The coexistence of these two scripts has resulted in a profound lack of public orientation with regard to the rules that guide political action. The insecurity of both political actors and their public observers has been mutually reinforcing and has led to the emergence of ‘oppositional mimicry’, that is, the simulation of a political position – a phenomenon that constitutes a major impediment to the establishment of a legal-rational order and may be an overall implication of neopatrimonial settings. In Kyrgyzstan, the emergence of a mimicking opposition has undermined the capacity of the political system to adapt to changes in the society by making binding decisions and providing orientation for what the future might – or rather should – look like. References Bremmer, I. and Taras, R. (eds). 1997. New States, New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations. New York: Cambridge University Press. Brownlee, J. 2002. …And Yet They Persist: Explaining Survival and Transition in Neopatrimonial Regimes. Studies in Comparative International Development, 37, 35-63. Carothers, T. 2002. The End of the Transition Paradigm. Journal of Democracy, 13, 5-21.

10

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Collier, D. and Levitsky, S. 1997. Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research. World Politics, 49, 430-451. Colton, T.J. and Tucker, R.C. 1995. Patterns in Post-Soviet Leadership. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Dawisha, K. and Parrott, B. 1994. Russia and the New States of Eurasia: The Politics of Upheaval. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fisun, O. 2003. Developing Democracy or Competitive Neopatrimonialism? The Political Regime of Ukraine in Comparative Perspective. Presentation prepared for the workshop on ‘Institution Building and Policy Making in Ukraine’, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto, 24 October. Franke, A., Gawrich, A. and Alakbarov, G. 2009. Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan as Post-Soviet Rentier States: Resource Incomes and Autocracy as a Double ‘Curse’ in Post-Soviet Regimes. Europe-Asia Studies, 61, 109-140. Hale, H. 2006. Democracy or Autocracy on the March? The Colored Revolutions as Normal Dynamics of Patronal Presidentialism. Communist and PostCommunist Studies, 39, 305-329. Jones Luong, P. 2002. Institutional Change and Political Continuity in PostSoviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Linz, J.J. 1975. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, in Handbook of Political Science, Volume 3: Macropolitical Theory, edited by F.I. Greenstein and N.W. Polsby. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 175-411. Linz, J.J. and Stepan, A. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Merkel, W. 2004. Embedded and Defective Democracies. Democratization, 11, 33-58. O’Donnell, G. and Schmitter, P.C. 1986. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pridham, G. (ed.) 1995. Transitions to Democracy: Comparative Perspectives from Southern Europe, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Aldershot: Dartmouth. Schedler, A. (ed.) 2006. Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Segbers, K. and DeSpiegeleire, S. 1996. Post-Soviet Puzzles. Mapping the Political Economy of the Former Soviet Union. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Snyder, R. 1992. Explaining Transitions from Neopatrimonial Dictatorships. Comparative Politics, 24, 379-399. Timm, C. 2010. Jenseits von Demokratiehoffnung und Autoritarismusverdacht: Eine herrschaftssoziologische Analyse post-transformatorischer Regime, in Autoritarismus Reloaded: Neuere Ansätze und Erkenntnisse der Autokratieforschung, edited by H. Albrecht and R. Frankenberger. BadenBaden: Nomos, 95-118.

Introduction

11

Whitmore, S. 2010. Parliamentary Oversight in Putin’s Neo-patrimonial State: Watchdogs or Show-dogs? Europe-Asia Studies, 62, 999-1025. Zimmer, K. 2004. The Captured Region: Actors and Institutions in the Ukrainian Donbass, in The Making of Regions in Post-Socialist Europe: The Impact of History, Economic Structure and Institutions. Case Studies from Poland, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, Volume II, edited by M. Tatur. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 231-348.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Part I Theory

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 1

Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space: Hybrid Regimes Timm Beichelt

Does it make sense to classify political regimes as ‘hybrid’ and, if yes, what are the properties and consequences of such a classification? In order to answer this question, we try to map the field of conceptual and empirical research which concentrates on the phenomenon of political regimes that are neither clear democracies nor outright autocracies. Specifically, the potential need for a hybrid type arises when real world cases unify elements belonging to different established regime types, for example the simultaneous existence of pluralist elections (a feature of democracies) and media repression (a feature of autocracies). The term hybridity in that sense can simply be associated with a ‘mixture’ of components which – according to a given theory – belong to two or more different categories. One of the major debates concerning hybrid regimes has addressed the issue of whether the establishment of hybrid types should be seen as an element of scientific progress or as an indicator of insufficient classification. On the one hand, the creative development of a genuine regime type may be able to describe regime characteristics more adequately and to capture specific properties of power relations or other political variables. On the other, an explicit dissociation from established categories like ‘democracy’ or ‘autocracy’ goes along with an abdication of understanding with regard to typical power constellations and their consequences. Any construction of new types therefore faces the fundamental challenge to make us better understand our phenomenon, which can already partially – but not completely – be understood. Introducing the category of a hybrid regime to systematic regime studies is only justified if that category is better able to describe or explain features of political power that remain poorly grasped as elements of either democracies or autocracies. The hybridity of regimes started to be identified as an object of research during the mid-1990s. As such, it constitutes an issue of studies on the Third Wave of transition (after Huntington 1991). In the early years of the Third Wave, the problem was not in the centre of scholarly attention. Rather, both political actors and scholars acted on the assumption of two dominant pathways – democratic stabilization and consolidation (Diamond et al. 1997) on the one hand or democratic breakdown (Linz 1978) on the other. Only after some time did certain countries obviously deviate from these diametrically opposed expectations by remaining in the status of incomplete transition over a longer period of time. The debate on the

16

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

character of hybrid regimes gained special momentum because important cases of transition studies – for example, Argentina, Indonesia, and Russia – were or still are involved. The chapter proceeds as follows. In the second section, we try to identify how hybrid types are constructed. This section will demonstrate that hybrid types are sometimes seen as genuinely distinct from other types. At the same time, however, hybridity is associated with the creation of subtypes, for example with different sub-forms of democracy or autocracy which deviate from the allegedly ‘complete’ types. The third section enquires into this finding by more closely discussing these different logics of construction. On the one hand, a phenomenon-specific approach has brought forward types without clear associations to democracy and/or autocracy; we will call them ‘oscillation regimes’. On the other hand, the creation of subtypes leads to two sorts of sub-regimes: incomplete democracies and incomplete autocracies. In the literature, we find different suggestions for their classification, which will be briefly discussed. The fourth section will take a look at empirical developments, and the fifth section will summarize the results. Hybrid regimes: Core Principles From a bird’s eye perspective, two diverse strategies of coping with the difficulties of shabby typologies have been adopted in the transition literature (Krennerich 2002: 59-61). The first strategy consists in the mixture of regime elements in order to define new regime types. This is where the term ‘hybridity’ was used most prominently (Karl 1995). Terry Karl used it for Central American cases in which democratic elements – here: pluralist political competition – and non-democratic features – here: clientelist decision-making procedures – existed alongside each other. The second strategy does not mix regime type elements but creates special occurrences of established regime types. One of the most prominent expressions of transition studies is ‘democracies with adjectives’ (Collier and Levitsky 1997): democracies which lack one or another element of theoretically consolidated democracies. More recently, authoritarian regime types with additional attributes have also been discussed (Levitsky and Way 2002, Shevtsova 2004). In Figure 1.1, the constitutive logics of these different strategies of type construction are visualized. The first variant may be called a ‘pure type’ strategy. Authoritarianism (A1) and Democracy (C1) are separated by a clear line; in that sense every political regime belongs to either one or the other type. In a strict sense, the term hybridity should therefore even be avoided; there is no room for deviating types. From a purely logical point of view, one would always have to speak of main types or main type alienation from that perspective. Still, many authors use the term ‘hybridity’ when cases, usually countries, are supposedly located on or close to the dividing line B1. The logic is tellingly sketched by Wolfgang Merkel’s term of a ‘defective democracy’ – a democracy with certain

C1

A1 Authoritarianism

Democracy

B2 A2

B4 B3

Authoritarianism

C2

Ideal Democracy

Totalitarian Regime

B1

17

Ideal Democracy

Totalitarian Regime

Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space: Hybrid Regimes

Democracy Hybrid Regime

Figure 1.1

Pure Types Versus Fuzzy Types

Source: Compiled by the author.

shortcomings which (if we follow Merkel) still allow the usage of the dominant concept ‘democracy’ (Merkel 2004). The second variant, also visualized in the figure, leaves a deliberate gap between democracy and authoritarianism.1 Hybridity is not limited to a crossover region but comes in three variants: B3 indicates the core of the genuine type; B2 and B4 present regimes which are on the edges of the regular types A2 and C2. In principle, the regimes on and around B2 and B4 could also be defined as ‘incomplete’ with regard to the established types. In practice, however, scholars rather tend to focus on B3 as the newly created type and try to include various features in it. Therefore, hybrid types always bear elements which are – in other conceptions – attributed to either democracies or autocracies. Examples are elections, the rule of law, and the freedoms of speech and assembly on the one hand, and electoral fraud, fragile judicial systems, and tutelary rulers on the other. The examples remind us of the fact that all political regimes are composed of various elements rather than being centred around one decisive structural feature. To be sure, some existing regime typologies are one-dimensional. The prime example that comes to mind concerns elections, which have been declared central to democracy in certain democratic theories (Schumpeter 1976 [1942], Downs 1957). These minimalist conceptions, however, are inadequate for an advanced analysis of post-transition democracy – if cases are not clear, the whole problem 1  I use the terms autocracy and authoritarianism interchangeably in this text.

18

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

consists in hard-to-capture interactions beyond elections. Therefore, the white arrows in the lower figure indicate that hybrid regimes always bear characteristics of both democracy and authoritarianism. If this finding is accepted, another question arises: Can certain patterns of mixture between ‘democratic’ and ‘autocratic’ elements be discerned? A first answer has again to allude to the main types. In fact, there are no conceptions of democracy that are ready to disclaim elections as the core element of democracy. Many theories insist that there must be more to a democracy than just free and fair elections (Held 1996). Democracies without non-manipulated elections, however, are not possible. Therefore, no compromises concerning hybridity can be made in connection with elections. With regard to that variable, all regimes are indeed either democratic or non-democratic (Merkel 2004). Logically, hybrid regimes therefore consist of free elections as well as other regime elements which introduce a partially autocratic character.2 Usually, it has been argued that these have to do with the specific understanding of incumbents of allowing possibilities of democratic control. The clientelism discussed by Terry Karl questions the autonomous formation of elite structures, leading to decision networks beyond public control (Karl 1995). Friedbert Rüb locates hybridity in the lack of willingness of democratically elected incumbents to limit the extent of their own power (Rüb 2002). More specifically, Rüb associates hybridity with a typical combination of a) democratic power legitimation and power exercise and b) autocratic power structures and an unlimited reach of incumbent power. If we follow his concept, hybrid regimes are characterized by pluralism, free and fair elections, and at least some rule-of-law elements. Furthermore, the structure of power is ill-defined due to weak horizontal control, leading to a barely controlled executive which is itself able to decide how to limit its own power (Rüb 2002: 106). This highlights the long-discussed affinity between regimes with strong presidents and autocratic characteristics (Linz 1990). However, Rüb addresses this relationship in more abstract terms by speaking of control powers within a regime of checks and balances, rather than focusing on strong presidents alone (Rüb 2001). In sum then, hybridity can be associated with two sorts of political regimes. Pure types refer to the ‘main types’ of democracy and authoritarianism and add additional attributes. Prominent examples, just to name a few, are Kubicek’s ‘delegative democracy’ (Kubicek 1994) and ‘competitive authoritarianism’ as designed by Levitsky and Way (2002). The other variant is characterized by fuzziness. Democratic and non-democratic elements coexist, stand in complex relations one to another, and form regimes with distinct characteristics. 2  Unfortunately, the literature does not offer a threshold beyond which an election can objectively be labelled as ‘free’ or even as ‘free and fair’. OSCE missions usually try to arrive at a classification, but these judgements are under political control and can hardly be used on a comparative basis.

Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space: Hybrid Regimes

19

Alternative Concepts: Diminished Subtypes, Oscillation Regimes What are the properties of hybrid regimes according to the two typological principles discussed in the previous section? My argument is that pertinent types of hybridity are based on essentially different strategies of type construction, namely the development of diminished subtypes in the pure-type dimension and of oscillation regimes in the fuzzy-type dimension. The pure-type strategy results in the creation of subtypes of either democracy or authoritarianism. It follows the approach of Collier and Levitsky, who define (in their case: democratic) regimes as categories with a set of distinctive features (Collier and Levitsky 1997). Subtypes of these main types are ‘diminished’ in the sense that they are incomplete, or ‘defective’, with regard to the main type. For example, ‘delegative’ democracies are inferior to consolidated democracies because of their weakness with regard to the horizontal control of powers (Kubicek 1994, Merkel et al. 2003: 87-91). An alternative to the creation of diminished subtypes would be the establishment of differentiated subtypes, as is, for example, the case with presidential or parliamentary democracy. These do not alter the character of the respective main type. Diminished subtypes do so by adding attributes which do not belong to the defining elements of the main type (Krennerich 2002: 60-61). The most systematic approach to capture diminished subtypes of democracy has been developed by Wolfgang Merkel and several collaborators (Merkel 2004, Merkel et al. 2003). His group analysed political regimes by looking at different partial regimes. In each of them, potential ‘defects’ were associated with specific attributes to characterize the respective subtypes: • A damaged electoral regime allows for characterization of a regime as ‘exclusive democracy’;3 • Limited civic rights, for example arbitrary access to courts or inequality before the law, and limited political freedoms such as the harassment of civil society lead to an ‘illiberal democracy’; • Weak control powers and feeble horizontal responsibilities result in a ‘delegative democracy’ as described by Kubicek (see above); • Damage to effective government power – no real power for those elected – leads to classification as an ‘enclave democracy’. In the context of our article, Merkel’s types can be seen as proxies for all types of diminished democracy found in the literature. First, they focus on a particular element of democratic rule rather than on the democratic regime as a whole. 3  It should be noted that this classification refers solely to the systematic exclusion of certain parts of the population from electoral voice, for example with regard to the Russian population in Estonia and Latvia in the first years after 1991. The argument is not extended to other potential defects of the electoral regime, for example electoral fraud. In this case, a regime would not qualify as democratic anymore.

20

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Second, they attribute a malfunctioning in comparison to certain standards of (real or ideal) democracy. The attribute – this is the third point – describes this particular ‘defect’ but then semantically adapts it to express a particular democratic case as a whole. Like in a mirror image, things are similar with regard to subtypes of authoritarian regimes. Obviously, the notion of ‘diminished subtypes’ needs to be used in purely analytical terms. We do not object to the notion of a ‘defective democracy’ because of the implicit understanding that a non-defective democracy is usually preferable in normative terms. Intuitively, calling a diminished subtype a ‘defective autocracy’ would give a signal that a normatively problematic regime exists in variations which are even worse. Subtype diminishment in the case of hybrid authoritarianism can in fact usually be equated with the opposite: Elements of autocracy open up and lead to more freedom or societal autonomy. Since it is not possible to discuss all subtypes of autocracy here (see, for example, Shevtsova 2004, Hanson, Way and Levitsky 2006), I concentrate on one of the most prominent ones – the concept of ‘competitive authoritarianism’ as developed by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way. In their view, competitive authoritarianism ‘must be distinguished from unstable, ineffective, or otherwise flawed types of regimes that nevertheless meet basic standards of democracy’ (Levitsky and Way 2002: 53). Translated into the figure of the previous section, the authors locate competitive authoritarianism within the field A1, but close to the line B1 which marks the crossover to a democratic regime. In competitive authoritarianism, some democratic elements, like a certain pluralism connected to elections, are present. In the end, however, competitive authoritarian regimes are defined by failing to offer democratic institutions as ‘an important channel through which the opposition may seek power’ (Levitsky and Way 2002: 54). Instead, ‘incumbents violate [democratic] rules so often and to such an extent that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy’ (Levitsky and Way 2002: 52). These violations concern not only elections, but also the arenas of legislation, the judiciary, and the media. This understanding of a specific type of autocracy offers many parallels to the construction of democracy subtypes according to Merkel. Competitive authoritarianism is a ‘diminished’ subtype in the sense that one core element – elite selection – differs in character from the main type (where we would expect a topdown elite selection, completely controlled by incumbents). At the same time, the new subtype highlights this specific element while neglecting other features of this diminished authoritarianism. For example, the notion is less easily applicable to the judiciary sphere where ‘competition’ is hardly observable. To my knowledge, autocracy studies have not yet developed an integrated model of subtypes which would allow for more systematic categories.4 Instead, we can observe a turn towards metaphors like the ‘uneven playing field’ (see Way and Levitsky in this 4  The seminal conceptualization by Juan Linz presents a series of authoritarian sub-types which, however, can hardly be reduced to one core element. See Linz, J. 1975.

Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space: Hybrid Regimes

21

volume), which include the multi-dimensionality of diminished authoritarianism without being able to conceptualize it in a differentiated way. While there are many parallels between diminished democracy and diminished autocracy, there also exists one major difference. Diminished democracies are implicitly seen as relatively long-lived regimes, with built-in defects of a structural nature. The electoral regime plays a crucial role because non-democratic developments in this sphere may swing the whole regime in an authoritarian direction. In such a case, the structural nature of democratic defects makes it relatively unlikely that such a trend may be reversed within a short time. With regard to diminished autocracy, however, things are somewhat different. Since we are by definition dealing with regimes which allow for competition, it is not unlikely that the organization of acceptably free elections may lift a case above the electoral democracy threshold. If regimes are not completely closed, there is always a next election on the horizon. Of course, there exist different suggestions on how many free (and fair) elections need to be observed until a country may plausibly be classified as a stable democracy. However, we have seen that there are many diminished forms of democracy, and stability is not a precondition for all of them. Therefore, diminished authoritarian regimes are by definition close to becoming democracies. Indeed, one of the major aims of autocracy studies is to identify conditions under which this is the case. Consequently, we find the scholarly opinion that competitive authoritarian regimes often oscillate between democracy and non-democracy (Howard and Roessler 2006: 368). Stating an oscillation as such does not change the character of competitive authoritarianism as a diminished subtype. Yet, if the status between democracy and autocracy changes regularly, some authors have perceived the need to focus on the phenomenon of regime change itself. By doing so, they undertake a conceptual switch from the pure-type to the fuzzy-type strategy. Or, returning to Figure 1.1, they focus on the character of B3 instead of B1. In conceptualizing hybridity as a genuine type marker, one has to focus on the source of fuzziness within a given regime. Traditionally, this element has been linked to the interaction of political and economic elites in young democracies (Karl 1995, Schmitter 1992, Comisso 1997). In recent years, and especially in the postsocialist space, the focus of attention has, however, turned to elections as the most important regime element for the identification of hybridity. Notably, the so-called colour revolutions provide an impetus to shed light on a variant of hybridity that is linked to the ambivalent character of elections. Bunce and Wolchik have identified 14 cases of such elections where the classification as either democracy or autocracy has not been clear (Bunce and Wolchik 2009). In principle, they all took place in non-democratic settings but offered a semi-open political battlefield in which ‘democratic’ oppositions were allowed to compete for public office. Bunce and Wolchik identified further Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, in Handbook of Political Science, edited by F. Greenstein and N. Polsby. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

22

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

elements (Bunce and Wolchik 2009: 99, 103): the defection of internal key regime allies, changes in electoral regime (for example with regard to the introduction of professionalized election monitoring) and the collaboration of opposition elites. None of them belong to a non-diminished authoritarian regime where repressive measures of safeguarding incumbent power would be expected. To be sure, the aim of Bunce and Wolchik did not consist in creating a genuine type of hybrid regimes; they were looking for circumstances under which ‘electoral revolutions’ take place. Of the 14 elections under scrutiny, many did not result in deepening hybridity but in fact underlined an authoritarian regime character, for example in Azerbaijan (2003 and 2005) and Belarus (2001 and 2006). Other cases resulted in once-and-for-all democratic turnovers, for instance in Romania (1996), Bulgaria (1997) and Slovakia (1998).5 The remaining cases – various elections in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Serbia – form enough substance to establish a type of their own – the stretch B3 in Figure 1.1. Here, we find a constellation in which elections form a window of opportunity by allowing societal pluralism to become, under certain circumstances, a threat to an authoritarian regime (Bunce and Wolchik 2009: 106). Or, as Lindberg writes: Elections make democratization more likely if they serve to make repression ‘expensive’ and counterproductive, and spur the opposition to unify and mobilize, and if they make a policy of tolerating the opposition seem to the rulers as if it will make their rule more legitimate, but in fact trigger defections of state actors to the opposition and create self-fulfilling expectations about the continuation of competitive politics. (2009: 87)

Where is the fuzziness ascribed to this model? It is hidden in the fact that free elections – successful electoral revolutions – are only one element among others which make a regime democratic. Going back to Merkel’s partial regimes, we can easily see that certain defects like a weak horizontal control of powers or a limited respect for political rights are structural dangers for democratic regimes. A situation can easily arise in which the succeeding elections have to be held under authoritarian pressure, for example by a hostile bureaucracy or a reluctant security apparatus. In that sense, open elections do not constitute a necessary condition for a regime to turn into a democracy, however minimal or defective its character. Rather, an oscillation between free and non-free elections forms a pattern which is both theoretically feasible and empirically observable.

5  In the case of successful electoral revolutions, the regime character changed to A2. In unsuccessful cases, the resulting regime character was located in C2 (again, see Figure 1.1).

Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space: Hybrid Regimes

Figure 1.2

23

Regime Development of Hybrid Post-Soviet Cases According to Freedom House Ratings, 1991-2009

Source: Freedom House ratings 1991-2009. Compiled by the author.

Hybrid Regimes in Eastern Europe: Findings Which of the country cases in the post-Soviet space can be identified as hybrid on the empirical level? Following our argument so far, there are two logics of classification. According to the pure-type strategy, hybrid regimes are those which are close to the threshold between democracy and autocracy. According to the fuzzy-type strategy, hybrid regimes occur in an area where neither democratic nor autocratic elements prevail. Being aware of different regime measurement concepts (Lauth, Pickel and Welzel 2000), we turn to the Freedom House ratings for an assessment of democratic regime content in the post-Soviet space. As is well known, Freedom House rates countries with scores from 1 to 7 along the dimensions of political rights and civil liberties in its ‘Freedom in the World’ surveys. Figure 1.2 lists a set of cases for which the hybrid regime finding holds in the sense that they are, or have been, close to the democracy threshold within the last 20 years.6 In 6  The formulation ‘close to the threshold’, of course, implies the pure-type logic as described in the second section. Freedom House itself has created a fuzzy hybrid type by establishing a category which is called ‘partly free’. As we can deduce from the Freedom House website, it becomes relevant when regimes are neither ‘free’ (collecting one or two credits on each of the dimensions ‘political rights’ and ‘civil liberties’) nor ‘not free’ (six or seven credits on each of the dimensions).

24

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

that sense, classification takes place according to the pure-type logic. Cases far from the democracy threshold should not be included. For example, the Baltic States have been unambiguously rated as democracies for many years. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, cases like Belarus or Russia have a clearly authoritarian essence and therefore lack hybridity (Freedom House 2010). However, Figure 1.2 is also compatible with a different logic. It includes those five cases of the post-Soviet space – Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Ukraine – which belong to the Freedom House category of ‘partly free’ regimes. That, of course, constitutes a fuzzy-type logic which establishes ‘something else’ apart from a purely democratic (‘free’) or purely autocratic (‘not free’) regime. What do the data tell us? First, there are indeed cases in which oscillation takes place to a considerable extent. Therefore, it seems utterly plausible not to rely on one threshold between democracy and authoritarianism but to allow for a more differentiated look at non-pure, or fuzzy, types. Second, only one of the cases presented in the figure (Ukraine) shows some signs of steady development in the direction of democracy (see however Lange 2010). Beyond Ukraine, we can see tendencies of more or less stable hybridity (Georgia and Moldova) as well as cases of moderate re-autocratization (Armenia and Kyrgyzstan). Of course, the figure does not take into account the authoritarian regimes in Central Asia or in Azerbaijan. Some of them also showed hybrid characteristics in the 1990s. Third, and maybe most importantly, hybrid types are not very stable with regard to the democratic content of their regimes. Rather – as we see with the cases of Armenia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan – we can observe oscillation mainly within the area which Freedom House characterizes as ‘partly free’. Accordingly, we have quite some evidence that hybrid regimes are characterized by inherent instability. Not only do they combine properties of different regime logics, usually in the sense that pluralist elections are combined with non-pluralist tendencies in other partial regimes like the administration or the judiciary. Also, they face difficulties of keeping this relationship stable. Obviously, we are faced with an enduring conflict of two regime logics. On the one hand, some political actors challenge the actors in the tutelary power structure. On the other, even newly elected incumbents have to root their power in democratically ‘defective’ partial regimes. In consequence, ‘democratic turnovers’ in a hybrid setting rarely have the prospect of propelling a country in the direction of a consolidated democracy. Only the absence of strong defects in all partial regimes serves as a foundation for democracy in the long run. Conclusion This chapter has shown that the discussion of hybrid regimes as a result of post-Soviet transition is justified for both conceptual and empirical reasons. Conceptually, restricting ourselves to the pure types ‘democracy’ and ‘autocracy’ leaves us with a bloodless understanding of cases which do not clearly fit into

Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space: Hybrid Regimes

25

one of the categories. On the one hand, the creation of diminished subtypes has helped to highlight certain anomalies of the core models of ‘democracy’ and ‘autocracy’. On the other hand, fuzzy types display a specific mix of democratic elements (often competitive elections) and non-democratic regime domains (often in the administrative or judiciary dimension). In this respect, transition studies have been beneficial to our general knowledge of political regimes by adding the message that hybrid types are more than transitory exceptions. Rather, the study of post-Soviet transition has taught us that hybridity and instability are long-term characteristics in a number of important cases. Because of the different ways of designing hybrid types, we have to pay special attention to the respective specificities of type construction. In the puretype strategy, attributes are added to a defining element of a core type. While the question ‘democracy or not’ is most often convincingly answered by a look at the character of elections, things are less clear with regard to authoritarian regimes. The concept of a ‘competitive’ or ‘electoral’ authoritarianism cannot persuasively refer to elections because their character is by definition sometimes free and sometimes not free. Are there other core elements? ‘Bureaucracy’ and the character of its actions have been targeted (Shevtsova 2004). In the case of Russia, an overly strong centralization of power has allegedly been a central factor of reautocratization (Buhbe and Gorzka 2007, Mommsen 2007). Beyond post-Soviet Europe it has often been problematic civil-military relations which have been seen as a major element promoting authoritarianism (Mares 1998). Although all these suggestions appear plausible, it seems fair to state that the conceptual discussion on authoritarian regimes is less advanced if we go beyond characterizations of specific cases. Moving to the empirical dimension, the study of hybrid regimes offers evidence which is more complex than the assumption of a general return of autocracy which has been stated by some authors (for example, see Hanson, Way and Levitsky 2006). In a longer perspective, we find various forms of oscillation and a number of regimes which, despite not permanently reaching the democracy threshold, cannot be classified as permanent autocracies. We find that democratic breakdowns have not taken place in consolidated democracies but rather in diminished ones. Typically, the main damage has occurred with regard to elections in these cases, but often as a function of other partial regime defects like weak horizontal control or other impediments to the guarantee of civil or political rights. We have been able to observe that an area studies approach is of limited use when approaching hybrid regimes. Only in the west of the former Soviet Union do we find regimes with more than minimal democratic elements (Ukraine). In the east and the south, regimes have a tendency towards authoritarianism. Hybridity itself, however, is more equally distributed: one regime in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan), two in the Southern Caucasus (Armenia and Georgia), one or two in Eastern Europe (Moldova and, depending on the democracy measurement tool, Ukraine). Therefore, it seems plausible to further approach hybridity in the post-Soviet space on a case-study basis rather than dealing with subregions within the area.

26

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

All subregions display a strong variety of case profiles, for example Turkmenistan versus Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan versus Georgia, and Belarus versus Ukraine. Since regional neighbourhood obviously has only a limited impact on regime character, we are able to posit a generally contingent potential for regime development in all countries of the post-Soviet space. The focus on hybridity has shown that comparatively rapid phases of regime development are indeed likely to occur. The challenge for ‘democratic’ actors consists in preserving a dynamic towards democracy while avoiding autocratic backlashes. As we have seen, these are often rooted in partial regimes beyond the electoral sphere. Fixing democratic defects here implies concentrating not on the core of democratic regimes but on the core’s context. In that sense, it is difficult to issue a general statement about which strategy of typologizing should be preferred. Everything depends on the respective cognitive interest. If it consists in acquiring general knowledge on properties of political regimes, an awareness of different systematic approaches offers a valuable finding in itself. If scholars want to know more about the defects of democracy, the focus needs to be directed to those regime elements which impede a proper functioning of democracy in its various dimensions. Interest in the phenomenon of relatively open authoritarian regimes implies a reverse perspective, albeit scholars here enter a less developed field of established types and categories. Therefore, autocracy studies today possess the strongest potential for conceptual progress. Finally, if the cognitive interest involves knowing more about the systematic functioning of individual cases, the diverse approaches towards hybrid regimes offer a somewhat advanced toolbox for understanding post-Soviet political dynamics. In the end, the acceptance of and trust in democratic elections depends on a large variety of actors both among the elites and within populations. They are located in politically relevant arenas like the administration, the judiciary, the media, and the public sphere in general. If certain preconditions of democracy are precarious, the hybrid character of political action may depend on contingent constellations in all of the arenas mentioned. In some cases, we are able to rely on conceptual propositions in order to trace typical patterns – this is, for example, the case with the concept of neopatrimonialism (see Erdmann and Timm in this volume). More often, however, patterns of hybridity display a case’s individual nature. In that sense, the acceptance of hybridity as a category of its own offers a certain promise – the basic choice to turn to qualitative considerations if the knowledge offered by established types and categories is not sufficient. References Buhbe, M. and Gorzka, G. 2007. Russland heute: Rezentralisierung des Staates unter Putin. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Bunce, V.J. and Wolchik, S.L. 2009. Democratization by Elections? Postcommunist Ambiguities. Journal of Democracy, 20, 93-107.

Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space: Hybrid Regimes

27

Collier, D. and Levitsky, S. 1997. Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research. World Politics, 49, 430-451. Comisso, E. 1997. Legacies of the Past or New Institutions: The Struggle over Restitution in Hungary, in Liberalisation and Leninist Legacies: Comparative Perspectives on Democratic Transitions, edited by B. Crawford and A. Lijphart. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 184-227. Diamond, L., Plattner, M.F., Chu, Y. and Tien, H. (eds). 1997. Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies: Regional Challenges. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Downs, A. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Freedom House. 2010. Freedom in the World 2010: Global Erosion of Freedom [Online]. Available at: www.freedomhouse.org [accessed: 2 July 2010]. Hanson, S.E., Way, L.A. and Levitsky, S. 2006. The Return of Competitive Authoritarianism. East European Politics and Society, 21, 7-30. Held, D. 1996. Models of Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Howard, M.M. and Roessler, P.G. 2006. Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes. American Journal of Political Science, 50, 365-381. Huntington, S.P. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Karl, T.L. 1995. The Hybrid Regimes of Central America. Journal of Democracy, 6, 72-86. Krennerich, M. 2002. Weder Fisch noch Fleisch? Klassifikationsprobleme zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie, in Hybride Regime: Zur Konzeption und Empirie demokratischer Grauzonen, edited by P. Bendel, A. Croissant and F. Rüb. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 55-71. Kubicek, P. 1994. Delegative Democracy in Russia and Ukraine. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 27, 423-441. Lange, N. 2010. The First 100 Days after Change of Power in Ukraine: Authoritarian Tendencies and Rapprochement with Russia [Online]. Available at: http://www. kas.de/wf/doc/kas_19723-544-1-30.pdf [accessed: 27 November 2010]. Lauth, H-J., Pickel, G. and Welzel, C. (eds). 2000. Demokratiemessung: Konzepte und Befunde im internationalen Vergleich. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Levitsky, S. and Way, L.A. 2002. The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy, 13, 51-65. Lindberg, S. 2009. Democratization by Elections? A Mixed Record. Journal of Democracy, 20, 86-92. Linz, J. 1975. Totaliarianism and Authoritarian Regimes, in Handbook of Political Sciences, edited by F. Greenstein and N. Polsby. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley, 175-411. Linz, J. 1978. The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown and Equilibration. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Linz, J. 1990. The Perils of Presidentialism. Journal of Democracy, 1, 51-69.

28

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Mares, D.R. 1998. Civil-Military Relations: Building Democracy and Regional Security in Latin America, Southern Asia, and Central Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Merkel, W. 2004. Embedded and Defective Democracies. Democratization, 14, 33-58. Merkel, W., Puhle, H-J., Croissant, A., Eicher, C. and Thiery, P. 2003. Defekte Demokratie. Band 1: Theorie. Opladen: Leske + Budrich. Mommsen, M. 2007. Putins ‘gelenkte Demokratie’: ‘Vertikale der Macht’ statt Gewaltenteilung, in Russland heute: Rezentralisierung des Staates unter Putin, edited by G. Gorzka and M. Buhbe. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 235-252. Rüb, F.W. 2001. Schach dem Parlament. Regierungssystem und Staatspräsidenten in den Demokratisierungsprozessen Osteuropas. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Rüb, F.W. 2002. Hybride Regime: Politikwissenschaftliches Chamäleon oder neuer Regimetypus? Begriffliche und konzeptionelle Überlegungen zum neuen Pessimismus in der Transitologie, in Hybride Regime: Zur Konzeption und Empirie demokratischer Grauzonen, edited by P. Bendel, A. Croissant and F. Rüb. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 93-118. Schmitter, P.C. 1992. Interest Systems and the Consolidation of Democracies: Reexamining Democracy, in Reexamining Democracy, edited by G. Marks and L. Diamond. London: Sage Publications, 156-181. Schumpeter, J.A. 1976 (1942). Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. London: Allen & Unwin. Shevtsova, L. 2004. The Limits of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy, 15, 67-77.

Chapter 2

Democracy and a Level Playing Field1 Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way Politics … is not like football, deserving a level playing field. Here, you try that and you will be roasted (Ex-Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, quoted in Munene 2001: 24).

Competitive authoritarian and other hybrid regimes have become a major feature of the post-Cold War landscape. Notwithstanding the proliferation of multiparty elections, autocrats in much of the world continue to find ways of thwarting opposition challenges (Schedler 2006, Levitsky and Way 2010). Competitive authoritarian regimes combine genuinely competitive elections with widespread incumbent abuse of power – including harassment of opposition, attacks on the media and/or electoral fraud.2 At the same time, one of the most effective forms of abuse is a skewed playing field. In fact, in countries such as Armenia, Botswana, Cambodia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Singapore, Tanzania and Venezuela, democratic competition is undermined less by electoral fraud or repression than by unequal access to resources, media and state institutions. An uneven playing field is often less salient – to scholars and international observers alike – than fraud or repression. Yet it can have a devastating impact on democratic competition. When the opposition is systematically denied access to finance and major media, competing in elections – even clean ones – is an uphill battle. Although opposition candidates occasionally win such battles (for example, Nicaragua 1990, Zambia 1991, Belarus 1994, Senegal 2000, Kenya 2002), they usually lose them. And when elections are over, resourcestarved oppositions are often decimated by defection, sometimes to the point of collapse. A skewed playing field may thus enable authoritarian incumbents to retain power without resorting to the kinds of blatant abuse that can threaten their international standing.

1  Levitsky, S. and Way, L.A. 2010. Why Democracy Needs a Level Playing Field. Journal of Democracy, 21(1), 57-68. © 2010 National Endowment for Democracy and The Johns Hopkins University Press. Adapted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2  Competitive authoritarian regimes are distinguished from fully authoritarian regimes by the fact that viable opposition is allowed to run in elections and campaign openly. At the same time, electoral fraud is sufficiently limited that elections mostly reflect real voter preferences (Levitsky and Way 2010: 365-368).

30

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

The Concept of an Uneven Playing Field We define an uneven playing field as one in which incumbent abuse of the state generates such disparities in access to resources, media and/or state institutions that opposition parties’ ability to organize and compete for national office is seriously impaired.3 These disparities rarely emerge naturally; rather, they are usually rooted in illicit or authoritarian behaviour, including partisan appropriation of state resources, systematic packing of state institutions and state-run media and politicized distribution of state resources, concessions and licenses. Obviously, incumbent advantage exists everywhere. Incumbents in advanced democracies distribute patronage, engage in pork-barrel spending and enjoy privileged access to media and finance, and clientelism, corruption and other forms of particularism are pervasive in new democracies in Southeast Europe, Latin America and elsewhere. Yet there is a vast – and substantively important – difference between routine incumbent advantage and a skewed playing field – or what Kenneth Greene (2007) calls ‘hyper-incumbent’ advantage. Whereas patronage and corruption may affect the quality of democracy in Brazil, Poland, or Italy, skewed access to resources and the media in countries like Botswana, Malaysia and Tanzania undermines democracy itself. To distinguish an uneven playing field from routine incumbent advantage, we set a high threshold. We consider a playing field uneven where: (1) state institutions are widely abused for partisan ends; (2) the incumbent party is systematically favoured at the expense of the opposition; and (3) the opposition’s ability to organize and compete in elections is seriously handicapped. The scope, partisan character, and, in particular, the impact of incumbent abuse are thus critical. Incumbents may abuse state resources in Argentina, Latvia and other democracies, but such abuse does not seriously affect the opposition’s capacity to organize and compete for power. The political playing field may be skewed along a variety of dimensions, but three are of particular importance: (1) resource disparities; (2) unequal media access; and (3) unequal access to the law. Access to Resources Extreme resource disparities may be created in several ways. For one, incumbents may directly appropriate state resources. In Mexico, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) reportedly drew up to $1 billion in illicit state finance in the early 1990s (Oppenheimer 1996: 88); in Russia, tens of millions of dollars in government bonds were diverted to Boris Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election campaign; in Cameroon, ‘the national treasury bankrolls the [ruling] party,’ covering nearly all of its operating expenses (GERDDES-Cameroon 1995: 91-92). Incumbents may 3  For an excellent discussion of the causes and consequences of a skewed playing field, see Greene (2007).

Democracy and a Level Playing Field

31

also make widespread partisan use of public buildings, vehicles, communications equipment and employees – including not only low-level bureaucrats but also security forces and (in parts of the former Soviet Union) teachers, doctors and other professionals. Although such abuse is of little significance in wealthy democracies, it can have a major impact where the state apparatus is particularly large (for example, Belarus) and/or the private sector and other societal resources are limited (for example, Malawi, Mozambique). Incumbents may also use the state to skew access to private sector finance. For example, they may use public credit, concessions, licensing, privatization and other policy instruments to enrich party- or proxy-owned enterprises, as in Malaysia and Taiwan, or to corner the market in private sector finance, as in Russia and Mexico under the PRI. They may also use state policy to punish businesses that finance the opposition. In Ghana, for example, entrepreneurs who backed the opposition parties in 1992 ‘were blacklisted, denied government contracts and [had] their businesses openly sabotaged’ (Oquaye 1998: 109), and in Cambodia, the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) was ‘starved for funds by a business community told by [the government] that financing SRP was committing economic suicide’ (Heder 2005). In these cases, resource disparities exceeded anything seen in democratic regimes. Ruling parties in Malaysia and Taiwan built multi-billion dollar business empires. In Taiwan, the Kuomintang’s (KMT) estimated $3 billion in assets made it the ‘richest party in the non-communist world’; in the mid-1990s, its $450 million annual budget exceeded that of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) by at least 50-to-1 (Baum 1994: 62-64, Wu 1995: 79). In Mexico, the PRI reportedly spent up to 20 times more than its two major opponents combined in the 1994 legislative election (Oppenheimer 1996: 110), and in Russia in 1996, the Yeltsin campaign spent between 30 and 150 times the amount permitted the opposition (McFaul 1997: 13). In some cases, including Belarus, Gabon, Malawi, Senegal and Russia in the 2000s, opposition parties were so starved of resources that many either collapsed or were co-opted by the government. As Russian opposition leader Grigory Yavlinsky complained, ‘How can we compete if one of the goals on a football pitch is one metre long while the other is ten metres long?’ (White 2006: 205). Media Access Media access may also be skewed in several ways. In many cases (for example, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Zambia), the state either monopolizes broadcast media or operates the only television and/or radio stations with a national audience. Although independent newspapers often circulate freely, in many countries (particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa) they only reach a small urban elite. This leaves state-run media as the dominant – and in many rural areas, the only – source of news. Such news is almost always biased toward the ruling party. In other cases, private media exist but are closely linked to the governing party, via proxy ownership, bribery, or other corrupt means. In Ukraine, President Kuchma

32

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

controlled television coverage through an informal network of private media entities. Viktor Medvedchuk, acting as head of the Presidential Administration and owner of the popular 1+1 television station, issued orders to all major stations dictating how events should be covered. In Peru in the late 1990s, television owners signed ‘contracts’ with state officials in which they received up to $1.5 million a month in exchange for limiting coverage of opposition parties. In Malaysia, all major newspapers and television stations were controlled by allies of the governing Barisan Nasional. In these cases, elections are marked by extraordinarily uneven media access. A study of television coverage during Peru’s 2000 election found that Fujimori’s share of coverage hovered close to 90 per cent, and that nearly all opposition coverage was negative (Boas 2005: 36). Similarly, in Russia’s 1996 election, the head of the main private television station, Novoe Televideniye (NTV), served as Yeltsin’s media director, major broadcasters refused to sell advertising time to the Communist opposition, and the media covered up Yeltsin’s heart attack just before the second round. In Malawi, electronic media remained state-run and biased even after the 1994 transition from dictator Kamuzu Banda to elected president Bakili Muluzi, leading one journalist to complain, ‘Before it was Banda, Banda, Banda – every day. Now it is Muluzi, Muluzi, Muluzi’ (Carver 1994: 57). Biased Arbiters: Uneven Access to the Law Finally, in many competitive authoritarian regimes, incumbents not only control the judiciary, electoral authorities and other nominally independent arbiters (via packing, bribery and intimidation) but also deploy them systematically as partisan tools against opponents. Politicized control of the legal system allows incumbents to violate democratic procedure with impunity. It also ensures that all major electoral, legal, or other disputes will be resolved in the ruling party’s favour. These decisions may be crucial. In Malaysia, a packed judiciary ensured that a major schism in the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) was resolved in Prime Minister Mohammad Mahathir’s favour in 1988, and a decade later, it allowed Mahathir to imprison his main rival, Anwar Ibrahim, on dubious charges; in Belarus, the constitutional court terminated an impeachment process launched by parliamentary opponents of President Lukashenka, which facilitated Lukashenka’s consolidation of authoritarian rule; in Venezuela, the electoral authorities’ 2003 ruling invalidating signatures collected for a recall referendum against Hugo Chávez delayed the referendum long enough for Chávez to rebuild public support (and thus survive the recall election). Why the Playing Field Matters Identifying and measuring the extent of an uneven playing field present important challenges. Few if any existing datasets cover these dimensions. Simultaneously,

Democracy and a Level Playing Field

33

a skewed playing field involves abuses that are often more subtle and hidden from view than many civil liberties violations. Despite these problems, the playing field demands greater attention from scholars. Hyper-incumbent advantages are a central component of contemporary authoritarianism because they allow incumbents to thwart opposition challenges without resorting to significant fraud or repression. Given the external cost of openly authoritarian behaviour in the post-Cold War era, this can be an enormous advantage, for it enables autocrats to retain power without sacrificing international legitimacy – to effectively have their cake and eat it, too. Perhaps the best example of such ‘perfect’ competitive authoritarianism is Botswana. Described as ‘Africa’s Prize Democracy’ (The Economist 2004), Botswana has long been considered a model democratic regime. Freedom House has classified it as ‘Free’ since 1974 and its political rights and civil liberties scores in the 2000s were equal to or better than those of Latin American democracies such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Indeed, Botswana’s elections have generally been free of fraud or intimidation and civil liberties – though violated more frequently than often believed – have been relatively well protected (Taylor 2003). Nevertheless, the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has overwhelmingly won every election since independence in 1966, and it has always controlled at least 75 per cent of the legislature. This outcome is not merely a product of Botswana’s robust economic growth. Rather, it is rooted in the ruling party’s virtual monopoly over access to state institutions. The BDP ‘towers over the political scene’ (Taylor 2003: 218). Its financial advantages are enormous. Whereas the BDP’s privileged ties to business yield ‘generous donations’ from the private sector, opposition parties ‘attract virtually no donations’ (Taylor 2003: 218). And whereas the BDP routinely uses state agencies and resources for partisan ends, no public financing exists for opposition parties. Media access is similarly skewed. Through the late 1990s, the state owned all electronic media and country’s only daily newspaper. Although some private media emerged in the 2000s, the state-owned Radio Botswana and Botswana TV remained the dominant news source and favour the ruling party (US Department of State 2009). The BDP’s financial and media advantages left opposition parties unable to compete on even remotely even footing. As one newspaper editorialized prior to the 2004 elections, ‘only the [BDP] enters the race with resources to reach every voter’ (Mmegi Online 2004). A similar dynamic exists in Tanzania. Outside of Zanzibar, electoral fraud and major civil liberties violations have been relatively rare in Tanzania since the 1992 transition to multiparty rule (Freedom House, Freedom in the Press 2008, Freedom in the World 2009). Nevertheless, the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) has overwhelmingly won every national election. In 2005, the CCM won more than 80 per cent of the presidential vote and captured over 85 per cent of parliament. Again, this dominance is mostly rooted in extreme resource and media disparities. The

34

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

CCM ‘overwhelms the playing field’.4 The 1992 transition failed to break the ruling party’s ties to the state. Thus, CCM either owned or made regular partisan use of numerous public properties (including businesses, buildings and vehicles), giving it an incalculable resource advantage. As one opposition leader put it, ‘In many areas, every open space is owned by the CCM. There are simply no places that we can hold meetings other than on the road side’.5 The CCM also uses its business holdings and close private sector ties to dominate access to finance. Finally, although private radio and television stations exist, their reach is largely limited to the capital. Stateowned media predominate in the rest of the country, giving the CCM ‘far more media exposure than opposition parties’ (Hoffman and Robinson 2009: 130). With these advantages, CCM leaders boast that they do not ‘need to cheat’ in elections (Hoffman and Robinson 2009: 123). Although a skewed playing field is often less salient than fraud or repression, it can have an equally devastating effect on democratic competition. Where oppositions lack reasonable access to resources and the media, even clean elections are unfair. For example, even though Mexico’s 1994 presidential election was free of fraud, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional’s (PRI) resource and media advantages were so vast that Jorge Castañeda (1995) compared the race to ‘a soccer match where the goalposts were of different heights and breadths and where one team included 11 players plus the umpire and the other a mere six or seven players’. Similarly, Taiwan’s 1996 presidential election – though widely viewed as democratic – was marked by such extreme resource disparities that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ‘found it nearly impossible to compete’ (Rigger 2001: 949). Opposition candidates occasionally win unfair elections, as in Nicaragua in 1990, Zambia in 1991, Belarus, Malawi and Ukraine in 1994, Senegal and Serbia in 2000 and Kenya in 2002. However, the mere possibility of opposition victory is not sufficient for democracy. Regimes in which opposition victories are heroic exceptions, rather than the norm, should not be labelled democratic. The importance of the playing field extends beyond elections. Indeed, an uneven playing field also undermines the opposition’s ability to organize between elections. Deprived of resources or access to the mass media, opposition parties often cannot maintain national organizations. Without patronage or other material inducements to offer followers, they are frequently plagued by defection, as leaders and activists jump to the ruling party in search of patronage, pork, or a more secure political future. Indeed, unless opposition parties have established organizations, identities, or core constituencies (for example, Albania, Malaysia, Taiwan), their very survival may be threatened. Many prominent (or promising) opposition parties have withered away in this manner: Yabloko in Russia, 4  Way, interview with Stevfan Mushi, Professor University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 23 November 2007. 5  Way, interview with Wilbrod Slaa, Chadema opposition party, Arusha, Tanzania, 29 November 2007.

Democracy and a Level Playing Field

35

Semangat 46 in Malaysia, the Social Democratic Front in Cameroon, the United National Independence Party (UNIP) in Zambia and more recently, Renamo in Mozambique. Facing the spectre of collapse, opposition parties may conclude that their only alternative is to join the governing coalition. Major opposition parties in Cambodia, Cameroon, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Senegal, Russia and Ukraine have allowed themselves to be co-opted by the government, largely in order to secure the resources necessary for political survival. A skewed playing field may thus force opposition parties to choose between co-optation and collapse. As ‘pragmatic’ parties join the government and ‘principled’ ones weaken, the opposition space may become under-populated. In Cambodia, for example, the opposition National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC) was co-opted and transformed into a government ‘lap dog’ in the 2000s (Marston 2002: 98) and as the more militant Sam Rainsy Party was pushed to the political margins, observers wrote of the ‘end of opposition’ (Un 2008). Oppositions have been similarly weakened in much of sub-Saharan Africa. In Gabon, opposition parties seriously challenged President Bongo in the early 1990s, but in the decade that followed, Bongo used the state’s considerable oil rents to co-opt nearly all of them. By 2005, 29 of 35 registered parties had joined the Presidential Majority Coalition; those which remained in opposition did so ‘at the cost of losing money, and therefore supporters’ (Africa Confidential 2005: 5). In post-2002 Mali, President Touré’s ‘consensus’ strategy brought most major parties into the Presidential Bloc, leaving the country virtually without opposition. Finally, in Tanzania, no major national opposition party has emerged in 17 years of multiparty rule. Denied access to resources, the opposition remains a ‘smattering of small parties that do not constitute a real or potential threat to [CCM] hegemony’ (Hyden 1999: 148). The impact of an uneven playing field on political competition may be illustrated through a brief comparison of eight so-called ‘new democracies’ in Southern Africa (Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia) and Central America (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua). Freedom House classifies all eight regimes as ‘electoral democracies’ and has given them roughly similar political rights and civil liberties scores since the mid-1990s. Yet in terms of the playing field, the two sets of cases differ markedly. Whereas the Central American playing fields were reasonably level, in that private finance and media were accessible to two or more competing parties, the Southern African playing fields were skewed: state-owned media were the dominant news source, and incumbents’ abuse of state resources and massive advantage in private sector fundraising generated vast resource disparities (Levitsky and Way 2010: 236-308). The consequences are striking. With the exception of transitional elections in Zambia (1991) and Malawi (1994), incumbents in the Southern African cases have never lost: ruling parties have been re-elected four consecutive times in Zambia and three times in Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia (in Mozambique and Namibia, they were likely to win again in late 2009). Overall, incumbents in these four cases have won

36

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

13 of 15 elections and have not lost since 1994. In Central America, by contrast, incumbents usually lose. In El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala, opposition candidates have won more than two thirds (13 of 18) of presidential elections held since 1989. These contrasting patterns suggest real differences in the level of democratic competition that standard measures fail to capture. The Need for Conceptual Precision The above discussion suggests a need to take the slope of the playing field more seriously in conceptualizing and measuring democracy. Notwithstanding the scholarly convergence around Schumpeterian definitions of democracy, the proliferation of hybrid regimes poses a conceptual challenge. Because most hybrid regimes hold multiparty elections, scholars seeking to differentiate them from democracies have sought to ‘precise’ the concept of democracy by making explicit criteria that had been implicitly understood to be part of the overall meaning (Collier and Levitsky 1997). In the 1980s and 1990s, scholars precised the Schumpeterian definition to include – or make explicit – two criteria: civil liberties and civilian control over the military. In our view, the concept needs to be further precised to include a reasonably level playing field. In other words, a level playing field should be treated as a defining feature of democracy. Although a level playing field is implicit in most conceptualizations of democracy, standard measures of free elections and civil liberties often fail to capture key aspects of unfair competition. For example, abuses that skew the playing field are often not civil liberties violations per se. Whereas closing newspapers or arresting opposition businessmen are clear civil liberties violations, gaining de facto control of the private media via informal proxy or patronage arrangements or using government concessions and licenses to secure a virtual monopoly over private sector finance are not. Likewise, many of the effects of a skewed playing field are felt between elections and are thus often missed in evaluations of whether elections are free and fair. When vast resource disparities weaken opposition party structures, induce erstwhile opponents to back the government, or deter potential opponents from entering the political arena, democratic competition is undermined in ways that do not necessarily manifest themselves on election day. Incumbents effectively secure victory before the campaign begins. Attention to the slope of the playing field thus highlights how regimes may be non-democratic even in the absence of significant fraud or civil liberties violations. Precising the definition of democracy to include a level playing field thus allows scholars to more accurately score cases – like Mexico and Taiwan in the mid-1990s and contemporary Botswana, Georgia, Mozambique and Senegal – in which the appearance of Schumpeterian democracy belies a far less competitive reality.

Democracy and a Level Playing Field

37

Origins of an Uneven Playing Field What conditions promote hyper-incumbent advantage? Uneven playing fields would seem to emerge under conditions that facilitate incumbent control over key state and societal resources. Such conditions often exist, for example, in cases of incomplete transition from single party rule. Single party regimes tend to fuse state and ruling party, creating a highly politicized state in which bureaucrats simultaneously are party cadres, state properties (for example, businesses, media outlets) are simultaneously party properties, and resources from various state agencies are systematically deployed for partisan use. Transitions to multiparty rule – often accomplished via a simple constitutional change or the calling of elections – do not necessarily change these patterns. Thus, in Cambodia, Serbia, Taiwan and much of Sub-Saharan Africa, the end of single party rule in the late 1980s or early 1990s did not bring an effective de-linking of state and party, which helped incumbents retain power in a multiparty context. A skewed playing field may also be a legacy of incomplete postcommunist transitions. Due to severe restrictions on independent economic and political activity under communism, incumbents often retained dominant control over societal resources following the collapse of state socialism in 1989-1991. In states that did not undergo large-scale privatization (for example, Belarus, Uzbekistan), or in which governments used insider privatization to establish extensive patronage ties to a new business elite (for example, Russia, Serbia), incumbents often established a virtual monopoly over access to finance and the media. Where this occurred, it subsequently became very difficult for non-state actors to emerge and challenge the government. A third source of an uneven playing field is mineral wealth. Where petroleum or and other natural resource exports are a primary source of national revenue, and when the bulk of this revenue flows through the state, governments often enjoy a virtual monopoly over societal resources. In such a context, it is often extremely difficult to build or sustain opposition. This dynamic is clearly seen in Botswana, Gabon and to some extent, contemporary Venezuela. Finally, an uneven playing field is often rooted in underdevelopment. In a context of widespread poverty and a weak private sector, the financial, organizational and human resources available to opposition parties are usually quite limited. Small, economically vulnerable private sectors cannot be relied upon to finance opposition. Moreover, in the absence of a vibrant private economy, public sector jobs, contracts and other resources take on disproportionate importance, making it much easier for governments to co-opt individual politicians, businessmen and activists away from the opposition. Opposition impoverishment magnifies the impact of incumbency. Even petty incumbent abuses that have no real impact in rich countries, such as the ruling party’s use of public employees, buildings, or vehicles, can skew the playing field in such a context. In countries like Cambodia, Madagascar, Mali and Tanzania, access to state-owned 4x4 vehicles and other forms of transportation allows incumbents to penetrate rural areas that are largely

38

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

inaccessible to opposition parties. Under-development also skews media access. In poor societies, newspaper circulation is usually low, leaving television and radio as only news sources for much of the population. Yet weak private sectors may have difficulty sustaining national broadcasting networks. Indeed, in Mali, Moldova, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and other low-income countries, state-owned television remained the only national broadcaster through the 1990s and into the 2000s. Even where private media exist, they are often highly dependent on the government. Where the private sector is under-developed, government advertising is almost invariably a major source of revenue for private media, which makes them vulnerable to co-optation. In very poor countries, then, resource scarcity and media under-development are such that simply being in government can create a ‘hyper-incumbency’ advantage. This fact has an important implication: the same type of incumbent abuse can have very different effects across cases, depending on the level of development. For example, incumbents use public employees and state resources for election campaigns in Malawi and Brazil, but whereas in Malawi this abuse seriously affects the opposition’s ability to compete, in Brazil it does not. Likewise, government threats to withdraw advertising from private media powerfully shape media behaviour in Botswana, but not in Italy or Mexico. And whereas biased public television or radio has little impact in Central Europe and South America, where private media predominate, it has a powerful impact in much of Southern Africa, where it is often the only available news source. Overcoming an Uneven Playing Field How can an uneven playing field be overcome? The most reliable way is to grow out of it. Capitalist development expands the resources available to opposition parties, creates markets capable of sustaining a pluralist media structure, and diminishes the impact of incumbent abuse. In Mexico, for example, economic development expanded the media market and gave rise to a more independent private sector that would be a major source of opposition finance. Thus, although the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) continued to abuse state power during the 1990s, the impact of this abuse diminished relative to earlier decades. Similar changes took place in Taiwan, and they may be at work today in Malaysia. Short of such long-term structural developments, hyper-incumbent advantage may be overcome in other ways. The most common of these is division within the ruling elite. Where the playing field is highly skewed, the most viable challengers often come from within. Unlike opposition politicians, top government officials do have access to the state and media. Thus, when regime elites defect and use privileged access to media and patronage to contest for power, the advantages of an uneven playing field may be effectively wiped out. Incumbent coalitions are especially prone to disintegration where ruling parties are weak, as in much of Africa and the former Soviet Union. For example, in Ukraine, ex-Prime

Democracy and a Level Playing Field

39

Minister Victor Yushchenko was able to mount a successful national campaign (despite considerable incumbent abuse) due to support from leading politicians and oligarchs who, along with Yushchenko, had recently abandoned the regime. Likewise, in Kenya, the defection of leading Kenya African National Union (KANU) government officials was critical to opposition’s victory in 2002. Indeed, many of the most dramatic David versus Goliath-style opposition victories in recent decades (Zambia in 1991, Malawi in 1994, Senegal in 2000, Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003) were made possible by massive defections of regime insiders (such outcomes are less likely where ruling parties are highly cohesive, as in Mozambique and Zimbabwe). Another means of overcoming an uneven playing field is through a strategy of opposition through co-optation. As noted above, opposition parties that lack access to finance and the media often have an incentive to join the government. Major opposition parties and politicians have adopted this strategy in Armenia, Cambodia, Cameroon, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Senegal, Serbia and elsewhere. Such behaviour is often dismissed as opportunistic and corrupt, and it risks discrediting opposition parties. Under conditions of extreme resource scarcity and/or inequality, however, joining the government may be the only viable means of organizational survival. By allowing themselves to be co-opted today, opposition parties may gain the resources needed to survive and compete tomorrow. Indeed, cooperative strategies sometimes succeed. For example, Abdoulaye Wade’s Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) joined government coalitions in 1991 and 1995, gaining access to critical patronage resources. While ‘pure’ opposition parties languished, the PDS strengthened, and Wade won the presidency in 2000. Similarly, in Kenya, longtime opposition leader Raila Odinga aligned his National Democratic Party (NDP) with the ruling KANU in the late 1990s and joined the government in 2001. Well-endowed with resources, Odinga rejoined the opposition in 2002 and played a central role in KANU’s defeat. Likewise, several key opposition politician who led Ukraine’s Orange Revolution had garnered critical resources by first aligning themselves with the Kuchma government in the 1990s. Although these scenarios highlight how incumbents may be defeated despite an uneven playing field, neither one entails an actual levelling of the playing field. As a result, turnover in such cases often does not bring democracy. Indeed, in Belarus, Malawi, Ukraine and Zambia in the 1990s and in Senegal, Kenya, Madagascar and Georgia in the 2000s, an uneven playing field persisted after transitions and successor governments were not democratic. Democratization in such cases often requires active measures to disperse resources and/or media access, such as guaranteed public finance for parties and regulations that encourage pluralist media structures and strengthen independent media. Campaign finance and media reforms were notably successful in leveling the playing field in Mexico after 1996. However, incumbents rarely accede to such redistribution, and frequently, equitable arrangements on paper are not enforced in practice.

40

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

In such cases, international actors may make a difference. On several occasions, external assistance has helped opposition forces overcome the effects of an uneven playing field. In some cases, this assistance helped opposition groups build or sustain national organizations. In Nicaragua in 1990, for example, US assistance enabled an enfeebled opposition coalition to hire staff, purchase campaign vehicles, open offices across the country, and run a national campaign – all of which was critical to its stunning victory over the Sandinistas. Similarly, in Serbia in 2000, Western assistance was critical to the anti-Milosevic opposition’s successful campaign and post-election protest movement. External assistance may also strengthen civil society organizations – such as domestic election observer groups – whose activities help opposition parties compete on a skewed playing field (for example, OK-98 in Slovakia, Committee of Voters in Ukraine), and it may help sustain independent media outlets, thereby providing opposition parties with media access that they would not otherwise have had (for example, Nicaragua 1990, Cambodia 1993, Serbia and Croatia in 2000, Ukraine 2004). In poor countries, where a few 4x4 vehicles or rural radio stations can make a big difference, external efforts to level the playing field do not require large sums of money. Simply by enabling opposition groups to reach voters across the country, even modest assistance can put them in a position to win. In sum, a skewed playing field is an increasingly important means of sustaining authoritarian rule. Even where fraud and/or civil liberties violations remain widespread, as in Belarus, Cambodia, Cameroon, Malaysia, Russia and Singapore, unequal access to resources, media and the law may be the most potent force undermining political competition. Indeed, in the post-Cold War era, such mechanisms may be a more effective way to ‘disappear’ opponents than the kind of violent repression used by regimes in the past. References Africa Confidential. 2005. Gabon. Bongo for ever: The oil is dwindling but the President shows no such weakness, 21 January, 5. Baum, J. 1994. The Money Machine. Far Eastern Economic Review, 11 August, 62-66. Boas, T. 2005. Television and Neopopulism in Latin America: Media Effects in Brazil and Peru. Latin American Research Review, 40(2), 27-49. Carver, R. 1994. The Army Factor. Africa Report, 39(1), 56-58. Castañeda, J.G. 1995. The Mexican Shock: Its Meaning for the United States. New York: The New Press. Collier, D. and Levitsky, S. 1997. Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research. World Politics, 49, 430-451. Freedom House. 2008. Freedom of the Press. 2008. Tanzania [Online]. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4871f63728.html [accessed: 1 March 2011].

Democracy and a Level Playing Field

41

Freedom House. 2009. Freedom in the World. 2009. Tanzania [Online, 16 July]. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4a64527b32.html [accessed: 1 March 2011]. GERDDES-Cameroon (Groupe d’Études et de Recherches sur la Démocratie et le Développement Economique et Social). 1995. Financing Political Parties in a Multi-Party Democracy: The Experience of Cameroon, in Funding Political Parties in West Africa, edited by Kofi Kumado. Accra: Electoral Commission of Ghana, 91-92. Greene, K. 2007. Why Dominant Parties Lose: Mexico’s Democratization in Comparative Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press. Heder, S. 2005. Cambodia: Hun Sen’s Consolidation: Death or Beginning of Reform? Southeast Asian Affairs, 113-130. Hoffman, B. and Robinson, L. 2009. Tanzania’s Missing Opposition. Journal of Democracy, 20(4), 123-136. Hyden, G. 1999. Top-Down Democratization in Tanzania. Journal of Democracy, 10(4), 142-155. Levitsky, S. and Way, L.A. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. New York: Cambridge University Press. Marston, J. 2002. Cambodia: Transnational Pressures and Local Agendas. Southeast Asian Affairs, 95-108. McFaul, M. 1997. Russia’s 1996 Presidential Election: The End of Polarized Politics. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institute Press. Mmegi Online. 2004. Botswana Elections: Free But Not Fair [Online, 23 June]. Available at: http://www.mmegi.bw/2004/June/Wednesday23/1989070351211. html [accessed: 1 March 2011]. Munene, M. 2001. The Politics of Transition in Kenya: 1995-1998. Nairobi: Quest and Insight Publishers. Oppenheimer, A. 1996. Bordering on Chaos: Guerrillas, Stockbrokers, Politicians, and Mexico’s Road to Prosperity. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. Oquaye, M. 1998. Human Rights and the 1996 Elections, in The 1996 General Elections and Democratic Consolidation in Ghana, edited by J.R.A. Ayee. Accra: University of Ghana Department of Political Science, 105-125. Rigger, S. 2001. The Democratic Progressive Party in 2000: Obstacles and Opportunities. The China Quarterly, 168, 944-959. Schedler, A. (ed.) 2006. Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Taylor, I. 2003. As Good as it Gets? Botswana’s ‘Democratic Development’. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 21(3), 215-231. The Economist. 2004. Botswana: Africa’s Prize Democracy. Why is an Arid, Landlocked Country in Southern Africa Such a Success? [Online, 6 November]. Available at: https://www.economist.com/node/3364739 [accessed: 1 March 2011].

42

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Un, K. 2008. Cambodia’s 2008 election: the end of opposition. Open Democracy. [Online, 5 August]. Available at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/ cambodia-s-2008-elections-the-end-of-opposition [accessed: 1 March 2011]. U.S. Department of State. 2009. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009: Botswana [Online]. Available at: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/ hrrpt/2009/af/135939.htm [accessed: 1 March 2011]. White, D. 2006. Yabloko: Opposition in a Managed Democracy. Aldershot: Ashgate. Wu, J.J. 1995. Taiwan’s Democratization: Forces Behind the New Momentum. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 3

Neopatrimonialism: Problems of a Catch-all Concept?1 Gero Erdmann

Neopatrimonialism is a universal concept, yet it is highly controversial. To differing degrees, the concept is applied in political science and in various area studies. Sometimes it is strongly associated with African Studies – a perception, however, that does not correspond to research realities. The mistaken association with African Studies might be explained by the fact that neopatrimonialism seems to be a well-established concept for the understanding of politics in that area. As pointed out previously, an uncritical attitude seems to have precluded a fruitful methodological debate about the usefulness of the concept (Erdmann and Engel 2007). Aside from a few exceptions, scholars who do not subscribe to the concept continue simply to ignore it or to dismiss it outright without discussing it seriously. At the same time, neopatrimonialism is becoming more frequently used to describe and explain politics in other areas of the world, as indicated by the collection of case studies in this volume. Hence, the basic question of whether neopatrimonialism is useful for a better understanding of politics in the post-Soviet space is an opportunity to reflect upon the conceptual development of neopatrimonialism. I shall start with a short explication (1) of what the concept is about and why it is useful. This will be followed (2) by a short review of the historical evolution and application of the concept and (3) a definition and explication of neopatrimonialism. Finally (4), I shall analyse the weaknesses of the concept and point out the issues remaining to be addressed in its future elaboration. The concluding argument will be twofold. First, neopatrimonialism is conceptually still underdeveloped, and second, it is not much more than a heuristically useful concept, which means that in its current state, it has only limited relevance for empirical research.

1  This contribution draws on sections first published as ‘Neopatrimonialism’ in Routledge Handbook of African Politics, edited by D. Anderson and N. Cheeseman; to be published 2012 by Routledge – 480 pages; http://www.routledge.com/books/ details/9780415573788/

44

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Why Neopatrimonialism? – History and Application The origin of the concept neopatrimonialism dates back to the developmental studies of the early 1970s when Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (1973) is thought to have coined the term. It was part of a debate about a grand theory of modernization. From the beginning, the concept had a universalistic claim applicable to developing countries to which most other scholars using the term would subscribe (for example, Theobald 1982, Medard 1982, Clapham 1985, Roth 1987). Although it became prominent in African Studies, it was only Victor T. Le Vine who explicitly adapted the concept to Africa as a particular African variant of patrimonialism (Le Vine 1980). During the 1980s, the concept suffered a decline in developmental studies, but experienced a revival during the 1990s. Above all, it became a frequent explanation for failed transitional processes from authoritarian rule and for the emergence of hybrid regimes. The concept gained prominence particularly in African Studies (Bratton and van de Walle 1994, 1997, Erdmann 2003, 2002, Pitcher, Moran and Johnston 2009). It was also used to explain the continued economic crisis in Africa (Engelbert 2000, van de Walle 2001). This wide application was also true for Southeast Asian Studies (Crouch 1979, Snyder 1992, Ufen 2002), the Middle East and North Africa (Pawelka 1985, 2002, Brownlee 2002, Richter and Steiner 2008, Bank and Richter 2010). While the scholarship on Latin America largely ignored the concept (Bechle 2010), it gained increasing attention in studies on post-Soviet societies (Ishiyama 2002, Fisun 2003, Ilkhamov 2007, Gawrich and Franke 2009) and in research on Eastern Europe (Hensell 2009). At the same time, there were recurrent complaints about its conceptual shortcomings (Le Vine 1980: 663, Theobald 1982: 555, Clapham 1982: 32, Erdmann and Engel 2007: 97-104, de Gassi 2008, Pitcher, Moran and Johnston 2009). Based on a survey of its use in African Studies, Pitcher, Moran and Johnston (2009: 131) have identified four different applications, which can be interrelated. They depicted the concept as: (1) a set of social relations at either the community or nation-state level, mediated by personal loyalty and governed by bonds of dependence and subordination; (2) the rent-seeking behavior and personalist patterns of authority practiced by … leaders in selected country settings; (3) an economic logic distinguished by the continual blurring of public service and private gain, with serious implications for economic development; (4) a characteristic regime type associated with countries not only during [the] period of [authoritarian] … rule, but also in the … period of democratization.

This varied application of the concept is not confined to the African context, but is identical in other contexts such as the post-Soviet regimes and Asia. There is an additional, more specific understanding of the concept. Political science research outside the OECD world, particularly if linked to institutions,

Neopatrimonialism: Problems of a Catch-all Concept?

45

usually struggles with the formal and informal dimensions of politics. In the past, some area specialists even tended to dismiss the study of formal institutions as irrelevant. Formal institutions were often equated with the ‘Western’ institutions of the modern state because politics in other areas seemed to be dominated by informal institutions or at least informal behaviour (Bayart 1993, Chabal and Daloz 1999, Hyden 2006: 98, Chabal and Daloz 2006). However, even the rejection of the relevance of formal institutions and the emphasis on informal institutions and/or recurrent informal behaviour point to the fact that formal institutions do matter, and this point of view has indeed attained a broader consensus today. Recent research on politics in Africa, which has notoriously been characterized by a concentration on non-formal politics, has revealed that formal institutions are becoming increasingly institutionalized (Solt 2001, Posner and Young 2007, Lindberg 2006). Despite this recent development, the phenomenon of formal and informal institutions existing side by side and impacting each other remains a challenge for political science research in Africa, Asia and Latin America and even for some parts of Eastern and Southern Europe. This does not mean that informal institutions and non-rule-bound politics do not play a role in Western or Northern Europe and the US, but they are usually less important than in those other parts of the world. Hence, neopatrimonialism is an attempt to tackle the challenge provided by the coexistence and interaction of formal and informal institutions or widespread informal behaviour within one polity. The systematic inclusion of formal and informal institutions in one concept, however, still has a number of shortcomings. In fact, the diverse use of the concept has contributed to frequent claims that it has become a ‘catch-all concept’ with diminished analytical power (Erdmann and Engel 2007, de Gassi 2008, Pitcher, Moran and Johnston 2009). What is Neopatrimonialism? Defining the Concept As indicated above, until the mid-1990s the concept of neopatrimonialism was ill defined. Most often the distinction between patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism was blurred and the meaning of both conflated. Sometimes neopatrimonialism was just a synonym for personal rule, clientelism and patronage. Others scholars provide a sort of ‘dense’ description of the phenomenon. Often the prefix ‘neo’ was used to describe a somehow modern or area-specific variant of patrimonialism without much specification (Erdmann and Engel 2007, Pitcher, Moran and Johnston 2009).2

2  The more recent conceptualizations of neopatrimonialism cannot be reduced to a ‘personalist approach’ or to the ‘big man’ syndrome; it also does not make a claim that it is ‘deeply culturally embedded, and in effect genetic’ or ‘preordained’; this is a complete misunderstanding and even misrepresentation of the concept by some authors (Bauer and Taylor 2006: 9-10) who also refer to the ‘personal rule’ of Jackson and Rosberg 1984.

46

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle (1997) opened up the space for a more precise understanding of neopatrimonialism. They were the first to define neopatrimonialism as being clearly distinct from patrimonialism. According to them, neopatrimonialism is characterized by customs and patterns of patrimonialism which coexist with, and suffuse, rational-legal institutions (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 62). Based on a critical discussion of their concept, the following definition was proposed: Neopatrimonialism is a mixture of two types of domination: namely, patrimonial and legal-rational bureaucratic domination. Under patrimonialism, all power relations between ruler and ruled, political as well as administrative relations, are personal relations; there is no differentiation between the private and the public realm. However, under neopatrimonialism the distinction between the private and the public, at least formally, exists and is accepted […]. Neopatrimonial rule takes place within the framework of, and with the claim to, legal-rational bureaucracy or ‘modern’ stateness. Formal structures and rules do exist, although in practice the separation of the private and public sphere is not always observed. In other words, two role systems or logics exist next to each other, the patrimonial of the personal relations, and the legal-rational of the bureaucracy. (Erdmann and Engel 2007: 105)

This means that the two spheres are not isolated from each other; the patrimonial penetrates the legal-rational system, twists its logic, functions and output, but does not take exclusive control over the legal-rational logic. Formal and informal institutions and behaviour are intimately linked to each other in various ways and varying degrees, and this mixture becomes institutionalized. Within this system, people have a certain degree of choice as to which logic they want to employ to achieve their goals and best realize their interests. Thus, the crucial feature of neopatrimonialism is the insecurity about the role of state institutions and the behaviour of their agents. The systematic uncertainty about which rules or which relationship are best applied or mobilized in any particular situation in order to achieve a particular goal – either the legal-rational (formal) or the patrimonial (informal) – shapes the behaviour of individuals and organizations. All actors strive to overcome their insecurity, but they do so by operating according to both the formal and the informal logic of neopatrimonialism. Ultimately, this inherent insecurity is reproduced in a systematic way. The relationship between the two logics of neopatrimonialism, the formal and the informal, can thus be conceptualized as a mutually reinforcing one, as a mutually constitutive cycle of reproduction. One additional remark must be made. Within such a pattern of social and political relations, formal state institutions cannot fulfil their universalistic purpose – but they might fulfill other purposes and perform other functions for a different ‘system’ in which particularistic interests determine politics and policies.

Neopatrimonialism: Problems of a Catch-all Concept?

47

Conceptual and Research Problems A general observation about the use of neopatrimonialism in research alludes to a major problem. The concept is usually applied as an independent variable in research projects. This means it is taken as ‘given’ to explain something else – for example, an ill-functioning democracy, a poor policy outcome or an economic crisis. I know of only one study that takes neopatrimonialism as a dependent variable or as something that needs to be explained (see Von Soest 2010). Moreover, I know of no study that investigates thoroughly whether a form of domination (regime or system) is actually neopatrimonial or best described another way. This observation indicates a number of conceptual problems that will be discussed below. The Problem of Delineation Regardless of how we make use of the concept – even when using it as a meaningful independent variable – we must be able to answer the following questions: How can we recognize a neopatrimonial type of domination? And how can we distinguish such a type from others? To answer these questions, we need clearly defined attributes or components (properties or indicators) that would allow us to determine the specific character of a given type of domination. Unfortunately, such clear-cut attributes or criteria are missing in all definitions and descriptions of the concept. This unresolved issue refers to the delineation or benchmark problem of the concept. Without such attributes or components, we will have a fundamental problem identifying a neopatrimonial form of domination. For this purpose, we must be in a position to distinguish between a patrimonial and a neopatrimonial type of domination on the one hand and between a neopatrimonial and a legal-rational bureaucratic domination on the other. To put it differently, where precisely is the border between patrimonialism, neopatrimonialism and legal-rational bureaucratic domination? At first glance, the concept is defined quite clearly as a mixture of two other types; hence, it is neither patrimonialism nor legal-rational bureaucratic domination. However, if we get a step further, the following questions need to be answered: How large is the ‘share’ of the patrimonial and how large the ‘share’ of the legal-rational bureaucratic component in neopatrimonial domination? Is it about 50-50? Or is a minimum of 25 per cent on one side sufficient? Apart from the problem of the difficulty in quantifying the share of each component, there is another problem to deal with: How do we recognize whether we are dealing with a neopatrimonial type or with a patrimonial type? Or, on the other side, how do we recognize whether we are dealing with a legal-rational bureaucratic type? An additional problem is that in systems recognized as legal-rational bureaucratic there are also usually informal elements or non-rule-bound behaviour and even informal institutions, of which some are actually required to make the formal institutions work. To phrase it differently: How many ‘patrimonial defects’ in a legal-rational bureaucratic system are necessary for it to be called neopatrimonial?

48

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Or the other way round: How much legal-rational bureaucracy is required to turn a patrimonial into a neopatrimonial type of domination? It is surprising that among scholars who use the concept there is no discussion about the delineation or threshold issue and how to solve this problem; and as mentioned above, there is hardly any explication as to why a system is termed ‘neopatrimonial’, apart from the general reference to non-formal politics and to clientelism and patronage within the system. This leads directly to the next problem, which is how to apply the concept in empirical research. The Problem of Operationalization As implied in the section above, only a few authors have explicitly addressed the challenge of operationalizing neopatrimonialism. Snyder (1992: 379) identified ‘an extensive network of personal patronage’, which determined the character of neopatrimonial regimes, and stated that the penetration of state institutions by these networks ‘tend[s] to be uneven’. But he did not explain how we can establish the existence of an extensive network of personal relations and the degree of penetration into state institutions. Based on the assumption that there is a vital link between patrimonialism and broader socio-economic factors, Theobald (1982: 559) related specific instances of patrimonialism to ‘these contextual variables’. He, however, confined himself vaguely to ‘three sets of variables’ which, apart from casually naming some (that is, size and composition of the GDP and the subsistence sector; general nature of the relationship between the political executive and the administration), he did not elaborate on further as regards their relationship to each other.3 Possibly as a result of the very general nature of these variables (for example, rate of social mobilization), it is not really surprising that the literature on neopatrimonialism has made no systematic use of Theobald’s suggestion. More recently, Bratton and van de Walle (1997: 63-68) suggested another substantive approach to the problem. They identified three informal political institutions, which are said to be typical for neopatrimonial regimes: Firstly, ‘presidentialism’, which here means the ‘systematic concentration of political power in the hands of one individual, who resists delegating all but the most trivial decision-making tasks’ (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 63). Secondly, 3  In fact, whether specific instances of neopatrimonialism (or patrimonialism, in this case) can be linked to a certain GDP size, GDP composition, etc., remains questionable. He suggested three sets of variables of which two concern general economic and political features, that is, the size and composition of the GDP, the character of trade and manufacturing, the size of the subsistence sector, etc.; political factors such as the historical evolution, the character of the state structure, the degree of internal political integration, and the ‘general nature of the relationship between the political executive and the administration’ (Theobald 1982: 559). For his third set of variables, on the ‘characteristics of specific bureaucracies’ (Theobald 1982: 559), we need not look beyond the bureaucracy or ‘state structure’.

Neopatrimonialism: Problems of a Catch-all Concept?

49

‘systematic clientelism’, which implies that the president or ‘strongman’ relies on awarding of personal favours, for example, the distribution of public sector jobs and public resources through licences, contracts and projects (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 65-66) and thirdly, the ‘use of state resources for political legitimation’ which is closely linked to clientelism (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 66-67). As indicated above, the first problem with this proposition is that the first variable is not indicative of neopatrimonialism, but of a kind of patrimonialism, for everything is left to the discretion of the unrestrained ruler. The crucial question of whether or not the presidential powers are applied according to formal constitutional rules (if presidential powers were rule-based, there would be no patrimonial problem) is not addressed. Another problem is that the second variable is underspecified – ‘use of state resources for political legitimation’ does not say very much. This phenomenon can be identified in all sorts of political regimes; even in the best of all democracies, politicians will try to find policies which will use state resources in order to please the majority of the electorate and increase their own legitimacy prior to the next elections. What was probably meant is simply that political office is used for appropriating public wealth for private enrichment as well as selective patronage – but this would require a different phrasing of the indicator. It might be worthwhile to further explore the possibilities of patronage or clientelism as one indicator of neopatrimonialism because both turn up in most descriptions and definitions of the concept. The systematic analysis of the distribution of public resources, including development projects to particular regions, districts or ethnic (sub-)groups, along with the distribution of ministerial and other major political and administrative posts, might provide an indicative pattern of patronage or clientelistic politics. However, this would partly shift one conceptual problem to another, from neopatrimonialism to patronage or clientelism. As Landé (1983: 440-444) has observed, there are three problems related to comparative research on clientelism: the problems of conceptualization, observation and explanation. This means (1) there is no basic agreement as to what is to be included in the study of clientelism; (2) the ‘amorphousness’, the ‘latency’ and the ‘elusiveness’ of clientelism highlights the problem of observation; and finally, (3) the methodological question on the explanation of the existence of clientelism is not satisfactorily answered. Because the confusion about the terminology has not lessened and because we still lack clear criteria to distinguish ‘clients’ from ‘non-clients’, for example, it is still very difficult to deal with ‘clientelism’ in empirical and comparative research (see also Stokes 2009). This lack of conceptual clarity applies to ‘patronage’ as well, which is often conflated with clientelism or not strictly separated (Erdmann and Engel 2007: 106-108). Building on Bratton and van de Walle, Christian von Soest has specified the concentration-of-power indicator by suggesting an ‘and-connection’ between the concentration of power in the hands of the president and a high turnover of five key cabinet members (Von Soest 2009: 56). In addition, he specified the

50

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

clientelism indicator by the ‘size and the composition of the ministerial cabinet’ and for the third informal institution, the ‘misuse of state resources’, he uses the corruption ratings of Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and the World Bank Governance Index with respect to ‘control of corruption’ (Von Soest 2009: 57-58). All this is an improvement over Bratton and van de Walle’s original operationalization. However, it does not really solve the problems I mentioned earlier. All the new indicators are still unspecified. They do not tell us the exact number of turnovers of key cabinet ministers, or which cabinet size, or which ranking in one of the corruption indexes turns a legal-rational bureaucratic rule into a neopatrimonial type. This again points to the basic issue of undefined benchmarks. Moreover, it is unclear whether these indicators really indicate what they are supposed to. Beyond the claim that these indicators are highly correlated with neopatrimonialism, there is very little conceptual discussion about their usefulness, not to mention any validity test. The size of a cabinet could be dictated by various political reasons that might have nothing to do with neopatrimonial practices; for example, having a bigger cabinet might be an attempt to include as many different political groups as possible into the government in order to keep peace, to unite all political forces for one particular goal or to integrate a heterogeneous polity – but does that mean we are observing clientelist politics or the misuse of state resources for private gains or a largely corrupt political system? These issues need to be discussed thoroughly before we can be sure about the benefit of the indicator. One of these problems is related to the corruption indexes. They are supposed to indicate the misuse of state funds by the political elite in government. However, both indexes mentioned above appraise grand and petty corruption; hence, they are at best only ‘second-best indicators’ (Von Soest 2009: 58) for the specific purpose of indicating the level of corruption of the political elite (not to mention the quality of the survey data of the CPI, for example). Finally, there are two other unresolved problems. One is that the indicators discussed in detail are related to the political sphere, which is much less formally rule-based than the bureaucracy proper – a crucial issue which I shall discuss in the next sub-section. The other problem is related to what Bratton and van de Walle refer to as informal institutions of neopatrimonialism. This, however, might be a specific problem for those scholars relying on an institutionalist approach. But there is a general tendency in neopatrimonialist or patrimonialist studies to view informal or non-rule-bound behaviour not as an institution but as something ‘ingrained’ or culturally or traditionally embedded. Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky (2006: 6-8) have emphasized the distinction between informal behaviour and informal institutions. This means that not all non-rulebound behaviour constitutes an informal institution. A formal rule might not be observed, but that does not mean the deviant behaviour is guided by a different institution or set of rules. Therefore, the challenge is to distinguish between nonrule-bound behaviour according to a formal institution and behaviour according

Neopatrimonialism: Problems of a Catch-all Concept?

51

to an informal institution. How this problem relates to an institutionalist or any other understanding of neopatrimonialism has not been discussed at all. So far, the conclusion that neopatrimonialism is still poorly operationalized for empirical research is unavoidable. Aside from the small number of attributes or components – there are only two: the patrimonial and legal-rational bureaucratic domination – the indicators or properties are very ‘soft’ and ill-defined, and it is therefore difficult to establish whether or not the concept is able to ‘capture’ the phenomenon it claims to describe. Significance of the Political and Administrative Spheres As indicated in the previous sub-section, the most recent operationalizations of neopatrimonialism focus on the political dimension of the concept. This means they focus on only one dimension of the concept and tend to ignore the second, the administrative dimension. By looking only at the political side and claiming, based on the observation of its specific indicators, that the whole system is neopatrimonial might be a huge mistake. One has to take into account that there might be strong patrimonial behaviour in the political sphere – as in many autocratic regimes – while the public administration operates largely according to legal-rational bureaucratic principles. Such an approach with a focus on the political side conflates the two dimensions of government and governance, which, at least for analytical purposes, should be kept separate. The reason is simply that the political sphere of government (and governance) is much less regulated by formal rule than the administrative sphere. To put it differently, the government proper, which is the arena of politicians who might be elected, nominated or selfnominated by force, is not entirely subject to legal-rational bureaucratic rule – not even in a democracy. Most of the political decisions are made at the discretion of the politicians, although they have to observe certain procedural rules and some basic values and norms that are embedded in the constitution. The sphere of the administration, the state bureaucracy proper with its administrative staff, is much more regulated by legal-rational bureaucratic rules. This distinction between these two governmental spheres is perfectly at one with Weber’s concept of rational domination: There are very important types of rational domination which, with respect to the [head of administrative staff], belong to other types …; this is true of the hereditary charismatic type … and of a pure charismatic type of a president chosen by plebiscite’; the implication is: ‘at the top of a bureaucratic organisation, there is necessarily an element which is at least not purely bureaucratic (Weber 1978: 219, 222, 1980: 126, author’s translation).

Presidents, prime ministers and cabinet ministers are not proper ‘civil servants’ (Beamte) within the legal-rational bureaucracy, which requires technical qualifications for the staff. Membership in a ministerial cabinet requires ‘political’ qualifications

52

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

only; the nomination of cabinet members is usually left to the discretion of the head of government and the number of cabinet members is not usually regulated by the constitution (only the nomination procedure is prescribed). This means there is always a personal or patrimonial dimension in even the most advanced or pure type of legal-rational bureaucratic domination. There is, however, a difference between authoritarian and democratic regimes as regards differing degrees of the personal or patrimonial moment: A democratically elected leader or head of government is subjected to legal-rational rules himself (the rule-of-law) much more than an authoritarian ruler (for a discussion of these issues, see the next section). To avoid the conflation of the spheres of politics and administration, a separate analysis of the two dimensions of governance is required: first, the conduct of political office and second, the conduct of bureaucratic office. While for the first one, the well-known criteria which allow the distinction between authoritarian and democratic governance can be applied, the second one might use specific indicators that allow for a differentiated assessment of administrative behaviour – for example, a list provided by Max Weber – although these are clearly not exhaustive. This means an analysis of how the bureaucracy operates is required. Hence, we have to establish how far the stipulated rules are observed; how the officials concur with their formal obligations within the legal-rational roles; and to what extent and frequency they deviate from the conception of their role. This should provide an answer to the question of the degree to which formal bureaucratic behaviour is routinized vis-à-vis informal behaviour or external influence by politicians. Yet, this challenge of how to include an analysis of the functioning of the state administration proper has hardly been included in the conceptual study of neopatrimonialism, aside from von Soest (2009, 2007), who tried to assess the legal-rational and neopatrimonial behaviour of the tax administration in Zambia and Botswana. The Problem of Subtypes Since neopatrimonialism can have different empirical manifestations – one case can be closer to patrimonialism, the other closer to legal-rational domination – and these may have different effects, authors have suggested the formation of subtypes in order to increase the analytical power of the concept (Snyder and Mahoney 1999: 112, 118, Erdmann and Engel 2007: 114). Within African studies, no subtypes have been suggested or developed yet. However, based on Bratton and van de Walle’s concept of neopatrimonialism, a number of scholars in Central Asian studies have made an attempt to differentiate the concept for classification purposes. Based on Bratton and van de Walle’s concept of neopatrimonialism they suggested an extended subtype formation of four types (Fisun 2003, Gawrich and Franke 2009): • Sultanistic neopatrimonialism has a very strong concentration of power in an impermeable narrow circle of power elites. There is low or no elite competition. In fact, it is the worst case of neopatrimonialism, especially relevant in Central Asia;

Neopatrimonialism: Problems of a Catch-all Concept?

53

• Oligarchic neopatrimonialism may be characterized by … rent-seeking cycles, which … may be linked with government institutions. There may be strong competition between these groups …; • Bureaucratic neopatrimonialism shows a monopolization of power which is based on informality in bureaucracy. State mechanisms are dominated by bureaucracy (parallel to weak parliaments), especially due to the lack of party power …; • Soft neopatrimonialism is defined as governance systems which are already based on less informal mechanisms. Accordingly strong competition [is] expected. (Gawrich and Franke 2009: 5) A major advantage of this typology is that it uses Weberian terminology, which fits the conceptual roots of neopatrimonialism. However, the two major challenges for each typology – first, exclusiveness (Are the types sufficiently distinctive or specific?), and second, exhaustiveness (Are they sufficiently inclusive?) – are not so neatly addressed. The exhaustiveness does not seem to be a major problem because the four types cover a wide empirical variety that spans from the first type, which is close to patrimonialism, to the fourth type, which is close to legal-rational bureaucratic rule. The issue here is again that the authors did not discuss the delineation from both the major types. The exclusiveness, however, seems to be a problem. The explication of the different types consists of very short descriptions and the phrasing is not very precise (‘competition may be strong’). Another problem is that one particular subtype is defined through an economic behaviour, ‘rent-seeking’. Is this a behaviour that is relevant for neopatrimonialism only? And why is it a feature of only one subtype? There is no discussion of these properties. Another problematic example is the definition of the third subtype: the ‘monopolisation of power … is based on informality in bureaucracy. State mechanisms are dominated by bureaucracy’ (Gawrich and Franke 2009: 5). This seems to be a contradiction in terms; on the one hand, power is based on informality, and on the other hand, ‘state mechanisms’ are dominated by the bureaucracy. Usually, bureaucracy means legal-rational bureaucracy – and if the bureaucracy is dominant, how can power be generated by informality in the bureaucracy? Moreover, the first two subtypes identify elites as actors, but none for the third, so one might ask whose power is ‘based on informality in bureaucracy’? More fundamentally, while ‘informality in the bureaucracy’ is a defining attribute of neopatrimonialism, how can this be used as a defining attribute of a subtype? Altogether, the subtype formation is not sufficiently specific in its definition and attributes, not consistent in its criteria and consequently not sufficiently distinctive. It would be difficult to apply it effectively in empirical research and in classifying observations. Neopatrimonialism and Regime Types Another contentious issue is the debate about how neopatrimonialism relates to the classical regime types. There are several questions related to this issue. First, is

54

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

neopatrimonialism a regime type of its own? Second, how does neopatrimonialism relate to democratic and/or authoritarian regimes? Often the application of the concept suggests that neopatrimonialism is a type of its own, a hybrid type of regime somewhere between democracy and dictatorship. At the same time, there seems to be agreement that neopatrimonial domination belongs to the realm of non-democratic regimes. However, only a few authors explicitly address this question. Critical discussions of the concept claim that it is not a regime type of its own (Erdmann and Engel 2007: 111, Pitcher, Moran and Johnston 2009: 126). Contentious, however, is the relationship between neopatrimonialism and the various political regime types. Crucial questions are: Is it possible to have a neopatrimonial democracy? Would that be a hybrid regime or a defective democracy? Is it possible to observe a non-neopatrimonial autocracy – or is this a contradiction in terms? Democracy is closely linked to the rule-of-law and thus dependent on a functioning legal-rational bureaucracy and its rules. Consequently, legal-rational domination finds its logical incarnation in a democratic framework. However, as mentioned above, even the purest type of legal-rational bureaucratic domination accommodates some patrimonial elements as well. I would argue (and many other political scientists would presumably concur) that liberal democracy and neopatrimonialism are not compatible with each other – by definition they exclude each other. Ann Pitcher and her colleagues have challenged this view. They argue with the example of Botswana that liberal democracy and neopatrimonialism are compatible: The political regime is ‘neopatrimonial, yet democratic’ (Pitcher, Moran and Johnston 2009: 144). They acknowledge that elections are widely regarded as fair and substantially free of fraud and although elections have not resulted in the handover of power to an opposition party, such parties have been able to secure lower-level election victories. They describe the regime as an ‘open elite democracy’ in which patrimonialism has not been abandoned by the elite. The elite has built a ‘democratic state on the foundation of traditional and highly personalized reciprocities and loyalties’ (Pitcher, Moran and Johnston 2009: 145). The controversial issue is foremost not an empirical but rather a conceptual one, from which empirical problems arise, and the conceptual problem is twofold. Like many others, Pitcher and her colleagues do not clearly explicate how they distinguish between neopatrimonial and legal-rational bureaucratic domination. The other problem is the concept of liberal democracy, which they do not explain either. Without going into details, a way out of the controversy could be as follows: If an increasing ‘share’ of patrimonialism impacts, for example, the practice of the rule-of-law, even if the electoral regime as the core regime of a democracy is unaffected, one might call it not a liberal but a defective or more precisely an ‘illiberal’, ‘delegative’ or ‘electoral’ democracy (Merkel 2004, O’Donnell 1994, Freedom House 2011). This means that only a defective democracy might be compatible with a weak (‘low intensity’) kind of neopatrimonialism – but not liberal democracy. Here again, the crucial question is: Where is the delineation between a proper liberal and an illiberal democracy which is damaged by

Neopatrimonialism: Problems of a Catch-all Concept?

55

patrimonial behaviour or institutions? How much patrimonialism is required to turn a liberal into an illiberal democracy? Since this question has not been asked systematically, there is no answer to it. On the other hand, authoritarian rule should not be equated with neopatrimonialism. There is the general claim that a legal-rational bureaucracy can exist within an authoritarian regime, which, for example, might have a corporatist character, as in many cases in Latin America. Another classic example of nonneopatrimonial authoritarianism is Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century, during which the country was largely governed by a legal-rational bureaucracy and the rule-of-law, although this version of the rule-of-law was not based on common democratic or basic political or human rights. Hence, various possible combinations of the type of governance and type of bureaucracy within different regime types are possible. As pointed out in a previous section, this differentiation is only feasible if we acknowledge the necessity for an analytical differentiation between the two spheres of government (and governance), that is, the government proper, which is the sphere of politicians – whether elected, nominated or self-nominated by force – and that of the state bureaucracy and administrative staff. Clarifying how different authoritarian regimes can function seems to be crucial in order to assess their chances of successful democratization. Bratton and van de Walle (1994) made this point as regards the different outcomes of transitions in Africa: Transitions in Latin America and in Southern and Eastern Europe departed from authoritarian regimes which were corporatist in nature, while authoritarian regimes in Africa were distinctly neopatrimonial, which provided a major institutional impediment to successful democratic transitions. In fact, while the majority of Latin American countries succeeded in establishing at least defective democracies, in Africa democratic transitions were much less successful; only a minority ended up with a sort of democracy. Based on a few cases in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Richard Snyder (1992, see also Brownlee 2002) made a similar argument when he observed that transitions from neopatrimonial authoritarian regimes tend to result in non-democratic rule. Conclusion Neopatrimonialism is still characterized by several conceptual weaknesses: It lacks a clear and useful definition, there is no delineation with regard to other related concepts and it is poorly operationalized – that is, one-sided and unbalanced. One consequence of these flaws is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify and clearly explain why or why not a regime should be described as neopatrimonial. All this makes it problematic to use the concept in empirical research. However, it maintains its heuristic value by directing our attention to the unresolved problem of how to investigate the widespread phenomenon of interaction between formal institutions and informal behaviour

56

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

and/or institutions in politics. To overcome these limitations, more conceptual elaboration is required and such an endeavour needs to include the political and the administrative dimensions of governance. References Bauer, G. and Taylor, S.D. 2005. Politics in Southern Africa: State and Society in Transition. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Bayart, J-F. 1993. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. London: Longman. Bechle, K. 2010. Neopatrimonialism in Latin America: Prospects and Promises of a Neglected Concept. GIGA Working Paper, 153, November 2010. Bratton, M. and van de Walle, N. 1994. Neopatrimonial Regimes and Political Transitions in Africa. World Politics, 46, 453-489. Bratton, M. and van de Walle, N. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brownlee, J. 2002. …And Yet They Persist: Explaining Survival and Transition in Neopatrimonial Regimes. Studies in Comparative International Development, 37(3), 35-63. Chabal, P. and Daloz, J-P. 1999. Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument. Oxford: James Currey. Chabal, P. and Daloz, J-P. 2006. Culture Troubles: Politics and the Interpretation of Meaning. London: Hurst & Company. Clapham, C. 1982. Clientelism and the State, in Private Patronage and Public Power, edited by C. Clapham. London: Frances Pinter. Clapham, C. 1985. Third World Politics. London: Helm. Crouch, H. 1979. Patrimonialism and Military Rule in Indonesia. World Politics, 31(3), 571-587. De Grassi, A. 2008. ‘Neopatrimonialism’ and Agricultural Development in Africa: Contributions and Limitations of a Contested Concept. African Studies Review, 51(3), 107-133. Eisenstadt, S.N. 1973. Traditional Patrimonialism and Modern Neopatrimonialism. London: Sage Publications. Englebert, P. 2000. Pre-Colonial Institutions, Post-Colonial States, and Economic Development in Tropical Africa. Political Research Quarterly, 53, 7-36. Erdmann, G. 2002. Neopatrimoniale Herrschaft – oder: Warum es in Afrika so viele Hybridregime gibt, in Hybride Regime. Zur Konzeption und Empirie demokratischer Grauzonen, edited by P. Bendel, A. Croissant and F.W. Rüb. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 323-342. Erdmann, G. 2003. Apokalyptische Trias – Staatsversagen, Staatsverfall und Staatszerfall – strukturelle Probleme der Demokratie in Afrika, in Demokratie und Staatlichkeit, edited by P. Bendel, A. Croissant and F.W. Rüb. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 267-292.

Neopatrimonialism: Problems of a Catch-all Concept?

57

Erdmann, G. and Engel, U. 2007. Neopatrimonialism Reconsidered: Critical Review and Elaboration of an Elusive Concept. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 45(1), 95-119. Gawrich, A. and Franke, A. 2009. Informal Institutions and Negative Stability in Post-Soviet Rentier States – The Cases of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Conference-Paper. 5th ECPR General Conference. Panel 215, Section 24: ‘Informal institutions in the age of globalization – different world regions compared’, ECPR General Conference, Potsdam, 10-12 September. Gawrich, A., Melnykovska, I. and Schweickert, R. 2010. More than Oil and Geography – Neopatrimonialism as an Explanation of Bad Governance and Autocratic Stability in Central Asia. Paper to be presented at the workshop ‘Neopatrimonialism in Various World Regions’, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg [Online, 23 August]. Available at: http:// www.giga-hamburg.de/content/fsp1/pdf/neopat/paper_neopat_workshop_ gawrich.pdf [accessed: 14 December 2010]. Helmke, G. and Levitzky, S. 2006. Introduction, in Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America, edited by G. Helmke and S. Levitzky. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1-32. Hensell, S. 2009. Die Willkür des Staates: Herrschaft und Verwaltung in Osteuropa. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Hyden, G. 2006. African Politics in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ilkhamov, A. 2007. Neopatrimonialism, interest groups and patronage networks: The impasses of the governance system in Uzbekistan. Central Asian Survey, 26(1), 65-84. Ishiyama, J. 2002. Neopatrimonialism and the Prospects for Democratization in the Central Asian Republics: Power and Change in Central Asia. London: Routledge. Jackson, R.H. and Rosberg, C.G. 1984. Personal Rule: Theory and Practice in Africa. Comparative Politics, 421-442. Kirschke, L. 2007. Semipresidentialism and the Perils of Power-Sharing in Neopatrimonial States. Comparative Political Studies, 40(11), 1372-1394. Landé, C.H. 1983. Political Clientelism in Political Studies: Retrospect and Prospects. International Political Science Review, 4(4), 435-454. Le Vine, V.T. 1980. African Patrimonial Regimes in Comparative Perspective. Journal of Modern African Studies, 18, 657-673. Médard, J.F. 1982. The Underdeveloped State in Africa: Political Clientelism or Neo-patrimonialism?, in Private Patronage and Public Power, edited by C. Clapham. London: Frances Pinter, 162-189. Merkel, W. 2004. Embedded and Defective Democracies. Democratization, 11(5), 33-58. O’Donnell, G. 1994. Delegative Democracy. Journal of Democracy, 5, 55-69.

58

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Olukoshi, A.O. 1999. State Conflict and Democracy in Africa: The Complex Process of Renewal, in Conflict and Democracy in Africa, edited by R. Joseph. London: Lynne Rienner, 451-466. Olukoshi, A.O. 1998. The Elusive Prince of Denmark: Structural Adjustment and the Crisis of Governance in Africa. Research Report 104. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Pitcher, A., Moran, M.H. and Johnston, M. 2009. Rethinking Patrimonialism and Neopatrimonialism in Africa. African Studies Review, 52(1), 125-156. Roth, G. 1968. Personal Rulership, Patrimonialism, and Empire-Building in the New States. World Politics, 20, 194-206. Roth, G. 1978. Introduction, in M. Weber: Economy and Society, edited by G. Roth and C. Wittich. New York: Bedminster Press, 227. Roth, G. 1987. Politische Herrschaft und persönliche Freiheit. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Snyder, R. 1992. Explaining Transitions from Neopatrimonial Dictatorships. Comparative Politics, 24(4), 379-400. Snyder, R. and Mahoney, J. 1999. Review Article. The Missing Variable. Institutions and the Study of Regime Change. Comparative Politics, 32(1), 103-122. Solt, F. 1994. Institutional Effects on Democratic Transitions: Neo-Patrimonial Regimes in Africa, 1989-1994. Studies in Comparative International Development, 36(2), 82-91. Stokes, S.C. 2009. Political Clientelism, in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, edited by C. Boix and S.C. Stokes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 604-627. Theobold, R. 1982. Patrimonialism: Research Note. World Politics, 34(4), 548559. Thompson, M. 1995. The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ufen, A. 2002. Herrschaftsfiguration und Demokratisierung in Indonesien (1965-2000). Hamburg: Institut für Asienkunde. Van de Walle, N. 2001. African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Von Soest, C. 2007. How does Neopatrimonialism Affect the African State? The Case of Tax Collection in Zambia. Journal of Modern African Studies, 45(4), 621-645. Von Soest, C. 2007. Measuring the Capability to Raise Revenue. Process and Output Dimensions and Their Application to the Zambia Revenue Authority. Public Administration and Development, 27(4), 353-365. Von Soest, C. 2009. The African State and its Revenues. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag. Von Soest, C. 2010. Persistence and Change of Neopatrimonialism in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia. Paper to be presented at the workshop

Neopatrimonialism: Problems of a Catch-all Concept?

59

‘Neopatrimonialism in Various World Regions’, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg [Online, 23 August]. Available at: http:// www.giga-hamburg.de/content/fsp1/pdf/neopat/paper_neopat_workshop_ soest2.pdf [accessed: 14 December 2010]. Weber, M. 1964. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, translated by A.M. Henderson and T. Parsons. New York: Free Press. Weber, M. 1980. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 5th edition, edited by J. Winckelmann. Tübingen: Mohr.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Part II Case Studies: Russia

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 4

Russia’s Political Regime: Neo-Soviet Authoritarianism and Patronal Presidentialism Margareta Mommsen

For experts in the field of Comparative Politics there is nothing more exciting, yet frustrating than to investigate the possible classifications of Russia’s postSoviet political system. This system is characterized by the opacity of the decision-making processes and the interpenetration of the political and economic realms, making it extremely difficult to determine the specific nature of the regime. Immediately, Winston Churchill’s famous remark from 1939 comes to mind (Churchill 1955: 403): ‘Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. It is the purpose of this article to bring to light some segments of this confusing subject, focusing in particular on the peculiarities of the political system shaped during the presidency of Vladimir Putin, which had partly taken shape under his predecessor Boris Yeltsin. At the same time one must attempt to classify the regime within the traditional typologies of rule. In doing so it is especially helpful to consider the path dependency of the Soviet system, which existed for more than 70 years. In general, one has to ask the following questions: Does the present system resemble more closely a rudimentary democracy, an oligarchy, an autocracy or a neo-Soviet regime? Or is it a complex mixture of all these things? What are the specific sources of power for the Russian presidential system? For an analysis of the Russian regime there are at our disposal different conceptual approaches: The normative approach testing the course of democracy, the functional approach of systems theory, and the more fashionable neopatrimonial approach which focuses on informal structures such as patronage and clientelism. All these methods offer insights into the legitimacy and stability of the contemporary regime. Additionally they demonstrate the residual patterns of the Soviet system. While the terms ‘neo-Soviet authoritarianism’ or ‘competitive authoritarianism’ fit well with criticisms of Russian democracy, the neopatrimonial approach lends itself more to systems theory and the concept of ‘patronal presidentialism’. Therefore, it is helpful to consider both theories in tandem when attempting to analyse the Russian regime.

64

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

From Yeltsin to Medvedev: Shifting Paradigms and Changing Forms of Rule – A History of Regime Definitions From the very beginning of Yeltsin’s presidency the existence of an ‘informal cartel’ could be observed. The challenge is to define this phenomenon. Is it more appropriate to classify it as an example of Aristotle’s ‘oligarchy’ or of Robert Dahl’s ‘competitive oligarchy’? Indeed, in the 1990s the term ‘oligarchy’ was already being applied to the real political process. The sociologist Vitali Elizarov (1999) defined the power structure as a ‘competitive oligarchy’, that is, as a group of competing players who share state power. This view corresponds to Robert Dahl’s use of the term as a transitional step from an authoritarian regime to a democracy (Dahl 1971, Glaeßner 1997). In the second half of the 1990s critical media liked to speculate about the ‘Kremlin family’ as the governing oligarchic power cartel comprised of Yeltsin’s relatives, top civil servants and the ‘oligarchs’, the new business leaders. There were other fashionable terms such as ‘oligarchic capitalism’ or ‘privatization of the state’, which symbolized the transition from a planned to a market economy, or ‘from plan to clan’(Mommsen 2009a, Stark 1995). Interestingly, the ‘privatization of the state’ could already be observed in the late years of the Soviet Union. In the Yeltsin era the notions of ‘superpresidentialism’, ‘electoral monarchy’ or ‘defective democracy’ prevailed (Bos 2003). While the two former definitions suggested the personalization of power and the autocratic posturing of the president, the term ‘defective democracy’ was an offspring of transitology. At that time transitologists favoured the use of subtypes of democracy, for instance ‘electoral’, ‘delegative’ or ‘defective democracy’, in order to define regimes in transition. Others invented the formula of ‘hybrid regime’ to explain the coexistence of authoritarian as well as democratic elements (Wigell 2008, see also Beichelt in this volume). Since Putin’s presidency there has been less talk of democracy. Only the representatives of the Russian political leadership themselves dared to speak of democracy in Russia. For instance, Putin came out in favour of a national democracy ‘adapted’ to Russian traditions, and the new chief ideologist in the Kremlin, Vladislav Surkov, elaborated the notion of ‘sovereign democracy’ (Mommsen and Nußberger 2007: 26). Critical sociologists preferred terms such as ‘simulated’, ‘imitated’, und ‘managed democracy’(Mommsen 2007). ‘Managed democracy’ became the usual label because it best illustrates the contrast between real democracy and its perversion. Later some Russian political scientists transformed Putin’s ‘managed democracy’ into ‘overmanaged democracy’. This notion expresses the perfecting of control over society by manipulating elections and creating virtual parties and institutional surrogates (Petrov, Lipman and Hale 2010). Some observers focused not on democracy but on the holders of power and the goals of power. Again, the shape of a ‘competitive oligarchy’ became visible. Experienced commentators describe Russia’s power system first and foremost as a ‘complex structure of interests’ (Lipskiy and Polukhin 2009) or as the ‘syndicate

Russia’s Political Regime

65

of the interests’ of an ‘informal caste’ (Kostikov 2009). Such formulations give a vague idea of the system, but no concrete profile. In searching for the real profile of Putin’s regime it is helpful to look at the president’s closest allies. The main players are easily identifiable by their social status, their professional origin and their ideological outlook. They are to be found mostly among security officers, big business leaders, ‘corporate bureaucrats’ (top civil servants with commercial interests) and finally, top civil servants of a technocratic ilk. The ‘anatomy of power’ shows that power in Russia is primarily in the hands of the bureaucracy – including the secret services – whose common goal is to satisfy their commercial interests (Kryshtanovskaya 2005a). Indeed no other country in the world has so many top government members who serve also on the boards of major corporations (Inozemtsev 2009). In general, the number of bureaucrats in the central government, as well as in the regional administrations, has grown considerably in the post-Soviet period.1 The rise to power of the bureaucratic class together with the repression of democracy gave birth to the term ‘bureaucratic authoritarianism’ (Shevtsova 2006) which describes the monopoly on power by a corrupt bureaucracy as the essence of the national authoritarian regime (O’Donnell 1973).2 Other descriptions of Russian authoritarianism have been coined. An American expert on Russia, Leon Aron (2005), has defined the phenomenon of wide acceptance of authoritarian political rule by the Russian population as a form of ‘plebiscitarian authoritarianism’. Later others observed some kind of ‘glamourous authoritarianism’, a reference to the clear transformation of politics into entertainment (Mesropova 2008). In the meantime the majority of observers seem to agree that the ‘Putin regime’ fits the archetype of an ‘oligarchy’. As already mentioned, the term ‘Kremlin oligarchy’ was widely used in the Yeltsin era. Under Putin, the alternative notion of an ‘oligarchy of security officers’ was prefered. Both terms belong to the standard vocabulary of the few existing print media critical of the leadership. Some critics of the system use expressions which expose the material greed of the ruling class, such as ‘plutocracy’, ‘monetocracy’ or ‘kleptocracy’ (Delyagin 2009b, Belkovskiy 2009, Ryzhkov 2009). Quite often there is talk of the ‘Kremlin Inc.’, the ‘Russia Corporation’ or even of the KREMPEC, a derivative of OPEC. This alludes to the lucrative dealings of the government and the state monopolies in crude oil and natural gas (Lavelle 2004, Goldman 2008: 164). All of these notions fit into Aristotle’s typology of ‘rule by the rich’ and of the perverted rule of the aristocracy, that is, ‘oligarchy’. In the same vein, we find the assumption made by Aristotle

1  According to the State Statistical Service, civil servants numbered 1.45 million in 2006, a higher number than in the Soviet Union (Inozemtsev 2009: 55). The Director of the Russian Section of Transparency International, Elena Panfilova, estimates the actual number of civil servants to be 3.5 million (von Twickel 2007). 2  O’Donnell has coined the term of ‘bureaucratic authoritarianism’ for the military dictatorship of Argentina.

66

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

that the rich rule in their own interest and not in the interest of the ‘common good’ (Berg-Schlosser, Maier and Stammen 1977: 218, Fisun 2003). Analysts have mapped out who is profiting from a pseudo-plutocracy. For instance, the economist Sergei Delyagin (2009a) is convinced that the regime is a ‘family enterprise’, in which the ‘friends, relatives, the friends of the relatives and the relatives of the friends’ make up the majority of a corrupt distribution system. Both Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov (2010) confirm this state of affairs. They assume the existence of ‘family contracts’. The historian Yurii Afanas’ev (2009) goes so far as to compare Russian crony capitalism with a ‘patrimonial sultanate’. Andrei Piontkovski (2009) terms the regime of property rights in Russia a ‘corporate kleptocracy’ which depends exclusively on the loyalty of the owners to the political leadership. The validity of this assumption was proven by the dramatic debacle of Yukos owner Michail Khodorkovski, who was politically disloyal and tried to be economically independent of the Kremlin (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde 2005, Khodorkovski and Ulitskaya 2010, Mommsen and Nußberger 2007: 129). The perception of the specific patrimonial tendencies of a regime in which the public and private spheres overlap is currently fiercely discussed within the field of Comparative Politics and in transitology. Indeed the patrimonal approach based on the work of Max Weber has become quite popular as a way of analysing post-socialist systems (Hensell 2009). In 1997 Jürgen Hartmann described the patrimonial patterns in any system in a very similar way to Delyagin’s observations on Russia. He wrote of a system in which ‘a specific person at the top of the state takes into consideration the main functions of the state and the profits of state resources only with regard to himself or to relatives and close confidants’ (Hartmann 1997: 34). The American transitologist Henry Hale has named this very phenomenon ‘patronal presidentialism’ (2006). The patrimonial and oligarchic elements of the Russian regime are of importance to understanding the inner workings of power, but the sources of political legitimacy and stability add yet another dimension of political life. Thus the strongly traditional political culture within the population – as well as in the ruling classes – becomes apparent. Polls regularly report strong political apathy and a predominantly patriarchal feeling of the people vis-à-vis the political leadership, which seems to enjoy a constant approval rating of over 70 per cent. Due to this, Dmitri Trenin has written that in Russia one finds ‘authoritarianism with the approval of the citizens’ (Kunkle 2008). Long before this statement was made, the transitologist Juan Linz (1975) had identified traditionalism and apathy as distinguishing features of mass psychology in authoritarian regimes. Russian sociologists confirm that the population is far more concerned with social protection than with political participation. These findings categorize the Russian regime as much more of a ‘traditional system’ (Gudkov 2009). This cursory overview of the history of regime definitions has demonstrated that the Russian political system has been characterized by a plethora of features: It is simultaneously neo-Soviet, patrimonial, oligarchic, plutocratic, authoritarian,

Russia’s Political Regime

67

plebiscitarian, traditional, bureaucratic and pseudo-democratic. In the following sections we rely upon some of these characteristics both to draw parallels and to make distinctions across the Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev presidencies. In doing this we first use a critical normative approach by comparing the democratic constitution with political reality. In a second step we apply the functional approach of systems theory as shaped by Gabriel Almond to assess the overall performance of the ‘Putin system’. Democracy under Investigation: Yeltsin’s ‘Defective’ und Putin’s ‘Overmanaged’ Democracy It is a classical approach to compare the constitutional order with constitutional practice. This test of democracy is all the more important for regimes in transition. Experts in ‘transitology’ such as Adam Przeworski have developed yet more criteria, the so-called ‘minimalistic’ definitions of democracy. His definition of a democracy at its most basic is ‘a system for processing conflicts without killing one another’. Furthermore, open political competition must be guaranteed, which can be checked by the simple question of whether parties can lose elections (Przeworski 1991: 10, 95, Dahl 1971: 3). Both criteria are helpful when analysing the transformation of the Russian political system from the Soviet regime to the ersatz democracy we see today. All the presidential systems which developed in the post-Soviet space have their roots in Gorbachev’s perestroika. The reforms of the late eighties weakened central Soviet power. When in March 1990 the monopoly on power of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was cast off willy-nilly, a presidency was used to fill the resulting power vacuum and strengthen the reach of Moscow. In reality, the results were completely the opposite. The governments in the Union Republics rushed to mimic the new institution with hopes of national sovereignty and the desire to attain political independence and general welfare. The Russian political leadership under Boris Yeltsin imagined the presidential model as the predetermined way to a democratic future. It was the intention of influential authors – mainly liberal legal experts – of the Russian constitution of December 1993 to create a mixed parliamentary-presidential system. Sergei Shakhrai, one of the principal fathers of the constitution, on its fifteenth anniversary, confirmed that the hope was for such a balanced system and not for a strong presidency. Valeri Zorkin, the head of the Constitutional Court, repeatedly upheld the relationship between the Russian constitutional order and the semi-presidential model of the French Fifth Republic. For other Russian commentators the constitutional order is strictly presidential, a view that has been shared by the Russian presidents themselves (Mommsen 2009b). They use the model of the United States as a reference point, but they grossly overlook the central importance of the principle of separation of powers. In reality, they adhere to the Russian cultural traditions of mono-centric power.

68

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

The controversies over the constitution originated in the strongly contested debates about the design of the constitution. The conflict over the hegemony of either the legislative wing or the executive wing brought the country to the brink of war. On the third of October 1993 the Parliament in Moscow was attacked by tanks and gunfire, in an act of open violence which was in sharp contrast to Adam Przeworski’s minimal conditions of democracy. The next catastrophe was the defeat of the democratic forces in the first parliamentary elections in December 1993. All of these instances hindered the successful creation of a working democracy. Yeltsin and his so-called ‘Young Reformers’ rushed to implement an open market economy. A strong presidency seemed to be the best guarantee on the way to democracy. It was their naive impression that a market economy would automatically lead to democracy (Mommsen 2003: 17). Due to the outcome of the first elections there was no majority with which to form a government. It was not possible to use the Duma as a basis of political support or a source of political recruitment. Therefore, Yeltsin formed a cabinet of technocrats. This prototype, although created solely out of necessity, has become a stable pattern for the formation of governments in Russia. President Putin still followed the practice even with an overwhelming majority of more than twothirds for the Kremlin political parties, proving that leading politicians continued to distrust the fundamental rules of a modern multiparty system of democracy. The development of political parties was therefore permanently impaired. Instead of a responsible cabinet, the presidential administration, an apparatus of about 1,600 civil servants, became the ‘government’ in the narrow sense of the word. The administration is outside of democratic control. From the very beginning the political players were convinced that the administration should handle all political matters, while the cabinet of ministers should handle economic questions. So the administration became the heir of the omnipotent Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The new government inherited the low status of the former Soviet cabinet of ministers. The activities of both institutions overlapped, again after the Soviet example (Mommsen 2010). As before, true bastions of ‘bureaucratic authoritarianism’ sprang up and the general outlook of the whole regime again became Soviet. Only during the government of Yevgeni Primakov from September 1998 until May 1999 did the Administration lose its domination. Due to the financial and economic crisis the president was severely handicapped and he receded into the background. Primakov, at the top of the cabinet, received broad support in the Duma. He himself tried to independently build a coalition cabinet along parlamentary factions, and was successful. Therefore, the Primakov era proved that the semipresidential or mixed parliamentary-presidential design of the constitution was indeed practicable not just in France, but also in Russia (Mommsen 2010: 288). Reviewing the presidency of Yeltsin from a normative perspective, constitutional principles were at least partly observed. Essentially, the vertical and horizontal separation of powers was practiced. The wide variety of media and the freedom of expression, and by extension open criticism of the political

Russia’s Political Regime

69

leadership, were to a large extent accepted. Even Przeworski’s minimal criteria for democracy, the potential for political parties to lose elections, prevailed. In this sense the ‘Yeltsin System’ can be classified as a ‘competitive authoritarianism’ in the sense of Lucan A. Way and Steven Levitsky. It can also be seen as a ‘defective democracy’. One of the greatest ‘defects’ was the manipulated transfer of power to his successor, Vladimir Putin (Mommsen 2003: 86). Under Yeltsin the goals of transformation were mainly focused on the transition to market economy, but for Putin the emphasis lay on strengthening the competitiveness of the Russian economy and on the ascendance of Russia to a world economic power. Economic growth, political stability, the strong state and the idea of Russia as a leading world power became the leitmotifs of the Putin era. Democratization was clearly postponed. Surkov’s concept of ‘sovereign democracy’ therefore distinguishes the Russian model of democracy from ‘Western democracy’. Essentially, Russia pursued a historical ‘Sonderweg’ with its own values and institutions. At the same time criticism from abroad was summarily ignored (Mommsen and Nußberger 2007: 78). Due to the difficulties of the so-called ‘Operation Successor’, Putin called for the ‘manual handling’ of Russian politics. He expressed the opinion that such a ‘manual regime’ had to continue for another 15 to 20 years. Only then could the system function automatically (Mommsen 2009c). He was convinced that the political process needed continued steering from above and could not follow the constitution. Indeed, Putin did everything possible to establish a rigid ‘power vertical’, to completely do away with all checks and balances and to drastically limit the freedom of the press. Putin created a perfect ‘control regime’ (Heinemann-Grüder 2009). The formal democratic institutions remained in name only and were merely covers for the de facto disregard for the main constitutional principles. Critical terms like ‘imitation’ and ‘simulated democracy’ succinctly described this situation. By the end of 2004, Nikolai Petrov, an outstanding Russian political scientist, came to this conclusion: ‘The fact that the state has become Soviet in both form and content is the final result of the various transformations that have affected nearly every branch of government in recent years’ (Petrov 2004). Yet another typical characteristic was the creation of new institutions and the restructuring of existing ones. For instance, the Federation Council lost its power of parliamentary veto which it had gained under Yeltsin. Several institutions without a constitutional basis sprang up, such as the Seven Plenipotentiary Representatives of the president, the advisory ‘State Council’ and the advisory ‘Social Chamber’. These institutional substitutes were meant to increase the efficiency of the state departments, collect feedback from the public and secure the stability of the regime. The last step in consolidating the vertical of power was the abolition of the direct elections of the governors. These ‘reforms’ contradicted the principles of separation of powers and of democratic representation. Additionally the political parties, the mass media and the parliament were completely integrated into the ‘vertical’. The Duma degenerated to nothing more than a department of the presidential administration. Symbolic for the loss of power was the infamous

70

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

expression of the speaker Boris Gryzlov in October 2005, that ‘the Duma is not a place for political discussions’ (Rodin 2005). The power as it was centralized in the administration and personified by President Putin represented only the autocratic facade of the regime. In contrast the non-transparent inner workings of the system consisted of an oligarchy of informal groups, or ‘competitive oligarchy’. As the well known sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya, the political scientist Nikolai Petrov and other experts on the system believe, in this oligarchy ‘only a few highly placed functionaries and businessmen have any say’ (Kryshtanovskaya 2005: 144, Petrov 2008a). Putin’s authority is thus built not only on the autocratic ‘vertical of power’, but also on his role as an efficient referee within the inofficial oligarchy, characteristic of his ‘patronal presidentialism’. In both roles Putin has profited by the artifical popularity created by the state-controlled media. In light of Putins’s dual role, it was almost unimaginable to transfer the presidency to another actor. The ‘manual handling’ was needed to successfully undertake the difficult ‘Operation Successor’. To this end the Duma elections of December 2007 were transformed into a ‘plebiscite for Putin’. This was without doubt a serious violation of the constitution, but in the system of ‘plebiscitarian authoritarianism’ the success of such manoeuvring was guaranteed. The desired two-thirds majority for United Russia came to pass. Putin capitalized on this for his selection of the successor within the Kremlin oligarchy. The privilege was granted to the then First Vice Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, a longtime comrade-inarms. Medvedev was by trade an academic in civil law with liberal tendencies. He had also held several high government positions and was therefore an insider of the system. Medvedev publicly appealed to Putin to head the government in case of his own election to president. Putin gave his accord. Thus the ‘Tandem’ became an official project (Mommsen 2008). Medvedev’s pledge of joint rule gives way to speculation that the informal oligarchy agreed to this on the condition that Putin would retain power, and his cronies would maintain their previous positions. Another criterion for Medvedev’s selection was the fact that he lacked an institutional power base. From the very beginning Medvedev was meant to be a weak authority figure in the Kremlin. The presidential elections in March 2008 were tantamount to a nomination. The electorate, which was socialized under the conditions of ‘plebiscitarian authoritarianism’, obediently followed the Kremlin’s wishes. They gave 70.28 per cent of their votes to Medvedev. Only one day after his inauguration, the Duma confirmed Putin with an overwhelming majority as prime minister (Mommsen 2009c: 314). The Tandem Putin/Medvedev The political personnel hardly changed after the presidential elections. A complicated game of musical chairs ensured that the new president was ‘sandwiched’ between Putin’s loyal supporters. Medvedev initiated the first amendment to the

Russia’s Political Regime

71

constitution, which extended the presidential term of office from four to six years. Without doubt the duumvirate had agreed on the measure in advance. It went without saying that this allowed for continuation of the political status quo. This step can also be seen as a manual correction of the constitution with the intention of consolidating the regime in the face of the intensifying economic crisis in the country (Mommsen 2010: 303). The ‘Tandem’ gave the impression of a collective leadership working in continued mutual understanding, however Medvedev continued to play the role of the junior partner. In the public opinion the two were portrayed sitting on a tandem bicycle with Medvedev in a child seat and unable to reach the pedals (Petrov 2008b). Sociologists viewed Putin and Medvedev as a ‘unique political individual with four legs and four arms’. Thus, they made it clear that such an artificial and fragile figure could not be long-lived (Samarina 2008). In respect to questions of foreign policy and defence one could not distinguish any differences between the two. This was especially obvious during the armed conflict in the Caucasus in August 2008. Medvedev as a ‘war president’ was just as militant as Putin. Both were rewarded by an enthusiastic Russian public. Their approval rating climbed to more than 80 per cent (Dubin 2008). In contrast to the initial common stance in matters of foreign policy Medvedev soon outed himself as a strong critic of the political workings within Russia. He presented himself as a kind of ‘dissident’ in the highest office of the state. At least rhetorically he denounced the authoritarian political system which had developed under Putin. It was noteworthy that he focused his criticisms on the constitution. Already in November 2008 he abused the bureaucratic ‘state apparatus’ as ‘its own judge, its own political party und finally, as its own people’ (Prezident Rossii 2008, Schröder 2005). This situation was synonymous with the notion of ‘bureaucratic authoritarianism’ and of the term ‘managed democracy’ where there is no separation of powers and where political parties are created from above as Medvedev openly confessed. However, the president kept hidden the relationship between the bureaucracy and the political leadership it created. Thus, the strange impression arose that the Russian officialdom was a species completely sealed off from the outside world and in stark contrast to the benevolent tsars in the Kremlin. Against the background of the growing economic crisis Medvedev strengthened his criticism of the conditions of the country. In the Autumn of 2009 he claimed that Russian ‘democracy’ was ‘weak’, that ‘the economy was ineffective’ and that ‘society was half-Soviet’ (Medvedev 2009). He spoke of a ‘backward country with a primitive economy which depended on natural resources’. In an ‘archaic society’ in which the ‘great leaders’ think and decide for everyone, ‘paternalistic attitudes’ hindered new ideas and initiatives (Prezident Rossii 2009, Schröder 2009). This viewpoint stood in direct opposition to Putin’s vertical of power. In addition, the president often criticized state-run businesses because of their unproductivity. Several times, he even called for them to be shut down. Medvedev’s criticisms were followed by impassioned appeals to modernize the

72

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

country. The Kremlin party, United Russia, gave in to this only under pressure. The party opted for an ambivalent ‘conservative modernization’ (Veretennikova 2009). Putin, the leader of the party, was also reluctant. In the meantime, the public discussion on the need for modernization of the country broadened. There is a growing concern that economic progress is not possible without a parallel political liberalization. People are also anxious that without modernization Russia risks being marginalized in the world (Trenin 2010). This brings to mind the beginnings of glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s. At that time, the political leadership under Mikhail Gorbachev and Aleksandr Yakovlev decided to implement radical reforms to cope with the structural shortcomings of the Soviet system. They were convinced that the system could not continue as before (Jakowlew 2003: 454). They believed that only a clear course of political liberalization could lead the country out of its decades-long cul-de-sac. Medvedev’s fundamental criticism of the workings of the contemporary Russian state reminds one strongly of Gorbachev’s fundamental criticism of the Soviet Union. The main structural and functional shortcomings of the ‘Putin system’ can best be verified by applying the criteria of Almond’s systems theory. A Functional Analysis: Inefficiency of the ‘Putin System’ and Critical Need for Reform One of the basic assumptions of systems theory is that every political regime requires functions of maintenance and adaptation for survival. The goal of this approach is to compare political systems worldwide with the help of standardized criteria and to dissociate research from normative categories. With this in mind American scholars developed a model analogous to cybernetic processes, focusing on the relationship between political institutions and the broader social and economic conditions of a country (Almond 1960, Easton 1965). The exchange between political and social systems is described in the categories of input and output. The inputs consist of support for and demands made upon the political leadership. The reactions of the government are characterized as the outputs of the centre of power. They generate feedback, that is, new demands and more or less support for the regime. Thus the cycle of continual interaction between society and politics comes full circle. In the narrow sense a political system means the state authorities (‘government’), which transform inputs into outputs, the latter being the conception, coordination and implementation of politics. Among the central functions of input are the communication between society and the political leadership, the articulation of interests, the aggregation of interests as well as the function of political recruitment. All of these functions can also serve as equivalents and institutional substitutes. In the event of that one or more of these functions are lacking, the system itself will fall into disarray and crisis.

Russia’s Political Regime

73

In the following sections the performance of these functions in the Russian case is subjected to a critical analysis. The Soviet Legacy: Archaic Forms of Political Communication and Domination of State Propaganda A cursory examination of political communication in Russia shows how influential Soviet patterns remain. In comparison to Western democracies, parties in Russia do not function as intermediaries of interest articulation and aggregation. They are substituted poorly by functional equivalents such as individual and collective petitions and administrative reception hours which follow centuries old traditions (Petrov and Ryabov 2007: 88, Lipman and Petrov 2009: 163). These arrangements nevertheless serve as an important vehicle for political demands from below Petrov, Lipman and Hale 2010: 15-22). Along with opinion polls they provide raw data but do not allow for open dialogue between rulers and the ruled. Thus the social ‘nervous system’ is completely underdeveloped. Overall, the public opinion collected through these channels does not qualify as direct political communication. A novelty is Putin’s ‘dialogue with the people’, a well-organized and popular annual or semi-annual event. Interested citizens voice their concerns via television, text messages or telephone directly to the President – and later Prime Minister – Putin (Mommsen and Nußberger 2007: 55). These long conversations ‘with the whole people’ are dominated by the daily problems of normal citizens. Putin’s dialogue with the people is a modern version of an archaic form of communication between rulers and the ruled. It serves as a measure of limited feedback from society to authorities. President Medvedev, a passionate user of the internet, prefers a more modern kind of dialogue with citizens. He created his own website and maintains a blog. Via this channel and online publications he solicits opinions from the people, for instance in his groundbreaking article ‘Forward, Russia!’ (Medvedev 2009). No doubt, Medvedev opted for this website because it and its readership are considered especially critical of the regime. By doing so the president demonstrated his readiness to accept open criticism of his ideas, but this form of political communication still falls very short of lively direct dialogue between the political leadership and society. Nevertheless, the growing popularity of the internet provides an important gateway to the open exchange of political opinions. At the same time, however, the government attempts to mitigate the flow of ideas that are contrary to their official positions through the use of blogs secretly maintained by government lackeys (Oates and McCormack 2010). In contrast to the internet the state owned television channels remain outlets for official propaganda. They simply advertise for the political regime. Critical voices are not tolerated and a specific series of topics are completely taboo. Through the airing of only positive comments on the work of the government its authority

74

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

remains above questioning. With ninety percent of the population receiving their news through state television channels the success of the state propaganda machine is guaranteed (Mommsen and Nußberger 2007: 52). In February 2010, Matvei Ganapolski described the influence of state television as follows: ‘The television images decide everything’, a deliberate play on words of Stalin’s mantra: ‘The cadres decide everything’. Corporations as Functional Surrogates for Parties In Russia the classical functions of interest articulation and interest aggregation are on occasion exercised by major corporations, while political parties and associations of employers or employees wield comparatively little political power (Evans 2010). It is indeed true that the representatives of big business are from time to time invited to the Kremlin for an exchange of ideas. Although these discussions are officially consultations, they allow businesses to exert their influence on politics. These talks serve primarily as a forum to forward the interests of the ‘oligarchs’ within the government (Panina 2010). A few economic corporations have their fingers on the pulse of national politics. They have their ‘own’ deputies in the Duma and direct access to ministries and to the presidential administration. During election campaigns the big corporations function as political machines, almost as their own political parties. They perform the role of intermediary between society and state authority. They have almost replaced party politics during elections (Hale 2010). This has only served to strengthen the impression that in Russia political power has been usurped by a ‘corporate oligarchy’ (Petrov 2007). The so-called ‘administrative parties’ such as United Russia and Fair Russia are only instruments manipulated from above for providing support for the political leadership (Mommsen and Mikhaleva 2008). All the political parties only feign the appearance of democratic organizations. The so-called ‘governing party’, United Russia, is not an active part of political power. It does not even have influence on cabinet appointments. Furthermore, it is correct to characterize the party as an ‘appendage’ of the ‘clan oriented clientelistic political structure’ of the country (Sheinis 2003: 100). As a client oriented party United Russia has above all the duty to organize access to important resources and offices (Ryzhkov 2009). As it was in the CPSU, United Russia serves as a stepping stone for ambitious party members. In contrast to the Soviet Communist Party, United Russia does not have any real power of its own and does not follow any specific ideology (Stykow 2006, 2007). The new state party functions as a transmission belt within the ‘power vertical’. In this sense the party belongs more to the output side than to the input side of the regime. Due to massive manipulations in recent years elections have lost the function of legitimizing the power of government. Elections became a ritual for reaffirming the powers that be. The obvious manoeuvres used by the Kremlin to guarantee

Russia’s Political Regime

75

the victory of United Russia in the regional elections in October 2009 led to nationwide disillusionment. As a sign of protest the deputies of the minority parties walked out of the Duma for a while (Moscow Times 2009), requiring Medvedev to intervene. He waffled between acknowledging the supposed victory of United Russia and the call to instruct the victor to learn to ‘lose gracefully’. He criticized that the party obviously misunderstood democratic procedures as ‘administrative’ ones (von Twickel 2009). Thus, he maintained the appearance of being outside of the typical mechanisms of ‘manual control’ of the system. It was, however, a standard part of ‘manual control’ to cement the victory of the ‘governing party’ with the help of state corporations and governors, which make up the well-oiled ‘political machines’. In October 2009, it became apparent for the first time that these mechanisms of the ‘overmanaged democracy’ ran counter to the functionality of the regime. Political Recruitment Soviet Style – Co-optation of Elites instead of Democratic Selection In Western multi-party democracies the political personnel is recruited through democratic procedures. In contrast, in Russia political recruitment is limited to elite co-optation. In this way the input function has decisive influence on the total profile of the regime. The president fills the highest state positions with selected people he personally knows and trusts. These appointees can fit government policy to their own abilities and interests. This traditional and autocratic form of political recruitment is the result of the exclusion of political parties from the political process. In their place the presidential administration and the security apparatus have the dominant influence on the selection of the highest civil service posts (Heinemann-Grüder 2009: 43). Shortly after taking office, President Medvedev bemoaned in public the difficulty of instituting a new policy of political recruitment. The existing system of recruitment is in his view ‘archaic’ and reminiscent of the ‘Soviet departments of cadres’. Government posts were handed out in exchange for personal loyalty, some posts ‘even being purchased’ (Sitnina, Veretennikova and Rozhkova 2008). Obviously, Medvedev wants to change this system to one based on the principle of professional competence. To this end, he has initiated computer research to discover the ‘Hundred Best’ and even the ‘Golden Thousand’ in the whole country as a reserve source for top administrators (Samarina, Bilevskaya and Rodin 2009). This technocratic move shows that Medvedev – who is a general without an army – desires to create his own personal power base. Up to this point assembling one’s own comrades in arms has been a precondition to securing presidential power in Russia. Yeltsin recruited his closest aides from different milieus. He even engaged scholars and gave them free rein. In contrast, the former KGB colonel Putin closely followed the method of recruitment based on personal acquaintance and

76

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

absolute loyalty. He recruited his comrades in arms from among his colleagues at the university, the KGB, the city administration of St. Petersburg and even from among his personal friends. They brought along varying liberal, technocratic and authoritarian dispositions to their offices in Moscow (Mommsen 2003: 122). To ensure their continual support, Putin allowed them the opportunity to participate in major economic endeavours. Many of them received high executive positions in major corporations (Schröder 2010: 319). These ‘corporate bureaucrats’ were mostly recruited from among the security apparatus. They were dubbed ‘siloviki’, a variation of the word ‘sila’, meaning power and strength. By combining the notions of ‘oligarch’ and ‘silovik’ the ‘silovarchs’ or the ‘Putingarchs’ arrived on the scene together with the original ‘oligarchs’ (Mommsen and Nußberger 2007: 70, see also Delyagin 2008). This constellation was typical for the system of ‘patronal presidentialism’ as defined by the American transitologist Henry Hale. It became obvious from the beginning that the career secret service men were not particularly apt for leading major corporations. That is the reason why outstanding economists as well as critics of the regime doubted the functionality of this strange intertwining of economy and politics (Mommsen 2006: 46, Huskey 2009: 253). ‘Patronal Presidentialism’: Political Decision-making within an Informal Oligarchy and Bureaucratic Rule Hale (2006) has painted a vivid picture of ‘patronal presidentialism’ during the rule of Leonid Kuchma in Ukraine. What is the relevance of ‘patronal presidentialism’ for the political decision-making process and for the general governability of Russia? From the viewpoint of systems theory the transformation of social demands into political actions takes place within the government, in Russia including not only the cabinet of ministers and the presidential administration but also informal gatherings of the clientelistic groups. Their representatives stand at the apex of political and economic power. The origins of this structure lie in the patrimonial and bureaucratic legacy of the Soviet Union. At the same time this is the result of the processes of privatization of the Soviet state corporations. The change of system has produced new distributions of capital and new power constellations. This facilitated the renewal of the typical Soviet practice of a patrimonial relationship to power (Ledeneva 2006). The fusion of money and political might led to the oligarchization of the state (Hensell 2009: 116). This phenomenon is not limited to Russia. Clan structures and notorious clientelism as well as the private economic exploitation of state offices are typical patterns in the postsocialist states of the former ‘Eastern Bloc’ (Stark 1995). The complete informality of the process of ‘accommodation of oligarchic interests’ through personal connections is a principal characteristic of the decision-making process in Russia (Zudin 2002). Additionally, the influence of state corporations within the power syndicate is of utmost importance (Petrov

Russia’s Political Regime

77

2007: 85). To these players belong at the very least the following ‘nomenklaturapolitical groups’ and selected state corporations: Gazprom, Gazpromneft, Rosneft, Bank Rossia, Sperbank, Rosenergoatom, the finance-industrial group Rosoboroneksport, the Russian Railroads (RAO RZhD), BazEl and the groups of Abramovich and Deripaska (Rubneva 2007, Petrov 2007: 86, Schröder 2010: 320). The individuals in the fraternity are ever changing, making it very difficult to identify the main players within this ‘complex structure of interests’. Some think it impossible to distinguish among Gazprom, Rosneft and the state. Others think it is unclear whether Putin controls Gazprom and Lukoil or the reverse (Kasparov 2006, Götz 2009). When one considers the degree of family and personal relations amongst the leaders of top state departments and large corporations, it becomes obvious how intertwined the major players are (Schröder 2010: 324). Delyagin’s impression of a ‘Putin family corporation’, Afanas’ev’s suggestion of a ‘patrimonial sultanate’ and Nemtsov’s and Milov’s idea of ‘family contracts’ are not entirely provable, but there is strong evidence for their existence. In any case, the popular theory that a ‘plutocracy’ exists in Russia is not groundless. The plutocrats are in constant competition with each other. Their rivalries are sometimes decided by the state prosecutors and sometimes solved with the help of hostile takeovers – ‘reiderstvo’ (Chepurenko 2007). It is conceivable that in the centre of power and decision-making within the regime of patronal presidentialism there exist two overlapping spheres of interaction. While in one of these spheres about 13 to 15 clans gravitate and fight for their interests, in the other sphere of interaction a narrow circle of people has the last word.3 To this exclusive group of leaders belong at least the highest representatives of the security organs, the ‘corporate bureaucrats’ and the leading technocrats (Grigoryev 2009: 8-9). These few interact with two power bases: the informal Kremlin groups and the bureaucracy, including informal political consultants (Willerton 2010: 34). At the end of Putin’s presidency it was obvious that the top civil servants within the administration had an especially strong influence (Petrov, Lipman and Hale 2010: 26). The overall lack of transparency prevented a clear impression of who exactly shaped the major decisions. All of these observations demonstrate that the formation of outputs, namely the conceptualization, the implementation and the coordination of politics, is a long and difficult matter. Compromises are only reached by ad hoc coalitions. These decisions lack stability. Therefore, their final implementation is often blocked (Grigoryev 2009, Charap 2009: 13). Bureaucratic intrigues replace democratic controls. In any case, political responsibility is not a fundamental condition of this form of rule. Thus, the decision-making at the top of the state lacks functional efficiency and the whole political regime lacks stability.

3  Kryshtanovskaya and White assume that the ‘siloviki’ have their own Politbureau (2005). See also Petrov, Lipman and Hale 2010: 25.

78

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Relations between State and Society: Political Legitimacy and Stability in Exchange for Output Performance Due to contributions to society in the form of material and ideological offerings the political leadership enjoyed a continual approval rating of 70 to 80 per cent. The material gains were based on the considerable rise in living standards thanks to the overwhelming amount of money from the exports of crude oil and natural gas. Idealistically, the people were led to believe by the state controlled media that Russia had returned to the highest echelons of world leadership and had achieved its own political stability. Putin’s presidency was painted as a unique success in comparison to the anarchic rule of Boris Yeltsin. Additionally, the West and especially the United States of America were systematically depicted as the main enemies of Russia, a classic example of using propaganda to unite the Russian people against their common foes (Mommsen 2009a: 244). Another source of legitimacy was the cult of personality around Vladimir Putin. Indeed, Putin’s folksy way of behaviour, his often vulgar choice of words and his confrontational style in international relations were appreciated by the Russian public (Heinemann-Grüder 2009: 43). Many see him as ‘one of us’, a man of the people with all the reflexes and complexes of the Soviet man. Psychologists have analysed why Putin’s predilection for striking hyper-masculine poses, whether as a jet fighter or shirtless with a knife in his belt while fishing, have appealed so well to the general public. The theory is that this was done to compensate for a shaken national confidence during Gorbachev’s perestroika und Yeltsin’s kowtowing to the West (Tumanov 2009, Engelfried 2007). The legitimizing output-performances of the Putin regime were categorized in the following terms: prosperity, national pride, paternalism, cult of Putin, orientation towards consumerism and ‘glamour’, that is, the showy presentation of power at home and abroad (Baev 2010). The ‘glamourous authoritarianism’ of the late years of the Putin presidency was demonstrated by the combination of politics with public shows and star power as well as by organizing national jubilees to celebrate victorious Russian artists and athletes. For instance, the selection of Sochi as host of the Olympic Games in 2014 resulted in a multi-day celebratory mania. The ceremonialization of politics serves to enhance national pride and to reaffirm the image of stability (Dubin 2006). The buoyant feelings of national identity lulled society into acceptance of the existing situation, caused further disinterest in politics and directed attention away from uncomfortable reforms. Polls still showed in late fall 2009 that 70 per cent of the population completely denied any need for such reforms. Only 36 per cent confirmed Medvedev’s criticism that the country was backward and had only a primitive economy (Levinson 2009). Indeed, Medvedev’s criticism was completely in contrast to the national pride and the image of a resurgent country celebrated by Putin. The question is: How could one mobilize a society which has been led to such complacency? By which new methods could one activate social interest in reforms? Medvedev’s self-proclaimed battle against corruption and his encouragement of a

Russia’s Political Regime

79

genuinely independent judiciary struck a sensitive nerve in society. People are increasingly aware of the growing corruption, especially in the police and the law enforcement agencies. Curbing corruption could indeed secure more legitimacy and also improve the governability of the regime. The problem is that corruption is so pervasive and is a precondition for the working of the whole system to such a degree that individual steps taken against this epidemic are fruitless (Feifer 2009b, Siegert 2009). Corruption comes into play on the input-side as well as on the output-side of the functional pattern of the regime. Corruption in the highest levels of government has become the model for the whole of society (Gudkov, quoted by Feifer 2009a). In view of the general debasement of the system, the critical journalist Yulia Latynina (2010) proposed renouncing the notion of ‘system’ to describe politics in Russia. Instead of a system she sees at best a ‘swarm’ of interests whose only goal is to amass fat payoffs. The swarm functions with a high degree of organization, but on very basic instincts. In the fight against corruption it is necessary to initiate institutional reforms as well as democratic controls, although the most important step would be an entirely new legal culture. Medvedev knows this and he pledges tirelessly to overcome the traditional ‘legal nihilism’. He has even suggested asking sociologists for help in combatting the entire ‘mentality’ of corruption (von Twickel 2010, Aleksandrova 2010). To achieve these goals Medvedev needs his own top personnel. For quite some time, legal scholars and judges in the highest courts have been discussed as his potential new cadres. Ideally, the infamous ‘siloviki’ could be replaced by some famous ‘civiliki’, as Medvedev’s legal entourage has been called, in reference to his specialty as an academic in civil law.4 Even some circles within the business elite have signalled support. In general, big businesses are interested in solidifying property rights and creating an independent judiciary. Therefore, a substantial number of reform-minded people are already convinced that ‘the enlightened bureaucrat’ Medvedev will be successful in modernizing Russia. Indeed, change is already visible. The economic crisis and mounting unemployment are strengthening the will of the people to protest. Society is becoming more obstinate (Karmazin, Zubov and Ozerova 2010). There is more open criticism of Putin’s leadership. United Russia lost several strongholds in the regional elections in March 2010. After years of complete political silence there are once more political debates. Thus, a well-known political think tank published a controversial manifesto on a new wave of democratization and on the full integration of Russia into NATO and the EU (INSOR 2010, Siegert 2010). Medvedev himself initiated a principled discussion on political reforms in the state council – together with representatives of the opposition (Abdullaev 2010). No doubt, a new cacophony of views can be heard. Some perceive this as a new stage of ‘glasnost’, if not yet a new ‘perestroika’ (Samarina and Tsvetkova 2010, Nußberger 2010: 9). 4  Medvedev is an expert in civil law (‘tsivilistika’).

80

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

How would it be possible for Medvedev, the junior partner within the ‘tandem’, to assure the success of his modernization rhetoric? Through the effective battle against corruption? Through a new era of glasnost? Through revival of democracy within the still intact constitutional institutions? In polls from Spring 2010, 73 per cent of the respondents were favourable towards Medvedev’s appeals for modernization.5 The fight against corruption received particularly strong support. So it appears that the population could very well be mobilized for a new perestroika. In contrast the governing elites prefer to resist any radical reforms. Understandably they cannot be expected to show interest in the loss of their gains. The economic crisis in the country has affirmed the general impression that Russia’s dependency on the export of raw materials has led it down a blind alley. The alternative is between ‘modernizing’ or ‘marginalizing’ in world politics. The potential loss of Russian influence in international affairs undermines the traditional belief in Russia’s role as a great power which is, especially for the elites, an integral part of their national identity. In this light even Russia’s patrons and oligarchs cannot afford to stand in the way of genuine modernization of political and economic life in the country. Conclusions The results of this contribution are twofold. First, they have illustrated the specific peculiarities of the authoritarian Russian system. Second, they have indicated the usefulness of a combination of conceptual approaches. The literature on hybrid regimes and diminished subtypes provides useful analytical tools to describe and explain the emergence and persistence of the Yeltsin and Putin regimes. The normative approach focusing on constitutional and ‘minimalist’ criteria for democracy has demonstrated the enormous gap between the democratic constitution of Russia and its actual political regime. Systems theory and Almond’s structural-functional classification of political systems have helped us to grasp the ways in which political communication functions in this regime and, even more importantly, understand the interconnections between the political and economic spheres and their implications for the outputs generated by the existing system. The lenses of systems theory revealed the many shortcomings in the functioning of the Russian state and thus provided evidence of the fundamental instability of the political regime. The main peculiarities of the Russian political system can be summarized in the following way: It is a hybrid of mainly oligarchic and autocratic components. The latter express themselves through ‘bureaucratic’, ‘plebiscitarian’ and ‘glamorous’ authoritarianism. Just as obvious are the patrimonial, traditional, archaic, technocratic and Soviet elements. At the very core of Russian patronal 5  Poll organized by the Russian Academy of Sciences together with the FriedrichEbert Foundation, Moscow (Ryzhkov 2010).

Russia’s Political Regime

81

presidentialism is the total interpenetration of business and politics. This leads to informality, opacity, favouritism and corruption. Despite this pessimistic summary it is worth considering that the shells of democracy have survived. Therefore, it is very well imaginable that a new perestroika can take root once more. References Abdullaev, N. 2010. Medvedev Refuses to Change Political System at Rare Talks. Moscow Times [Online, 25 January]. Available at: http://www.themoscowtimes. com/news/article/medvedev-refuses-to-change-political-system-at-raretalks/398078.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Afanas’ev, Y. 2009. The end of Russia? Open Democracy [Online, 21 January]. Available at: www.opendemocracy.net/article/russia-theme/the-end-of-russia [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Aleksandrova, L. 2010. President Goes Ahead with War on Corruption, Society Skeptical. Itar Tass World Service, 15 April. Almond, G.A. 1960. Introduction: A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics, in The Politics of Developing Areas, edited by G.A. Almond and J.S. Coleman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Aron, L. 2005. Putin’s Risks. American Enterprise Institut [Online, 1 January]. Available at: www.aei.org/docLib/20050112-PutinsRisknewCCg.pdf [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Baev, P. 2010. Russia: Stuck in a Year of Events and Little Change. Eurasia Daily Monitor [Online, 4 January]. Available at: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/ edm/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=35865&tx_ttnews[backPid]=484&no_ cache=1 [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Belkovskiy, S. 2009. Tserkov’ Vladimira Putina. Ezhednevni Zhurnal. [Online, 12 July]. Available at: www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=9173 [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Berg-Schlosser, D., Maier, H. and Stammen, T. 1977. Einführung in die Politikwissenschaft 2. Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck. Bos, E. 2003. Wo fängt Demokratie an und wo hört Demokratie auf? Demokratietheoretische Überlegungen zum politischen Regime Russlands, in Das russische Parlament. Schule der Demokratie, edited by E. Bos, M. Mommsen and S. von Steinsdorff. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 271-292. Charap, S. 2009. Pravitel’stvo – ne coordinator. Russkiy Zhurnal [Online, 15 October]. Available at: http://www.russ.ru/layout/set/print/Mirovaya-povestka/ Pravitel-stvo-ne-koordinator [accessed: 13 April 2011]. Chepurenko, A. 2007. ‘Schwarze Raider’: Feindliche Übernahmen in der russischen Wirtschaft. Russland-Analysen, 130 [Online]. Available at: www. laender-analysen.de/russland/pdf/Russlandanalysen130.pdf [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Churchill, W.S. 1955. Second World War: The Gathering Storm, 5th Edition. London: Cassell.

82

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Dahl, R. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Delyagin, M. 2008. Vse budet, kak pri dedushke? Yezhednevni Zhurnal [Online, 27 February]. Available at: http://ej.ru/?a=note&id=7832 [accessed: 13 April 2011]. Delyagin, M. 2009a. Rodstvenni biznes. Chast’ 7. Predsedatel’ pravitel’stva Vladimir Putin. Novaya Gazeta [Online, 28 January]. Available at: www. novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/008/00.html [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Delyagin, M. 2009b. Vozvrashchenie bezyschodnosti. Ezhednevnii Zhurnal [Online, 1 May]. Available at: www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=9027 [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde e.V. (ed.). 2005. Der Fall Jukos. Osteuropa, 55(7). Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag. Dubin, B. 2006. Simulierte Macht und zeremonielle Politik: Elemente der politischen Kultur in Rußland. Osteuropa, 3, 19-32. Dubin, B. 2008. Fernsehkrieg und echter Krieg – Russland: Der KaukasusKonflikt in den Köpfen. Osteuropa, 11, 71-75. Easton, D. 1965. A Systems Analysis of Political Life. New York: Wiley. Elizarov, V. 1999. Elitistskaia teoria demokratii i sovremenni rossiiski politicheski protsess. Polis, 1, 72-78. Engelfried, A. 2007. Das Porträt des Präsidenten: Vladimir Putin zwischen Kunst, Kult und Kommerz. Osteuropa, 10, 51-66. Evans, A.B. 2010. Russian Society and the State, in Developments in Russian Politics, edited by S. White et al. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 99-117. Feifer, G. 2009a, Corruption in Russia, Part 1, A Normal Part of Everyday Life. Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty [Online, 27 November]. Available at: www. rferl.org/content/Corruption-in-Russia-Part-1-A-Normal-Part-Of-EverydayLife-/1889394.html [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Feifer, G. 2009b. Corruption in Russia, Part 3: How Russia is Ruled. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty [Online, 27 November]. Available at: www.rferl.org/ content/Corruption-in-Russia-Part-3-How-Russia-Is-Ruled-/1890170.html [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Fisun, O. 2003. Developing democracy or competitive neopatrimonialism? The political regime of Ukraine in comparative perspective. Conference paper, University of Toronto, 24 December 2003. Available at: www.utoronto.ca/ jacyk/Fisun-CREES-workshop.pdf [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Ganapolsky, M. 2010. Telekadry reshayut vse. Moskovskii Komsomolets [Online, 15 February]. Available at: www.mk.ru/social/article/2010/02/15/431118telekadry-reshayut-vse.html [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Glaeßner, G.J. 1997. Von der Kommunismusforschung zur vergleichenden Transitionsforschung, in Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, edited by D. BergSchlosser and F. Müller-Rommel. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 223-250. Goldman, M. 2008. Oilopoly: Putin, Power and the Rise of the New Russia. Oxford: Oneworld.

Russia’s Political Regime

83

Götz, R. 2009. Energieaußenpolitik mit oder gegen Russland? Irrtümer der europäischen Energiedebatte. Osteuropa, 1, 3-18. Grigoryev, O. 2009. A Party of Emergency Measures matures in Government. Russia Journal, 24(38), 8-9. Gudkov, L. 2009. Propaganda: Bezotvetstvennost’ vlasti. Vedomosti [Online, 30 September]. Available at: www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/ article/2009/09/30/215034 [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Hale, H.E. 2006. Democracy or autocracy on the march? The Colored Revolutions as normal dynamics of patronal presidentialism. Communist and PostCommunist Studies, 39, 305-329. Hale, H.E. 2010. Russia’s Political Parties and their Substitutes, in Developments in Russian Politics, edited by S. White et al. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 81-98. Hartmann, J. 1997. Vergleichende Regierungslehre und Systemvergleich, in Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, edited by D. Berg-Schlosser and F. MüllerRommel. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 27-48. Heinemann-Grüder, A. 2009. Kontrollregime: Russland unter Putin und Medvedev. Osteuropa, 59, 27-48. Hensell, S. 2009. Die Willkür des Staates: Herrschaft und Verwaltung in Osteuropa. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Huskey, E. 2009. The Politics-Administration Nexus in Post-communist Russia, in Russian Bureaucracy and the State. Officialdom from Alexander III to Vladimir Putin, edited by D.K. Rowney and E. Huskey. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 253-272. Inozemtsev, V. 2009. The Nature and Prospects of the Putin Regime. Russian Social Science Review, 50(1), 40-60. INSOR 2010: Rossia XXI veka: Obraz zhelaemogo zavtra [Online: Institut sovremennogo razvitia]. Available at: www.riocenter.ru/Obraz-gel-zavtra-0. pdf [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Jakowlew, A. 2003. Die Abgründe meines Jahrhunderts: Eine Autobiographie. Leipzig: Faber & Faber. Karmazin, I., Zubov, M. and Ozerova, M. 2010. ‘Medvedei’ koe-gde vygnali iz berlog. Moskovski Komsomolets, 16 March, 1. Kasparov, G. 2006. Oil- and Gas Empire. Wall Street Journal, 31 July, A11. Khodorkovski, M. and Ulitskaya, L. 2010. Briefe aus dem Gefängnis: ‘Am wichtigsten ist die Selbstdisziplin …’, Osteuropa, 1, 27-54. Kostikov, V. 2009. Nuzhno li ‘molchat v tryapochku’? Rossyane gotovyat dlya vlasti spisok pretenzii. Argumenti i Fakti. [Online, 6 May]. Available at: http:// www.aif.ru/society/article/26576 [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Kryshtanovskaya, O. 2005a. Anatomie der russischen Elite: Die Militarisierung Russlands unter Putin. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Kryshtanovskaya, O. and White, S. 2005b. Inside the Putin Court: A Research Note. Europe-Asia Studies, 57(7), 1065-1075.

84

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Kunkle, F. 2008. Conflict Makes Clear Who Rules in Russia: Putin Shown Giving Orders to Medvedev. Washington Post, 14 August, A11. Latynina,Y. 2010. Roi ili Antibulochnik. Novaya Gazeta [Online, 25 January]. Available at: www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2010/007/10.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Lavelle, P. 2004. OPEC dethroned, Putin’s ‘KremPEC’ arrives. Future Brief [Online, 19 August]. Available at: www.futurebrief.com/peterlavelleyukos002. asp [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Ledeneva, A.V. 2006. How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices that Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Levinson, A. 2009. Put’ k sebe. Vedomosti [Online, 17 November]. Available at: http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article/2009/11/17/219014 [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Linz, J. 1975. Totaliarianism and Authoritarian Regimes, in Handbook of Political Sciences, edited by F. Greenstein and N. Polsby. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 175-411. Lipman, M. and Petrov, N. 2007. Vsaimodeistvie vlasti i obshestva, in Puti rossiskogo postkommunisma, edited by N. Petrov and A. Ryabov. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo P. Elinina, 163-233. Lipskiy, A and Polukhin, A. 2009. Lipskiy, Deputy Editor of Novaya Gazeta, in dialogue with Luke Harding from the British Observer. Novaya Gazeta [Online, 13 April]. Available at: http://www.novayagazeta.ru/st/online/495069/ [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Medvedev, D. 2009. Rossia Vpered. Gazeta.ru. [Online, 10 September]. Available at: www.gazeta.ru/comments/2009/09/10-a-3258568.shtml [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Mesropova, O. 2008. Ich wähle Russland, ich wähle Glamour. Kultura, 6 [Online]. Available at: www.kultura-rus.uni-bremen.de/kultura-dokumente/ausgaben/ deutsch/kultura-2008-06.pdf [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Mommsen, M. 2003. Wer herrscht in Rußland? Der Kreml und die Schatten der Macht, second edition, Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck. Mommsen, M. 2006. Wladimir Putin – Zerstörer der Demokratie und Begründer einer Oligarchie der Geheimdienste, in Zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie, edited by E. Bos and A. Helmerich. Münster: LIT Verlag, 29-54. Mommsen, M. 2007. Putins ‘gelenkte Demokratie’: ‘Vertikale der Macht’ statt Gewaltenteilung, in Russland heute: Rezentralisierung des Staates unter Putin, edited by G. Gorzka and M. Buhbe. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 235- 252. Mommsen, M. 2008. Wer wird Russland regieren? Die Kreml-AG, in Russland: Der Kaukasische Teufelskreis oder die lupenreine Demokratie, edited by N. Schreiber. Klagenfurt: Wieser Verlag. 26-49. Mommsen, M. 2009a. Plebiszitärer Autoritarismus in Russland: Der Wandel seit 2000, in Autoritarismus in Mittel- und Osteuropa, edited by J. Mackow. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 241-261.

Russia’s Political Regime

85

Mommsen, M. 2009b. Das politische System Rußlands, in Die politischen Systeme Osteuropas, edited by W. Ismayr. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 419-478. Mommsen, M. 2009c. Rußlands gelenkte Demokratie: Das Tandem Putin– Medwedjew. Stimmen der Zeit, 227, 307-320. Mommsen, M. 2010. Die Exekutive im russischen Regierungssystem und das Tandem Putin/Medvedev. Rossija: Itogi poslednego, edited by G. Gorzka and R. Krumm. Moscow: Rosspen, 272-305. Mommsen, M. and Mikhaleva, G. 2008. Russland: Autoritäre Macht und gelenktes Parteiensystem, in Osteuropäische Demokratien als Trendsetter? Parteien und Parteiensysteme nach dem Ende des Übergangsjahrzehnts, edited by E. Bos and D. Segert. Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 187-207. Mommsen, M. and Nußberger, A. 2007. Das System Putin: Gelenkte Demokratie und politische Justiz in Russland. Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck. Moscow Times. 2009. Lawmakers Storm Out of Duma Session in Election Protest [Online, 14 October]. Available at: http://rus.tmtbb.ru/news/article/lawmakersstorm-out-of-duma-session-in-election-protest/387414.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Nemtsov, B. and Milov, V. 2010. Putin. Itogi. Nezavisimi Ekspertni Doklad. 10 Let. Moscow: Solidarnost. Nußberger, A. 2010. Perestroika die Zweite? Russland-Analysen, 198, 9. Oates, S. and McCormack, G. 2010. The Media and Political Communication, in Developments in Russian Politics, edited by S. White, R. Sakwa and H.E. Hale. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 118-134. O’Donnell, G. 1973. Studies in South American Politics. Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies. Panina, T. 2010. Shokhin vozvrashchaetsya v pravitel’stvo. Rossiiskaia Gazeta [Online, 13 January]. Available at: http://www.rg.ru/2010/01/13/shohin.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Petrov, N. 2004. 2004: Back to the Soviet Future. The St. Petersburg Times [Online, 28 December]. Available at: http://www.sptimesrussia.com/index. php?action_id=2&story_id=2448 [accessed: 13 April 2011]. Petrov, N. 2007. Korporativizm vs Regionalizm. Pro et Contra, 11, 75-89. Petrov, N. 2008a. Medvedev prishel, Putin ostalsya. Nezavisimaya Gazeta [Online, 1 July]. Available at: http://www.ng.ru/ng_politics/2008-07-01/9_double.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Petrov, N. 2008b. Medvedev is There, and so is Putin. Radio Echo Moskvy, BBC Monitoring, 28 November. Petrov, N., Lipman, M. and Hale, H.E. 2010. Overmanaged Democracy in Russia: Governance Implications of Hybrid Regimes. Russia and Eurasia Program, 106, Carnegie. Piontkovski, A. 2009. Reading Russia: The dying mutant, Journal of Democracy, 2, 52-55.

86

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Prezident Rossii. 2008. Poslanie Federal’nomu Sobraniyu Rossiiskoi Federatsii [Online video, 5 November]. Available at: www.kremlin.ru/video/185 [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Prezident Rossii. 2009. Poslanie Federal’nomu Sobraniyu Rossiiskoi Federatsii [Online video, 12 November]. Available at: http://news.kremlin.ru/video/264 [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Przeworski, A. 1991. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 10, 95. Rodin, I. 2005. Gosdumu obvinili v antikonstitutsionnom perevorote. Nezavisimaya Gazeta. [Online, 12 October]. Available at: http://www.ng.ru/ politics/2005-10-12/1_palata.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Rubneva, E. 2007. Sem’ Tuchnych. Vedomosti, 1 June, A1. Ryzhkov, V. 2009a. Modernization from below. Moscow Times, 27 October, 8. Ryzhkov, V. 2009b, Medvedev’s Abracadabra Modernization Plan. Moscow Times, 18 November, 9. Ryzhkov, V. 2010. Moving Beyond Petersburg and Vekselberg. Moscow Times, 16 June, 9. Samarina, A. 2008. Ne parlamentskaya, ne prezidentskaya: Medvedev i Putin, po mneniyu ekspertov – odno politicheskoe litso. Nezavisimaya Gazeta [Online, 26 November]. Available at: http://www.ng.ru/ideas/2008-11-26/7_politface. html# [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Samarina, A. and Tsvetkova, R. 2010. Eshche ne perestroika. No … Nezavisimaya Gazeta [Online, 16 February]. Available at: http://www.ng.ru/ ng_politics/2010-02-16/9_perestroika.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Samarina, A., Bilevskaya, E. and Rodin, I. 2009. Prezident opredelilsya s polovinoi rezerva. Nezavisimaya Gazeta [Online, 22 December]. Available at: http:// www.ng.ru/politics/2009-12-22/1_president.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Schröder, H-H. 2005. ‘Change’ auf Russisch? Medvedevs erste Botschaft an die Föderalversammlung. Russland-Analysen, 173, 2-5. Schröder, H-H. 2009. Modernisierung ‘von oben’: Medvedevs zweiter Bericht zur Lage der Nation. Russland-Analysen, 192, 2-5. Schröder, H-H. 2010. Oligarchen und Cinovniki: Einflussgruppen in der russischen Politik, in Rossija: Itogi poslednego desiatiletia (1998-2008) i perspektivy razvitia, edited by G. Gorzka and R. Krumm. Moscow: Rosspen, 306-334. Sheinis, V. 2003. Zehn Jahre parlamentarische Erfahrung im postsowjetischen Russland – eine (persönliche) Zwischenbilanz, in Das russische Parlament, edited by E. Bos, M. Mommsen and S. von Steinsdorff. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 87-108. Shevtsova, L. 2006. Bürokratischer Autoritarismus: Fallen und Herausforderungen. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 11, S. 6-13. Siegert, J. 2009. Von Fehlern im System und Systemfehlern: Eine Polemik, in Russland-Analysen, 194, 2.

Russia’s Political Regime

87

Siegert, J. 2010. Das Medwedew-Institut legt sein ‘Bild der wünschenswerten Zukunft Russlands im 21. Jahrhundert’ vor. Russland-Analysen, 198, 2-5. Sitnina, V., Veretennikova, K. and Rohkova, N. 2008. Vsya prezidentskaya rat’. Vremya Novostei [Online, 24 July]. Available at: www.vremya. ru/2008/132/4/209016.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Stark, D. 1995. Privatization in Hungary: From Plan to Market or from Plan to Clan? East European Politics and Societies, 3, 351-392. Stykow, P. 2006. ‘Einiges Russland’: Die ‘Partei der Macht’ als Staatspartei? Russland-Analysen, 115, 2-5. Stykow, P. 2007. Russland vor der Wahl? Die Neuordnung des Parteiensystems, Russland-Analysen, 127, 3-6. Trenin, D. 2010. Russia’s foreign policy: Modernise or marginalise [Online, 15 January]. Available at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/dmitrytrenin-and-boris-dolgin/russia%E2%80%99s-foreign-policy-modernise-ormarginalise-1 [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Tumanov, B. 2009. Takie, kak Putin. Gazeta.ru [Online, 29 January]. Available at: http://www.gazeta.ru/comments/2009/01/29_a_2932140.shtml [accessed: 13 April 2011]. Veretennikova, K. 2009. Konservativnaia partia modernizatsii. Vremya Novostei. [Online, 23 November]. Available at: www.vremya.ru/2009/215/4/242197. html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. von Twickel, N. 2007. Red Tape Reaching its Soviet Heights. Moscow Times [Online, 7 August]. Available at: http://context.themoscowtimes.com/ sitemap/paid/2007/8/article/red-tape-reaching-its-soviet-heights/195211.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. von Twickel, N. 2009. Medvedev Reprimands United Russia. Moscow Times [Online, 23 November]. Available at: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/ article/medvedev-reprimands-united-russia/390148.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. von Twickel, N. 2010. Medvedev redefines Anti-Corruption Drive. Moscow Times [Online, 15 April]. Available at: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/ article/medvedev-redefines-anti-corruption-drive/403966.html [accessed: 7 April 2011]. Wigell, M. 2008. Mapping ‘Hybrid Regimes’: Regime Types and Concepts in Comparative Politics. Democratization, 15(2), 230-250. Willerton, J.P. 2010. Semi-presidentialism and the Evolving Executive, in Developments in Russian Politics, edited by R. Sakwa, S. White and H.E Hale. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Zudin, A. 2002. Rezhim Vladimira Putina: Kontury novoi politicheskoi sistemy. Moscow: Moskovski Tsentr Karnegie.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 5

Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia: Trajectories of Political Evolution1 Vladimir Gel’man2

Subnational authoritarianism: A Framework for Analysis The rapid and dramatic diversification of political developments in Russia’s regions and cities in the 1990s was widely perceived as one of the unintended consequences of the collapse of the Communist rule and of the Soviet state, which led to the spontaneous decentralization of government. The degree of diversity of these political developments at times was similar to cross-national differences rather than to within-state differences (Gel’man, Ryzhenkov and Brie 2003). Most observers have pointed out two major trends in Russian regional and local politics in the 1990s: (1) the localization of politics, where local-based rather than nationwide elites served as veto players in terms of their influence on mass behaviour, economic governance and property rights (Afanas’ev 2000, Brie 2004, Pappe 2000, Robertson 2007) and (2) the monopolization of control over key resources in many regions and cities – mainly, in the hands of chief executives. It is not surprising therefore, that the emergence of ‘regional authoritarianism’ in Russia has been severely criticized for providing major obstacles to the development of democratic and market institutions (Golosov 2004, Stoner-Weiss 2006). In the 2000s, the localization of Russian politics was undermined by the recentralization of the Russian state (Gel’man 2009) and the en masse encroachment of nationwide companies on local markets (Zubarevich 2002). At the same time, local monopolistic controls over resources in the regions and cities had been transformed into a nation-wide monopoly, governed by the Kremlin, especially after (1) the abolition of the popular elections of regional chief executives (and of city mayors in many cities) and (2) the transformation of United Russia (UR) into the dominant party (Hale 2006, Gel’man 2008, Golosov 2008). The politics of the recentralization of the Russian state only partially modified these subnational regimes – their autonomy from the federal government has been weakened and their diversity became less visible in comparison with the 1990s, but major patterns of regional and local politics have been sustained over time. 1  This is a revised version of an article published in Gel’man, V. and Ross, C. (ed.) 2010. The Politics of Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia. Farnham: Ashgate. 2  I would like to thank Maria Roti for her linguistic assistance.

90

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

In a comparative perspective, the constellation of the localization of politics and the monopolization of control over local elites has been termed ‘subnational authoritarianism’ (Gibson 2005). In certain historical periods it was a feature of local and regional government in many states and nations, ranging from Latin America (Gibson 2005, Stokes 2005) and Africa (Boone 2003) to South-East Asia (Scott 1972) and Southern Italy (Chubb 1982). During the long period of American history ‘political machines’, which were controlled by local bosses, imposed their rule over politics and government in many large cities (Banfield and Wilson 1966: Chapter 9), while federal political actors and institutions had rather limited impact on these local developments. These examples of subnational authoritarianism (SNA) in various countries and regions varied substantively in terms of their genesis, patterns of government and political outcomes. Whilst some SNA regimes disappeared, others gradually became institutionally embedded. In this respect, SNA in any given country (including Russia) is not a unique and context-bounded phenomenon but rather a by-product of state building and regime change. A number of scholars have drawn many parallels between regional and local government in Russia in the 1990s and 2000s with ‘machine politics’ in other countries (Brie 2004, Lankina 2004). By placing the dynamics of SNA in Russia in a cross-national and cross-temporal comparative perspective we may gain new insights into the patterns of SNA in Russia and its development more generally. This article is devoted to the analysis of subnational authoritarianism in post-Communist Russia from a comparative and historical perspective. Firstly, I will offer an overview of the dynamics of SNA and its typology, based upon the experiences of the ‘political machines’ in US cities from the 1870s to the 1930s and Southern Italy from the 1950s to the 1980s. Then, I will reconsider the nature of SNA in contemporary Russia in the light of its development in other countries. I conclude by discussing the prospects for continuity and change to subnational authoritarianism in Russia and those factors which may bring about its transformation. The Rise and Decline of Subnational Authoritarianism The development of subnational authoritarianism is usually considered to be one of the stages in the process of state-building and institution-building in modern societies, or as a ‘halfway house’ on the path to political modernization that arises from the spread of universal suffrage and competitive elections (Scott 1969: 1143). Local elites and political leaders, who acquired autonomy from the central government either before the introduction of competitive elections or due to these processes, had to invest significant organizational efforts into holding on to power and maintaining political control under conditions of electoral competition. First, they had to eliminate the threats of local challengers; second, they attempted to avert political risks initiated by nation-wide political actors. In other words, local elites were forced to establish mechanisms to keep themselves in power,

Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia

91

regardless of their electoral support and the preferences of the voters, and they also had to act to prevent ‘hostile takeovers’ from nation-wide political actors. Their strategies included: the establishment of (1) a monopolist control over politics and government at the subnational level through the use of local-based electoral ‘political machines’ and (2) effective ‘boundary control’ (Gibson 2005), which prevents the undermining of this monopoly ‘from above’ (that is, by nation-wide political actors). Historically, the term ‘machine politics’ was used to describe politics and governance in US cities. From the time of the Civil War until the New Deal, all large American cities were governed through the mechanism of ‘machine politics’ (Banfield and Wilson 1966: 116). ‘Political machines’ are defined as business organizations, which were established by powerful local groups for a special kind of business (power holding through competitive elections) in order to retain control over politics and government and mass political behaviour through the use of specific material and non-material incentives (Banfield and Wilson 1966: 115, Scott 1969: 1144, Erie 1988: 26). Although ‘political machines’ at that time partially compensated for some of the other defects in the American political and social order, such practices led to the development of corruption and inefficiency in urban governments. Most observers agree that the demise of ‘political machines’ in the US during the 1920s-1930s was a natural consequence of the consolidation of the American state, economic growth and social progress and their ‘life cycle’ (that is, emergence, bloom and decline) was merely a by-product of political modernization and development (Scott 1969: 1146). The ‘developmentalist’ model of ‘machine politics’, offered by James Scott, has certain limits for the comparative study of subnational authoritarianism. It was not only in Third World countries that SNA regimes failed to achieve their goals and often collapsed due to state failure, economic backwardness, ethnic conflicts, etc. The factors determining the survival of successful ‘political machines’ varied widely in different subnational settings, sometimes irrespective of the national political context. For example, Edward Gibson analysed the case of the SNA regime in the Argentine Province of Santiago del Estero, where the governor retained political control over the region for more than half a century (from 1949 until 2004), despite the fact that Argentina experienced dramatic changes of governance and both democratic and authoritarian regimes were installed during this period (Gibson 2005). Whilst Scott has provided an analysis of the structural factors pertaining to the rise and decline of ‘machine politics’, Gibson focuses on the strategies of political actors who seek either to preserve or to undermine SNA regimes. He argues that successful SNA regimes can achieve their goals if they are able to pursue three major strategies simultaneously: (1) the establishment of monopolist patrimonial rule (the parochialization of power) at the subnational level; (2) the nationalization of the influence of subnational leaders on nation-wide politics and government; (3) the monopolization of national-subnational linkages between respective areas and the country as a whole, in major political and policy areas

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

92

(Gibson 2005: 109). From this perspective, nation-wide political actors during the process of democratization may use two different strategies to undermine SNA: (1) employment of the apparatus of the central state (including law enforcement agencies) as a tool of coercive dismantling of SNA (as happened in the 2000s in Argentina) and (2) the spread of party competition from the national to the subnational levels (as happened in the 2000s in Mexico). One should note, though, that political parties, especially if they collude with the state apparatus, may serve as instruments to weaken or preserve SNA regimes. Several examples include the emergence of Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) dominance in Mexico in the 1930s (Cornelius 1973), which enhanced the power of local ‘caciques’ (Kern 1973), the long-term one-party rule in the American South (Key 1949) and in Southern Italy (Chubb 1982) and regional political regimes in the Soviet Union (Hough 1969, Rutland 1993). Despite the significant differences between these SNA regimes as such and their national political contexts, they successfully implemented the above-mentioned strategies of self maintenance, and achieved their political goals. In this respect, both the centralized state apparatus (hereafter the Centre) and nation-wide political parties should be regarded as exogenous factors of SNA regimes, which define their institutional environment. The constellation of influence of these two factors at the subnational level in various countries can lead to the formation of a 2x2 matrix of various types of SNA regimes, which are outlined in Table 5.1. Table 5.1

A Typology of Subnational Authoritarianisms (SNA) Local influence of the apparatus of the central state

Strong Local influence of national political Weak or parties absent

Weak

Strong

No empirical cases

Centralized party-based SNA (Southern Italy 1950-1980s, USSR, Russia after mid2000s)

Decentralized SNA (USA 1870-1930s, Russia 1991–mid-2000s)

Centralized bureaucratic SNA (pre-1917 Russia, Uzbekistan, Belarus)

Source: Compiled by the author.

Although the constellation of a strong presence of nation-wide political parties and the weak influence of the Centre at the local level is almost unimaginable, all other varieties of SNA have existed in different states and nations in different phases of their history. First, in many centralized authoritarian states and regimes, political parties could not exist at all or played only a rather modest role, especially at the subnational level. Pre-1917 Russia is a model case: its provinces and cities were

Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia

93

governed in a purely top-down manner by a bureaucratic hierarchy. Despite the limited autonomy of local government, political parties were legalized only after 1905 and remained weak in the provinces. Governors remained fully subordinated to the Centre and mediated centre-periphery relations, thus maintaining local SNA regimes as a logical continuity of nation-wide authoritarianism. In a similar vein, bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes in Latin American states (O’Donnell 1988) or in post-Communist Central Asian countries, such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (Jones Luong 2002) maintained SNA regimes through the establishment of bureaucratic hierarchies. Institutional settings of this kind of SNA were endorsed by the Centre’s coercive, and in some regimes, distributive capacities. The Centre tends to use its coercive capacity for administrative control over subnational politics and government through bureaucratic appointments and dismissals, but centralized administrative control often co-exists alongside the relative autonomy of SNA regimes, which emerged as a by-product of the principal-agent relationships operating within the state bureaucracy. Deeply-embedded patron-client ties cemented these SNA regimes which helped to maintain their continuity over time, often irrespective of political changes in national politics. An example of this is Argentina (Gibson 2005), where the re-emergence of competitive elections in the 1980s, after the collapse of the dictatorship, could not prevent the rise of a type of local politics which led to the ‘perverse accountability’ of citizens to their local ‘political machines’ (Stokes 2005). Thus, centralized bureaucratic subnational authoritarianism may become self-enforcing. It may be undermined either by a comprehensive crisis of the state as a whole (as it happened in 1917 in Russia) or by the adoption of national level policies which have been deliberately designed to dismantle SNA regimes ‘from above’. The latter method, is especially salient in those cases where the pressure on SNA regimes ‘from below’ (by local political, economic and social actors), is weak or absent (Gibson 2005). ‘Political machines’ which were present in US cities from the 1870s-1920s represent another type of SNA. On the one hand, the American system of government at that time was heavily decentralized, and the coercive and distributive capacities of the federal authorities were rather limited (Skowronek 1982). Thus, state and urban governments held significant coercive and distributive capacities, which were successfully used by local ‘bosses’ for political mobilization. On the other hand, the genesis of the US party system ‘from below’ (that is, at the state level) and trends of its early development (Shefter 1994) led to its decentralization. Nation-wide party leaders could not maintain control over state and city party politics and were dependent upon subnational party leaders and local ‘bosses’, especially, in large cities. The weakness of administrative (the Centre) and political (party leadership) controls from nation-wide political actors gave a free hand to local ‘bosses’, who were able to establish SNA regimes and to successfully pursue all three of the above-mentioned strategies (local patrimonial rule, nationalization of influence and monopolization of linkages) (Erie 1988). The formation of early capitalism during the ‘golden age’, accompanied by the rent-seeking efforts of ‘robber barons’, led to state capture at the subnational level. The constellation of

94

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

these political and economic arrangements also helped to maintain decentralized subnational authoritarianism. The decline and subsequent collapse of ‘political machines’ in US cities was the result of numerous factors (including an increase in the capacity of the federal government), which diminished the opportunities of local ‘bosses’ to control their fellow citizens (Banfield and Wilson 1966). One of the major attacks on ‘political machines’ came ‘from below’, at the subnational level, as a result of the political activism of a rising urban middle class and the emergence of the progressive movement, which became a major focus of local protests against SNA. In fact, the progressive movement in the early twentieth century played an important role in changing the political and institutional environment of US cities (Lineberry and Fowler 1967). After the New Deal, the reach of SNA was limited to Southern states (Key 1949) and some urban ‘political machines’, while the country as a whole successfully moved ‘from oligarchy to pluralism’ (Dahl 1961: 11). Finally, Southern Italy in the 1950s-1980s should be considered as a case of centralized party-based subnational authoritarianism. The centralized Italian state coexisted with the centralized party system, whilst the economically backward South was deeply embedded with patron-client ties (Putnam 1993), and the practice of ‘amoral familism’ (Banfield 1958) at the subnational level informally supplemented hyper-centralization. The dominant party, the Christian Democrats (CD), not only governed the country, but since the early 1950s established unchallenged control over the South, which served as its electoral base, and maintained a monopoly in local and (after 1970) regional councils (Chubb 1982). In fact, the CD, both nation-wide and subnationally, served as a large ‘distributional coalition’ (Olson 1982: 43-47). The long-term state programme for the development of the Southern regions became a ‘cash cow’, which was used by the CD as a tool of monopolization of national-subnational linkages. The distributive capacity at the subnational level was concentrated in the hands of local party notables, who extracted major rents under the CD label. Organized crime, which collaborated with the CD, also supplemented the coercive capacity of the state. Parties other than CD (first of all, the Communist Party) had limited access to local political markets and even their occasional electoral victories did not challenge the status quo: widespread clientelism encouraged all parties to use similar political strategies (Chubb 1982). The social base of SNA in Southern Italy included local businesses (which were dependent upon local authorities), the urban middle class (which was dependent upon public sector jobs) and the urban poor (Chubb 1982). Local CD notables successfully co-opted traditional patron-client ties into the lower echelon of the party hierarchy (Hopkin and Mastropaolo 2001) and used selective punishment of disloyal individuals and groups as the major negative incentive for loyalty. Unlike US ‘political machines’, which used positive incentives for loyalty, the Italian South demonstrated opposite trends; the use of side-payments by CD notables to their fellow citizens was rather limited (Chubb 1982, Warner 2001), and local government performance remained poor (Putnam 1993). In other words, the

Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia

95

political opportunity structure in the Italian South was closed and no equivalents of a progressive movement could emerge. Southern residents migrated to the more prosperous Northern regions, while SNA in the Italian South stagnated over time. To use Albert Hirschman’s term (1970), ‘exit’ rather than ‘voice’ became the major alternative. The nation-wide political crisis in Italy from 1992-94, with the subsequent collapse of its party system, major corruption scandals (which involved virtually all Italian political classes) and the rise of North-South tensions was a major blow to SNA in Southern regions (Hopkin and Mastropaolo 2001). Even though this crisis could not diminish clientelism and corruption, the centralized party-based SNA had been undermined. While comparative studies of authoritarianism demonstrated that dominant party regimes are more sustainable than military and personalist regimes (Geddes 2003: 47-88), their subnational equivalent – centralized party-based SNA – could also become self-enforcing. Its stability is based upon unchallenged party dominance at both the national and the subnational levels, if the party is able to maintain local patrimonial rule, endorse nationalization of influence of subnational leaders and support monopolization of national-subnational linkages in the long run. These practices could be observed in both democratic regimes with dominant parties and dominant party authoritarian regimes. However, the dominant party could be more efficient than the bureaucratic apparatus in resolving principal-agent problems due to the competition between the Centre’s agents at the subnational level (that is, party apparatus vs. state apparatus), especially if the Centre successfully uses the policy of the rotation of local cadres. The undermining of centralized party-based SNA regimes ‘from below’ is almost impossible – they could be dismantled only if there was a major crisis of the dominant party ‘from above’, which could lead to the weakening of its local branches and finally to the subsequent collapse of the regime in the country as a whole (as it happened with the PRI regime in Mexico in the 1990s and with the Communist regime in the Soviet Union in 1988-1991). Looking at this map of different types of SNA, one may consider major similarities and differences among them. In different periods of history, SNA in Russia could be classified as one of the above-mentioned types. But why, and how during the last two decades, has Russia experienced a pendulum-like swing from centralized party-based SNA to decentralized SNA and back again? Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia: Back in the USSR? A study of SNA in the Communist period may give us new insights into its development in post-Soviet Russia. Here we see the effects of path-dependency during the processes of decentralization of the 1990s and recentralization of the 2000s. The centralized party-based SNA in the Soviet Union was a complex political construct. On one hand, it was based upon a hierarchical and highly concentrated constellation of power, which was built around vertically integrated structures of the Communist party and nation-wide branch ministries, including

96

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

the military and the KGB. On the other hand, at the subnational level, territorial branches of the Communist party performed functions of social integration and distribution of goods, and also served as local lobbying groups in the higher echelons of the power hierarchy. The asymmetrical nature of various territorial units of the Soviet state and the diversity of their socio-economic development, as well as other factors, contributed to the emergence of ‘departmentalism’ and ‘localism’ in regional and local government, which played an important role in post-Soviet politics (Rutland 1993, Gel’man, Ryzhenkov and Brie 2003). During the last decades of Communist rule, the Soviet system of regional and local governments were faced with the rise of principal-agent problems due to the increasing costs of centralized control and the decline of its efficiency. In fact, the relationships between nation-wide and subnational authoritarian regimes could be described as an informal contract which guaranteed ‘loyalty in exchange for non-intervention’. In other words, over the period 1960s-1980s subnational elites gradually captured control over the distributive capacities of the Soviet state and extracted major rents due to the monopolization of national-subnational linkages. Gorbachev’s perestroika, which led to the en masse replacement of subnational leaders, initiated ‘from above’, became a major blow to the equilibrium of subnational authoritarianism. In many regions and cities, it led to major conflicts between interest groups and undermined established patron-client ties (Gel’man, Ryzhenkov and Brie 2003, Moses 2008). The loss of the Communist Party’s monopoly and the introduction of competitive elections for regional and local councils in March 1990 finally put an end to the institutionalized foundations of the centralized party-based SNA of the Soviet period. But the collapse of the Soviet Union, problems of economic transition, and institutional changes, initiated by the Centre at the subnational level, soon turned the centralized party-based SNA into decentralized SNA. First, the unintended consequences of the Soviet collapse led to substantial weakening of both the coercive and the distributive capacities of the Centre (Stoner-Weiss 2006). The de facto devolution of major power resources from the Centre to the regions, including institutional leverages and control over the coercive apparatus (which often had been controlled by local criminal groups) become a major side effect of these processes (Volkov 2002). Second, the economic recession of the 1990s led to the major crisis of ‘departmentalism’ in regional and local governance (it was only partially reversed during the territorial expansion of nation-wide businesses in the 2000s). The rise of the spatial polarization of Russia also contributed to increasing control of subnational elites over economic resources. They became ‘veto players’ during major privatization deals (Pappe 2000) and were able to concentrate more than 60 per cent of Russia’s consolidated budget in the regional coffers (Konitzer 2005: 57). Third, federal policies of building institutions in regional and local governments undermined political pluralism, which had developed in some regions and cities from the early 1990s. Attempts by the Kremlin to preserve administrative control over regional and local governments were unsuccessful, and since the mid-1990s, pressure by subnational

Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia

97

elites led to the formation of regional and local political regimes, which acquired relative autonomy from the Centre (Gel’man, Ryzhenkov and Brie 2003, Golosov 2008). In sum, hyper-centralization of Soviet regional and local government in the 1990s was replaced by spontaneous post-Soviet decentralization. Although the features of decentralized subnational regimes differed in the various regions and cities as a result of the varieties of the constellations of local elites (Gel’man, Ryzhenkov and Brie 2003, Golosov 2004), most of them demonstrated tendencies towards the creation of decentralized SNA regimes. Their social base included impoverished populations, which were dependent upon subnational governments (first of all, public sector employees) (Brie 2004), local business actors, which were controlled by subnational elites (Pappe 2000) and local criminal groups, which received ample opportunities for their legalization in exchange for their support of the status quo (Volkov 2002). Subnational leaders were not only able to prevent the rise of protest movements of local residents, but also to control collective-action in their regions and cities which they used as an instrument of organized pressure against the Centre (Robertson 2007). In some ethnic-based republics of Russia ethno-political mobilization was successfully used as an instrument of monopoly of ethnic elites in the framework of decentralized SNA (Lankina 2004). The weakness of political parties in the provinces (Golosov 2004) gave a free hand to non-party-affiliated regional leaders, who maintained their power monopoly despite the holding of regular competitive gubernatorial and mayoral elections (the share of incumbents’ losses in these elections has been substantially reduced since the mid-1990s) (Golosov 2008, Konitzer 2005). By the late 1990s, subnational elites had turned into key actors of nation-wide politics, if not ‘veto players’ in federal elections. During the 1999 State Duma elections, the pre-election coalition ‘Fatherland – All Russia’ had been formed by influential subnational leaders. It claimed the role of the new ‘party of power’, but it lost the election due to a number of factors, including the inability of its participants to resolve collective action problems (Hale 2006). As for the Kremlin, it was unable to prevent the spread of decentralized SNA, but attempted to build ad hoc alliances with subnational leaders in order to secure its power during national elections. This led to a policy of the ‘selective appeasement’ of some rebellious regions (Treisman 1999) and the spontaneous devolution of exclusive privileges to other provinces. It is not surprising therefore, that most observers evaluated these trends in a very critical tone (Mitrokhin 2001, Stoner-Weiss 2006). Apparently, many features of decentralized SNA in Russia in the 1990s were similar to those of US cities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In both instances, SNA regimes demonstrated trends of patrimonial rule and monopolist control at the subnational level, the drive towards political influence at the nation-wide level and attempts at building monopolies on national-subnational linkages. In addition, there were other similarities between Russia in the 1990s and the US during the ‘golden age’: the weakness of nation-wide political parties and the ad hoc affiliation of local leaders with them, the high levels of economic monopolism, widespread corruption and ‘state capture’ by economic interest

98

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

groups (Volkov 2008). But important differences exist between the Russian and American cases. First, unlike in the US, in Russia no substantial demands for the weakening of SNA regimes emerged ‘from below’ and no equivalents of the progressive movement emerged. The reasons for the absence of local demands for the dismantling SNA regimes were related not only to the presence of deeply embedded patron-client ties in Russia (Afanas’ev 2000) and to the weakness of alternative forms of coordination at the level of civil society, but also to the wider context in which the complex transformation of the 1990s took place, when the economic recession encouraged all meaningful local actors to preserve the status quo rather than to undermine it. Second, whilst in the US, under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, nation-wide political actors established informal alliances with the progressive movement in the struggle for undermining ‘political machines’ both ‘from below’ and ‘from above’, in Russia, the Centre had no incentives for building such alliances. In the 1990s, nation-wide political actors had no resources for the struggle against SNA and were forced to accept it as a matter of fact: in the 2000s they used opportunities for co-optation of SNA regimes ‘from above’ into the nation-wide authoritarian regime. The turning point of subnational authoritarianism in Russia was related to three major events. (1) The financial meltdown of 1998, which demonstrated the primary importance of Centre-regional relations for Russia’s development and formed a kind of public demand for re-centralization from major nation-wide political and economic actors (Mitrokhin 2001: 74). (2) The active involvement of subnational elites in the coalition ‘Fatherland – All Russia’, which lost during the 1999 State Duma elections to the pro-Kremlin bloc ‘Unity’, endorsed by Vladimir Putin (Golosov 2004, Hale 2006). (3) The wave of economic growth of the 2000s, which led to the spread of nation-wide business actors from Moscow into the periphery, also contributed to the dismantling of entry barriers to local markets (Zubarevich 2002). The recentralization policies initiated in 2000 by Putin (Gel’man 2009) became a major response to these challenges. The aim was to re-establish the Centre’s control over the coercive and distributive capacities of the Russian state. As a result we have witnessed administrative recentralization (including the reestablishment of federal controls over regional branches of the power ministries) and recentralization of economic resources (including tax reform, which concentrated financial flows in the federal rather than subnational coffers). But how did recentralization affect SNA regimes in Russia? The re-establishment of the Centre’s control over regional and local domains in the early 2000s led to a weakening of subnational actors in nation-wide politics. Nonetheless, the employment of the centralized state apparatus was the only enforcement tool which the Kremlin could employ to control subnational leaders. However, the Centre was faced with major constraints, because it possessed limited capacity to impose control over SNA regimes, which by the early 2000s had been able to weaken the autonomy of potential oppositional actors, such as local business, legislatures, branches of nation-wide political parties or NGO’s

Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia

99

(Golosov 2008: 25-26). Under these circumstances, the Kremlin applied new tools of control over regional and local politics – institutional changes and, in particular, the spread of party politics (but not party competition) from the national to the subnational level. Whilst in the Latin American cases, in the context of political democratization, these tools were employed to dismantle subnational authoritarianism (Gibson 2005), in Russia, in the context of creating an authoritarian regime they were used by the Centre to co-opt SNA regimes. In 2003, the Kremlin imposed the use of mixed electoral systems for regional legislative elections in order to increase the influence of nation-wide parties (first of all, UR, the major pro-Kremlin party) at the subnational level (Gel’man 2008, Reuter and Remington 2009). But the impact of this new electoral legislation on the Kremlin’s control over subnational leaders was rather limited. In 2003-2004 UR was successful in regional and local elections only if and when its branches were puppets of regional governors and/or city mayors, who had no incentives to put all their eggs into one basket, and often spread their political support across various nation-wide parties. However, the introduction of mixed electoral systems encouraged party competition at the subnational level which led to a choice of political alternatives which undermined decentralized SNA (Golosov 2008: 2829). But the Kremlin was oriented towards the preservation of its power monopoly and the regime’s continuity in the wake of the 2007-2008 national elections. Thus, the Centre had more incentives to co-opt subnational ‘political machines’ than to dismantle them. The abolition of the popular elections of regional chief executives in 2004 was a logical outcome of the policy of recentralization (Gel’man 2009). As for city mayors, their popular elections were not abolished in the country as a whole, but in many regions and cities UR initiated the replacement of elected mayors by appointed city managers, who by and large were controlled by the governors (de facto appointed by the Centre) and/or by UR branches (Gel’man and Lankina 2008). The introduction of the de facto appointment of regional chief executives paved the way for a new informal contract between the Centre and subnational leaders, which resolved the problem of mutual commitments and eliminated barriers to the transformation of UR into a fully-fledged dominant party (Reuter and Remington 2009). Institutional changes also provided new incentives to subnational leaders, who were forced to be loyal to UR and were no longer able to diversify their political investments (Golosov 2008: 30). It is not surprising that during the 2007 State Duma elections 65 out of 85 regional chief executives were included in UR’s party list (Gel’man 2008), whilst in the 2003 parliamentary elections, less than half of the regional leaders had joined the UR ranks. The Centre, from its position, attempted to keep the incumbent regional leaders in power (Titkov 2007). The capacity to control subnational electoral politics by any means possible, rather than effective management, was the best predictor of the survival of appointed governors and city mayors. The compromise between national and subnational leaders was achieved according to a deal which allowed the regions to maintain their ‘power monopolies’ as long as they delivered the votes to the Kremlin and

100

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

‘guaranteed the “right” election results’ (Golosov 2008: 33); this contract cemented the foundations of ‘electoral authoritarianism’ (Schedler 2006) in Russia. In fact, the centralization of SNA and the replacement of its political and institutional bases from personalist to party-based mechanisms strengthened subnational regimes, as the ‘political monopoly’ of the governors was now conflated with the monopoly of ‘United Russia’ and its control over the key elected posts at the regional and local levels (Golosov 2008: 30). The economic base of these regimes was maintained through (1) politically motivated exchanges of resources between federal, regional and local governments in a manner of a ‘political business-cycle’, although these exchanges involved subnational elites rather than citizens (Starodubtsev 2008) and, (2) large nation-wide companies, which substantially expanded at the subnational level in the 2000s and were interested in the maintenance of the status quo. The social bases of subnational (as well as nation-wide) authoritarianism also expanded in the 2000s due to the rise of an urban middle class, which was also interested in the maintenance of the status quo. In sum, in the 2000s Russia established a new centralized party-based SNA, which is rather different from both the centralized bureaucratic SNA (which has been formed in post-Soviet Central Asia and Belarus) and the decentralized SNA of the 1990s. Its features are more close to the above-mentioned experience of Southern Italy: the dominance of patron-client ties, negative incentives for loyalty of local actors and ordinary citizens, small side payments from subnational ruling groups and the lack of meaningful actors able to challenge SNA regimes ‘from below’ (in the manner of the progressive movement in the US). However, SNA regimes in contemporary Russia operate in an environment where there is a political monopoly of the dominant party, UR, at both the national and the subnational level, which is similar to the cases of Mexico under PRI and of the Soviet Union. A comparison between contemporary subnational regimes in Russia and practices of regional and local government under Communist rule reveals a number of parallels. Today, Russia’s regions and cities are governed by officials, de facto appointed from the Centre, with the formal approval of local elites. Their methods of solving major economic tasks – such as territorial development and inflow of external resources – are still dependent upon the success of informal lobbying at the Centre. Their room for manoeuvre at the subnational level and beyond is constrained by the constellation of economic interest groups and their by-products, such as ‘localism’ and ‘departmentalism’ in the regions and cities (Gel’man, Ryzhenkov and Brie 2003). Even the forms of ‘state corporatism’ which have been instigated at the local levels (Petrov 2007) are similar to that which was present during the Communist period (Rutland 1993). However, UR is not a reincarnation of the Communist Party (Gel’man 2008), the role of ‘Gazprom’ and other large companies is very different from the unilateral dominance displayed by Soviet branch ministries, and governors and city mayors have not become ‘post-Soviet prefects’ (Hough 1969). Nonetheless, the non-competitive

Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia

101

nature of both national and subnational regimes and their monopolist economic bases, based on rents, demonstrate striking similarities between the patterns of Soviet and post-Soviet SNA. Moreover, SNA regimes in contemporary Russia are faced with the same problems of principal-agent relationships, as were their predecessors in the Soviet Union 30-40 years ago. The Centre (as was the case in the Communist period) attempted to minimize the costs of its control over local elites through the use of relatively cheap tools such as the selective redistribution of rents among subnational lobbyists and the selective punishment of secondrank officials. As yet, neither the apparatus of the central state, nor the dominant party, UR, have succeeded in resolving these issues. Moreover, the spontaneous transfer of resources from the Centre to some regional leaders (especially in the ethnic-based republics), which has arisen out of the above-mentioned informal contract of ‘loyalty in exchange for non-intervention’, has intensified principalagent problems. Subnational authoritarianism in Russia in the 2000s has undergone a major transformation from a decentralized to a centralized party-based model in the manner of ‘back in the USSR’. Should we expect that SNA patterns in Russia will continue in terms of its developmental trajectory and long-term duration? Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia: Future Prospects? The formation of a centralized party-based form of SNA in Russia in the 2000s was the logical consequence of major trends in Russia’s development – (1) the recentralization of the state against the background of economic growth (before 2008) (Gel’man 2009, Petrov 2007) and (2) building of an authoritarian regime, based upon the dominant party (Gel’man 2008, Golosov 2008, Reuter and Remington 2009). In the 1990s, Russia’s nation-wide political regime combined democratic and authoritarian features, which coexisted alongside decentralized SNA. Historically, the US and recent Latin American experiences suggest (Gibson 2005), this kind of co-existence is not unique. Local regimes of decentralized SNA served as roadblocks for Russia’s development. But the conditions for undermining them ‘from below’ did not emerge in post-Communist Russia, while the Centre had no interest to weaken them ‘from above’. Yet, the Centre weakened local elites in the 2000s, but these actions were purely instrumental and oriented towards the subordination of local regimes (Golosov 2008). However, the Kremlin effectively used subnational authoritarianism to maintain its own dominance over society whilst subnational regimes were incorporated into it and subnational leaders were co-opted into the dominant party UR (Reuter and Remington 2009). Unlike decentralized SNA, which might be viewed as a temporary phenomenon during processes of state-building and institution-building, centralized SNA could produce more sustainable effects. Its sustainability is based upon (1) the concentration of the coercive and the distributive capacity of the Centre, which is able to prevent the undermining of the status quo in

102

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

subnational politics ‘from above’ and (2) the lack of meaningful actors able to undermine it ‘from below’. In this respect, centralized party-based SNA is an even more sustainable version of subnational authoritarianism. The experience of such regimes, ranging from Southern Italy to Mexico under PRI and the Soviet Union, demonstrates that these regimes were demolished as by-products of the collapse or major transformation of nation-wide regimes and/or party systems, rather than as a result of their local-based internal evolution. Thus, one should not expect that in the short-term perspective subnational authoritarianism in Russia will be substantially weakened or abolished without special efforts. And even the liberalization and democratization of the nation-wide political regime in Russia would not guarantee the weakening of subnational authoritarianism. Besides historically embedded legacies of the Soviet (and even pre-Soviet) period, the new institutional legacy of the 1990s and, in particular, of the 2000s, also prevents the demise of SNA in Russia (Golosov 2008); its overthrow would require significant and serious efforts of both nation-wide actors ‘from above’ (Gibson 2005) and pro-democratic local-based actors (such as civil society) ‘from below’. On the contrary, one might expect that the preservation of a nation-wide authoritarian regime in Russia will lead to the conservation (if not stagnation) of subnational authoritarianisms at the regional and local levels, at least in the short term. At the moment, SNA regimes serve as one of the major pillars of the nation-wide authoritarian regime in Russia, thus it is unlikely that the Centre will provide strong incentives for the transformation of SNA in Russia’s regions and cities which could overturn their current trends. Moreover, recent comparative studies of SNA regimes in Africa (Boone 2003) and Latin America (Gibson 2005) convincingly demonstrated that the nature of their evolutionary trajectories is path-dependent and often self-enforcing even regardless of the changing nationwide political and economic contexts. Whilst the embeddedness of institutions of SNA regimes in Russia is entrenched due to the complex legacies of the Soviet period (Gel’man, Ryzhenkov and Brie 2003) and due to political consequences of the reforms of the 1990s and the 2000s (Golosov 2008), attempts at consolidation and co-optation of SNA regimes into the ‘power vertical’ have prevented possible changes in both subnational and nation-wide politics and governance, thus dooming the preservation of the status quo. However, in the long run, not only the dynamics of the nation-wide political regime, but also some special factors of local and regional developments might affect the dynamics of SNA in Russia. One might consider the effects of various pressures on local regimes, such as: (1) the pressure ‘from above’. If and when the Centre will need more efficient regional and local government in Russia, this requirement might force the Centre towards a new decentralization of governance, which could include the weakening of its administrative and political controls over local regimes. (2) The pressure ‘from below’. Economic development in Russia’s regions (and, in particular, in big cities), the rise of contradictions between the Centre and the periphery, as well as between regions and cities might produce

Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia

103

incentives for local-based actors and encourage their systematic involvement in the advancement of political interests at the local and regional levels. The constellation of pressures of ‘producers’ of local development (that is, business) and ‘consumers’ of local public goods (that is, citizens) could initiate some cumulative effects and could even lead to the emergence of a Russian equivalent to the US Progressive Movement, despite the fact that presently the political opportunities for the rise of such a movement are rather unfavourable. (3) Finally, one should not forget about the pressures ‘from outside’ due to the more active involvement of Russia’s cities and regions with the outside world. The intensity of these linkages will increase over the next several decades, and such trends will strengthen the influence of the international community on subnational regimes in Russia, even if, at the present time, this impact is rather modest (Gel’man and Lankina 2008). In the long run, the development of subnational authoritarianism in Russia will affect the success of democratization and state-building at the national level. In the 1990s, Russia’s transition faced multiple and protracted ‘growing pains’. A key negative factor here was the formation of decentralized subnational authoritarianism, which prevented effective state-building and thwarted the ability of democratic institutions to function. However, in the 2000s centralized subnational party-based authoritarianism was formed in Russia and the above tendencies developed the symptoms of chronic disease. To find a cure for this disease will take some time and will be a highly complex process, which should include major institutional changes and might be rather conflict-ridden. But whether or not the demise of subnational as well as nation-wide authoritarianism will happen under the current generation of Russia’s politicians and citizens remains to be seen. References Afanas’ev, M. 2000. Klientelizm i rossiiskaya gosudarstvennost’. Moscow: Moscow Public Science Foundation. Banfield, E. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. Banfield, E. and Wilson, J.Q. 1966. City Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Boone C. 2003. Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brie, M. 2004. The Moscow political regime: The emergence of a new urban political machine, in The Politics of Local Government in Russia, edited by A. Evans and V. Gel’man. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 203-234. Cornelius, W. 1973. Nation building, participation, and distribution: The politics of social reform under Cardenas, in Crisis, Choice, and Change: Historical Studies of Political Development, edited by G. Almond, S. Flanagan and R. Mundt. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 392-498.

104

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Chubb, J. 1982. Patronage, Power and Poverty in Southern Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dahl, R. 1961. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Erie, S. 1988. Rainbow’s End: Irish Americans and Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840-1985. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Geddes, B. 2003. Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Gel’man, V. 2008. Party politics in Russia: From competition to hierarchy. EuropeAsia Studies, 60(6), 913-930. Gel’man, V. 2009. Leviathan’s return: The policy of recentralisation in contemporary Russia, in Federalism and Local Politics in Russia, edited by C. Ross and A. Campbell. London: Routledge, 1-24. Gel’man, V. and Lankina T. 2008. Authoritarian versus democratic diffusions: Explaining institutional choices in Russia’s local government. Post-Soviet Affairs, 24(1), 40-62. Gel’man, V., Ryzhenkov, S. and Brie, M. 2003. Making and Breaking Democratic Transitions: The Comparative Politics of Russia’s Regions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Gibson, E. 2005. Boundary Control: Subnational Authoritarianism in Democratic Countries. World Politics, 58(1), 101-132. Golosov, G.V. 2004. Political Parties in the Regions of Russia: Democracy Unclaimed. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Golosov, G.V. 2008. Elektoral’nyi avtoritarizm v Rossii. Pro et Contra, 12(1), 22-35. Hale, H.E. 2006. Why Not Parties in Russia? Democracy, Federalism and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hirschman, A.O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Response to Decline in Firms, Organisations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hopkin, J. and Mastropaolo, A. 2001. From patronage and clientelism: Comparing the Italian and Spanish experience, in Clitentelism, Interests and Democratic Representation: The European Experience in Historical and Comparative Perspective, edited by S. Piattoni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 152-171. Hough, J. 1969. The Soviet Prefects: The Local Party Organs in Industrial Decision-Making. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jones Luong, P. 2002. Institutional Change and Political Continuity in PostSoviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kern, R. (ed.). 1973. The Caciques: Oligarchic Politics and the System of Caciquismo in the Luso-Hispanic World. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Key, V.O. Jr. 1949. Southern Politics in State and Nation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Subnational Authoritarianism in Russia

105

Konitzer, A. 2005. Voting for Russia’s Governors: Regional Elections and Accountability under Yeltsin and Putin. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press. Lineberry, R.L. and Fowler, E.P. 1967. Reformism and public policies in American cities. American Political Science Review, 61(3), 701-716. Mitrokhin, S. 2001. Predposylki i osnovnye etapy detsentralizatii gosudarstvennoi vlasti v Rossii, in Tsentr-regiony-mestnoe samoupravlenie, edited by G. Luchterhandt-Mikhaleva, S. Ryzhenkov. Moscow and St. Petersburg: Lentii Sad, 47-87. Moses, J.C. 2008. Who has led Russia? Russian regional political elites, 19542006. Europe-Asia Studies, 60(1), 1-24. O’Donnell, G. 1988. Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Argentina 1966-1973 in Comparative Perspective. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Olson, M. 1982. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pappe, Y. 2000. Treugol’nik sobstvennikov v regional’noi promyshlennosti, in Politika i ekonomika v regional’nom izmerienii, edited by V. Klimanov and N. Zubarevich. Moscow and St. Petersburg: Letnii Sad. 109-120. Petrov, N. 2007. Korporativizm vs. regionalism. Pro et Contra, 11(4-5), 75-89. Putnam, R.D. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Reuter, O.J. and Remington, T. 2009. Dominant party regimes and the commitment problem: The case of United Russia. Comparative Political Studies, 42(4), 501-526. Robertson, G. 2007. Strikes and labour organisations in hybrid regimes. American Political Science Review, 101(4), 781-798. Rutland, P. 1993. The Politics of Economic Stagnation in the Soviet Union: The Role of Local Party Organs in Economic Management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schedler, A. (ed.) 2006. Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Scott, J.C. 1969. Corruption, machine politics, and political change. American Political Science Review, 63(4), 1142-1158. Scott, J.C. 1972. Patron-client politics and political change in Southeast Asia. American Political Science Review, 66(1), 91-113. Shefter, M. 1994. Political Parties and the State: The American Historical Experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Skowronek, S. 1982. Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Starodubtsev, A. 2009. Politicheskie i sotsial’no-ekonomicheskie faktory realizatsii regional’noi politiki v Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Candidate of Political Science dissertation, European University, St. Petersburg.

106

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Stokes, S. 2005. Perverse accountability: A formal model of machine politics with evidence from Argentina. American Political Science Review, 99(3), 315-325. Stoner-Weiss, K. 2006. Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Titkov, A. 2007. Krizis naznachenii. Pro et Contra, 11(4-5), 90-103. Treisman, D. 1999. After the Deluge: Regional Crises and Political Consolidation in Russia. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Volkov, V. 2002. Violent Entrepreneurs: The Role of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Volkov, V. 2008. Standard Oil and Yukos in the context of early capitalism in the United States and Russia. Demokratizatsiya, 16(3), 240-264. Warner, C. 2001. Mass parties and clientelism in France and Italy, in Clitentelism, Interests and Democratic Representation: The European Experience in Historical and Comparative Perspective, edited by S. Piattoni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 122-151. Zubarevich, N. 2002. Prishel, uvidel, pobedil? Krupnyi biznes i regional’naya vlast’. Pro et Contra, 7(1), 107-120.

Chapter 6

Fascistoid Russia: Putin’s Political System in Comparative Context1 Alexander J. Motyl

All the post-Communist states of the former Soviet empire have experienced significant change in the last 20 years, but Russia’s systemic transformations since Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika may be most dramatic. In contrast to other post-Communist states, Russia passed from totalitarianism to several years of both authoritarianism and democracy – only to abandon democracy completely and embark on a transition to what is arguably fascism. In using this term, I am suggesting both the magnitude of Russia’s change in recent years and the direction in which it has changed. No less important, I am also suggesting that the terms scholars have developed for Russia – such as patrimonial or tsarist – are inadequate, primarily because they fail to place Russia on a spectrum of comparative politicalsystem types. This chapter therefore examines fascism as a system type within a typology of political systems. It also suggests why Vladimir Putin’s Russia has enough of the defining characteristics of fascism to qualify as fascistoid – that is, as moving toward fascism – and why Russia alone moved along so exceptionally turbulent a systemic path. Finally, the chapter examines whether a fascistoid or fascist Russia is likely to be stable. Systems and System Types Social scientists have since Plato and Aristotle characterized countries or states according to their dominant features, as only such an exercise permits them to engage in comparisons and produce theoretical generalizations. A political system – a term that I shall, despite their conceptual differences, use interchangeably with state in this chapter – consists of those characteristics that define the politics, broadly conceived, of a country. Those characteristics concern established institutions, structures, relations and attitudes – and not individuals 1  Longer and different versions of this article appeared as Motyl, A.J. 2009. Russland: Volk, Staat und Führer: Elemente eines faschistischen Systems, Osteuropa, 59(1), 109124 and Motyl, A.J. 2010. Russia’s Systemic Transformations since Perestroika: From Totalitarianism to Authoritarianism to Democracy – to Fascism? The Harriman Review, 17(2), 1-14.

108

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

or policies. The disassociation of policies from systems means that, for instance, democratic systems may conduct non-democratic policies and still be democratic systems, while authoritarian systems may pursue democratic policies and still be authoritarian systems. The three dominant system types encountered in modern social-science literature are totalitarianism, authoritarianism and democracy, which differ, to put it over-simply, from one another in the degree to which the ruling authorities exert control and the society enjoys political and economic freedom. Totalitarian systems are most controlling and their populations enjoy least freedom; democratic systems are least controlling and their populations enjoy most freedom; and authoritarian systems are somewhere between the two. Obviously, there is no system that exerts total control over everything, just as there is no system that is perfectly democratic – which may mean, ironically, that authoritarianism is the least ideal of the system types. The systemic types, and their features, that I employ in this chapter are presented in Table 6.1. The categories of totalitarianism, authoritarianism and democracy are relatively straightforward and, I trust, uncontroversial and require no further elaboration. The fifth column, however, which describes the features of fascism, does require a closer look, if only because there is little scholarly consensus on what fascism is. Fascism as a Political System Let us start our investigation of fascism by examining five definitions, which nicely illustrate both the diversity of opinions and approaches regarding fascism and the weaknesses of existing definitions. Juan Linz (1976: 12-13) defines fascism as: a hyper-nationalist, often pan-nationalist, anti-parliamentary, anti-liberal, anti-communist, populist and therefore anti-proletarian, partly anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois, anti-clerical, or at least, non-clerical movement, with the aim of national social integration through a single party and corporative representation not always equally emphasized; with a distinctive style and rhetoric, it relied on activist cadres ready for violent action combined with electoral participation to gain power with totalitarian goals by a combination of legal and violent tactics. The ideology and above all the rhetoric appeals for the incorporation of a national cultural tradition selectively in the new synthesis in response to new social classes, new social and economic problems, and with new organizational conceptions of mobilization and participation, differentiate them from conservative parties.

According to Robert O. Paxton (2004: 218):

Fascistoid Russia

109

fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elite groups, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Michael Mann (2004: 13) says that ‘fascism is the pursuit of a transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism’. Stanley G. Payne (1994: 14) writes that: fascism may be defined as a form of revolutionary ultra-nationalism for national rebirth that is based on a primarily vitalist philosophy, is structured on extreme elitism, mass mobilization, and the Führerprinzip, positively values violence as end as well as means and tends to normalize war and/or the military virtues.

According to Roger Scruton (1982: 169): Fascism is characterized by the following features (not all of which need to be present in any of its recognized instances): nationalism; hostility to democracy, to egalitarianism, and to the values of the liberal enlightenment; the cult of the leader, and admiration for his special qualities; a respect for collective organization, and a love of the symbols associated with it, such as uniforms, parades, and army discipline.

Linz’s and Paxton’s definitions are, in reality, historically-grounded descriptions of movements and not definitions of a system type. Although Linz (1976: 12-13) has a point in emphasizing the ‘anti’ character of fascism – if only because the definition of any object necessarily entails stating what it is not – he underplays the no less important part of any definitional exercise – stating what an object is. Paxton (2004: 218) is surely right to suggest that fascism is a ‘form of political behavior’ (what is not a form of political behaviour?), but that form appears to be primarily rooted in a psychological condition characterized by obsessive and compensatory attitudes and only secondarily in political phenomena. Mann’s (2004: 13) definition actually is a definition, but its emphasis on ‘pursuit’ reduces fascism to an activity with a set of goals – a characterization that, like Paxton’s, applies to most human endeavours and has the effect of removing fascism from the realm of movements or regimes or systems or, for that matter, even politics. Like Mann, Payne provides an actual definition, but his differs from the others in reducing fascism to an ideology – ultra-nationalism – which tells us little about fascism as a system of rule. Scruton’s is a list of family characteristics that sidesteps the question of whether fascism is an ideology, movement, or system, but it does have the advantage of being pithy and clear.

Table 6.1

Political Systems and Their Features

Defining Characteristics

Totalitarianism

Authoritarianism

Democracy

Fascism

Politics

Single hegemonic party; staged elections; rubberstamp parliament

Dominant party; rigged elections; subordinate parliament

Multiple parties; genuine elections; autonomous parliament

Domineering party; rigged elections; rubber-stamp parliament

Leader

Cult of supreme leader

Strong man

President, premier

Hyper-masculine cult of supreme leader

Ideology

All-embracing

Statism and hypernationalism

Popular sovereignty

Statism and hyper-nationalism

Popular attitude to regime

Widespread support

Acquiescence

Support

Widespread support

Economy

Central planning of nonmarket economy

State alliance with Market economy dominant forces in market economy

State control of commanding heights of market economy

Pro-leader movement

Yes

No

No

Yes

Police/Army

Subordinate to party

Part of ruling elite

Subordinate to government

Part of ruling elite

Media/Society

Complete control

Domination

Free

Domination

Violence

Widespread

Selective

Minimal

Selective

Associated Characteristics

Source: Compiled by the author.

Fascistoid Russia

111

Despite these definitional difficulties and disagreements, it is noteworthy that Payne’s and Scruton’s defining characteristics overlap, while also resonating with many of the points made by Linz, Mann and Paxton. All five scholars more or less agree that fascism is hyper-nationalist, anti-democratic, elitist, leader-centered, mass-oriented or collectivist and vitalist. They disagree about violence and mass mobilization, with Payne and Paxton regarding both as central, and Scruton disregarding the former altogether and only hinting at the latter with his reference to collective organization and parades. Note also their points of disagreement with Linz. Payne, Paxton, Mann and Scruton say nothing about fascism’s supposedly anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois, anti-communist, or anti-proletarian qualities. These definitions point to three conclusions. First, we need to differentiate between fascist systems and fascist movements. Although they may share similar ideological goals and aspirations, political systems are established sets of institutions, structures, relations and attitudes, while movements are mass organizations that are ‘on the move’. Since fascist movements are far more numerous than fascist systems, most scholars defining fascism are actually defining fascist movements and not fascist systems (Nolte 1966). But, obviously, there is no reason for the two political formations to share the same exact characteristics. Second, we must appreciate that why fascist systems emerge is a question of causality and that the origins of things should not be confused with the characteristics, or definitions, of those things. In other words, it is perfectly possible for similar or identical fascist systems to be ‘caused’ by different factors at different times. The ‘anti’ qualities emphasized by Linz reflect the historical origins of inter-war fascisms and tell us more about causation than about system type. There is thus no reason to expect early-twenty-first- century fascisms to have the same causes as twentiethcentury fascisms. Just as there are many causes of nationalism, war, revolution, empire and so on, so too there may be many causes of fascism. And third, we need to dissociate the particular characteristics of particular historical fascisms from the defining characteristics of fascism as a system type. In the first case, there is no need to be especially rigorous about how systemic categories vary across systems (such as totalitarianism, authoritarianism, democracy and fascism) because the focus is on some country at some time; in the latter case, that kind of rigorous, controlled, cross-systemic comparison is the very point of the whole exercise. We cannot expect every example of fascism to be identical in every single respect to every other example of fascism. Nor should we think that every case of fascism must be identical to the Italian variant. Our goal should be to grasp those defining and associated features of fascism that define it on its own terms and in relation to other system types. Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism and Fascism Table 6.1 provides a comparative overview of the defining characteristics of totalitarian, authoritarian, democratic and fascist political systems. Unlike

112

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

democracies, fascist systems lack meaningful parliaments, judiciaries, parties, political contestation and elections. The key word here is meaningful: in fascist systems, as in all authoritarian or totalitarian systems, parliaments are rubberstamp institutions, judiciaries do what the leader tells them, opposition parties are marginal and electoral outcomes are preordained. Unlike totalitarian states, fascist states do not penetrate into every dimension of a country’s political, economic, social and cultural life; fascist states do not propound all-embracing ideologies that purport to answer all of life’s questions. Instead, like all authoritarian states, fascist states attempt only to influence and control these dimensions of life and they prefer to espouse limited worldviews. Like authoritarian systems, fascist systems are highly centralized and hierarchical, they give pride of place within the authority structure to soldiers and policemen, usually secret policemen, and they always have a domineering party that, in contrast to the single hegemonic party of totalitarian systems, may tolerate other parties but that, in contrast to the dominant parties characteristic of authoritarian systems, brooks no interference in its running of the political system. Like authoritarian states, fascist states limit freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Like authoritarian states, fascist states also reject socialism and embrace capitalism – which means that they tacitly acknowledge private property and the autonomy of capitalists. But this autonomy is circumscribed by substantial state intervention – ranging from simple dirigisme to occupation of the strategic heights to corporatism. And like authoritarian states, fascist states generally espouse some form of hyper-nationalism glorifying their nation and its fabulous past, present and future. But fascist states also go further than authoritarian states in fetishizing the state and its glory and power. Like totalitarian systems, fascist systems always have a supreme leader enjoying cult-like status. Run-of-the-mill authoritarian states typically connote images of dour old men ruling a sullen population. Totalitarian states generally connote images of wise patriarchs. Fascist leaders, in contrast, exude vigour and want to appear youthful, manly and active. These qualities of hyper-masculinity are most starkly evident in such fascist and fascistoid leaders as Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Juan Perón and Hugo Chávez, but they are lacking in such totalitarian and authoritarian autocrats as Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco, Augusto Pinochet, Nicolae Ceauşescu, or the Ayatollah Khomeini. A fascist leader may, like Mussolini, fit the historical stereotype and be hyper-masculine and histrionic or, like Putin, he may not and instead be hyper-masculine and cool.2 Fascist leaders also evoke and appeal to vitalism and vigour in the population and usually co-opt the young into their movements or parties. No less important, fascist states are popular and they always implicate the population in its own repression. Fascist states incorporate the population into the system of rule, promising it a grand and glorious future in exchange for its enthusiasm and support. Fascist leaders are especially popular, presenting themselves as the embodiments 2  Naturally, there is no reason that a woman cannot be hyper-masculine and cool.

Fascistoid Russia

113

of a nation’s best qualities and as the only hopes for its future. It is small wonder, therefore, that fascist and totalitarian systems are often characterized by parades and flag-waving. But pace Scruton, parades are not defining characteristics of either system – indeed, it would be bizarre if something that ephemeral were – but associated characteristics of such systems’ populist nature. The above similarities to and differences from totalitarianism and authoritarianism suggest that we may hazard a definition. I therefore define fascism as a non-democratic, non-socialist political system with a domineering party, a supreme leader, a hyper-masculine leader cult, a hyper-nationalist, statist ideology and an enthusiastically-supportive population. Is Putin’s Russia Fascist? Answering this question requires looking at the defining characteristics of fascism in the Russian context. • Non-democratic and non-socialist political system: Elections to the Duma and presidency are generally regarded as unfair and unfree – even though almost everyone agrees that Putin and his allies would win even if elections were fair and free. By the same token, the Duma has been effectively transformed into a rubber-stamp parliament, partly as a result of changes to its structure and procedures and mostly as a result of the dominance within it, and the larger political system, of the pro-presidential party of power, United Russia. To be sure, United Russia does not resemble twentieth-century fascist movements striving for power. The former is a loose agglomeration of mostly opportunists who boarded a regime-sponsored political band wagon; the latter were, like the Bolsheviks, cadre parties of true believers. A more apposite comparison would be with the Nazis or Fascists in power, by which time their ranks had been swelled by hangers-on and careerists and both had become popular container parties that only slightly resembled the militant movements from which they had sprung. At the same time, United Russia clearly does not – or does not yet – dominate all of Russia’s political, social, economic and cultural institutions and, in that sense, falls far short of the reality in Hitler’s Germany or Mussolini’s Italy. The claim that post-Soviet Russia is non-socialist requires, I trust, no elaboration; • Statism and hyper-nationalism: Although Russia lacks a coherent ideology of the sort encountered in the Soviet Union, fascist Italy, or Nazi Germany, the prevailing ideological currents, or discourse, clearly promote and glorify both the Russian state and the Russian people. The concept of ‘sovereign democracy’, for instance, is about a strong Russian state and not about democracy. Especially emblematic of this discourse is Putin’s Speech at the Reception on the Occasion of National Unity Day (2007), in which he emphasized the indivisible relationship between national unity, national

114

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

greatness and state strength. Russia’s official ideology of nationalism does fall short of the style and substance of Mussolini’s or Hitler’s extreme claims. Accordingly, Russians are great, as are their past and present and future, but – aside from official toleration and encouragement of Russian superciliousness toward other non-Russians – that greatness does not yet entail racism and overt ethnocentrism; • Hyper-masculine cult of supreme leader: Like Mussolini, Putin favours stylish black clothing that connotes toughness and seriousness. Like Mussolini, Putin likes being photographed in the presence of weapons and other instruments of war. And like Mussolini, Putin likes to show off his presumed physical prowess. The specially released late-2007 preelectoral video showing Putin in a variety of manly poses – on horseback, with automatic rifles, wading through a river – and usually bare-chested deserves particular attention and arguably represents a watershed in Putin’s self-representation.3 Not only is the video extraordinary in its blatant depiction of Putin as the quintessence of virility and a man’s man, but it is quite open in targeting the youngish female voter to whom, apparently, Putin’s ‘political technologists’ believed such gendered representations of masculinity would necessarily appeal; • Widespread popular support: Like Mussolini and Hitler, Putin enjoys enormous popular appeal. Despite the many ups and downs of his years in office, Russians have consistently supported him to the tune of 70 per cent plus. Like Hitler and Mussolini, Putin has restored law, order and stability – or at least the semblance thereof. Far more important, Putin has also restored Russians’ pride in themselves, their present and their past – in part by rehabilitating Stalin – and given Russians hope in their future. And like Hitler and Mussolini, Putin claims to be fulfilling nothing more than the people’s mandate. Is, then, Putin’s Russia fascist? As this checklist suggests, Russia is rather more than a simple authoritarian state. Some scholars have tried to capture this difference by employing such terms as patrimonial or tsarist. Anne Applebaum (2008) speaks of ‘Putinism’. Although these terms are fine as descriptive designations, they fail to locate today’s Russia on a spectrum of political systems and, thus, to convey the magnitude of the changes wrought by Putin. I suggest that the term fascism can therefore tell us just how much, as well as the direction in which, Russia has changed. To be sure, although Putin’s Russia possesses many of the defining characteristics of fascism, it does so only to a greater or lesser extent. Having emerged haphazardly only in the last few years, these characteristics have not yet assumed the form of a consolidated political system; nor is it clear that they are here to stay. In that sense, Russia today resembles Germany in 1933 or Italy in 3  This video is avaialble online at: www.russia.ru/putin/.

Fascistoid Russia

115

the early-to-mid-1920s. Russia could follow in their footsteps, or it could falter and find its way back to some form of democracy or authoritarianism. Located somewhere between authoritarianism and fascism, today’s Russia may therefore be termed fascistoid. Theoretical Approaches to Systemic Change One may explain Russia’s, or any country’s, systemic transformations as the product of (1) political culture; (2) structural or institutional forces; or (3) elite decisions – with the first two approaches reflecting ‘structure’ and the third reflecting ‘agency’ in the structure vs. agency debate. Cultural explanations that assume the persistence of cultural norms, attitudes, or discourses are best at explaining systemic continuities or reversions to past forms; they are generally weak when it comes to explaining breaks with the past. Structural and institutional explanations can explain persistence and change, but they cannot account for timing. Elite explanations can explain persistence, change and timing, but in being able to account for everything, they easily run the risk of being trivially true. In explaining the shift from totalitarianism to authoritarianism, a cultural explanation would focus on the growing gap that developed in the last two decades of Leonid Brezhnev’s rule between official Soviet ideology, discourse and norms on the one hand and popular ideology, discourse and norms on the other. Such an explanation would then emphasize how the notion of systemic failure was ‘constructed’ by opposition elites – in particular the non-Russian popular fronts that emerged during perestroika – who managed to delegitimize the authorities, mobilize their own discursive constituencies and create systemic collapse. A cultural explanation would then emphasize the emergence of a democratic discourse of popular sovereignty in the late-perestroika years, Yeltsin’s appropriation of democratic rhetoric in the aftermath of the failed August 1991 coup and the resultant discursive momentum toward a democratic form of government. Seen in this light, democracy could never really have taken hold because, despite the temporary emergence of a democratic discourse, Russian political culture, as it developed in the course of hundreds of years, is non-democratic and imperial and Russians like strong rule by strong men – a point the Marquis de Custine would probably have endorsed. The drift away from democracy was therefore inevitable. Russians were therefore grateful to Putin for having restored both stability, which they supposedly value above all else, and their sense of pride, in themselves and in their formerly humiliated country, great Mother Russia. In explaining the shift from totalitarianism to authoritarianism, a structural/ institutional explanation would focus on the internal systemic contradictions and inefficiencies of totalitarianism and argue that totalitarianism was fated, as in Karl Marx’s understanding of capitalism, to collapse. That it collapsed at the time it did was due to Gorbachev’s institutionally induced inability to appreciate – indeed, to see – the importance to the USSR’s stability of the nationality factor and unwillingness

116

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

to stop perestroika from eviscerating the Soviet body politic. A structural/ institutional explanation would then highlight the collapse of the Communist Party, as an all-embracing institution that defined the nature of the political system, and its replacement by a plethora of parties, movements and groupings that began competing for power in a manner that approximated competition and democracy. Finally, democracy had to fail from this perspective because the construction of stable democratic institutions was incompatible with Russia’s inheritance of the institutional legacies of totalitarian and imperial collapse. An elite explanation of the shift from totalitarianism to authoritarianism would focus on Gorbachev’s decisions, first, to implement glasnost and perestroika and, second, not to rein them in once disintegrative processes had been unleashed. The rise of Yeltsin as president of Russia and the emergence with him of a counterforce to Gorbachev, the gradual transformation of the Communist bosses of the non-Russian republics into national Communists supporting sovereignty and then independence, and the inability of Gorbachev to meet the challenge they posed to him and his authority would round out the picture through 1991. Yeltsin’s ability to outflank his opponents by employing force against the recalcitrant parliament in late 1993, his decision to hold more or less fair and free presidential elections in 1996, tolerate party competition and refrain from pursuing unlimited presidential power would be the key factors behind the emergence in the 1990s of a weak form of democracy. Finally, an elite explanation would focus on Putin the ex-KGB officer who packed the ruling elites with his allies from among the siloviki, emasculated the regions and progressively dismantled the country’s democratic structures and replaced them with fascist-like ones. Although these approaches are different, the fact that they all do an adequate job of explaining Russia’s systemic transformations suggests, first, that Russia’s move toward fascism may have been over-determined and, second, that we may therefore employ all three in explaining Russia’s fall from totalitarianism and drift through authoritarianism and democracy toward fascism. The next section will attempt to craft a coherent account of Russia’s systemic transformations that draws on all three approaches within a framework that employs two key concepts – totalitarianism and empire. Explaining Russian Exceptionalism Russia’s exceptional trajectory – from totalitarianism to authoritarianism to democracy to fascism – is the result of its exceptional status within the Soviet system of rule. In contrast to all the other post-Communist states, Russia was the core of both the totalitarian system and the Soviet empire. That is, although the Russian population suffered enormously from the misrule of the Communist Party, the Soviet secret police and their leaders, the institutions that ran the totalitarian and imperial systems were lodged in Russia, were run by Russian cadres and

Fascistoid Russia

117

employed Russian language and culture as instruments of rule. Russians also viewed these institutions and the Soviet state and empire as fundamentally theirs. The collapse of totalitarianism and empire thus had different implications for non-Russians and Russians. First, collapse meant expanded freedom for all the peoples of the former Soviet empire, but for Russians it also, if not primarily, meant strategic defeat and intense national humiliation. Second, while collapse forced non-Russians to embark on ideologically legitimated positive projects of nationand state-building, it forced Russians to salvage what remained of a superpower and great state. Third, collapse bequeathed weak and underdeveloped institutions and armies to the formerly Soviet non-Russian states in the ‘near abroad’, and relatively coherent, experienced and well-staffed governing institutions, a secret police and a powerful army to the Russians. In other words, collapse stacked the cards against democracy in Russia. The population, whose political culture was anti-democratic to start with, viewed nation-building as being primarily about reestablishing its lost position of glory as a ‘great people’ and state-building as being primarily about reestablishing the ‘great Russian state’. No other population in the former Soviet space was encumbered with such a mind-set. Worse, the Russian Federation inherited the very institutions – still powerful central ministries and a strong and powerful secret police and army – that were least inclined to support democratic projects. Further complicating things was the economic collapse and breakdown in law and order that afflicted Russia and every other post-Communist state in the 1990s. All elites and populations in all the states had to cope with the resulting disorder and many were tempted to adopt or prolong authoritarian solutions, but only in Russia did this time of troubles become transformed into a discursive mantra that blamed democracy for all of Russia’s ills and seemed to justify a widespread systemic transformation toward dictatorial rule. Putin’s ability to assume power in 1999-2000, to consolidate his rule quickly and to attain the status of a popular ‘national leader’ therefore had as much to do with the condition of post-Soviet Russia as with any personal talents he may have possessed. Putin, the career KGB officer, represented the ideal ‘man on horseback’ who would end the besporyadok and khaos (disorder and chaos) that was created by the collapse of empire and totalitarianism and that was so repugnant to an authoritarian political culture. That same background also provided him with invaluable contacts with the already large percentage of siloviki who had managed to infiltrate the establishment in the 1990s. Unlike Mussolini and Hitler, Putin was an insider who neither had to march on the capital nor wage street battles and sit in gaol. And because Putin emerged from within the system, he did not need – or have – a fully-fledged ideological program for storming the citadels of power. Instead, he could proceed to construct a fascistoid state without declaring that he would do so – and, perhaps, without even knowing that he would do so. Unsurprisingly, post-Soviet Russia’s developmental path resembles that of post-World War I Germany. Both countries lost empires and experienced profound humiliation. Both countries then experienced extreme economic hardship under

118

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

the stewardship of weak and corrupt democratic regimes. Both countries blamed democracy and its internal and external supporters for their ills. Both countries turned to hyper-nationalism, state fetishization and strong-man rule. In both countries strong men seized power – by legitimate means, by the way – and exploited popular willingness to submit to domination to establish their dictatorial rule. Seen in this light, fascism, pace Marxist theories thereof, is not so much the product of the ‘crisis of capitalism’, as of the ‘crisis of democracy’ in weakened and humiliated states with non-democratic political cultures. Challenges for Fascistoid Russia Although totalitarianism decays in the long run, it tends to be stable in the short to medium term, as all its components reinforce total control – until they do not, at which point the slide toward breakdown may be inevitable. Authoritarian systems are stable as long as they can repress populations – which becomes increasingly hard to do over time, as the costs of repression mount and revenues usually decline. Democracies may be the most stable, especially in the long term, as they are generally able to enjoy some degree of popular support, minimize the costs of compliance and promote economic growth. Fascism may be least stable in the short, medium and long terms, generating three contradictions, or weaknesses, relating to the supreme leader, the willingness of the population to obey and the effect of fascist rhetoric and behaviour on neighbouring states. (1) Cults of vigorous leaders cannot be sustained as leaders inevitably grow old or decrepit. A continual rejuvenation of the supreme leader might solve the problem were it not for the fact that fascist leaders do not want to give up power. Sooner or later, fascist leaders lose their core legitimacy, and when they do, both their followers and the submissive population begin to look for alternative idols. Putin, although young and vigorous today, will not remain young forever. And an old and decrepit Russian leader will not be able to make the case for youth, vigour and manliness in typical fascist style. Moreover, fascist regimes are invariably fragmented. Extreme centralization of power in a supreme leader is supposed to ensure elite coordination and submission; instead, it inclines elites to compete for the leader’s favour, to amass resources and build regional or bureaucratic empires and not to cooperate with their colleagues-turned-competitors. Fascist regimes are thus brittle, and when supreme leaders falter – as they inevitably do, especially during times of crisis – or leave the scene, successor elites engage in cutthroat competition to assume the mantle of authority. In so doing, however, they not only weaken the regime, but they also expose the system as less than the imposing monolith projected to the submissive population. (2) Popular humiliation and the willingness to submit to unconditional authority are weak foundations on which to build states. Sooner or later, Russians will not feel humiliated and, when that happens – as it surely will, once their

Fascistoid Russia

119

prosperity and exposure to the world and its blandishment increases – they will be less inclined to accept leader cults and authoritarian rule by shadowy siloviki. To be sure, Russian political culture may be authoritarian, and, as such, it will sustain fascism. But strategic sectors of Russian society – the middle class and students – will increasingly reject that culture and prove to be a source of new thinking about Russia’s politics. The rise of a ‘middle class’ committed to private property, rule of law and greater involvement in the political process is an obvious challenge to the longerterm stability of a fascist state. Even if official elites succeed in converting affluent and educated Russians to hyper-nationalism and neo-imperialism – as many elites have done in the past – a middle class could force the state to make concessions to its preferences and, over time, evolve into a milder form of authoritarian rule. The middle class could come to play a more directly destabilizing rule in times of political or economic crisis, especially during periods of intense elite infighting. Students are the traditional bearers of revolution in almost all societies and it is at first glance remarkable that Russia’s many students have thus far been quiet. Like Americans and Europeans in the 1950s, they may be responding to past economic insecurity and current economic prospects by focusing on their educations and careers. But, like their American and European counterparts in the 1960s, they may, once a certain degree of prosperity can be taken for granted while politics remains non-democratic, have the self-assurance to translate their critical thinking and youthful enthusiasm into protest. (3) All fascist states scare their neighbors and provoke them to defend themselves against perceived threats emanating from the behaviour and bluster of fascist leaders. In that sense, fascist hyper-nationalism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – effectively creating the very enemies it invokes as the reasons for its justification. The soldiers and policemen who run fascist states have a natural proclivity to toughness and weaponry. The hyper-nationalism, state fetishes and cult of hyper-masculinity incline fascist states to see enemies everywhere. The cult-like status of leaders encourages them to pound their chests with abandon. And the population’s implication in its own repression leads it to balance its selfhumiliation with attempts to humiliate others. Unsurprisingly, Russia has taken to asserting its ‘rightful’ place in the sun by engaging in energy blackmail visà-vis Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states, cyber-wars against Estonia, a war against Georgia, Polar land grabs, sabre-rattling in the Crimea and other forms of aggressive behaviour. Russia will create ever more suspicious and terrified neighbors the longer it remains fascistoid. Those neighbours – in particular Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan – will not just roll over and accept a fait accompli crafted in Moscow. Instead, they will seek existential solutions to existential threats. This means beefing up substantially their defense expenditures, crafting anti-Russian alliances, subordinating economic reform to

120

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

the exigencies of security and viewing their own Russian-speaking populations as potential fifth columns. Naturally, these defensive reactions will only succeed in persuading Russia’s ruling elites that continued power enhancement is imperative, both in defense of the fatherland and in defense of their ‘abandoned brethren’ in the non-Russian states. A ‘quick, little war’ might then become tempting, as a means of rallying the population around the flag, of distracting attention from economic woes and of teaching the non-Russians a lesson. Crisis and overreach will then become likely – especially as Russia is far weaker than its elites believe – and the resulting foreign-policy disasters will serve to expose the regime and leader as less than all-knowing and all-competent and thereby accelerate elite fragmentation and popular dissatisfaction. (4) Russia faces an additional problem – one peculiar to its economy. Because energy resources have fuelled Russia’s economic development, the centrality of energy and, thus, of easy money will transform, and perhaps already has transformed, Russia into a ‘petro-state’ that already serves as an impediment to further economic development and political stability. Energy-generated easy money encourages state elites to engage in corruption and outright theft and to use the state as a source of patronage. Easy money therefore promotes a bloated and parasitic state apparatus whose efficiency and effectiveness decline as lines of command become blurred, elites engage in localized empire building, resources are diverted from their intended uses and corruption gets out of control. Elite fragmentation weakens the supreme leader, while untrammelled rent-seeking both undercuts the persuasiveness of statist ideology and impedes the development of the middle class. Easy money also encourages elites to engage in saber-rattling vis-à-vis their neighbours. The Future of Fascistoid Russia Which way will Russia go – toward more or toward less democracy, toward more or toward less fascism? A cultural approach to systemic change would suggest that more fascism, as being more in sync with an authoritarian political culture, is more likely. A structural/institutional approach would probably come down on the side of some messy form of democracy as the most likely aftermath of the supreme leader’s fall from power and the concomitant elite infighting. An elite approach could go either way, especially as Putin’s opponents can be found among both the democratic opposition and the hard-line siloviki. If these calculations are correct, then the most one can say with any degree of confidence is that a post-fascistoid Russia will probably enter an extended time of troubles characterized by different forces pulling it in different directions – both toward and away from democracy and toward and away from fully-fledged fascism. The only thing that seems certain is that besporyadok and khaos will, alas, increase.

Fascistoid Russia

121

References Applebaum, A. 2008. Putinism: Democracy, the Russian Way. The Berlin Journal, 16, 43-47. Linz, J.J. 1976. Some Notes toward a Comparative Study of Fascism in Sociological Historical Perspective, in Fascism: A Reader’s Guide, edited by W. Laqueur. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 3-121. Mann, M. 2004. Fascists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nolte, E. 1966. Die faschistischen Bewegungen. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. Paxton, R.O. 2004. The Anatomy of Fascism. London: Allen Lane. Payne, S.G. 1995. A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Putin, V. 2007. Speech at the Reception on the Occasion of National Unity Day [Online, 4 November]. Available at: http://194.226.127.22/eng/ speeches/2007/11/04/0924_type127286_150361.shtml [accessed: 1 March 2011]. Scruton, R. 1982. A Dictionary of Political Thought. New York: Harper & Row.

This page has been left blank intentionally

part iiI Case Studies: Ukraine and Georgia

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 7

From Competitive Authoritarianism to Defective Democracy: Political Regimes in Ukraine before and after the Orange Revolution Heiko Pleines

This contribution aims to conceptualize the change of Ukraine’s political regime initiated by the Orange Revolution in 2004-2005, which after mass protests led to a negotiated transfer of rule from President Leonid Kuchma to the opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko in the context of constitutional reform and demands for democratization. It is argued with reference to the concepts of competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky and Way 2002) and defective democracy (Merkel 2004) that regime change within the grey zone between democracy and autocracy follows specific paths. Analytical Framework It is by now commonly accepted that political regimes can be placed on a continuum ranging from an ideal-type democracy through ‘really existing’ democracies (that is, polyarchies in the concept of Dahl 1972) to authoritarian regimes and further on to totalitarian regimes, where one can again distinguish between ‘really existing’ systems with certain niches and the ideal-type totalitarian system, which has achieved full control of society. As a result a ‘grey zone’ of hybrid regimes between authoritarianism and democracy has been elaborated (see Beichelt in this volume). On the democratic side of this grey zone numerous concepts of different ‘democracies with adjectives’ have been developed. As Collier and Levitsky (1997) argue, they can all be understood as diminished subtypes of democratic regimes, that is, they fulfill most but not all criteria of a democracy test. Depending on which criteria they do not meet, regimes on the democratic side of the grey zone can be classified. The most comprehensive and systematic classification so far has been developed by Merkel with the concept of defective democracies (see Merkel 2003 for the full concept and Merkel 2004 for an English summary). He distinguishes exclusive democracies (not all are allowed to vote), domain democracies (veto powers without democratic legitimacy control

126

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

parts of the country or the political system), illiberal democracies (the rule of law is damaged and cannot fully guarantee civic rights) and delegative democracy (the state executive violates the horizontal division of powers). A similar systematic approach to the authoritarian side of the grey zone is still missing, but as Bogaards (2009) argues it would be an important building block on the way to establishing a complete continuum of political regimes. One reason for the lack of a comprehensive assessment of diminished subtypes of authoritarian regimes may be that (in contrast to democracies) these regimes have, first, been defined negatively (as non-democratic ones) and have, secondly, been classified on the basis of historical cases (nearly exclusively from the twentieth century) and not through deduction from an abstract root concept. However, again based on empirical observation, some different diminished subtypes of authoritarian regimes have been described. Following the idea of the continuum of political regimes from authoritarian regimes through a grey zone to democratic regimes, the diminished subtypes of authoritarian regimes should fulfill most criteria for authoritarianism but would also have some features pointing towards a democracy. In that sense they could be described as defective authoritarian regimes. As the deviations from authoritarian principles grow, they then turn into defective democracies. One of the most promising innovations in this context is the concept of competitive authoritarianism by Levitsky and Way (2002), which describes an authoritarian regime with an electoral defect, that is, elections (and especially election campaigns) are manipulated, but in the end, they still determine who gains political power. ‘In contrast to elections in fully authoritarian regimes, elections in competitive authoritarian regimes – even if highly unfair – generate genuine uncertainty’ (Way 2004: 147). Accordingly, power struggles between rival elite factions focus on elections. But the playing field between the ruling elites and oppositional forces is very uneven as a result of manipulations by the ruling elites (see Levitsky and Way in this volume and Schedler 2006). Returning to the idea of a continuum of political regimes, countries can of course jump from an authoritarian regime directly to a democratic one, especially in the case of regime collapse in a developed society. After some kind of putsch or revolution a democracy can also swiftly be transformed into a fully authoritarian regime. However, in the more common case of a more gradual transition countries move through the grey zone between authoritarianism and democracy and develop political regimes which can be described as diminished subtypes of either authoritarianism or democracy. They can move in either direction and they can move fast or slowly or may remain with a specific diminished subtype for a longer period of time. Many case studies, especially on transitions to authoritarian rule in interwar Europe (Berg-Schlosser and Mitchell 2002) and on democratic transitions in Latin America and Europe in the final third of the twentieth century (Linz and Stepan 1996: 55-65), have shown that these transitions through the grey zone are path-dependent, as the institutional design as well as the political culture and

From Competitive Authoritarianism to Defective Democracy

127

the stage of socio-economic development of the preceding regime influence the development of the one which follows.1 However, so far no research has attempted to systematically establish transition paths through specific diminished subtypes of authoritarian and democratic regimes, as most accounts focus either on specific explanatory factors and causal links or on the phases of democratization. Taking Ukraine as an example, I argue that one such transition path through the grey zone might lead from competitive authoritarianism, as established in Ukraine under President Kuchma (1994-2004), to a defective democracy of the illiberal type, which emerged after the Orange Revolution of 2004. The authors of the two concepts confirm these classifications for Ukraine (Way 2004, Merkel 2004: 51). However, both focus on a static description of the specific regime type and do not address questions of regime change. Ukraine’s Political Regime under Kuchma The political strategy of Ukrainian President Kuchma was not focused on the weakly developed political parties as represented in parliament, but on informal regional networks. Representatives of the regional political elites were appointed to national offices in Kiev. With the help of their newly-won authority, these politicians could then patronize their entrepreneur cronies from the informal networks. The politicians thus appear to have habitually shared in the entrepreneurs’ spoils via politically corrupt means. The informal networks used their influence on the mass media and on the political climate in their region in order to mould public opinion in favour of the president. In the Donetsk region especially, the result was a rather well-oiled political machine (Kuzio 2007, Zimmer 2006). All parties involved profited from this arrangement. The regional politicians reaped influential positions on the national level as well as bribery payments from the business world. The entrepreneurs received preferential treatment via policies that brought them immense profits. And the president received support for his election campaign. At this juncture, it was vital for the president to assemble informal networks in numbers sufficient to cinch the presidency; their combined election campaign assistance was instrumental in achieving this aim (Puglisi 2003, Pleines 2008). At the same time, the president had to secure his position as the central mediator in this system in order to prevent the rise of an internal competitor for his post. This entailed the frequent reshuffling of high-level offices as a means of thwarting the growth of competitors and simultaneously cultivating all the informal regional networks via regular redistribution of power. A classic example of this can be found in the office of the prime minister. During Kuchma’s ten-year term in office, no fewer than seven prime ministers served under him. The majority of them came 1  An overview of the state of the art is offered, for example, by Munck 2007.

128

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

from Dnipropetrovsk and thereby belonged to Kuchma’s regional network. At the beginning of Kuchma’s reign, old Soviet networks supplied the prime ministers. In 2002, the Donetsk informal network succeeded in procuring the post when Donetsk governor Viktor Yanukovych was appointed prime minister. The only prime minister without connections to an influential informal network was the reform-oriented Viktor Yushchenko, who served from the end of 1999 until spring 2001 (Pleines 2005: 178). In addition to the post of prime minister, many other ministerial positions – above all those exercising authority in the economic sector – were divided among the informal regional networks. These networks were also frequently able to gain proximity to the president when their representatives came to be appointed as personal advisers. In that way, not only regional politicians but also the entrepreneurs themselves were able to get a foot in the door (Puglisi 2003, Kowall 2006). Wealthy businesspeople, so-called oligarchs,2 were seen as a central feature of the political system. Connections with the political elites were a key to the success of the oligarchs’ business activities. In order to cement these connections, starting in the second half of the 1990s most of the oligarchs became politically active themselves. Political influence was exerted by the oligarchs in three ways: first, they acquired mass media in order to obtain political access via the manipulation of public opinion; second, they developed informal networks including political elites; and third, they themselves took political office, mainly as parliamentary deputies but also in the state executive (Pleines 2009). When they succeeded in securing a pro-presidential majority in parliament in 2000 by luring away opposition MPs, their power became evident. However, the oligarchs did not act collectively. Instead, they competed with each other for power and only seldom formed broad coalitions. Yulia Tymoshenko, for example, an entrepreneur from Dnipropetrovsk, failed to overcome competition from her own region in the second half of the 1990s. While Pavlo Lazarenko, as a prime minister from Dnipropetrovsk, became her major political patron, the election of Valerii Pustovoitenko as the next prime minister from Dnipropetrovsk brought down her business empire (Pleines 1998: 126). Only in the Donetsk region have the regional elites consistently avoided public internecine squabbles and refrained from forming coalitions with representatives of rival regions. At the same time, the example of Donetsk also demonstrates instability. Over the course of just one decade, the composition of 2  Based on the classical definition of oligarchy, that is, the rule of a few self-interested elites, the term ‘oligarchs’ denotes, among other things, entrepreneurs who use their wealth to exert political influence. In this context, the concept of an oligarch is also closely associated with political corruption, and the term is primarily used in the analysis of formally democratic systems with authoritarian tendencies, such as those found in Latin America, Southeast Asia and, since the 1990s, in Eastern Europe. In a narrower sense, which is how the term will be used here, the concept does not include politicians or civil servants who use their political influence to obtain control over (state-run) economic activities.

From Competitive Authoritarianism to Defective Democracy

129

the regional network underwent three fundamental shake-ups. In the first phase, at the beginning of the 1990s, the directors of state-run large-scale enterprises dominated the network and also occupied political posts at the regional and national levels. In the second phase the Shcherban brothers emerged, who represented new commercial structures in the economy and took over positions in regional politics. Finally, with the Industrial Union of Donbas and System Capital Management, two industry holdings owned by oligarchs entered into a tight regional insider network at the end of the 1990s with the help of the first autonomously created political elite surrounding Governor Viktor Yanukovych (Zimmer 2004).3 As the potential for direct vote rigging remained very limited in Ukraine and a strong political opposition could not be marginalized, it was important for President Kuchma to manipulate democratic rules in order to create an uneven playing field in his own favour (Way 2004, see also Birch 1997, D’Anieri 2001, 2003, Kubicek 2001, Bos 2006). One way was to use ‘administrative resources’, that is, to use the state bureaucracy to support election campaigns and organs like the tax police to put pressure on opponents (Darden 2001, 2008). Possessing financial means and control of influential mass media, the oligarchs held key resources to manipulate election campaigns. Accordingly, business elites have to be seen as important actors in the power struggles between ruling political elites and oppositional forces. In return, the oligarchs expected the political elites whom they supported to favour their business interests. During Kuchma’s second term, privatization auctions became the focal point of the oligarchs’ interests vis-à-vis the ruling political elite (Pleines 2008). The Orange Revolution However, during his second term Kuchma alienated a number of important allies. Some oligarchs, like Yulia Tymoshenko, and some politicians, like Viktor Yushchenko, lost their positions as a result of power struggles. The speaker of parliament also appealed to the opposition, presenting secret audio tapes of Kuchma allegedly ordering the murder of a journalist and organizing pressure by state agencies on oppositional forces and important figures in society. At the same time Kuchma’s decision to choose the governor of the Donetsk region, Victor Yanukovych, as his successor, alienated the other regional networks. While in the presidential elections of 1999, Kuchma’s main opponent had still been the candidate from the Communist Party, large parts of the population, especially in Western Ukraine and among the middle class, now saw for the first time a real alternative to Kuchma in the pro-democratic and pro-Western 3  For a detailed description of the Donetsk regional network, see publications by Kerstin Zimmer. For a concise summary, see Zimmer 2004. A detailed treatment can be found in Zimmer 2006.

130

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

opposition movement around Yushchenko and Tymoshenko. As a result the presidential election campaign in 2004 saw a close race between Yanukovych and Yushchenko. The ruling elites around Kuchma and Yanukovych again manipulated the election campaign. Media reporting was extremely biased, employees were pressured to vote the right way and campaigning by the opposition was hampered by administrative means. Yushchenko was even poisoned with dioxin. However, as Ukrainian society was marked by clear cleavages strongly separating Yanukovych from Yushchenko in the eyes of the population, Yanukovych faced a likely (though narrow) defeat (Wilson 2005, Dyczok 2007, Zimmer 2007, Pavlyuk 2007, Bos 2006, Darden 2008). The last-minute attempts of the old elites at authoritarian vote-rigging confirmed the assumptions of the concept of competitive authoritarianism, namely that the ruling elites can create an uneven playing field in their favour but the counter-elites are so strong that elections cannot simply be stolen. In Ukraine the old regime lacked the professionalism required for the task of massive vote-rigging,4 but most importantly it was faced with mass protests on the street which were backed up by a vital part of the elites (including prominent politicians, second-rank oligarchs and parts of the security and armed forces). The result was a stalemate (D’Anieri 2007). The old elites were pressured (through mass protests, a ruling of the Supreme Court and round table negotiations with international mediation) into accepting repeat elections, which they knew they would lose. In return the old elites demanded not only legal immunity but also constitutional changes which reduced the power of the president (for a comprehensive overview of events and interpretations see Bredies et al. 2007). Although the Orange Revolution was first interpreted as a clear victory of the counter-elites around Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, the elites remained as divided as they had been. Some oligarchs changed sides and joined the orange camp, but Yanukovych (who won 44 per cent in the clean repeat elections) was able to reform part of the networks around Kuchma into the Party of Regions, which soon formed the biggest faction in parliament. That meant that the elite structure based on the division into two opposing camps was not significantly changed by the Orange Revolution. What did change was that elections and election campaigns as well now conformed to democratic standards. This was due to the fact that elections were the focal point of the Orange Revolution. As a result power changed regularly in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution. After the parliamentary elections of 2006 Yanukovych’s Party of Regions was able to form the government, only to be replaced by a Tymoshenko government after the early parliamentary elections of 2007. After the presidential elections in 2010, Yanukovych replaced Yushchenko as president. 4  An account of vote-rigging is attempted by Myagkov, Ordeshook and Shakin 2005.

From Competitive Authoritarianism to Defective Democracy

131

Power Struggles and Regime Change In this context the broader argument would be that since competitive authoritarian regimes revolve around elections, the logical way for opposition forces to gain power in such regimes is to win elections. If the opposition can engage in the same kind of manipulations as the ruling elites, the result is just a change in the composition of the ruling elite. However, in the more likely case that the opposition cannot engage in manipulations (as it lacks control over the media and can be discriminated against by the state administration) it will demand clean elections. This way it can gain support from the population and also from foreign and transnational democracy promoters. Once the old elites have lost elections, it is their turn to support clean elections as their only chance to regain power. This means the focus on elections as a way of distributing power in combination with elite camps of relatively equal strength – as two major features of competitive authoritarian regimes – make election manipulations after a regime change and with that a transition to a defective democracy of the exclusive type (that is, a regime with limitations on the right of the people to vote) highly unlikely. The focus on elections, which give a certain legitimacy to parliament, and the regular changes in power also make a delegative democracy, that is, a fundamental restriction of the horizontal division of power, rather unlikely. This hypothesis is supported in the Ukrainian case by the fact that the Orange Revolution was accompanied by a constitutional reform which strengthened parliament vis-à-vis the president. A powerful president, who pushes horizontal controls aside, is more likely to emerge either from a putsch or from a populist uprising, but not from the inter-elite struggles of competitive authoritarianism. If counter-elites in parliament and the judiciary are sidelined in a competitive authoritarian regime, the regime would not move in the direction of a delegative democracy but in the direction of full-scale authoritarianism, as happened for example in Russia under President Vladimir Putin (on the Russian case see the contributions by Motyl, Mommsen and Gel’man in this volume). On the other hand, the main characteristics of a defective democracy of the illiberal type like the instrumentalization of corruption for political power games and the manipulation of courts in actors’ own political interest are also key features of competitive authoritarianism as they are the vital means to manipulate elections in order to reduce the uncertainty they cause through the creation of an uneven playing field. These phenomena are more deeply-rooted in political culture and depend not only on the narrow top stratum of elites. Moreover, as competition (even if unfair) is an integral part of competitive authoritarianism, the new elites tend to have been part of the old elites at some point in time and therefore are accustomed to the same mechanisms. In summary, whereas unfair elections threaten the new balance of power among the elites and the very foundations of the new system, limited manipulations of courts and civic rights can be employed by all elite camps. Accordingly, an illiberal democracy, that is, a regime which does not fully guarantee the rule of law and civic rights, emerged in Ukraine after

132

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

the Orange Revolution. This point can be illustrated through an analysis of the role of oligarchs in Ukrainian politics after the Orange Revolution. The Oligarchs as Informal Power Brokers With the Orange Revolution the Kiev and Dnipropetrovsk networks lost their political power. Thus, after 2004 only Donetsk can be said to have a powerful informal network. But informal networks between oligarchs and politics, in which politicians support the economic interests of the oligarchs and in return profit from the oligarchs’ financial and media support, are not only formed on a regional basis but also include connections between individual oligarchs and representatives of the executive branch responsible for their commercial areas of interest. A glaring example of this is the rise of Dmitri Firtash after the Orange Revolution. His seizure of a monopoly position in Ukrainian natural gas imports was accepted by Yanukovych as well as Yushchenko. Both also supported the extremely opaque formation of the related business connections (Pirani 2007, Kusznir 2006). However, while the oligarchs – as part of the informal regional networks – rallied around President Kuchma until 2004, things changed after Yushchenko was elected president. Some oligarchs with close ties to Kuchma withdrew from politics. The Donetsk informal network revolving around Yanukovych and the Party of Regions thus established itself as an independent political power that particularly enjoyed the patronage of Rinat Akhmetov among the oligarchs. On the other hand, the entrepreneurs who had supported Yushchenko and Tymoshenko now acquired political influence and thus oligarch status. In addition, several oligarchs changed sides after the Orange Revolution (Puglisi 2008). As a result, most of the Ukrainian oligarchs found themselves in the Orange camp and thus in the parliamentary factions of the Bloc Tymoshenko or Our Ukraine after 2004. Over the course of the 2006-2007 parliamentary elections, the number of oligarchs in parliament dropped precipitously, however. While at the beginning of 2006 there were twelve oligarchs in parliament (eight of which belonged to Orange factions), there were ten after the parliamentary elections (seven in Orange factions) and after the early elections in September 2007, only eight remained (five in Orange factions) (Pleines 2009). But this does not mean that the oligarchs’ influence in parliament has waned. On the contrary, many oligarchs are now represented in parliament by cronies. The change in the electoral system from single constituency mandates to a mixed system to fully party-list-based nominations promoted this development, as candidates in the lower section of the party lists were not scrutinized by the media and did not influence voters’ decisions (Wolowski 2008: 41).5 Having cronies in parliamentary seats gives the oligarchs a number of advantages. First of all, it enables them to retreat from public scrutiny. Second, it allows their parties to 5  On the development of the electoral system, see Harasymiw 2005 and Herron 2008.

From Competitive Authoritarianism to Defective Democracy

133

develop a less special-interest-oriented image. Third, stepping out of the political arena permits them to run their companies themselves, as members of parliament are forbidden from participating in entrepreneurial activities since 2005. Fourth, they can diversify their political influence by sending their cronies to various political camps. This has become important since factions have regularly gained and lost power in the period after the Orange Revolution (Pleines 2009). Though many collaborate with them, Ukraine’s political and economic elites still hold rather sceptical views of the political role of the oligarchs. In interviews conducted with national and regional politicians, prosecutors, judges and business people6 in spring 2008 a majority claimed that oligarchs determine Ukrainian politics, while hardly anybody considered them not to be influential.7 When asked about the ways the oligarchs exert their political influence, a third refers directly and exclusively to corruption, often with the direct assertion that they ‘buy’ politicians or laws. The proverb ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’ is cited several times. In addition, a tenth of the respondents refer to informal networks and clientelism, mostly using the term ‘clan’, which was a common way of describing the political constellation during the Kuchma presidency. Several of the respondents also refer to the oligarchs as the ‘grey cardinals’ of Ukrainian politics. This means about half of the members of the political and economic elites interviewed refer exclusively to informal and illegal means of influence. Most of the other half are rather indifferent, either talking about a multitude of methods, referring to the assumption of political office (without describing how office is gained) or giving no clear answer. Only 5 per cent named (presumably) legal lobbying activities as a major form of interest representation.8 In summary, the interviews, though not representative, give a clear indication that the majority of Ukraine’s political and economic elites see the oligarchs as playing an important role in Ukrainian politics with the help of corruption and informal networks. Altogether only five respondents mention some positive aspects of the oligarchs’ political involvement, either arguing that this promotes 6  Eighty-four in-depth interviews conducted from February to April 2008 according to a detailed interview-guide by Kiev-based Socis in Kiev, Donetsk and Lviv. Data collected as part of project No. 182628, located at the Norwegian Christian Michelsen Institute and funded by the Research Council of Norway. In one interview the questions on oligarchs were not asked. See Grødeland (2009) for details on the interview design and data. 7  Forty-two per cent saw them as determining politics, 27 per cent described them as either equally as influential as professional politicians or fully intertwined with the political elites, 10 per cent argued that the influence of the oligarchs depends on the circumstances (mainly relating to the political issues concerned) and 4 per cent saw them as not influential. 18 per cent did not give a clear answer to the question. 8  Thirty-seven per cent refer to corruption, 14 per cent to several methods, 13 per cent to informal networks, 12 per cent to the control of parliamentary factions, 5 per cent to the assumption of political office in general, 5 per cent to legal lobbying. One respondent named civic engagement and one (who had described the oligarchs as not influential) named no means of political influence. 11 per cent did not answer.

134

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

the general economic development of the country or pointing to their philanthropic activities.9 Though the oligarchs have not really altered their means of influencing political decision-making processes, their role in power politics has changed significantly with the Orange Revolution. While they all supported the manipulations of the Kuchma regime through participation in their respective regional networks and thus contributed to the creation of an uneven playing field in favour of the ruling political elites, since the Orange Revolution they have belonged to competing political camps and have thus contributed to political competition. As all major political factions receive support from oligarchs, they partly neutralize each other and thus offer a safeguard against a permanent takeover by one political force. At the same time, however, the oligarchs’ political engagement inhibits democratic consolidation since they represent their own individual rather than collective (entrepreneurial) interests and, even more importantly, because they use undemocratic means to promote these interests. This undermines democratic decision-making processes and delegitimizes the existing democratic constitutional order in the eyes of the public and of the political and economic elites. As a result the elites develop a very cynical view of the political game in which they themselves are taking part. Conclusion There are many paths through the grey zone between authoritarianism and democracy and they all have crossroads and benches. As a result, we should not expect to find the one way from authoritarianism to democracy, but had better try to draw a map of different paths and see how often and under which circumstances they are used. As the case of Ukraine demonstrates, one path leads from competitive authoritarianism through a ‘democratic revolution’ to a defective democracy of the illiberal type. The central development along this path is that elections and election campaigns become free and fair, while political decision-making remains prone to established forms of undemocratic manipulation, namely manipulation of parliamentary decision-making processes and pressure on courts to provide favourable rulings in political power struggles. But there are also two other paths of development starting with competitive authoritarianism. If one of the competing elite groups of the competitive authoritarian regime continues to act collectively and controls resources of relevance in political power struggles (for example, the military), it might gain specific veto powers, thus creating a domain democracy. But Ukrainian oligarchs, who had gained their fortune through political support, were not only too weak 9  It is interesting to note that these respondents belong to different professional groups and come from different regions.

From Competitive Authoritarianism to Defective Democracy

135

to confront a government threatening them with expropriation, they also lacked a common ideology justifying such a conflict. Instead many opted for changing sides as the best way to stay influential in politics. By now, some oligarchs have switched sides several times and some have diversified their bets by supporting several political parties. Yet another path leads from competitive authoritarianism back to full authoritarianism, as the Russian case seems to indicate. But President Kuchma was not strong enough to gain authoritarian control over Ukrainian society and to prevent the Orange Revolution. This seems to be due primarily to the fact that he faced a strong counter-elite which was able to mobilize mass support based on persistent cleavages within Ukrainian society. When the competitive authoritarian regime under President Kuchma became unstable, Kuchma was too weak to increase authoritarian control and no strong elite group existed that was able to keep a permanent grip on power. As a result Ukraine moved to a defective democracy of the illiberal type, where free and fair elections determine who gains power, but where ruling as well as opposition elite forces still try to create an uneven playing field with the help of undemocratic manipulations. Where the development paths away from illiberal democracies lead is still open to investigation, while Ukraine faces further journeys through the grey zone between democracy and authoritarianism. References Berg-Schlosser, D. and Mitchell, J. 2002. Authoritarianism and Democracy in Europe, 1919-39: Comparative Analyses. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Birch, S. 1997. Nomenklatura Democratization: Electoral clientelism in postSoviet Ukraine. Democratization, 4, 40-62. Bogaards, M. 2009. How to classify hybrid regimes? Defective democracy and electoral authoritarianism. Democratization, 16(2), 399-423. Bos, E. 2006. Leonid Kutschma. ‘Spieler’ mit demokratischen Institutionen, in Zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie: Staatspräsidenten als Kapitäne des Systemwechsels in Osteuropa, edited by E. Bos and A. Helmerich. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 79-116. Bredies, I. et al. (eds). 2007. Aspects of the Orange Revolution. Stuttgart: Ibidem Publishers. Collier, D. and Levitsky, S. 1997. Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research. World Politics, 49(3), 430-451. Dahl, R. 1972. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. D’Anieri, P. 2001. Democracy unfulfilled: The establishment of electoral authoritarianism in Ukraine. Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 26(1/2), 13-36. D’Anieri, P. 2003. Leonid Kuchma and the personalization of the Ukrainian presidency. Problems of Post-Communism, 5, 58-65.

136

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

D’Anieri, P. 2008. The last hurrah: The 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections and the limits of machine politics, in Democratization and Elections in Postcommunist Ukraine: Aspects of the Orange Revolution I, edited by P. D’Anieri and T. Kuzio. Stuttgart: Ibidem Publishers, 149-174. Darden, K.A. 2001. Blackmail as a tool of state domination: Ukraine under Kuchma. East European Constitutional Review, 2, 67-71. Darden, K.A. 2008. The integrity of corrupt states: Graft as an informal state institution. Politics & Society, 36, 35-59. Dyczok, M. 2007. Breaking through the information blockade: Election and revolution in Ukraine 2004, in Information and Manipulation Strategies in the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Elections: Aspects of the Orange Revolution II, edited by B. Harasymiw. Stuttgart: Ibidem Publishers, 77-106. Grødeland, A. 2009. Cultural Constants, Corruption and the Orange Revolution, in Ukraine on its Way to Europe: Interim Results of the Orange Revolution, edited by J. Besters-Dilger. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 79-102. Harasymiw, B. 2005. Elections in post-communist Ukraine. Canadian Slavonic Papers, 3/4, 191-239. Herron, E.S. 2008. The parliamentary election in Ukraine, September 2007. Electoral Studies, 27, 551-555. Kowall, T. 2006. Leonid Kutschma und die Oligarchen: Vom Gewinnen und Verlieren der Macht, in Zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie. Staatspräsidenten als Kapitäne des Systemwechsels in Osteuropa, edited by E. Bos and A. Helmerich. Münster: LIT, 117-133. Kubicek, P. 2001. The limits of electoral democracy in Ukraine. Democratization, 2, 117-139. Kusznir, J. 2006. RosUkrEnergo. Ukraine-Analysen, 2(10/11) [Online]. Available at: http://www.laender-analysen.de/ukraine/pdf/2006/UkraineAnalysen02.pdf [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Kuzio, T. 2007. Oligarchs, Tapes and Oranges: ‘Kuchmagate’ to the Orange Revolution. Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 23, 30-56. Levitsky, S. and Way, L. 2002. Elections without democracy: The rise of competitive authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 51-65. Linz, J.J. and Stepan, A. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Merkel, W. 2003. Defekte Demokratie 1: Theorie. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Merkel, W. 2004. Embedded and defective democracies. Democratization, 11(5), 33-58. Munck, G. 2007. Democracy studies: Agendas, findings, challenges, in Democratization. The State of the Art, edited by D. Berg-Schlosser, 2nd Edition. Opladen: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 45-68. Myagkov, M., Ordeshook, P.C. and Shakin, D. 2005. Fraud or Fairytales: Russia and Ukraine’s Electorial Experience. Post-Soviet Affairs, 21, 91-132.

From Competitive Authoritarianism to Defective Democracy

137

Pavlyuk, L. 2007. Extreme rhethoric in the 2004 presidential campaign: Images of geopolitical and regional division, in Information and Manipulation Strategies in the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Elections: Aspects of the Orange Revolution II, edited by B. Harasymiw. Stuttgart: Ibidem Publishers, 141-170. Pirani, S. 2007. Ukraine’s Gas Sector: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies [Online]. Available at: http://www.oxfordenergy.org/pdfs/NG21.pdf [accessed: 6 April 2011]. Pleines, H. 2005. Ukrainische Seilschaften: Informelle Einflussnahme in der ukrainischen Wirtschaftspolitik 1992-2004. Münster: LIT Verlag. Pleines, H. 2008. Manipulating politics: Domestic investors in Ukrainian privatisation auctions 2000-2004. Europe-Asia Studies, 60(7), 1177-1197. Pleines, H. 2009. The political role of the oligarchs, in Ukraine on its Way to Europe: Interim results of the Orange Revolution, edited by J. Besters-Dilger. Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 103-120. Puglisi, R. 2003. The rise of the Ukrainian oligarchs. Democratization, 3, 99-123. Puglisi, R. 2008. A window to the world? Oligarchs and foreign policy in Ukraine, in Ukraine. Quo vadis?, edited by S. Fischer. Paris: EU Institute for Security Studies (Chaillot Paper No. 108), 55-86. Schedler, A. (ed.). 2006. Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Way, L. 2004. The sources and dynamics of competitive authoritarianism in Ukraine. Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 20(1), 143161. Wilson, A. 2005. Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. New Haven, CA: Yale University Press. Wolowski, P. 2008. Ukrainian Politics after the Orange Revolution: How far from democratic consolidation?, in Ukraine. Quo vadis?, edited by S. Fischer. Paris: EU Institute for Security Studies (Chaillot Paper, no. 108), 25-54. Zimmer, K. 2004. The captured region: Actors and institutions in the Ukrainian Donbas, in The Making of Regions 2, edited by M. Tatur. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 231-348. Zimmer, K. 2006. Machteliten im ukrainischen Donbass: Bedingungen und Konsequenzen der Transformation einer alten Industrieregion. Münster: LIT Verlag. Zimmer, K. 2007. The comparative failure of machine politics, administrative resources and fraud, in Information and Manipulation Strategies in the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Elections: Aspects of the Orange Revolution II, edited by B. Harasymiw. Stuttgart: Ibidem Publishers, 223-250.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 8

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia Pamela Jawad

Based on the recognition that the majority of third-wave countries have entered a ‘political grey zone’ of being neither democratic nor authoritarian in an ideal-type sense, an academic debate has evolved on ‘the end of the transition paradigm’. The ‘transition paradigm’ assumes ‘that any country moving away from dictatorial rule can be considered a country in transition toward democracy’ (Carothers 2002: 6). The term ‘transition’ in this context is used as a synonym for the entire sequence of processes of regime change covering the period between the decay of the old regime or system, through the introduction of new rules (‘first transition’), until the conclusion of the consolidation of the new regime or system (‘second transition’) (Huntington 1991), or more narrowly for the period between the liberalization of an authoritarian regime and the consolidation of a democracy during which political elites are replaced by (re)negotiating pacts (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986). According to this latter transition model of O’Donnell and Schmitter, the process of consolidation of the democratic regime usually starts with the introduction of a new or revised constitution. Political analysts have responded to the challenge of an empirical reality of ‘grey zones’ by developing an array of ‘democracy with adjectives’ terms (Collier and Levitsky 1997). ‘Most of the ‘qualified democracy’ terms are used to characterize countries as being stuck somewhere on the assumed democratization sequence, usually at the start of the consolidation phase’ (Carothers 2002: 10). While the process and conditions of democratic consolidation have yet to be researched in a systematic way in order to draw general conclusions, several conceptions of consolidation exist varying from minimalist approaches (Di Palma 1990: 138144, Przeworski 1991: 26) to more demanding concepts (Pridham 1995, Linz and Stepan 1996).1 One of the ‘democracy with adjectives’ terms refers to the 1  Linz and Stepan (1996) have identified three dimensions in which democratic norms and values need to be accepted and defended in order for a democracy to be considered consolidated: Firstly, democracy is constitutionally consolidated when the constitution introduces democratic norms to the political system. Secondly, the behavioural consolidation of democracy is reflected in the democratic behaviour of the relevant political and societal elites who accept democratic rules as ‘the only game in town’ and abstain from manipulating them. In line with the minimalist approaches to democratic consolidation,

140

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

concept of ‘defective democracies’. It is based on the assumption that a wellfunctioning liberal democracy consists of intertwined partial regimes (‘embedded democracy’) and that defects in these partial regimes result in four types of defective democracies depending on which of these partial regimes is affected (Merkel et al. 2003, Merkel and Croissant 2004): An ‘exclusive democracy’ has defects with regard to the electoral regime and to the rights of political participation; an ‘illiberal democracy’ has defects with regard to the partial regimes of political liberties and the rule of law so that civil rights cannot be guaranteed; a ‘delegative democracy’ has defects with regard to the horizontal accountability and separation of powers; and a ‘tutelary’ or ‘domain democracy’ has defects with regard to the effective power to govern (see also Beichelt in this volume). However, Carothers (2002: 10) among others has criticized that ‘qualified democracy’ terms were ‘in effect trying to apply the transition paradigm to the very countries whose political evolution is calling that paradigm into question’. After all, the assumptions and ‘tentative conclusions’ of ‘transitology’ had been drawn from a small number of cases within a relatively homogenous area: Southern Europe and Latin America. Moreover, post-Communist and post-Soviet transitions differed fundamentally from earlier transitions in that they face at least two simultaneous processes of transformation causing a ‘dilemma of simultaneity’ (Offe 1991, see also Elster 1990): political (transition from authoritarianism to democracy), economic (change from a command to a market economy), and in some cases state transformation (new formation or re-founding of a nation-state). ‘Transitologists’ who have applied their propositions to ‘places never imagined initially’ have, therefore, been confronted with the reproach of ‘conceptual stretching’ (Schmitter and Karl 1994: 174, see also Sartori 1971, Collier and Mahon 1993). Some have thus argued that it was time to stop thinking about these grey-zone cases in terms of transitions to democracy or subtypes of ideal-type democracy and ‘to begin thinking about the specific types of regimes they actually are’ (Levitsky and Way 2002: 51). Although Levitsky and Way argue they have conceptualized a specific form of a hybrid regime, their concept of ‘competitive authoritarianism’ rather approaches the ‘grey zone challenge’ from the pole of authoritarianism.2 A this is what Przeworski (1991: 26) has summarized in the often-cited formula ‘Democracy is consolidated, when under given political and economic conditions a particular system of institutions becomes the only game in town ...’ and what Pridham (1995: 168) calls ‘negative’ consolidation of democracy. Pridham considers the reason for the ‘negative’ consolidation to lie in the lack of an attractive alternative. Thirdly, the attitudinal consolidation of democracy refers to the internalization of democratic values by the citizens who feel obliged to protect democracy. This is what Pridham (1995: 168) calls ‘positive’ consolidation of democracy. In his view, a democracy is ‘positively’ consolidated only when the entire system is legitimate not only in the eyes of the elites because of the lack of alternatives but when the attitude, values, and behaviour of the citizens reflect a stable belief in the legitimacy of democracy. 2  Levitsky and Way argue that their concept of ‘competitive authoritarianism’ is a specific form of hybrid regime. However, following Beichelt’s contribution that introduces

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

141

competitive authoritarian regime is understood as an authoritarian regime with a certain amount of freedom in the electoral realm because despite manipulations the outcome of elections is uncertain. Against the background of the debate on ‘political grey zones’, this contribution will aim to answer the question of whether concepts such as democracy (with adjectives), authoritarian regimes (with adjectives) or hybrid regimes combining democratic and authoritarian elements (among others Karl 1995, Diamond 2002) are suitable for interpreting and explaining the empirical evidence in the case of Georgia. Elections and the treatment of the opposition will constitute our focus because of their relevance for distinguishing between the ideal types of democracy and autocracy as well as for testing more recent concepts, such as competitive authoritarianism. Georgia: A Transition Country in the Process of Democratic Consolidation? In light of the transition model developed by Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter (1986), one might categorize Georgia as a democratizing regime in the process of democratic consolidation. The transition towards a democratic regime would have started before independence from the Soviet Union. The political regime opened up against the backdrop of the glasnost and perestroika policies pursued by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991), and the national opposition headed by Zviad Gamsakhurdia came to power following the October 1990 parliamentary elections in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. The process of democratic consolidation would then have started with the adoption of the new Constitution that introduced the formal requisites of democratic statehood to independent Georgia in August 1995 and represented an important milestone in the stabilization of the country (Jawad 2005) as well as with the parliamentary elections in November 1995.3 However, the formal democratic norms have continuously been manipulated and transgressed by the governing political elite since then. regimes of the ‘pure-type logic’ and the ‘fuzzy-type logic’, one wonders whether their concept really creates a new regime type with new typological features following the ‘pure-type logic’ and thus creating a specific form of hybrid regime as they argue. In Beichelt’s view, ‘competitive authoritarianism’ rather matches the ‘fuzzy-type logic’ in that it creates a subtype of an established regime type, that is, authoritarianism. Nevertheless, apart from the ‘pure type’ – ’fuzzy type’ discussion, it is also still open to debate whether it is even possible to create authoritarian sub-types given that authoritarianism is not a theoretically rooted concept such as democracy with free and fair elections as its core principle. 3  Because of the opposing positions within the constitutional commission, the ‘external’ support by international organizations and experts had had a catalytic impact on the process of drafting and adopting the Constitution (Allison, Kukhianidze, Matsaberidze and Dolidze 1996: 523-524, Gaul 2001: 106, 77-78).

142

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Therefore, Georgia could be considered an unconsolidated democracy experiencing difficulties with regard to the institutional, behavioural and attitudinal dimensions of consolidation4 and defective with regard to one or several partial regime(s) of democracy. Several of the partial regimes certainly appear to have had defects in the era of Eduard Shevardnadze due to the informal manner of decision-making, the failure to hold the executive accountable to the legislative branch, the lack of the rule of law, the violation of civil rights and liberties in reported incidents of frequent police beatings, death threats by state officials against journalists, the use of electric shocks on convicts as well as the harassment of politically active non-governmental organizations. The initial strategy of divide et impera and the co-optation of opposition forces increasingly turned into more authoritarian and repressive measures under Shevardnadze. Hopes for progress in the realm of democratization were high after the change of government in 2003/2004. Indeed, Shevardnadze’s successor, Mikheil Saakashvili, was able to achieve some successes, such as fighting corruption that had previously been endemic in everyday life, increasing public revenue, reducing the number of ministries, raising the salaries of public servants, improving macroeconomic performance and thus increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration.5 However, defects remained in terms of the expansion of presidential powers and increased limitations on civil rights and liberties under Saakashvili’s presidency (Jawad 2008: 616-617). In the first four years of its rule, the Saakashvili government relied on creating a pliant state dependent on a ‘reasonable opposition’ that only gave the appearance of multiparty democracy. With an emerging political crisis, however, it turned to attempting to co-opt the opposition and – on failing to do so successfully – to intimidating it through fines, detentions, harassment and the like. Given these defects, one might consider Georgia a defective democracy of the delegative and illiberal type. However, even more severe is an issue not yet mentioned: the defective electoral regime under both Shevardnadze and Saakashvili. Since Georgia’s independence, five presidential elections and six parliamentary elections have been held. Notwithstanding qualitative differences, none of these polls have been in compliance with international standards. Diamond et al. have labelled even those regimes ‘semi-democratic’ where the effective power of elected officials is so limited, or political party competition so restricted, or the freedom and fairness of elections so compromised 4  See footnote 1. 5  Georgia improved its rank in the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International from 133 in 2004 to 66 in 2009; however, there is widespread consensus that Saakashvili’s success in fighting corruption refers to only eliminating low-level official corruption. According to the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, the macroeconomic data improved from a gross domestic product (GDP) of $2,664 per capita in 2003 to $2,970 per capita in 2008.

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

143

that electoral outcomes, while competitive, still deviate significantly from popular preferences; and/or where civil and political liberties are so limited that some political orientations and interests are unable to organize and express themselves. (Diamond, Linz and Lipset 1989: xvii)

They feel that the term ‘resonates distinctively with the contemporary era, in which democracy is the only broadly legitimate regime form, and regimes have felt the unprecedented pressure to adopt – or at least mimic – the democratic form’ (Diamond 2002: 24). Thus, Diamond, Linz and Lipset might consider Georgia under Shevardnadze ‘semi-democratic’ or ‘pseudo-democratic’. However, one might question this ‘democratization bias’ for labelling regimes as ‘diminished’ forms of democracy that do not even fulfill minimalist criteria of free and fair elections (Schumpeter 1947: 269, Huntington 1991: 7) or ‘mid-range’ conceptions of democracy (Diamond 1999: 13-15). If democracy is the ‘root concept’ (Sartori 1971), with free and fair elections as its core principle, one cannot develop sub-types contradicting these very principles. Therefore, some believe those regimes that fail to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy can be better described as (diminished) forms of authoritarianism (Linz 2000, Levitsky and Way 2002: 52). While Merkel et al. also prioritize the electoral regime in their defective democracy concept, they still offer the possibility of compensation when it is violated. The first four criteria of the electoral regime may be violated without categorizing the regime as authoritarian if two additional conditions are met: meaningful elections with real choice and the possibility of turnover (as in Levitsky and Way’s concept of competitive authoritarianism) and the presence of elements such as political rights, horizontal accountability, and independent courts (unlike competitive authoritarianism) (Merkel et al. 2003: 66-73). While the first additional condition of meaningful elections with real choice and the possibility of turnover will be analysed in a specific section which takes a closer look at diminished forms of authoritarianism (and to a lesser degree in the following sections), the second additional condition of political rights, horizontal accountability, and independent courts will be addressed below by providing an analysis of the regime characteristics of Georgia under Shevardnadze and – after the Rose Revolution – under Saakashvili. It will be shown that the additional criteria provided by Merkel et al. in order to compensate for violations of the electoral regime were not met in Georgia at any point. Thus, the Georgian regime should not be categorized as any kind of (even defective) democracy. Georgia’s Political Regime under Shevardnadze (1992-2003) Independent Georgia’s first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was violently overthrown in January 1992 against the backdrop of growing popular

144

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

dissatisfaction with the regime.6 Apart from his lack of experience in governing a state and his unwillingness to engage in political compromise, Gamsakhurdia’s personal, extremely polarizing style of leadership played a decisive role. Accusations against non-Georgian minorities and a strong emphasis on unity undermined participation and political diversity (Jones 1994: 141-143). After the military coup d’état, the office of the president was abolished. Eduard Shevardnadze, former leader of the Georgian Communist Party and last Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, returned from Moscow to Tbilisi in March 1992 and became Chair of the hastily established Interim State Council and thereby de facto head of state without having obtained democratic legitimacy to hold this position. This constituted a decisive setback in the early transition period of the democratization process as he was elected president only in November 1995.7 Given the escalating warfare in the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia in the summer of 1992 as well as the Zviadists’ violent attempts to regain power in 1992/93 (see inter alia Jawad 2006: 5-12), Shevardnadze was confronted with the imminent collapse of the young state. With support from Russia and the Russia-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States as well as from fluid clientelist networks, Shevardnadze – in contrast to Gamsakhurdia – succeeded in disempowering the warlords and their armed followers and in establishing a certain degree of public order, physical security, and relative stability in the following years, thereby gaining some performance legitimacy.8 But his administration failed

6  Under Gamsakhurdia’s leadership, conflict over the acquisition of limited resources broke out between various Georgian and non-Georgian elite groups in 1991. The original unity of the former national and independence movement split more and more into particular interests. Police and security forces were increasingly involved in the criminal underworld and the shadow economy of the drug and weapons trade. They thereby contributed to the development of ‘markets of violence’ (Elwert 2003). In the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, armed opposition groups drove the government out of office and into exile in the ‘Winter War’ of January 1992. Gamsakhurdia, whose followers had successively divided into rival factions, was overthrown. 7  Shevardnadze was elected president with 74 per cent of the vote (turnout 69 per cent) in November 1995. 8  While Shevardnadze had at first continued his predecessor’s strategy of limiting Russian influence in the country as much as possible, when faced with rising violence he had to accept Russia’s peacekeeping role in Abkhazia in October 1993. At the same time, Georgia became a member of the Russia-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Russia, in return, promised to secure Georgia’s territorial integrity. However, besides deploying peacekeepers in Abkhazia and acting as a mediator in South Ossetia, Russia also had her own interests in the region and maintained military bases in Georgia. Until 2008, when a war broke out between Russia and Georgia, Moscow had applied a strategy of ‘controlled instability’ (Bielawski and Halbach 2004: 7), using her role with regard to the two breakaway regions as a lever to maintain influence on their ‘metropolitan state’.

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

145

to halt the progressive cultural fragmentation of the diverse country.9 Although Shevardnadze’s followers all came from the former Communist nomenklatura, his political party, the Georgian Citizens’ Union (CUG), was quite heterogeneous.10 Apart from a web of relationships that Shevardnadze was able to rebuild with administrative cadres, factory bosses and security officials that had run Georgia under Shevardnadze during the 1970s, the CUG also attracted a small group of younger, generally reform-minded leaders from civic organizations, some of which would later defect to the opposition and become the main protagonists of the Rose Revolution. Like similar ‘presidential parties’ in other parts of the post-Soviet space, ‘the CUG was driven less by ties of ideology and class than by loyalty to Shevardnadze and a desire of local elites to secure their political and economic positions’ (King 2001: 95-96). Under the country’s strongly presidential system, Shevardnadze was the ultimate decision-maker both within the state and within the CUG. Notwithstanding the fact that the CUG had helped him consolidate his position as speaker of a fragmented 24-party parliament in 1993, his rule came to be based on rather fluid clientelist networks. Shevardnadze’s leadership style was characterized by efforts to balance competing interests to ensure that no single group was able to challenge his authority as head of state, head of government and head of the ruling party. This tactic of divide et impera and of preventively co-opting possible opposition forces contributed to overcoming chaos and violence but called into question democracy and the rule of law. Laws were passed but their implementation was only guaranteed when their content accidentally corresponded to the personal self-interest of responsible authorities (Huber 2004: 47). The general lawlessness, entanglement in organized crime and arbitrary law enforcement of the political leadership damaged any kind of legal legitimacy the Shevardnadze government might have possessed, while the dominance of informal methods of decisionmaking diluted its procedural legitimacy (Jawad 2005: 16-18). Corruption and economic stagnation undermined political, economic and legal reforms that would be fundamental prerequisites for successful democratization.11 9  Approximately 100 ethnic groups inhabit the country, which had an officially estimated population of 4.6 million people as of 2002 and – keeping in mind emigration – a realistically estimated population of about four million. In the context of potential conflicts, not only the numerical strength of the ethnic groups is relevant, but also the compactness of their settlement areas and the fact that in many cases they speak their own languages. The main ethnic groups are Georgians (70 per cent), Armenians (8 per cent), Azerbaijanis (6 per cent), Russians (4 per cent), Ossetians (3 per cent) and Abkhazians (2 per cent). 10  Interestingly, the word ‘party’ is often shunned in the post-Communist countries of Eurasia in order to distinguish themselves from Soviet times and the rule of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Fairbanks 2010: 144). 11  Against the backdrop of political chaos in the early 1990s, economic transformation in Georgia started with a significant delay. Gamsakhurdia had set the idea of privatization aside and opened the door to the criminal and spontaneous appropriation of state properties.

146

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

The deterioration of government performance in almost all policy areas caused a deepening of internal splits and cleavages within the ruling party. The CUG split into a reform wing on the one hand and a group of presidential loyalists on the other in 1999.12 Moreover, a heterogeneous opposition alliance received a noteworthy number of votes for the first time in the October parliamentary elections.13 Although this indicated an emerging party system, fragmentation was still very high and political parties in Georgia continued to be weak. King (2001: 98) considered Georgia’s multiparty system at that time ‘to a great degree a notional one’ in practical terms. In reaction to the opposition alliance’s gain in votes in 1999, Shevardnadze appointed some of the ‘young reformers’ to high ministerial posts, only to drop them during later struggles with the old corrupt power elites (BTI 2003). The few individuals who appeared to be genuinely committed to reform faced obstacles placed in their way by the government.14 The usual alliance between reform-oriented representatives of the regime and moderate members of the opposition which could have been expected according to conventional transition theory was never formed in Georgia. From the end of the 1990s, citizen apathy increasingly turned into frustration with the poverty and pervasive corruption affecting all areas of life, causing permanent uncertainty.15 Facing a decline in his authority, Shevardnadze felt 12  The internal power struggle within the CUG to succeed Shevardnadze became particularly fierce after the 2000 presidential elections. Shevardnadze had only been able to run for re-election due to a constitutional change but would not be allowed to run for office again in 2004. 13  In the October 1999 parliamentary elections, a heterogeneous opposition alliance received a noteworthy number of votes for the first time. The CUG received 41.8 per cent. Earlier, during parliamentary elections in 1995, the CUG had received 23.71 per cent of the votes. However, only three of 53 political parties running for elections won seats in parliament, having barely gained a total of 39 per cent of the votes after a 5 per cent threshold had been introduced because of the high parliamentary fragmentation (Slider 1997: 181-182). 14  One example refers to Shevardnadze’s successor as president who was, at the time, Justice Minister: Mikheil Saakashvili suggested a full-scale anti-corruption crack-down within his ministry in November 2000 but was publicly rebuked for the potential ‘negative consequences’ of his zeal by Shevardnadze. Later, in 2002, Saakashvili resigned from his position to fight a parliamentary by-election because the government refused to approve an anti-corruption law. However, this step can also be seen in light of the internal power struggle that took place within the CUG and produced a lot of ‘hysterical’ anti-corruption rhetoric without any political effect (see footnote 12). 15  In a May 2003 survey, 68 per cent of respondents considered Shevardnadze ‘unfavourable’ in political leaders’ ratings and only 6 per cent considered him the ‘preferred next president’. 83 per cent answered the question ‘Generally speaking, things in Georgia are going in the ...’ with ‘wrong direction’ and 11 per cent with ‘right direction’. The question ‘How satisfied are you with the way democracy is developing in Georgia?’ was answered by 40 per cent with ‘very dissatisfied’ and by 29 per cent with ‘somewhat dissatisfied’. Regarding the question ‘Which political parties can deal most successfully with and solve

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

147

compelled to adopt authoritarian measures to remain in power. After Georgia’s admission to the Council of Europe in April 1999, power abuses including extra-judicial killing, police torture, state-condoned violence against religious minorities, and death threats to journalists coming from state officials have reportedly even increased according to reports by international human rights organizations (for example, Amnesty International 2000, HRW 2000a, 2000b). Although government involvement in violent assaults against political and civil society organizations cannot be proven, the lack of determination to prosecute them was a fact. Furthermore, in the late years of the Shevardnadze era, harassment of politically active NGOs became a new norm and laws limiting their freedom were passed.16 In contrast, throughout the 1990s there had hardly been any legislative limitations on civil society organizations. None of the elections conducted during the Shevardnadze era fully met international standards. Throughout the late 1990s, election manipulations were intensified, causing a rapid loss of democratic legitimacy. Already with regard to the 1999 parliamentary elections, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) noted ‘some irregularities’, ‘some instances of intimidation and violence observed during the pre-election period and on election days’, ‘few occasions of ballot stuffing’ as well as ‘some major deficiencies’ of the election framework. It stated that ‘freedom of movement was at times restricted, and on occasions these restrictions prevented political parties from campaigning’ and that ‘the election law allowed the ruling party to enjoy a dominant position in the election administration at all levels’ (OSCE/ODIHR 2000a: 2). The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), a Georgian local monitoring organization, reported widespread stuffing of ballot boxes, intimidation of voters by police and violence against independent election observers (King 2001: 98). The problems identified by the OSCE with regard to the 2000 presidential elections included interference by state authorities in the election process, deficient election legislation, a not fully representative election administration, unreliable voter registers, and ballot box stuffing. It stated that:

the problems Georgia is facing?’, only four per cent named Shevardnadze’s CUG, while 47 per cent stated that they would never vote for Shevardnadze’s election bloc ‘New Georgia’ (IRI, Gallup and IPM 2003: slides 3, 6, 19, 23-25). 16  In April 2002, Shevardnadze compared NGO activities with those of terrorists and pleaded for greater financial control of these groups which, in most cases, were funded by foreign donors. In February 2003, the Ministry of Security circulated a draft law ‘On the Suspension of Activities, Liquidation, and Banning of Extremist Organizations under Foreign Control’, but toned it down in response to protests by human rights groups. The Ministry of Finance issued an order imposing state control over all grants to NGOs in March 2003. Three months later, a Tbilisi district court suspended this order (Piano 2004: 5; Jawad 2005: 27).

148

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats the authorities provided strong support for the incumbent’s election campaign. There was no clear dividing line between State affairs and the incumbent’s campaign. […] the State media failed to provide balanced reporting on candidates and gave the incumbent clear advantage (OSCE/ODIHR 2000b: 2).

Thus Shevardnadze had established a constitutional democracy façade during his presidency, although democratic values had not yet prevailed, nor had they become consolidated in the attitudes and behaviour of the political elite and society. The Rose Revolution of November 2003 Given the devastating economic situation, the lawlessness of the political leadership, and the fact that state institutions were not capable of fulfilling their core functions and delivering services to citizens, Georgia became a failing state under Shevardnadze’s presidency (Halbach 2004). While ‘Western’ policy makers habitually analysed Georgia’s post-independence political developments as a democratic transition, highlighting the many formal achievements in the 1990s, the international donor community became increasingly alienated and – given the deterioration of government performance – eventually revoked financial support in 2003.17 The population’s dissatisfaction with the Shevardnadze government peaked in massive public protests against endemic election fraud that had, on the one hand, been drastically increasing with the government’s decreasing popularity since the end of the 1990s and had, on the other hand, become more transparent with improved election laws and monitoring by civil society and international organizations (Nodia 2004: 2). With regard to the November 2003 parliamentary elections, the OSCE found unusually clear words in its final observation report: The 2 November Parliamentary elections in Georgia fell short of a number of OSCE commitments and other international standards for democratic elections. The elections demonstrated that the authorities lacked political will to conduct a genuine democratic process. This resulted in widespread and systematic election fraud during and after election day (OSCE/ODIHR 2004b: 1).

The mass demonstrations that took place in Georgia spearheaded by the youth organization Enough (Georgian: kmara) as well as international attention paid to these developments forced Shevardnadze to resign. The Rose Revolution of November 2003 brought a new government of ‘young reformers’ around Mikheil 17  The International Monetary Fund (IMF) did not allocate the second tranche of $30 million within the framework of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) for the year 2002 (EC 2003: 11). The European Commission revised its Georgia Country Strategy Paper ahead of time in September 2003, given the deteriorating situation.

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

149

Saakashvili, Zurab Zhvania and Nino Burjanadze into office. They all had defected from the ruling elite. Saakashvili had resigned from his position as Minister of Justice in 2002 because the government refused to approve an anti-corruption law18 and founded the United National Movement party (UNM). Zhvania had become the CUG’s first Secretary General and later Chairperson of Parliament – a position he resigned from in protest against the attempt to crack down on the independent TV station Rustavi2 in November 2001 – and still later he created the United Democrats party.19 Zhvania was succeeded as Chairperson of Parliament by Burjanadze, who emerged in August 2003 as head of an opposition electoral alliance named Burjanadze-Democrats. Georgia’s Supreme Court annulled the election results – those of the proportional election contest but not the majoritarian election results – and the partial repeat parliamentary elections were scheduled for March 2004. Saakashvili was elected president with 96 per cent of the votes in January 2004. The Rose Revolution represented the first peaceful change of government in independent Georgia after Gamsakhurdia had been violently driven from office. Notwithstanding the fact that Bunce and Wolchik consider the Rose Revolution ‘electoral change’20 (Bunce and Wolchik 2009b, 2009a), this change of government was not directly brought about by democratic elections, since these had been massively manipulated and only public protests against this fraud had induced Shevardnadze to resign. Georgia’s Political Regime under Saakashvili (since 2003) The hopes of the international community as well as of the Georgian population were high that the Rose Revolution would provide an impetus for democratization in Georgia. Interesting in this regard is a comparison of people’s trust in various institutions before and after the Rose Revolution. The table shows that positive ratings of all institutions have increased by leaps and bounds, indicating a significant gain of trust and therefore an improvement in input legitimacy.21 This can be interpreted in the sense that the data for 2003 18  See footnote 14. 19  In the new government, he was appointed Prime Minister. His mysterious death in January 2005 was accompanied by rumours of rising tensions inside the propresidential camp. 20  Bunce and Wolchik introduce an ‘electoral model’ identifying ‘tasks that, if implemented by opposition groups and citizens, will increase the likelihood of authoritarians’ a) losing at the polls, and b) actually ceding power and leaving office in response to such a loss’ (Bunce and Wolchik 2009b: 97). Core elements of the model are rigorous election monitoring, impressive campaigning, voter-registration and voter-mobilization drives, advance preparation for protests, and parallel vote tabulations. 21  Contempt and mistrust in state institutions are common in non-communist authoritarian regimes and even democracies. Almost nowhere, however, are they as strong as in the former Soviet Union (Fairbanks 2010: 144). Against this backdrop, the

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

150

Table 8.1 Institution

Rating of Various Institutions (2003 and 2004) positive

rather positive than negative

rather negative than positive

negative

difficult to answer

2003 2004 2003 2004 2003 2004 2003 2004 2003 2004 Parliament

1.2

9.6

4.7

35.0

22.7

29.6

71.5

23.9

0

1.7

Executive

1.1

15.5

4.2

35.9

19.3

25.4

75.4

22.4

0

0.7

NGOs

5.9

15.0

25.0

32.7

28.1

22.1

38.6

24.5

2.4

5.6

Orthodox Church Mass media

38.6

52.1

38.2

32.1

12.7

6.8

9.0

4.1

1.5

4.8

25.6

31.7

41.3

36.6

18.3

17.0

14.5

13.6

0.3

0.8

Police

2.3

17.5

5.7

26.1

16.7

23.1

75.2

31.3

0.1

2.0

Prosecutor’s Office Courts

3.0

11.1

5.5

20.0

17.1

27.1

73.8

38.7

0.7

3.0

3.1

10.2

8.0

20.2

20.3

25.6

67.6

40.2

0.7

3.8

Source: International Centre for Conflicts and Negotiations (ICCN). Polls of 1,000 respondents in three major cities of Georgia (spring 2003 and 2004), as cited in Nodia and Scholtbach 2007: 66.

express the apathy and resignation prevailing in society during the Shevardnadze era, while the numbers for 2004 reflect the atmosphere of a new beginning and the hopes attributed to the new elite after the Rose Revolution. However, the new government under Saakashvili was not able to live up to these hopes. Although some successes were achieved, such as rebuilding moribund government institutions, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration and transforming the economy, all in all, the Rose Revolution did not represent a decisive turn towards democratization in Georgia (Jawad 2005). In fact, the Saakashvili government has increasingly applied authoritarian measures in its aim to reform inefficient post-Soviet administrative structures, stimulate the dysfunctional economy, re-integrate the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and stand up to the Russian neighbour (ICG 2007). The small, like-minded, young Georgian elite around President Saakashvili has concentrated power with itself and has increasingly failed to tolerate disagreement, criticism or opposition. Compared to the Shevardnadze era, nepotism within the higher administrative ranks has even increased. Political observers have criticized that the executive branch puts a lot of pressure on the judiciary and has thereby influenced the development of politically relevant cases (Nodia 2007: 244). The judiciary was improvements in the perception of state institutions after the Rose Revolution is even more impressive.

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

151

susceptible to such influence due to the fact that its representatives were partly still lacking qualifications. Saakashvili justified the creation of this sort of ‘super-presidential’ system, that is, the exclusive control over all political and state institutions, with the transformation of Georgia from a paralysed, corrupt pseudo-state to a capable, democratic and internationally respected state that adheres to the rule of law. His government has so far failed to establish legitimate and coherent institutions capable of reaching the periphery, and to extend the monopoly of power over the entire territory. A constitutional change in February 2004 further strengthened presidential powers and weakened those of parliament, which did not play its role in the sense of checks and balances and lacked credible opposition forces anyway.22 The ‘superiority’ of the governing party and the ruling parliamentary bloc represented a form of continuity in Georgia. The parliament’s chairperson, the vice chairs, and almost all committee chairs were usually associated with the ruling party in Georgia. Under Saakashvili, the drafting of the most important legislation was mainly controlled by a small group of members of parliament belonging not only to the ruling party but also to the president’s inner circle, thereby impairing the parliament’s independence from the presidency. Although countries in the post-Soviet space are generally keen to distinguish themselves from Soviet times, they still resemble the Soviet regime in ‘concentrating power in the hands of a single man, who typically rules with the help of an obedient government party […] plus a submissive legislature and judiciary’ (Fairbanks 2010: 145). The UNM has not used its opportunities to become a constituency-based political party since the beginning of its rule in 2004. Saakashvili has failed to translate his charismatic legitimacy of rather vague popular support into a stable power base. He therefore has reorganized his cabinet several times in order to readjust the balance of forces. This increased the problem of inexperienced ministers in an already young cabinet, not to speak of the administration that was usually replaced as well. The general situation has become neither clearer nor more stable after almost two decades of independence. The Saakashvili government repeatedly justified limitations of civil rights by referring to alleged interference in Georgian domestic politics by Russia, stoking fears in society.23 The political leadership failed to deal 22  These changes included that the president gained the power to dissolve parliament and call new elections and that parliament lost the right to dismiss the prime minister in a no-confidence vote. Prior to the Rose Revolution Saakashvili had vigorously protested most of these changes, which Shevardnadze had unsuccessfully been trying to obtain since 2001 (ICG 2007: 18). 23  A comparison of survey results in 2007 with those from 2003 reveals that in 2007 a total of 89 per cent of respondents considered relations with Russia to be ‘bad’, 71 per cent considered Russia to ‘comprise the most political and economic threat’ and only 22 per cent considered it one of ‘the most important partners for Georgia’ (IRI Gallup and IPM 2007b: slides 68, 70); in 2003, 60 per cent of respondents perceived Russia as a ‘threat’ and 42 per cent as an ‘important partner’ (IRI Gallup and IPM 2003: slide 39).

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

152

Figure 8.1

Trust in Various Institutions in Georgia (in per cent of Respondents that Answered with ‘Agreeable’)

Source: International Republican Institute (The Gallup Organization and The Institute of Polling and Marketing). Georgian National Voter Studies of the years 2003-2007. [Online]. Available at: http://www.iri.org/eurasia/georgia/asp [accessed: December 2007].

constructively with the demands and criticism of the opposition, civil society and citizens. Opportunities for the population’s participation in political processes were still lacking at the local, regional and national levels. This limited influence on the state’s decision-making about the distribution of resources once again fortified the sentiment of powerlessness and disinterest regarding questions of common welfare. All this heightened the risk that Saakashvili would become a victim of fragile public opinion and lose his initial popularity (Jawad 2005: 35). Despite improvements in public opinion, authorities still (or once again) possessed the negative image of contributing to nothing but their own career and personal gains, as the following graph shows: As Fairbanks (2010: 148) notes: In Georgia, as in many a consolidated democracy, wealth offers opportunities for political influence. Yet in Georgia it is also the case that allying oneself with political power is the shortest path to great wealth. This exerts a pervasive influence on the motives of the political elite, above all in cases where sharing or temporarily giving up power might be in the best political interests of presidents and their supporters.

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

153

One of Saakashvili’s guiding principles seemed to be that no major source of potential political power can be allowed to remain truly independent; furthermore, there should not be a power-sharing arrangement with genuine opposition elements (Fairbanks 2010: 145). However, the government knew that it needed to be seen to have an opposition, and engaged in few arrests or beatings and (so far, at least) no (known) killings. Yet it constantly attempted to divide, weaken, and control opposition forces so that they would not be able to threaten to assume power. One of the applied strategies referred to creating a pliant state dependent on a ‘reasonable opposition’ that was supposed to give the appearance of multiparty democracy while limiting actual party competition.24 After the November 2007 political crisis (see below), however, the government adapted its strategy with regard to the opposition to some degree. It tried to woo certain opposition leaders with offers of ministerial portfolios – but failed. Furthermore, confiscation was used as a weapon against the opposition’s major funder, as were punitive or damaging investigations that had intimidating or discrediting effects (Fairbanks 2010: 148).25 Notwithstanding improvements in the quality of life compared to the Shevardnadze period, poverty and unemployment nevertheless remained high in the Saakashvili era. Because the interests of the broad public were not represented within the political system, the population aimed at withdrawing itself from the control of state institutions, using instead informal institutions and procedures far removed from the state in order to secure people’s livelihoods. The lack of trust in state institutions and people’s disappointed hopes with regard to the Saakashvili government culminated in a massive political crisis in the fall of 2007. United in the rejection of Saakashvili and the amplitude of his power, the usually divided opposition demanded the transformation of the presidential system into a parliamentary republic. 24  Fairbanks (2010: 147) provides an illustrative example of this in describing the shifting loyalties of the former political director of Imedi television. After the government seized his channel, he suddenly dropped his vehemently oppositionist stance and established the mysteriously funded Christian Democratic Movement (CDM). The CDM lent the government democratic legitimacy, split the opposition and undermined its boycott of parliament. The creation of a tame opposition in Georgia probably betokens the lingering influence of the conspiratorial communist taste for working through front groups. 25  Fairbanks (2010: 148-149) argues that many opposition figures, including television entrepreneurs Shalva Ramishvili and Arkady ‘Badri’ Patarkatsishvili and rising Conservative Party leader Koba Davitashvili, have faced humiliation and even imprisonment after compromising (and sometimes edited) video or audio recordings came to light. He also shows how confiscated wealth can be used as a political reward: ‘When Speaker of Parliament Nino Burjanadze decided not to run for re-election in April 2008, she received a fashionable villa and almost eight acres of valuable land, all of it intentionally under-taxed. After she joined the opposition that October, the government’s tax agency and courts suddenly ‘discovered’ the real, much higher value of her house and land. Her reward is now up for auction’.

154

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

The crisis was triggered by the arrest of ex-Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili on 25 September 2007. Okruashvili, a populist nationalist hardliner, had announced the launch of an opposition party, the Movement for United Georgia, accused Saakashvili of nepotism, and challenged the official version of events surrounding Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania’s death in January 2005.26 Okruashvili was arrested and charged with extortion, money laundering, misuse of power, and negligence while serving as Defence Minister.27 In response, several members of parliament switched from the governing bloc to the opposition.28 A very heterogeneous opposition alliance was formed, the National Council of the United Public Movement (UPM) consisting of ten nationalist, populist left-wing, conservative and liberal political parties and demanding among other things the transformation of the presidential system into a parliamentary republic and the holding of parliamentary elections in spring instead of Autumn 2008. It organized the largest protests in recent years, with tens of thousands of people demanding the president’s resignation. Many protesters travelled in from the provinces, though according to the media authorities closed transport links and used intimidation and other forceful measures to decrease attendance (ICG 2007: 3). There were occasional violent clashes between the protesters and unidentified armed or masked men. The rallies were beaten down by the police and resulted in the closure of opposition media29 and the imposition of a state of emergency on 8 November 26  Okruashvili had resigned in 2006 after being appointed minister for economic development, a clear demotion compared to his former post of defence minister (and before that interior minister). His growing popularity had made him the president’s only true rival. In the weeks preceding the launch of his party, the Movement for United Georgia, several of his allies were arrested. Okruashvili’s successor as the governor of Shida Kartli and his closest associate, Mikheil Kareli, was accused of taking bribes and illegally participating in private business activities. These detentions may well have followed an unsuccessful attempt by the leadership to curtail Okruashvili’s plans to run for president by bringing him back into government (ICG 2007: 2). 27  Only after a country-wide televised avowal of remorse was he released and brought out of the country (Halbach 2007). 28  Nevertheless, the opposition still did not consist of more than 50 of a total of 235 members of parliament (Nodia 2008: 238-239). 29  This especially refers to the closure of Imedi television, the only independent television network broadcasting to the whole country. It was allowed to re-open only the day media campaigning for the presidential election of January 2008 officially started and was not on the air for several more days due to equipment damage (ICG 2007: i). With the exception of public broadcasting and small-town newspapers, Georgia’s media are at least nominally in private hands, and leeway for the expression of opposition sentiment is greater than it is in most former Soviet republics. Since 2007, the Georgian government, however, has kept all television broadcasting outside Tbilisi in friendly hands. The only independent media are limited-circulation outlets such as pricey newspapers and television channels that can be viewed only in the capital (which is already an opposition stronghold) or via satellite. But the government has gone through extraordinary manoeuvres first to close, then to legally confiscate and now to control Imedi, so that there is no independent

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

155

2007, provoking international criticism (Jawad 2008: 617-618, HRW 2007, ICG 2007). A number of opposition politicians were charged with attempting a coup at Russia’s behest and the government seized the assets of some. Saakashvili referred to the opposition as a ‘black, dark force’ funded by a ‘concrete oligarch Russian force’ promoting a ‘factory of lies’. This and subsequent pressure tactics have deepened the rift in society (ICG 2007: i; Fairbanks 2010: 146).30 Saakashvili resigned and presidential elections were rescheduled for 5 January 2008. Although the Labour Party withdrew from the united opposition and put up its own candidate, for the first time the opposition candidate, Levan Gachechiladze, received a significant share of votes (almost 26 per cent); the incumbent was re-elected with 53 per cent. International observers considered this 2008 presidential election to be the first genuinely competitive post-independence presidential election (OSCE/ODIHR 2008b: 2). However, while quantitative data showed a slight improvement in performance with regard to the electoral process since Saakashivili’s assumption of office (Nodia 2008), Fairbanks (2010: 146) notes that the 2008 presidential election: was marred by a suspicious coincidence between abnormally high turnouts and abnormally large numbers of votes for Saakashvili in very poor, ethnic-minority areas with long histories of delivering votes to the government in power. This pattern had been seen in the October 2003 election that preceded the Rose Revolution, when then-President Shevardnadze’s electoral bloc had performed worst in the capital city of Tbilisi and best in the minority areas, with Saakashvili and his allies doing the opposite. … Close statistical analysis and exit polling from the January 2008 election suggest that without fraud the president would not have been able to emerge from the first round claiming victory …

Although Saakashvili would doubtlessly have entered the second round with a strong edge, no second round was going to be allowed. ‘Eliminating all risk of losing power trumped any concern with retaining democratic legitimacy’ (Fairbanks 2010: 146). International observers still reported evidence of significant ‘tampering with voter lists, results and protocols’ and pro-incumbent bias in most large-audience media during the 2008 presidential election (OSCE/ broadcast network that can be watched throughout the whole country (Fairbanks 2010: 147). It remains open to debate whether a recent fake report by Imedi on renewed war in Georgia and Saakashvili’s assassination that triggered panic in March 2010 was an expression of such government control (Civil Georgia 2010a). Saakashvili stated that the report was ‘maximally close to what may really happen’ (Civil Georgia 2010b). Imedi’s current head is Giorgi Arveladze, former member of government and a long-time ally of President Saakashvili. 30  An NGO report cites cases of physical or legal intimidation by law enforcers through fines, detention and threats of physical harm or dismissal from jobs against citizens seen as disloyal to the UNM both in Tbilisi and elsewhere (TI Georgia 2007: 12).

156

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

ODIHR 2008b: 2, 20, 23). They had already noted problems of implausible voter turnout, selective cancellation of election results and ‘clear bias’ in the media during the March 2004 partial repeat parliamentary elections held after the Rose Revolution (OSCE/ODIHR 2004a). The May 2008 parliamentary vote was less fraudulent than the January presidential election, with the UNM scoring a big win that reflected massive popular retreat into political passivity and abusing state resources for campaign purposes (Fairbanks 2010: 146). After the 2008 elections, tensions with the opposition remained, with demands for Saakashvili to resign. Georgia – A (Diminished) Form of Authoritarianism? As noted above, Georgia might be better described as a (diminished) form of authoritarianism given that the political regime failed to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy, that is, conducting free and fair elections. But can the empirical evidence be explained by (diminished) forms of authoritarianism? The late Shevardnadze regime may be categorized as an ‘electoral authoritarian’ regime following Schedler’s concept of this ‘modal type of political regime in the developing world’ and ‘new form of authoritarianism behind electoral façades’. The elections that are regularly held in these regimes are: broadly inclusive (they are held under universal suffrage), minimally competitive (opposition parties, while denied victory [as in the November 2003 elections], are allowed to win votes and seats), and minimally open (opposition parties are not subject to massive repression, although they may experience repressive treatment in selective and intermittent ways) (Schedler 2006: 3).

The change of government that resulted from mass protests against election fraud in November 2003 suggests that Georgia was a competitive authoritarian regime at that time, as the elections could not simply be stolen. The Rose Revolution confirmed the assumption that elections ‘generate considerable uncertainty’ and if incumbents manipulate them anyway ‘this often costs them dearly and can even bring them down’ (Levitsky and Way 2002: 55).31 Also, violations of the ‘minimum criteria for democracy’32 were ‘both frequent enough and serious 31  Levitsky and Way consider the persistence of meaningful democratic institutions that create arenas through which opposition forces may – and frequently do – pose significant challenges even if the playing field is skewed in favour of the autocratic incumbents to be what makes competitive authoritarian regimes distinct from façade electoral regimes, in which electoral institutions exist but yield no meaningful contestation for power (Levitsky and Way 2002: 53-54). 32  Levitsky and Way (2002: 53) consider modern democratic regimes to all meet four minimum criteria: (1) Executives and legislatures are chosen through elections that

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

157

enough to create an uneven playing field between government and opposition’ (Levitsky and Way 2002: 53) in Georgia, as the failure to distinguish between political party and state structures (as well as between the government and the authorities responsible for election administration) has been a constant in Georgian elections, and incumbents routinely continue to abuse state resources to date.33 Similar features are found in Carothers’ ‘dominant power system’, which he has used to characterize Georgia in the period prior to the Rose Revolution (Carothers 2002: 11-14). He describes countries with this syndrome to have limited but still real political space, some political contestation by opposition groups, and at least most of the basic institutional forms of democracy. The typical pattern of elections in dominant-power countries is considered by Carothers to be one of dubious but not outright fraudulent elections in which the ruling group tries to put on a good enough electoral show to gain the approval of the international community while quietly tilting the electoral playing field far enough in its own favour to ensure victory. Due to the strengthening of the opposition which accompanied Shevardnadze’s declining popularity, the Shevardnadze administration felt compelled to adopt authoritarian measures and to resort to outright election fraud in order to remain in power. Until then – and especially until the November 2003 events – Carothers’ assessment of Georgia as a dominant-power system in which ‘one political grouping – whether it is a movement, a party, an extended family, or a single leader – dominates the system in such a way that there appears to be little prospect of alternation of power in the foreseeable future’ (Carothers 2002: 12) and elections are not outright fraudulent appeared valid. While it is clear that the Georgian governments have continuously created an uneven playing field (Levitsky and Way 2010 and in this volume), when it comes to the term ‘competitive’ in competitive authoritarianism, one wonders whether Georgia would have qualified until recently, considering that the January 2008 presidential election34 and the May 2008 parliamentary elections35 were considered ‘the first genuinely competitive post-independence elections’ (OSCE/ ODIHR 2008b: 4, 2008a: 5) in Georgia. At one point, Levitsky and Way simply state that: are open, free and fair; (2) virtually all adults possess the right to vote; (3) political rights and civil liberties, including freedom of the press, freedom of association and freedom to criticize the government without reprisal, are broadly protected; and (4) elected authorities possess real authority to govern, in that they are not subject to the tutelary control of military or clerical leaders (see also Mainwaring, Brinks and Pérez Linan 2001). 33  Levitsky and Way (2002: 52) consider their concept of competitive authoritarianism as one particular type of hybrid regime. See footnote 2. 34  Mikheil Saakashvili 53.47 per cent; Levan Gachechiladze 25.69 per cent; turnout of 56.19 per cent. 35  United National Movement – for Victorious Georgia 59.18 per cent (119 seats); United Opposition 17.73 per cent (17 seats); turnout of 53.9 per cent.

158

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats although the electoral process may be characterized by large-scale abuses of state power, biased media coverage, (often violent) harassment of opposition candidates and activists, and an overall lack of transparency, elections are regularly held, competitive (in that major opposition parties and candidates usually participate), and generally free of massive fraud. (Levitsky and Way 2002: 55, author’s own emphasis)

In this regard, Georgia would most certainly qualify as a competitive authoritarian regime with the exception of the very late Shevardnadze era where massive fraud took place in elections. However, Larry Diamond has interpreted ‘significant parliamentary opposition’ to be a ‘defining feature of competitive authoritarian regimes’ (Diamond 2002: 29). He considers parliamentary elections to be only an ‘authoritarian façade’ when the ruling or dominant party wins almost all seats. Large majorities of the ruling party notwithstanding, this has not been the case in any of the parliamentary elections in Georgia – not even the partial repeat parliamentary elections after the Rose Revolution’ in March 2004.36 This would also support categorizing Georgia as a competitive authoritarian regime. But one wonders whether it makes sense to operationalize this feature only quantitatively with regard to the number of seats in parliament and whether there should not also be qualitative requirements for an opposition to be considered ‘significant’ and to pose a real challenge to the government throughout the entire election cycle. Even to date, the opposition in Georgia remains fragmented.37 Political parties in Georgia have a ‘tradition’ of being weak, unstable, more focused on political personalities than on programs38 and barely rooted in society, 36  In the November 1995 parliamentary elections, the CUG won 107 of 235 seats with 23.71 per cent of the votes; in the October-November 1999 parliamentary elections, the CUG won 132 of 235 seats with 41.75 per cent of the votes; in the March 2004 repeat parliamentary elections, the National Movement – Democrats won 153 of 236 seats with 66.24 per cent of the votes (note: only the list-based seats were contested in the repeat elections due to a Supreme Court decision); in the May 2008 parliamentary elections, the United National Movement – for Victorious Georgia won 119 of 150 seats with 59.18 per cent of the votes (part of the United Opposition boycotted their mandates). 37  While the emergence of a large United Opposition bloc during the November 2007 political crisis, when several members of parliament switched from the governing bloc to the opposition, meant that the 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections were the most genuinely competitive elections in Georgia to date, the opposition remained fragmented, especially in single-member constituencies (OSCE/ODIHR 2008a: 5). Opposition parties had strongly opposed single-mandate constituencies, which they saw benefiting the ruling United National Movement, and had favoured regional proportional constituencies. 38  In 2003, 69 per cent of the respondents answered the question ‘When considering which party to vote for, what is more important: its leader or the party?’ with ‘leader is more important’; 29 per cent answered with ‘party is more important’ (IRI Gallup and IPM 2003: slide 30); in 2007, the same question was answered by 55 per cent with ‘leader is more

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

159

and therefore do not represent adequate mediators between citizens and the state. Instead of possessing an ideological aspect, politics was ‘pervaded by an opportunism that suggests an utter lack of principles’ (Fairbanks 2010: 145). Furthermore, the opposition seems to take shape less in parliamentary debates and more in street protests and only from time to time. So far, it has also sought political changes outside formal democratic institutions by boycotting elections or mandates or by pressuring leaders to resign.39 Thus, one might again question the classification of Georgia as a competitive authoritarian regime. With regard to presidential elections, Diamond considers three-quarters or more of the popular vote for the president to be ‘one clear sign of hegemony’ (Diamond 2002: 32).40 Levitsky and Way, in comparison, introduce the rule of thumb that a regime is considered non-competitive when presidents are re-elected with more than 70 per cent while, by contrast, in competitive authoritarian regimes elections are often bitterly fought (Levitsky and Way 2002: 55).41 Diamond’s three-quarters threshold applies to three of five post-independence presidential elections in Georgia,42 the Levitsky and Way rule of thumb to four of five.43 Just as there had been no alternative to Shevardnadze in October 1992 and in November 1995, there was no alternative to Saakashvili in January 2004. So, does this mean that Georgia has rather been a ‘hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime’ in which ‘elections and other ‘democratic’ institutions are largely façades, yet they may provide some space for political opposition, independent media and social

important’ and by 26 per cent with ‘party is more important’ (IRI Gallup and IPM 2007a: slide 28). When asked whether non-parliamentary opposition parties should unite to elect a single leader 40 per cent answered with ‘definitely yes’, 22 per cent with ‘likely yes’ (IRI Gallup and IPM 2009: slide 32). 39  A good example for this is a statement by opposition leader Levan Gachechiladze after the contested May 2008 parliamentary elections: ‘Our key goal is not to let the parliament convene its first session, even at the expense of bursting into the parliament’, something that Saakashvili had done during the Rose Revolution in November 2003. 40  Diamond (2002: especially 25-27) provides for five categories of regime types plus a residual on of ‘ambiguous regimes’: liberal democracy, electoral democracy (ambiguous regimes), competitive authoritarian, hegemonic electoral authoritarian and politically closed authoritarian. 41  However, Lucan A. Way distanced himself from this rule of thumb at the conference ‘Forms of Rule in the Post-Soviet Space’ held in Berlin on 17-18 December 2009. 42  Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s election with 86.5 per cent in May 1991 (turnout 83 per cent), Eduard Shevardnadze’s re-election with 79.82 per cent in April 2000 (turnout 75.86 per cent), and Mikheil Saakashvili’s election with 96 per cent in the extraordinary January 2004 elections right after the Rose Revolution (turnout 82.8 per cent). In the 2008 extraordinary presidential election, Saakashvili received 53.47 per cent of the votes (turnout 56.19 per cent). 43  Shevardnadze was elected president with 74.04 per cent of the votes in November 1995.

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

160

organizations that do not seriously criticize or challenge the regime’ (Diamond 2002: 26, Schedler 2002: 47) at these points in time? The label of a hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime seems to be incorrect. However, as shown, while characterizing Georgia a competitive authoritarian regime ‘feels’ right in a way, coding decisions still appear quite arbitrary as boundaries between types are not clearly specified. While the indicators reviewed briefly here indicate that Georgia might have been either a competitive authoritarian or a hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime at different points in time, in 2002 Diamond categorized Georgia as ‘“ambiguous” in the sense that [it] fall[s] on the blurry boundary between electoral democracy and competitive authoritarianism’ (Diamond 2002: 30). Conclusion Against the background of skepticism about the outcome of many transitions in the 1990s and debate about political grey zones, some progress has been made in capturing the characteristics of hybrid regimes, defective democracies or diminished forms or ‘sub-types’44 of authoritarianism by developing new concepts. However, as the case of Georgia has shown, it seems that the distinctions between such new concepts as competitive authoritarianism and other ‘sub-types’ of authoritarianism, such as hegemonic electoral authoritarianism, are quite blurred rather than clear-cut. And this is further complicated by the fact that regimes can frequently move in and out of these sub-types. Thus one might well question the explanatory or analytical value of these concepts. While both the Shevardnadze regime and the Saakashvili regime may be characterized as competitive authoritarian regimes and there are elements of continuity, there are also differences in the nature of the various Georgian governments. These differences have resulted in changing conditions for the citizens, varying treatment of the opposition and the emergence of diverse challenges for ‘external’ promoters of democracy. Put very sketchily, several conclusions may be drawn from these differences. It might have been more reasonable to especially address and promote the capacity of the government and democratic institutions during the Shevardnadze era, while the relative importance of strengthening the democratic opposition, improving its access to the arenas of democratic contestation and reinforcing checks and balances to control and limit the power of the executive has been higher since Saakashvili took office. This short statement is certainly not a concluding remark on or recommendation for ‘external’ democracy promotion in Georgia, but is supposed to highlight the limits of regime types with regard to developing strategies for democracy promotion. However, they do help shape expectations. Considering Georgia a defective democracy raises different and definitely higher expectations 44  See above, footnote 2.

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

161

than categorizing it as a diminished form of authoritarianism. Thus, the concepts mentioned have contributed to widening the perspective on the political grey zone. But there is still much work to be done with regard to systematizing and improving the conceptual precision of (diminished forms of) authoritarianism. References Allison, L., Kukhianidze, A., Matsaberidze, M. and Dolidze, V. 1996. Problems of Democratization in the Republic of Georgia. Democratization, 3(4), 517-529. Amnesty International. 2000. Amnesty International Report 2000. London: Amnesty International. Bielawski, M. and Halbach, U. 2004. Der Georgische Knoten – Die SüdossetienKrise im Kontext Georgisch-Russischer Beziehungen. Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP). BTI (Bertelsmann Transformation Index). 2003. Ländergutachten Georgien [Online]. Available at: http://bti2003.bertelsmann-transformation-index.de/ fileadmin/pdf/laendergutachten/gus_mongolei/Georgien.pdf [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Bunce, V.J. and Wolchik, S.L. 2009a. Getting Real About ‘Real Causes’. Journal of Democracy, 20(1), 70-73. Bunce, V.J. and Wolchik, S.L. 2009b. Postcommunist Ambiguities. Journal of Democracy, 20(3), 93-107. Carothers, T. 2002. The End of the Transition Paradigm. Journal of Democracy, 13(1), 5-21. Civil Georgia. 2010a. Fake Report on Renewed War Triggers Panic, Anger on Imedi Tv [Online]. Available at: http://www.civil.ge/eng/article. php?id=22080&search=march%202010%20imedi [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Civil Georgia. 2010b. Saakashvili: Fake TV Report ‘Close to What May Happen’ [Online]. Available at: http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=22081 [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Collier, D. and Levitsky, S. 1997. Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research. World Politics, 49, 430-451. Collier, D. and Mahon, J.E. 1993. Conceptual ‘Stretching’ Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis. American Political Science Review, 87(4), 845-855. Di Palma, G. 1990. To Craft Democracies. An Essay on Democratic Transitions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Diamond, L. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Diamond, L. 2002. Thinking About Hybrid Regimes. Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 21-35. Diamond, L., Linz, J.J. and Lipset, S.M. (eds). 1989. Democracy in Developing Countries. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

162

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

EC. 2003. Country Strategy Paper 2003-2006. Tacis National Indicative Programme 2004-2006 [Online]. Available at: http://eeas.europa.eu/georgia/ csp/03_06_en.pdf [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Elster, J. 1990. The Necessity and Impossibility of Simultaneous Economic and Political Reform, in Philosophy of Social Choice, edited by P. Polszajski. Warsaw, 309-316. Elwert, G. 2003. Intervention in Markets of Violence, in Potentials of Disorder: Explaining Violence in the Caucasus and in the Former Yugoslavia, edited by J. Köhler and C. Zürcher. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 219-242. Fairbanks, C.H.J. 2010. Georgia’s Soviet Legacy. Journal of Democracy, 21(1), 144-151. Gaul, W. 2001. Verfassungsgebung in Georgien: Ergebnisse Internationaler Rechtlicher Beratung in einem Transformationsstaat. Berlin: Berlin-Verlag Spitz. Georgian National Voter Study. 2003. [Online, May]. Available at: http://www.iri. org/eurasia/georgia/pdfs/2007-05-10-Georgia-Poll.pdf [accessed: July 2008]. Halbach, U. 2004. Georgien: Staatsversagen als Folge von Korruption und Territorialer Desintegration, in States at Risk – Fragile Staaten als Sicherheitsund Entwicklungsproblem, edited by U. Schneckener. Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), 105-121. Halbach, U. 2007. Die Krise in Georgien: Das Ende der ‘Rosenrevolution’?. Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP). HRW. 2000a. Georgia: Backtracking on Reform. New York: Human Rights Watch. HRW. 2000b. Human Rights Watch World Report 2001. Europe and Central Asia Division. Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch. HRW. 2007. Crossing the Line – Georgia’s Violent Dispersal of Protestors and Raid on Imedi Television [Online]. Available at: http://hrw.org/reports/2007/ georgia1207/ [accessed: March 2008]. Huber, M. 2004. State-Building in Georgia: Unfinished and at Risk? [Online]. Available at: http://www.clingendael.nl/publications/2004/20040200_cru_ paper_huber.pdf [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Huntington, S. 1991. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: Oklahoma University Press. ICG. 2007. Georgia: Sliding Towards Authoritarianism? Tbilisi/Brussels: International Crisis Group. IRI, Gallup and IPM [International Republican Institute (IRI), Baltic Surveys Ltd/ The Gallup Organization, Institute of Polling and Marketing (IPM)]. 2009. Georgian National Voter Study (29 September-5 October, 2009) [Online]. Available at: http://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/2009%20November%20 2 3 % 2 0 S u r v e y % 2 0 o f % 2 0 G e o rg i a n % 2 0 P u b l i c % 2 0 O p i n i o n , % 2 0 September%2029-October%205,%202009.pdf [accessed: 21 April 2011]. IRI, Gallup and IPM [International Republican Institute (IRI), Baltic Surveys Ltd/ The Gallup Organization, Institute of Polling and Marketing (IPM)]. 2007a. Georgian National Voter Study (31 August-10 September 2007) [Online].

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

163

Available at: http://www.iri.org.ge/images/stories/Documents/Survey/GNVS2007-09.zip [accessed: 21 April 2011]. IRI, Gallup and IPM [International Republican Institute (IRI), Baltic Surveys Ltd./ The Gallup Organization, Institute of Polling and Marketing (IPM)]. 2007b. Georgian National Voter Study (February 2007) [Online]. Available at: http://www.iri.org.ge/images/stories/Documents/Survey/GNVS-2007-02. zip [accessed: 21 April 2011]. IRI, Gallup and IPM [International Republican Institute (IRI), Baltic Surveys Ltd./ The Gallup Organization, Institute of Polling and Marketing (IPM)]. 2003. Georgian National Voter Study (May 2003) [Online]. Available at: http://www. iri.org.ge/images/stories/Documents/Survey/GNVS-2003-03.zip [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Jawad, P. 2005. Democratic Consolidation in Georgia after the Rose Revolution? Frankfurt/M.: PRIF. Jawad, P. 2006. Europe’s New Neighborhood on the Verge of War: What Role for the EU in Georgia? Frankfurt/M.: PRIF. Jawad, P. 2008. Conflict Resolution through Democracy Promotion? The Role of the OSCE in Georgia. Democratization, 15(3), 611-629. Jones, S.F. 1994. Populism in Georgia: The Gamsakhurdia Phenomenon, in Nationalism and History: The Politics of Nation Building in Post-Soviet Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, edited by D.B. Schwartz and R. Panossian. Toronto: University of Toronto, 127-149. Karl, T.L. 1995. The Hybrid Regimes of Central America. Journal of Democracy, 6, 72-86. King, C. 2001. Potemkin Democracy: Four Myths About Post-Soviet Georgia. The National Interest, 2001(64) [Online]. Available at: http://nationalinterest. org/article/potemkin-democracy-958 [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Levitsky, S., and Way, L. 2002. The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 51-65. Levitsky, S. and Way, L. 2010. Why Democracy Needs a Level Playing Field. Journal of Democracy, 21(1), 57-68. Linz, J.J. 2000. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Linz, J.J. and Stepan, A. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Mainwaring, S., Brinks, D. and Pérez Linan, A. 2001. Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America, 1945-1999. Studies in Comparative International Development, 36 (1), 37-65. Merkel, W. and Croissant, A. 2004. Conclusion: Good and Defective Democracies. Democratization, 11(5), 199-213. Merkel, W., Puhle, H-J., Croissant, A., Eicher, C. and Thiery, P. 2003. Defekte Demokratie – Band 1: Theorie. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.

164

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Nodia, G. 2004. Nations in Transit 2004: Georgia. Freedom House [Online]. Available at: http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=47&nit=333&year=2004 [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Nodia, G. 2007. Nations in Transit 2007: Georgia. Freedom House [Online]. Available at: http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=47&nit=423&year=2007 [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Nodia, G. 2008. Nations in Transit 2008: Georgia. Freedom House [Online]. Available at: http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=47&nit=452&year=2008 [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Nodia, G. and Scholtbach, Á.P. 2007. The Political Landscape of Georgia: Political Parties: Achievements, Challenges and Prospects. Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers. O’Donnell, G. and Schmitter, P.C. 1986. Transition from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Offe, C. 1991. Das Dilemma der Gleichzeitigkeit: Demokratisierung und Marktwirtschaft in Osteuropa. Merkur, 45, 279-292. OSCE/ODIHR. 2000a. Osce/Odihr Election Observation Final Report – Georgia Parliamentary Elections 31 October & 14 November 1999. Warsaw. OSCE/ODIHR. 2000b. Osce/Odihr Election Observation Final Report – Republic of Georgia Presidential Election 9 April 2000. Warsaw. OSCE/ODIHR. 2004a. Osce/Odihr Election Observation Mission Report Part 2 – Georgia – Partial Repeat Parliamentary Elections 28 March 2004. Warsaw. OSCE/ODIHR. 2004b. Osce/Odihr Election Observation Mission Report, Part 1 – Georgia Parliamentary Elections 2 November 2003. Warsaw. OSCE/ODIHR. 2008a. Osce/ Odihr Election Observation Mission Final Report – Georgia Parliamentary Elections 21 May 2008. Warsaw. OSCE/ODIHR. 2008b. Osce/ Odihr Observation Mission Final Report – Georgia Extraordinary Presidential Election 5 January 2008. Warsaw. Piano, A. 2004. Georgia – Countries at the Crossroads 2004 [Online]. Available at: http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=140&edition=1&ccrpag e=5&ccrcountry=47 [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Pridham, G. 1995. The International Context of Democratic Consolidation: Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective, in The Politics of Democratic Consolidation: Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective, edited by R. Gunther, P. Diamandouros and H-J. Puhle. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 166-203. Przeworski, A. 1991. Democracy and the Market. Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sartori, G. 1971. Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics. American Political Science Review, 64, 1033-1053. Schedler, A. 2002. The Menu of Manipulation. Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 3650.

Elections and Treatment of the Opposition in Post-Soviet Georgia

165

Schedler, A. 2006. The Logic of Electoral Authoritarianism, in Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition, edited by A. Schedler. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1-26. Schmitter, P.C. and Karl, T.L. 1994. The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go? Slavic Review, 53(1), 173-185. Schumpeter, J. 1947. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper. Slider, D. 1997. Democratization in Georgia, in Conflict, Cleavage, and Change, in Central Asia and the Caucasus, edited by K. Dawisha and B. Parrott. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 156-200. TI (Transparency International) Georgia. 2007. Monitoring the Use of Administrative Resources for Election Campaign. Tbilisi: Transparency International Georgia.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 9

From Corruption to Rotation: Politics in Georgia before and after the Rose Revolution Christian Timm

Analysing political systems beyond the OECD world has so far mainly been understood as examining how democratic or authoritarian a certain political system is. Countless instruments and indices have been invented to determine where exactly a country is located on the continuum between democracy and authoritarianism. Various approaches (see Beichelt in this volume) have taken shape to subdivide what has been perceived as the ‘zone of structural ambivalence’ (Schedler 2002: 37). Thus the necessary conceptual foundation was laid for the transition studies that initially considered themselves democratization studies (Bunce 1995, Jowitt 1996). Since gaining independence, Georgia has been ranked varyingly as ‘partly-free’ (Freedom House), as a ‘limited electoral democracy’ (Vanhanen), as an ‘anocracy’ (Polity IV) or as a ‘hybrid regime’ (Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index) (see Freedom House 2010: 211, Pickel and Pickel 2006: 126, Economist 2007: 4). However, modern Georgian history has repeatedly provided greater hope for a democratic breakthrough. First hopes for democratic reforms were linked to Eduard Shevardnadze, whose presidency led the country to more stability after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent civil war. His popularity in the west helped to gain considerable financial and institutional support, but could finally not prevent the demystification of his democratic project by the end of the 1990s as a ‘potemkin democracy’ (King 2000). The Rose Revolution in 2003, which brought a group of young reformers around the new President Mikheil Saakashvili to power, once again raised hopes that the stalled democratic transition could be completed. After a few years, though, pessimistic voices regarding the potential democratization of Georgia have again become more frequent (Wertsch 2006, Jones 2006, Welt 2009, Mitchell 2009). Examining the extent to which political and civil rights are secured, press and media are free and free and fair elections are regularly held is an appropriate way to demonstrate where a country stands on its expected path to democracy and fits perfectly into the framework of the formerly dominant transition paradigm. Under the conditions of a failed democratic consolidation, however, predictions about the further development of a country become difficult.

168

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

The experience of a missing democratic breakthrough in Georgia and most of the other transition countries challenged the basic assumption of a mid-term transition to democracy or of relapses into ‘closed authoritarianism’ (Schedler 2002, Snyder 2006) and raised the question of how the stability of the newly emerged ‘hybrid regimes’ (Karl 1995) could be explained (Carothers 2002). The requirements regarding a new theoretical framework appear demanding: It needs to deliver a definition of the new systemic quality, thereby explaining the unexpected stability and provide appropriate analytical instruments to sound out the development potential of the given political system. Stability of a political system should be understood in this context as the reproduction of certain ‘basic patterns in the organization, exercise, and transfer of … decision-making power’ (Higley and Burton 1989: 18). In order to grasp these ‘basic patterns’ of the new political systems and to avoid again falling into the trap of the democratization bias the analytical category of the political regime must be set aside and an alternative theoretical approach needs to be chosen. Ironically, in ‘measuring’ the distance of a country from the overall aim of a fully consolidated democracy, the regime level is indispensable. However, in order to draw conclusions about the various development potentials (including prospective democratization), one must leave this analytical dimension aside (Timm 2010). Against this background, the aim of the following is not to examine the Georgian case in order to detect the defects and deficits of the given political system in comparison to consolidated democracies. The discussion presents an attempt – using an alternative approach – to analyse how the Georgian political system at different points in time reproduces and stabilizes itself. This should, firstly, help to differentiate between Georgia before and after the Rose Revolution and, secondly, allow us to draw conclusions about the prospective development of the country. Neopatrimonialism as a Dual Mode of Domination In order to analyse what stabilizes a political system, the theoretical category of political authority in a Weberian understanding appears to be a promising approach. The inherent question of the concept of political authority is how political power – defined as a chance of commands being obeyed by a specifiable group of people – can be lastingly sustained (Weber 1980: 28-30). While Max Weber’s understanding of political authority is inevitably tied to certain sources of legitimacy (Roth 1987: 39), the theoretical concept of neopatrimonialism as a new extension of this debate (see Erdmann in this volume) offers a new perspective on how political authority can be maintained. The concept, which has been developed since the 1960s especially for analysing political systems in Africa (see Zolberg 1966, Roth 1968) combines two Weberian types of domination, namely, the legal-rational/bureaucratic and the traditional/

From Corruption to Rotation

169

patrimonial types. A legal-rational channel of integration defined by law, formal regulations and state institutions co-exists with a second, patrimonial or informal channel ensured by clientelism and other means of integration. Neopatrimonialism is thus defined by the existence of two modes of domination, the formal and the informal, available to the ruling elite. The central characteristic of neopatrimonialism is behavioural uncertainty due to the existing dual mode of domination (Erdmann and Engel 2006, Timm 2010). Uncertainty is produced by the possibility for the ruling elite in a certain situation using either one or the other channel. Predictability, which is the most important public good for political, economic and social actors, is consciously prevented by constant alternation between both modes of domination. The parallel existence leaves people uncertain as to which code they have to refer to in a particular situation. This specific form of domination is able to do without legitimacy and presents a new systemic logic sui generis. However, the debate on neopatrimonialism has so far hardly illuminated to any degree how exactly both modes of domination are interlinked and develop their specific ruling capacity. What are the concrete mechanisms between the formal and informal sphere to create and institutionalize behavioural uncertainty? The Georgian case can help to illustrate different mechanisms applied by the ruling elite before and after the Rose Revolution to stabilize political authority and, by doing this, contribute to the further development of the theoretical debate. In the following examination of Georgia before and after the Rose Revolution, most attention will be paid to the relationship between the realms of politics and state administration, since the stability of any political power structure – be it based on legal-rational or neopatrimonial domination as ‘basic patterns’ – is crucially dependent on the hinge between the incumbent and his executive staff (Weber 1980: 123). Georgia before the Rose Revolution In order to gain an understanding of the informal side of neopatrimonialism, scholars have often fallen back on the concept of patronage or clientelism – basically defined as a ‘relationship of exchange between unequals’ (Clapham 1982: 4). Clientelism, with its central linkage between a patron and client(s), helps in a neopatrimonial context to ensure (1) integration, (2) political cohesion and (3) to institutionalize uncertainty. The central argument for the integrative capacity of clientelism presents the role of the patron as a broker between the local and central state levels who allows the incorporation of different social groups into a national system (Lemarchand 1997: 66-68). Public goods circulate as goods of exchange between patrons and clients, as do positions and services for votes and loyalty (Erdmann and Engel 2006: 20-21). Often, according to Weingrod (1968: 379), parties are the central organizations for patronal relations.

170

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats [P]atronage refers to the ways in which party politicians distribute public jobs or special favours in exchange for electoral support. The political party – a formally organized group – is the major unit in this use of the term. (Lemarchand and Legg 1972: 165-166)

In addition to its integrative potential, the second important function of clientelism, the establishment of political cohesion, becomes obvious. This specific form of political parties, called political machine, is characterized by recruitment on the basis of material incentives and a high degree of control of the members’ activities by the party leaders (Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith 2002: 40). Eduard Shevardnadze has made extensive use of this kind of integration not solely to secure his own political power base but with the purpose of supporting a comprehensive state building process which was affected by the dramatic circumstances of the early 1990s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia experienced ethnic territorial wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and a successful coup d’état against the country’s first democratically elected President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, leading to a general environment of instability in the country. At this point the formal state structures of the newly independent Georgian state either had been captured by paramilitary and mafia groups or had simply ceased to exist (Wheatley 2005a: 108). The central challenge of Shevardnadze’s early presidency was the restoration of a political order delivering a minimum of security and predictability. The targeted establishment of an all-embracing clientelistic network served as an informal vehicle for creating political stability and, in the long run, even for the restoration of formal state structures. At the first stage of Shevardnadze’s state building process very different groups had to be integrated in a new national system: the leaders of the paramilitary groups, the old nomenklatura, the intelligentsia, nationalistic forces and various regional leaders, including their followers. At this point in time Shevardnadze’s efforts were mainly directed towards an even distribution of state resources among various key actors and interest groups (Baev 2003). Djaba Iosseliani, the leader of the paramilitary Mkhetrioni , Tengiz Kitovani as the military commander of the National Guard actively involved in the coup d’état as well as Aslan Abashidze, the strongman of the autonomous region Adjara, are the best examples of brokers between their own patronal networks and the national system. Iosseliani received control over the ministry of the interior and Kitovani over the ministry of defense as profitable looting possibilities and Abashidze was permitted to extend his autonomy in the Adjara Region (Christophe 2005: 74-75). A comprehensive clientelistic system based on material incentives emerged that created a fragile balance between very different social groups. Gradually, Shevardnadze managed to partly emancipate himself and repel the influence of certain actors (first of all the former entrepreneurs of violence) during his first years in office. Control of the regions, however, remained precarious until the end of his presidency (Wheatley 2005a: 70, 109-110).

From Corruption to Rotation

171

The fuel for Shevardnadze’s clientelistic network and the central good in exchange for loyalty was permission to loot state funds and international aid, including bribe extortion within the structures and institutions the brokers commanded at the time. Through these mechanisms, a lease of the state power structure took place (Zürcher and Köhler 2004). However, with increasing central control this informal contract between the various power brokers and the president developed into a more complex system of state control. The second phase of Shevardnadze’s state building process, starting in the mid-1990s, built upon the existing clientelistic networks but relied mainly on one phenomenon that became symbolic of his presidency: corruption, in an endemic and highly institutionalized version: From the bottom to the top of the state apparatus, officials routinely engage in corrupt practices … Myriads of networks are built within the state apparatus and between public officials and private citizens; their main purpose is the facilitation of corrupt exchanges. For instance, patron-client networks connect lower to higher officials. ... An informal hierarchy of clientelism overlaps with the official state hierarchy. (Stefes 2008: 75)

This informal channel based on corruption in combination with the legal framework of the state and its formal institutions turned out to be a very effective tool of state control. According to Darden this type of state control relies on three basic elements: (a) a permissive attitude of state leaders towards corruption, (b) extensive state surveillance to document malfeasance and (c) the use of this information, when compliance is required, to blackmail relevant political, economic or social actors (Darden 2001: 67). The institutionalization of corruption was promoted not only by the permissive attitude of the Georgian ruling elite, but by the establishment of various very concrete incentive structures. The first incentive was to keep wages within the state administration consciously low while at the same time bribery was perceived as an additional source of income for civil servants. For instance, official police salaries reportedly rarely exceeded $20 a month. This is little in comparison to the revenues obtained through bribery and kickbacks that were shared with supervisors and passed upwards from one layer of the administration to the next (Stefes 2008: 75). A border guard had to collect approximately $10,000 a year to be shared with his supervisors (Gogiashvili 2004). By this means, an alternative fiscal system parallel to the official state channels was installed in which informal ‘tax’ norms existed, regulating the collection of bribe revenues (Di Puppo 2004: 51). A second institutional incentive for anchoring corruption as a basic operational pattern was the commoditization of public positions. Depending on the prospective bribe extorting opportunities of different administrative responsibilities a market emerged where official posts could be purchased (Christophe 2001: 166, Hensell 2009: 192-199). The monetarization of public structures led to a situation in which positions in the profitable customs service could reach the $100,000 benchmark

172

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

(Washington Post 2003). The necessity to quickly amortize this risky investment promoted stronger engagement of state officials in corruption and a commitment to the inherent behavioural logic. Besides wage policy and the commoditization of state positions, a third element completed the existing incentive structures to institutionalize corruption. In order to facilitate bribe extortion the Georgian state furnished its officials with a certain legal environment for their operations. The government therefore produced a huge amount of conflicting, ambiguous or rapidly changing laws and regulations. The aim was to prevent the possibility of rule-conforming behaviour. Since people could not avoid violating rules they were consequently forced to pay for these violations being tolerated. As a report of the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) impressively illustrates, 83 per cent of all official documents reviewed did not serve an administrative rationale but were issued exclusively to maintain behavioural uncertainty for the population (Dadalauri 2005: 19). The mechanism of creating uncertainty through legislation is obviously common in the post-Soviet space, reflected in the invented Russian word vzyatkoemkost. Consisting of the two words vzyatka for bribe and emkost for capacity, it expresses the quality and the capacity of a new regulation to facilitate bribe extortion (Deutschlandradio 2007). Politics under Shevardnadze were thus not aimed primarily at shaping social reality in Georgia according to a western understanding of politics but at generating opportunities to extort bribes (Christophe 2005: 97-98). Evidence for the extent of the purposeful creation of corruption can be found in the fact that Georgia under Shevardnadze was ranked as an ‘endemic corrupt’ country holding the seventh from last position (127/133) among the most corrupt countries in the world (Transparency International 2003). The installation of this informal tax system based on corruption was not an end in itself but served as the first component of a comprehensive mechanism of state control. The second component consisted of an extensive surveillance of state officials. The hierarchical corruption pyramids overlapping with the official state bureaucracy were accompanied by systematic recording of participation in corrupt acts. By compiling such records, the state amassed a stockpile of compromising materials (kompromat) that documents wrongdoing on the part of officeholders as well as private actors (Darden 2001: 67). State surveillance, organized mainly by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Tax Ministry, the secret services and the customs service (Christophe 2001: 166, Hensell 2009: 171-199) thus reintroduced a practice of the former Soviet state. In the Soviet Union, kompromat was used as an effective means to maintain party discipline (Di Puppo 2004: 52). As part of the former nomenklatura Shevardnadze built upon this familiar mechanism of state control. Whenever compliance was required, as the third component of the mechanism, the collected material existing on every relevant individual could be used to blackmail political, economic or social actors and thereby to exact the aforementioned payment in obedience. As Darden states:

From Corruption to Rotation

173

The representatives of the power organs are able to present each member of the elite with a file containing compromising materials (kompromat) … with the implicit or explicit threat that a sudden decision to enforce the law would lead to the imprisonment of the individual in question. Thus is compliance secured. (Darden 2001: 67)

The Georgian case at its second stage illustrates an important difference between neopatrimonial systems and simple clientelistic networks. Neopatrimonial authority is able to bridge interrupted resource flows or defuse increasing demands on the part of its clients to a certain extent by retreating to officially prescribed positions and by preserving the option to enforce formal rules (Erdmann and Engel 2006: 21-22). The retreat to formal rules and laws in Georgia was typically reflected in corruption scandals, which occurred constantly and led to imprisonment for misappropriation or acceptance of bribes. These scandals sent an important signal to other state officials, thus enhancing the existing uncertainty. Due to the systematic criminalization of state officials, Georgia before the Rose Revolution presents a particularly efficient neopatrimonial system. The side-effect of this system was that, ironically, the Georgian government could present itself to the international community as highly committed to an anti-corruption policy and the establishment of a modern democratic state. This international image secured over a long period a steady international aid flow to Georgia to support institutional reforms. However, counterproductively this aid stabilized the existing system due to the enhanced possibility of material rewards. It is important to mention that the relationship between formal and informal institutions is not to be understood as a zero-sum game. Informal institutions are not exclusively strong where formal institutions are weak and vice versa. Contrary to often-cited views that informal structures undermine and weaken formal structures, the neopatrimonial logic requires a sufficient institutionalization of both the informal and formal dimensions. Formal state institutions may be ineffective in producing public goods. The ability of formal sanctions, however, has to be maintained (Christophe 2005). Informal structures thus do not simply detract from formal rules. They create – in combination with formal state institutions – a new system quality. The clientelistic networks in Georgia should be understood simultaneously as a precondition for and an answer to the behavioural uncertainty created by constant alternation between the two modes of domination. Clientelism combined with formal state structures can thus be identified as the engine of neopatrimonial authority. In such a system the only possibility to overcome structural uncertainty consists in the intensification of its own clientelistic relations, thus setting up a self-enhancing centripetal process playing into the hands of the ruling elite. By helping to institutionalize uncertainty, clientelism presents in this context not a simple survival strategy, but a complex foundation for neopatrimonial authority. The dual structure of formal state institutions (first and foremost the law enforcement agencies) on the one hand and corruption pyramids on the other

174

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

constituted the central components of Shevardnadze’s mechanism for sustaining political power. Predictability for political or economic actors was systematically prevented due to the existing double mode of domination. Georgia before the Rose Revolution in this respect presents a perfect example of neopatrimonial authority. Georgia after the Rose Revolution The demystification of Georgia in the West, the subsequent reduction in international aid flows and, consequently, the restriction of opportunities for material rewards – accelerated by the upcoming question of the presidential succession – led to an increased weakening of the capacity for cohesion of the Shevardnadze regime. As Bratton and van de Walle (1994: 464) note, insiders often withdraw when resources are running short and a change to the opposition camp is expected to become expedient in the mid-term. The obvious falsification of the parliamentary election in November 2003 ultimately changed incentive structures and allowed the opposition to massively mobilize against the government and finally force Shevardnadze to resign. The new government under Mikheil Saakashvili, former Minister of Justice, Nino Burjanadze, Speaker of the Georgian Parliament and Zurab Zhvania, former General Secretary of Shevardnadze’s Citizen’s Union Party, lined up as a dynamic reform government willing to fundamentally change the inherited institutional environment. Immediately after assuming office the Saakashvili administration started to conduct a whole array of far-reaching reforms. A revision of the legislative foundation, a massive personnel reorganization including targeted measures for improving qualifications and with the provision of a new infrastructure and equipment all aimed at the establishment of a modern and efficient administration. Through these efforts, the endemic corruption within the state bureaucracy was to be overcome and economic development stimulated. The public administration consequently underwent a process of deep procedural restructuring. Clear standards and transparent procedures were introduced in almost every relevant department of the administration in order to abolish structures enabling the extortion of bribes. An outstanding example of these reforms is presented by the introduction of the so-called ‘one window system’. The establishment of a department exclusively responsible for providing and accepting all business-related documents and certificates (Dadalauri 2005: 19) is a prime example of the efforts of the Georgian government to increase predictability for social and economic actors. In the course of the administrative reforms undertaken within the first two years over 16,000 policemen, 2,000 tax collectors and 1,500 customs officers were removed from their posts (BTI 2006: 15). By reforming the law enforcement agencies the government reorganized those institutions that were of crucial importance for the stability of the Shevardnadze regime. The most obvious result of the reform was the abolition of modern forms of highway robbery by the police force, which, as the

From Corruption to Rotation

175

lowest link in the former state corruption chain, had been obliged to ensure a constant flow of informal tax revenues (Hensell 2009: 182-192). The radical personnel reduction, a reemployment rate of up to 70 per cent (Saakashvili 2006), a reduction of competences as well as training and additional educational measures eliminated this phenomenon almost completely and made the police reform a showcase project for the new government and a blueprint for prospective administrative reforms in Georgia. The extensive personnel change was accompanied by a massive brain drain from the civil society sphere and the employment of young western-educated individuals from abroad (Broers 2005). This new staff was perceived by western analysts as possessing great potential and offering a chance for the democratization and prospective development of the country (Mitchell 2006: 671). The administrative reforms demonstrated tremendous success in combating corruption. The TI Corruption Perception Index indicates an improvement from score 1.8 (2003) to 4.1 (2009), that is, from place 127/133 to 66/188. Georgia is currently ranked directly behind Croatia and, not taking the Baltic states into account, represents the leader of the post-Soviet region. Even if the criticism is correct that only petty corruption has been abolished and grand corruption still remains a serious problem (Transparency International 2009: 1), the evidence suggests that the former system of corruption pyramids has been abolished. By implementing administrative reforms, the government apparently managed to overcome the particular logic of the former regime based on systematic creation of uncertainty integrated in a comprehensive system of corruption pyramids. The new government has linked its self-image and legitimacy to the elimination of corruption and the provision of tangible benefits or visible improvements in infrastructure (Bruckner 2009: 175). Due to the extensive reforms the state bureaucracy is now able to provide basic services to the population. The abovementioned successes notwithstanding, the relationship between politics and administration as the crucial indicator of changes in the ‘basic patterns’ of political authority has not significantly changed since the Rose Revolution. One reason for this is the establishment of the United National Movement (UNM) as a new governmental party and an important keystone of ‘revolutionary governance’ (Bruckner 2009: 174). The disintegration of the former presidential party of Shevardnadze (Citizen’s Union) proceeded as quickly as the new UNM could gain ground (Muskhelishvili 2005: 55). In the 2004 election the UNM received 67 per cent of votes (Civil Georgia 2004). In 2008 the National Movement was again able to obtain a clear two-thirds majority. However, since 2004 the UNM has not only monopolized parliament (Freedom House 2010: 215) but also ‘encroached upon the spheres of almost all civil society institutions: university, sport organizations, and professional unions’ (Muskhelishvili and Jorjoliani 2009: 694). The Saakashvili administration has banked on the monopolization of decisionmaking structures in order to ensure the success of its reform agenda. Right after the Rose Revolution the national and local administrations were filled with UNM partisans and ‘working in the administration went hand in hand with loyalty to

176

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

the ruling party’ (Muskhelishvili and Jorjoliani 2009: 697). Reminiscent of Shevardnadze’s Citizen’s Union, the UNM emerged as a ‘political machine’ (Welt 2010) ensuring political cohesion and loyalty based on informal (clientelistic) relations and opportunities for material rewards. Comparatively well-paid positions in the state administration for lower officials and still existing ‘grand corruption’ at higher state levels, for instance in return for access to certain markets, provide the material incentives for compliance. In sum, the governmental party, even more than before the Rose Revolution, has become the undisputed power centre and gatekeeper regulating access to political, administrative and economic resources. The historical (nation-)state-building mission as the central component of Saakashvili’s ‘revolutionary government’ serves as an additional source of loyalty especially among the younger generation of state officials. Since this source of loyalty will not last indefinitely, the question arises: By which means can the government ensure loyalty and political coherence, thereby compensating for the loss of the very efficient kompromat mechanism of the Shevardnadze period? As Bratton and van de Walle (1994: 464) state, the central cleavage in neopatrimonial systems runs not between representatives of different ideological positions but between insiders and outsiders. When the ruling group has a monopoly on political, administrative and economic resources it is obviously desirable to become or keep being part of the insider team. To maintain this insider/ outsider cleavage, which is tantamount to the perpetuation of the inherent logic of the system, the Georgian government falls back on one efficient mechanism: the reshuffling of cadres. The arbitrary nomination, suspension and re-appointment of state elites constantly alter the border between insiders and outsiders and, in doing so, create a conscious uncertainty about the time and extent of the next personnel change. The unpredictability of rotation ensures that actors seek to hedge their power base not within the subsystem they currently command but towards the ruling elite. Thus rotation strengthens informal relationships and is a vital means to ensure loyalty within the existing political system. On the one hand, rotation prevents the development of a genuine opposition, since the given potential to suddenly become an insider sustains a system in which political demands primarily focus on access to resources and positions, rather than on a fundamental change in the rules of the political game (Mungui-Pippidi 2006: 93). On the other hand the constant reshuffling serves to anticipate the development of threatening power networks within the current political logic (Migdal 1988: 223-225). Even if an accurate database on rotation in Georgia is still missing, some evidence suggests a significant acceleration of rotation since the Rose Revolution (BTI 2009). The period of incumbency office holders can count on has significantly diminished after the Rose Revolution. Between November 2007 and December 2008, the Head of Government alone changed four times. Similarly, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was also replaced four times, not to mention the remaining ministers (BTI 2009: 6, 24). Rotation is an omnipresent phenomenon at all levels of administration, aptly named ‘government carousel’ by the Georgian Media

From Corruption to Rotation

177

(International War and Peace Reporting 2004). Rotation is a vital means for the Georgian government to keep generating uncertainty and can be seen as the crucial element to compensate for the lost corruption pyramids. If corruption was the prevalent phenomenon of the Shevardnadze period, the characteristic phenomenon of the Saakashvili period is the constant rotation of officials. The new government inherited a political system with a certain legislative and institutional legacy formerly established to facilitate Shevardnadze’s kompromat state. The administrative reforms following the Rose Revolution removed this mechanism. However, in order to implement the wider reform agenda, the Saakashvili administration fell back on another proven instrument – the installation of a governmental party as political machine. This decision triggered a new cycle of neopatrimonial domination. While under Shevardnadze the criminalization of state officials ensured behavioural uncertainty and thus loyalty, this mechanism is now compensated for by the constant reshuffling of political and administrative cadres. The present Georgia differs in its shape and appearance considerably from its predecessor regime. The underlying mode of domination based on uncertainty, however, remains the same. What are the lessons to be learnt from the Georgian experience? Neopatrimonialism by Default As the Georgian case illustrates, overcoming a neopatrimonial mode of domination is a demanding venture. Several dilemmas hinder the unconstrained introduction of a legal-rational bureaucratic authority and may trigger a renewal of neopatrimonial basic patterns: 1. Personnel dilemma: As stated above, in a consolidated neopatrimonial system structural incentives prevent the development of an authentic opposition, fighting for a fundamental change of the rules of the political game. Conflicts erupt primarily between competing patronal networks defending the structural status quo, for which reason a change of political institutions remains unlikely (Eisenstadt 1973: 17, 23). The Rose Revolution opened a window of opportunity which the new government used to conduct far-reaching reforms. To what extent the new government had a fundamental change of the political rules in mind is difficult to judge. However, the massive brain drain from abroad and from civil society, which had been well-developed under Shevardnadze, was an important source to ameliorate the personnel dilemma; 2. Socialization dilemma: A closely connected challenge to be overcome is the political socialization of state officials and politicians at the top of the government as well as on lower levels of the administration. In Georgia new leaders often appear by splitting off from the former government and have thus undergone a very specific political socialization. The

178

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

new elite has to emancipate itself from this socialization and introduce a new ‘basic pattern’ of politics. Therefore the new government is also dependent on civil servants adequately responding to the new operational logic. The Saakashvili administration was aware of that fact and pushed a radical personnel change in order to bring in new, differently socialized officials. At the same time the new leaders themselves fell back on ruling mechanisms they were familiar with from the predecessor regime and triggered a renewal of a neopatrimonial authority; 3. Institutional dilemma: The new government operates in a legislative institutional environment often specifically established to facilitate particular mechanisms of domination. The challenge is to consciously relinquish the usage of inherited mechanisms and introduce bureaucratic principles. Generally a change from a neopatrimonial to a legal-rational mode is only likely if political elites invest in the establishment of reliable and dominant formal structures, to which – and this is crucial to further development – the elites themselves answer. From this perspective it becomes obvious that it is not the neopatrimonial system itself which is in need of an explanation, but rather the demanding breakthrough to bureaucratic authority. However, the strong inertia of neopatrimonialism does not result in a simple path-dependency but rather in a very dynamic type of authority oscillating between consolidated and precarious states. Since neopatrimonial authority relies exclusively on a very specific and fine-tuned relationship between formal and informal structures, a constant flow of resources and a comprehensive monitoring system of the activities of the elite, a shortfall of these conditions may provoke states of instability. The loss of control over clientelistic networks, an economic crisis or the question of presidential succession may disrupt the existing mechanism of domination and open a window of opportunity to change the ‘basic patterns’ of the political game. Against this background, neopatrimonial authority might be perceived as precarious. The change to bureaucratic authority, however, is much more demanding than a renewal of a neopatrimonial type of domination. Development Perspectives The Rose Revolution opened up a window of opportunity – depending on one’s perspective – to consolidate democracy (on the regime level) or to introduce bureaucratic authority (on the domination level). On the authority level, the reestablishment of neopatrimonial authority can be observed and characterized as a thoroughly consolidated order. Due to the above-described inherent inertia of neopatrimonial domination a fundamental change in Georgia cannot currently be expected. On the regime level, a barely altered status quo with regard to democratization can be documented. Making forecasts about potential democratic developments, however, appears to be difficult.

From Corruption to Rotation

179

An authority-oriented perspective can provide explanations for the lack of democratization. In the case of Georgia the renewal of a neopatrimonial mode of domination hinders further democratization. Democracy is inevitably dependent on the rule of law and a bureaucratic authority (Snyder 1992, Erdmann and Engel 2006: 30). Democracy is not compatible with the existence of two competing modes of domination, but tied to the generality of universal and sovereign rules. As long as neopatrimonial authority is in place, a democratic breakthrough in Georgia is not to be expected, or – to put it the other way around – if the difficult venture of overcoming the neopatrimonial mode of domination is undertaken, then democratic changes in Georgia are likely. International pressure to introduce democratic institutions has become a dominant paradigm in international politics within the last two decades. Apart from a couple of resource-rich exceptions, no country at the present time can afford not to hold elections or to legitimize political decisions, for example, through parliamentary procedures (Levitsky and Way 2002: 62-63). If these institutions were not undermined by neopatrimonial authority but rather based on bureaucratic principles, they could finally function in accordance with their essential nature. Conclusion So far democracy remains the dominant category of reference for evaluating the political system of any given country. The applied theoretical approach of neopatrimonialism presents an alternative heuristic model, shifting the analytical focus from the level of the political regime to political authority. By offering an explanation for political stability beyond democracy or authoritarianism it is possible to control for the democratization bias and avoid an unintended relapse into the logic of the transition paradigm. Using an authority-centred approach, the Georgian case illustrates different mechanisms applied by the ruling elite before and after the Rose Revolution to stabilize political authority. Prior to the Rose Revolution these mechanisms were based on corruption and kompromat, while afterwards they relied on a strong governmental party as ‘political machine’ and on rotation. Even if contemporary political Georgia differs very much in shape and appearance from the predecessor regime, the underlying ‘basic patterns’ of politics based on the purposeful creation of uncertainty remain the same. Both examples demonstrate how the formal and informal spheres are interlinked and institutionalize behavioural uncertainty. A neopatrimonial authority may not only represent a stable political order but also a ‘basic pattern’ that is generally difficult to overcome. The concept of neopatrimonialism focuses primarily on the performance of the political system, as well as on the strategic calculations and behavioural rationales of the political actors arising from the interaction of formal and informal power structures. This focus provides a deeper insight into the reproduction and stabilizing processes of political systems. This makes the concept an interesting

180

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

approach for analysing post-transitional political regimes. Within democratization studies much effort has been invested into the internal differentiation of the concept of political regimes and its operationalization for empirical research. These two points need to be addressed in further conceptual work on political authority in order to make the concept suitable for comprehensive comparative studies. References Baev, P. 2003. Civil Wars in Georgia: Corruption Breeds Violence, in Potentials of Disorder, edited by J. Koehler and C. Zürcher. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 127-144. BTI (Bertelsmann Transformation Index). 2006. Country Report Georgia [Online]. Available at: http://bti2006.bertelsmann-transformation-index.de/fileadmin/ pdf/en/2006/CISAndMongolia/Georgia.pdf [accessed: 22 July 2010]. BTI (Bertelsmann Transformation Index). 2009. BTI 2010. Georgia Country Report [Online]. Available at: http://www.bertelsmann-transformation-index. de/fileadmin/pdf/Gutachten_BTI2010/CIS/Georgia.pdf [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Bratton, M. and Van de Walle, N. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brinkerhoff, D. and Goldsmith, A. 2002. Clientelism, Patrimonialism and Democratic Governance: An Overview and Framework for Assessment and Programming. Working Paper prepared for USAID [Online]. Available at: http://www.abtassociates.com/reports/2002601089183_30950.pdf [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Broers, L. 2005. After the ‘revolution’: Civil society and the challenges of consolidating democracy in Georgia. Central Asian Survey, 24(3), 333-350. Bruckner, T. 2009. Decision-Making and Georgia’s Perpetual Revolution: The Case of IDP Housing. Caucasian Review of International Affairs, 3(2), 172-180. Bunce, V. 1995. Should Transitologists Be Grounded? Slavic Review, 54(1), 111127. Carothers, T. 2002. The End of the Transition Paradigm. Journal of Democracy, 13(1), 5-21. Cheterian, V. 2008. Georgia’s Rose Revolution: Change or Repetition? Tension between State-Building and Modernization Projects. Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 36(4), 689-712. Christophe, B. 2001. Transformation als Inszenierung: Zur institutionellen und kulturellen Einbettung von Korruption in Georgien, in Kultur als Bestimmungsfaktor der Transformation im Osten Europas: Konzeptionelle Entwicklungen – Empirische Befunde, edited by H-H. Höhmann. Bremen: Edition Temmen, 157-177.

From Corruption to Rotation

181

Christophe, B. 2005. Metamorphosen des Leviathan in einer postsozialistischen Gesellschaft: Georgiens Provinz zwischen Fassaden der Anarchie und regulativer Allmacht. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Civil Georgia. 2004. Saakashvili’s Party to Dominate in Legislative Body [Online, 31 March]. Available at: http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=6594 [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Clapham, C. 1982. Clientelism and the State, in Private Patronage and Public Power. Political Clientelism in the Modern State, edited by C. Clapham. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1-35. Dadalauri, N. 2005. Political Corruption: The Case of Georgia [Online]. Available at: http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/research/events/conferences/documents/ Redesigning%20The%20State%20Papers/Dadalauri.pdf [accessed: 22 July 2010]. D’Anieri, P. 2005. The Last Hurrah: Ukrainian Presidential Elections and the Limits of Machine Politics. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 38, 231-249. Darden, K. 2001. Blackmail as a Tool of State Domination: Ukraine under Kuchma. East European Constitutional Review, 10(2/3), 66-71. Darden, K. 2003. Graft and Governance: Corruption as an Informal Mechanism of State Control [Online]. Available at: http://www8.georgetown.edu/centers/ cdacs/Graft%20and%20Governance.pdf [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Deutschlandradio. 2007. Korruption als Selbstverständlichkeit: In Russland kassiert die Beamtenkaste ab [Online, 27 January]. Available at: http://www. dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/hintergrundpolitik/587637/ [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Di Puppo, L. 2004. Corruption as an instrument of state control in Georgia. Berliner Osteuropa-Info, 21, 47-54. Economist. 2007. Economist Intelligence Unit: Democracy Index 2006 [Online]. Available at: http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/DEMOCRACY_ TABLE_2007_v3.pdf [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Eisenstadt, S. 1973. Traditional Patrimonialism and Modern Neopatrimonialism. London, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Erdmann, G. and Engel, U. 2006. Neopatrimonialism Revisited: Beyond a CatchAll Concept. GIGA Working Paper Global and Area Studies [Online]. Available at: http://www.giga-hamburg.de/dl/download.php?d=/content/publikationen/ pdf/wp16_erdmann-engel.pdf [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Freedom House. 2010. Nations in Transition: Georgia [Online]. Available at: http://www.freedomhouse.org/images/File/nit/2010/NIT-2010-Georgia-proofII.pdf [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Gogiashvili, A. 2004. Survey of the Georgian Press for the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center of Tbilisi [Online]. Available at: http://www.traccc.cdn. ge/publications/index_subject.html#corruption [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Hensell, S. 2009. Die Willkür des Staates: Herrschaft und Verwaltung in Osteuropa. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Higley, J. and Burton, M. 1989. The Elite Variable in Democratic Transitions and Breakdowns. American Sociological Review, 54(1), 17-32.

182

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

International War and Peace Reporting. 2004. Georgian Government Carousel [Online]. Available at: http://iwpr.net/?p=crs&s=f&o=158644&apc_ state=henicrs2004 [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Jones, S.F. 2006. The Rose Revolution: A Revolution without Revolutionaries? Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 19(1), 33-48. Jowitt, K. 1996. Dizzy with Democracy. Problems of Post-Communism, 43(1), 3-8. Karl, T.L. 1995. The Hybrid Regimes of Central America. Journal of Democracy, 6(3), 72-87. King, C. 2001. Potemkin Democracy: Four Myths about Post-Soviet Georgia. The National Interest, 64, 93-104. Lemarchand, R. 1972. Political Clientelism and Ethnicity in Tropical Africa: Competing Solidarities in Nation-Building. The American Political Science Review, 66(1), 68-90. Lemarchand, R. and Legg, K. 1972. Political Clientelism and Development. Comparative Politics, 4(2), 149-178. Levitsky, S. and Way, L. 2002. The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 51-65. Migdal, J.S. 1988. Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mitchell, L.A. 2006. Democracy in Georgia since the Rose Revolution. East European Democratization, 50(4), 669-676. Mitchell, L.A. 2009. Compromising democracy: State building in Saakashvili’s Georgia. Central Asian Survey, 28(2), 171-183. Mungui-Pippidi, A. 2006. Corruption: Diagnosis and Treatment. Journal of Democracy, 17(3), 86-99. Muskhelishvili, M. 2005. Constitutional Changes in Georgia [Online]. Available at: http://www.idea.int/conflict/cb/upload/CBPGeorgiaMarina.pdf [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Muskhelishvili, M. and Jorjoliani, G. 2009. Georgia’s ongoing struggle for a better future continued: Democracy promotion through civil society development. Democratization, 16(4), 682-708. Pickel, G. and Pickel, S. 2006. Demokratisierung im internationalen Vergleich: Neue Erkenntnisse und Perspektiven. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag. Roth, G. 1986. Personal Rulership, Patrimonialism and Empire-Building in the New States. World Politics, 20(2), 194-206. Roth, G. 1987. Politische Herrschaft und persönliche Freiheit: Heidelberger Max Weber-Vorlesungen 1983. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Saakashvili, M. 2006. The way forward: Georgia’s democratic vision for the future. Harvard International Review, 28(1), 68-73. Schedler, A. 2002. The Menu of Manipulation. Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 3650. Shelley, L.I. and Scott, E.R. 2003. Georgia’s ‘Revolution of Roses’ can be transplanted. The Washington Post [Online, 30 November]. Available at: http://

From Corruption to Rotation

183

www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A201862003Nov28¬Found=true [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Stefes, C.H. 2008. Governance, the State, and Systemic Corruption: Armenia and Georgia in Comparison. Caucasian Review of International Affairs, 2(2), 7383. Snyder, R. 1992. Explaining Transitions from Neopatrimonial Dictatorships. Comparative Politics, 24(4), 379-399. Snyder, R. 2006. Beyond Electoral Authoritarianism: The Spectrum of NonDemocratic Regimes, in Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition Schedler, edited by A. Schedler. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 292-310. Timm, C. 2010. Jenseits von Demokratiehoffnung und Autoritarismusverdacht: Eine herrschaftssoziologische Analyse posttransformatorischer Regime, in Autoritarismus Reloaded: Neuere Ansätze und Erkenntnisse der Autokratieforschung, edited by R. Frankenberger and H. Albrecht. BadenBaden: Nomos, 95-118. Transparency International. 2003. Corruption Perception Index 2003 [Online]. Available at: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/ cpi/2003 [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Transparency International. 2009. Corruption Perceptions Index 2009: South Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia [Online]. Available at: http:// www.transparencia.org.es/INDICE%20DE%20PERCEPCI%C3%93N%20 2009/Regiones.%20Europa%20del%20Este%20y%20Asia%20Central.pdf [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Weber, M. 1980. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Tübingen: Mohr. Welt, C. 2009. Still staging democracy: Contestation and conciliation in postwar Georgia. Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, 17(3), 196-227. Welt, C. 2010. Georgia’s Constitutional Reform. Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Analyst [Online]. Available at: http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5443 [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Wertsch, J.V. 2006. Georgia after the Rose revolution. The Caucasus & Globalization, 1(1), 54-66. Wheatley, J. 2005a. Georgia from National Awakening to Rose Revolution: Delayed Transition in the Former Soviet Union. Aldershot: Ashgate. Wheatley, J. 2005b. Obstacles Impeding the Regional Integration of the Kvemo Kartli Region of Georgia. ECMI Working Paper No. 23 [Online]. Available at: http://www.ecmi.de/download/working_paper_23.pdf [accessed: 22 July 2010]. Weingrod, A. 1968. Patrons, Patronage, and Political Parties. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 10, 377-400. Zolberg, A. 1966. Creating Political Order: The Party States of West Africa. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally College Publications.

184

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Zürcher, C. and Koehler, J. 2004. Der Staat und sein Schatten: Zur Institutionalisierung hybrider Staatlichkeit im Süd-Kaukasus. WeltTrends, 12(45), 84-96.

Part IV Case Studies: Central Asia

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 10

Changing Political Systems and Regime Types: In between the Neopatrimonial and the Bureaucratic-Developmental State in Central Asia Paul Georg Geiss

Political Change in Central Asia When studying political change in Central Asia, it is important to start from the fact that currently all political systems in the region are based on state structures. This was not always so: Tribal and state-based types of political order competed in the area until the mid-nineteenth century, when a tsarist civilian and military administration was established in the Turkmen, Kazakh and Kyrgyz tribal territories (Geiss 2003: 97-125). While some scholars imply that nineteenthcentury tribal structures continued to shape political life in Soviet and independent Central Asia (see for example, Bohr 1996: 348), this assertion is problematic and based on improper ‘conceptual stretching’ of terms from a pre-state to a stateorganized society (Sartori 1970: 1033-1058). In a similar way the term ‘clan politics’ is based on improper conceptual stretching, if it is applied to the current features of informal politics in Central Asia. Cultural anthropologists used the term ‘clan’ to describe kin groups with one sib name or kin groups who trace their common descent up to seven or more generations and who acknowledge mutual ties of responsibility and obligation (Gullette 2010: 55-56). In Central Asia tribal subgroups consisted of such clans, which often also formed economic and territorial groups up to the 1930s. At that point the Soviet modernization project began to erode kinship ties and transformed them into clientele networks which – in the following decades – could also be established on the basis of comradeship and acquaintance in school, military service, at work or at university. When such informal patronage and clientele networks strive for control over economic and administrative resources within a region or a district, a regional power network emerges. The leaders of such a network might eventually challenge the influence of the central government on their territory or attempt to take control of central governmental institutions. Although Collins (2000) holds pacts between regional and central leaders to be an important reason for political stability in the first years of Tajikistan’s

188

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

independence and the failure of such a pact led to civil war in Tajikistan in 1992, these regional political alliances nonetheless have nothing in common with clans as descent groups in tribal societies (see also Junisbai 2010: 235-269, Isaacs 2010: 3-6). As the aim of concept formation is to use universal terms which can describe all past and contemporary societies, one should avoid stretching the term ‘clan’ to make it applicable in informal power structures in state-based societies, as this renders it almost meaningless. We should rather differentiate solidarity groups or groups of mutual trust based on kinship (clans), on residency (mahalla) or on clientelism (clientele group). Clientele networks which try to control the resources of a territory should, however, be called regional political alliances, in contrast to more social networks of residents and their families established by the institution of hospitality. A better concept for what Edward Schatz (2004) describes as ‘modern clan politics’ would be political regionalism, as this form of clientelism occurs only in particularistic, state based societies and can be also observed in republics like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan with non-tribal populations in the preSoviet period. Most accounts of political change place individual contemporary and historical political systems on the continuum of totalitarian, authoritarian and democratic regimes. These basic regime types became firmly established in the field by Juan Linz’ contribution to the Handbook of Political Science and became a credo in the field of comparative politics (Linz 1975: 175-412). Linz’ influential delimitation of authoritarian systems from democratic and totalitarian ones was not based on a theory of state or society, however. It analytically reproduces a more political perception of regime types in Europe and Latin America which was extended to the analysis of politics in other non-European societies. More recent scholarly debates have focused on the exact properties which differentiate these system types, distinguish among subtypes and permit an assessment of the position of regimes on their way towards liberal democracy. This established trio of ‘modern’ political systems is, however, too crude for the analysis of political change in Central Asian countries, as it focuses only on political exchange relations (that is, elections, party pluralism, parliamentarism, etc.) and does not pay sufficient attention to the administrative, legal and constitutional subsystems of the political system, which also represent the principal spheres of modern states (Kubicek 2010: 37-51, Jones Luong 2004: 271282). Thus, if we want to understand how political liberalization affects political stability and the functioning of a political system, we need to study the entire state organization and identify the type of state whose form of government, i. e. regime type, may be altered by holding free and fair elections, but whose functional logic remains unchanged by free elections and the inauguration of new leaders. In addition, we also need to look at how political institutions are embedded in Central Asian societies and how societal relations constrain administrative and political decision-making processes. For this reason it is necessary to sociologize the study of political change in Central Asia and to focus our analysis on how state structures have changed in the area.

Changing Political Systems and Regime Types

189

Bureaucratic-developmental and Neopatrimonial States If the abundant literature on states and political systems in non-European countries is reviewed and analysed, it seems to be possible to classify the different concepts and approaches within two basic types of political systems which Andreas Wimmer analysed as the neopatrimonial and the authoritarian political system (Wimmer 2000: 109-233, Hartmann 1997: 33-34). On the one hand, we find categories such as strong and weak states (Migdal 1988), neopatrimonial (Eisenstadt 1973, Pawelka 1985, Snyder 1992: 379-400, Bratton and van de Walle 1994: 453-489) and rentier states (Beblawi 1987) and on the other the bureaucratic-authoritarian state (O’Donnell 1973, Collier 1979) and the developmental state (Leftwich 1995: 400-427, Johnson 1982). In order to avoid a confusion of regime types and state types, i. e. types of political systems on the one hand and categories such as democracy or authoritarianism, which represent regime types based on different modes of political exchange relations, on the other, I propose to distinguish between the neopatrimonial and the bureaucratic-developmental state (Geiss 2006: 23-42). In contrast to the European constitutional state based on impersonal authority relations, both types of state organization are dominated by the subsystem of the administration and characterized by more undifferentiated legal and constitutional subsystems. However, the embeddedness of the administration in the polity and society differs in each of the two cases. In the neopatrimonial state personalized authority relations prevail and formal administrative institutions are weak. Due to the usurpation of the right to appoint all ministers and top officials by the head of state and the particularism of the state officials, state institutions are weak and lack a political and economic development agenda. Becoming an official is linked with the right to use statecontrolled economic resources for one’s own needs or those of political clients. Thus elites from different regions compete for control of the central state apparatus and try to secure top positions for their fellow countrymen. As a result political clientelism promotes oversized administrative apparatuses which dominate both legislative and judicial institutions. The legal and constitutional systems remain highly underdeveloped and are not able to regulate political competition and administrative processes. Property rights are not secured or uncertain and the rule of law does not exist at all (Wimmer 2000: 111-162, Pawelka 1985). In contrast, the political elite of the bureaucratic-developmental state aim to overcome the deficiencies of the patrimonial administration by initiating administrative reforms which introduce entrance exams for state officials, formalize career tracks of officials and depoliticize administrative offices. The rationalization of bureaucracy curbs regionalism, strengthens the relative autonomy of state organization from particularistic societal demands and enables the political elites to initiate and promote the industrialization of their countries by channelling private business interests to achieve national goals and by promoting public investment in strategic economic sectors. Building up a functioning legal system is seen as an important means of securing economic stability, although

190

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

cultural preferences for informal institutions and conflict management continue to prevail. Legal and administrative reforms promote the institutionalization of the political system and establish independent courts to settle economic disputes. Overall, the state is an important agent of the industrialization project, which is initiated by the elites in order to secure the national independence of the country (Leftwich 1995: 400-427, Johnson 1982). Nevertheless, both types of state can coexist with more democratic or authoritarian regime types, depending on the degree of political liberalization. Thus regime change is analytically to be differentiated from the change of state structures, which are much more comprehensive and do not substantially alter even if free elections occur once or twice. Thus, African democratic transformation at the beginning of the 1990s only affected regime change and not the change of the patrimonial state organization, the stability of which was endangered rather than strengthened by the political liberalization process (Bratton and van de Walle 1997: 159-232). For this reason democratically elected presidents were often inclined to secure the unity of the state with authoritarian means or – when they failed to do so – had to confront the decay of state structures. Political liberalization of neopatrimonial political systems often weakens the politicized administration and decreases the state’s autonomy and its ability to maintain peace within the country. State Structures in Soviet Central Asia In the literature we find a controversial debate about how to classify Soviet statehood: While in the 1950s the Soviet Union was described as a totalitarian state that terrorized the Soviet population (Arendt 1998: 954-955, Friedrich and Brzezinski 1956), a more revisionist form of Sovietology prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s, drawing a more complex and pluralistic picture of Soviet society, in which social forces from below also had formative influences on political processes (Fitzpatrick 1982). In the following years historians increased their attempts to study the state structures and institutional logics of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist Soviet Union. Until the 1980s, Sovietologists held the view that the Soviet Union had established strong state structures and that its economic and political capacity for societal penetration relied on formal organizational roles. Party and administrative apparatuses were submitted to the party leadership in a hierarchical vertical power structure which was much more able to establish an effective central government than tsarist Russia was (Service 1979). This research aimed to present evidence that central control over Soviet regions was established less by administrative and party structures than by personal clientele networks of Stalin and his close associates. This control was achieved by displacing loyal cadres of the central administration in the regions and by recruiting regional cadres into the central administrative offices. Both types of cadres owed their careers to Stalin and remained loyal protégés of their patron (Hughes 1996: 551-568, Willerton 1993, Pethyridge 1990, Getty 1986). While the intermingling of formal institutions and

Changing Political Systems and Regime Types

191

informal structures differed considerably in various regions in the 1930s und central orders were unequally implemented, the Soviet Union became a state with relatively efficient administrative and economic management capabilities by linking formal bureaucratic institutions with policy-oriented informal networks within the party and state apparatus (Gill and Pitty 1997). In Central Asia, like in other Asian areas of the Soviet Union, the establishment of central state institutions did not only face the problem of extending Stalin’s clientele networks into a fragmented and underdeveloped region, but also the difficulty of creating a uniform social space for implementing the radical Soviet cultural and socio-economic goals. It was the Soviet nationality policy and the new administrative division of the region into republics, regions (oblast’) and districts (rayon) which secured the necessary societal homogeneity of this space. In order to analyse how the Soviet state responded to particularistic societal demands and how political regionalism (mestnichestvo) was curbed, we have to take a closer look at the recruitment and promotion mechanism of administrative cadres. The establishment of Soviet administrative units created regional political elites who did not only compete for party and administrative offices, but were also rivals for investments and financial transfers from Moscow. Soviet statebuilding was not based on an equal representation of regional elites in central state institutions and the republican party organization: In Turkmenistan, the Communist Party (CP) was dominated by Western Yomuts from Mangyshlak and Teke-Turkmen from Tedshen and Ashgabat (Edgar 1999: 291-301). As the capital Ashgabat was located in the former tribal territory of the Ahal-Teke, people from Ahal were overrepresented in administration and in the educational sector. In Uzbekistan there existed a strong political competition between the Samarkand and Ferghana factions for political influence, which – depending on the regional origin of the First Secretary of the CP of Uzbekistan – favoured one or the other region. In Kazakhstan, regional elites identified with the descent groups of the Great and Middle Hordes competed for state resources, whereby people from areas of the former Middle Horde were well established in cultural institutions, while areas of the former Great Horde (which also includes the capital Almaty) were more influential in political terms. In Kyrgyzstan, regional elites from the more agrarian and Islamic South competed with elites from more industrial Northern Kyrgyzstan. In Tajikistan, the state and party apparatuses were dominated by the political faction from Leninabad (Khojand), which was located in the Ferghana valley and was more economically developed than Southern Tajikistan. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) leadership often had to take on the role of an arbitrator between rivalling regional elites and tried to avoid favouring one group by carefully monitoring cadre policies in the republics. Nevertheless, it would be misleading to conclude from the prevailing forms of political clientelism which resulted in the abuse of state resources for private gain and local concerns that the Soviets established an entirely neopatrimonial state in Central Asia. Soviet institutional control mechanisms curbed regionalism in various ways: Although Politburo members were influential within the republic

192

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

and held leading positions within the state apparatus, their political status remained dependent on Moscow’s cadre policy, which promoted regional elites on the basis of performance and qualification records. Thus party members who implemented Moscow’s socio-economic goals better than average usually had good careers, especially if their clientele networks supported their promotion by producing euphemistic service records and recommendations (Moses 1983: 15-61. Miller 1983: 62-97). Other institutional checks which curbed political regionalism also existed: high-level appointments in the republics like those of the First Secretary and his deputies in the Central Committees (CC) of the Republican parties were decided in Moscow so that designated office holders were expected to serve Moscow’s interests rather than those of the region. Important decisions by republican Politburos such as appointments to the regional committees (obkom) were controlled and could be changed by the Union CC. Cadre appointments in districts were made by the obkoms but were been overseen by republican CC and Politburos. Regional obkoms supervised the appointment of collective farm (kolkhoz) chairmen and of state farm (sovkhoz) directors which had been decided by the district committees (raykoms). If a sovkhoz director was also a member of the Central Committee, he could not be removed by his formal superiors in the district and regional party committees, but only through a decision of the corresponding CC (Miller 1983: 62-97, Cleary 1974: 323-344). Moscow’s appointment policy was based on a careful selection of leading cadres which attempted to entrust top republican positions to cadres of different regional origin. On comparing the regional affiliation of first party secretaries, it can be observed that their regional affiliation changed regularly. In this way Moscow tried to ensure that none of the regional factions could become too powerful. In addition other major offices, for example, those of the prime minister and the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, were given to party leaders from other regions in order to check the influence of the home region of the first secretary who usually was in charge of cadre affairs. Moscow retreated from this policy of balancing factionalism in Central Asia in two respects: In the Brezhnev era Central Asian First Secretaries were appointed for twenty years and more, which led to the so-called patrimonial era (Critschow 1991). During this period political clientelism became more unchecked, leading Gorbachev to try to curb it later on with his policy of cadre exchange. Secondly, there was the case of Tajikistan, where Moscow relied heavily on cadres from Leninabad and appointed all first secretaries from this more industrialized area of the Tajik Ferghana valley. These appointments were balanced by recruiting primarily people from Badakhshan into the security apparatus. This regional bias of state institutions fuelled the outbreak of the civil war in Tajikistan in 1992. Nevertheless, Moscow’s ideal candidates for top positions were russified Central Asians who were brought up as orphans in boarding schools, married to European wives and who did not work too long in their home regions. This was

Changing Political Systems and Regime Types

193

the case with Saparmurat Niyazov, the first president of Turkmenistan, as well as the current president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov. In this way party leaders were promoted who were not entangled in regional clientele networks. Political competition between regional factions was also constrained by European deputies, who were – being Moscow’s watchdogs – more difficult to integrate in clientele networks. In addition, political clientelism could not operate openly, as regional committees and Politburos formally made collective decisions, supported by all members of the committees. Finally, numerous Soviet institutions like the army, the KGB and the military-industrial complex were directly administered by Moscow and had different recruitment policies (Moses 1983: 15-61). Nevertheless, we cannot conclude from the strong regionalism and clientele networks that the Soviet state in Central Asia was a soft state – as Myrdal (1970: 227-243) defined it in the case of most African and some Asian countries – or that it was a weak state with a low capacity to implement state interests in a strongly particularistic society (Migdal 1988: 3-41). Soviet rule was based on a strong territorially structured central administration which eroded tribal and dynastic-Islamic political orientations and turned them into political clientelism within the newly created administrative units. Military and bureaucratic coercion was highly developed and enabled the pursuit of effective forms of resource extraction and allocation, even if socio-economic goals were more poorly implemented in Central Asian border areas and patrimonial enclaves were maintained within the party and state administration. These relatively strong state structures emerged from the overlapping of formal bureaucratic organizational roles and informal clientele networks within the Communist Party, which secured the unity of the Soviet state. Thus the Soviet state in Central Asia could be described as a mixed type of neopatrimonial and bureaucratic-developmental state which was capable of implementing a socioeconomic reform agenda but remained neopatrimonially organized within its core, the Communist Party. Regime Change in Independent Central Asia In all Central Asian republics, national independence initially increased the patrimonialization of state structures. The breakdown of the Soviet planned economy and of the interregional division of labour along with the abolition of financial transfers and subsidized goods decreased the resources available for maintaining the Soviet welfare state and for funding health and education services. As a result, political elites also started to question the previous social responsibilities of the state. This increasingly led to a narrow perception of public interests in terms of political stability and interethnic peace. The dissolution of the Soviet Union also dried up the centrally-controlled allocation channels of goods and services to the mass population and took away the central control mechanism for securing cheap supplies of basic commodities.

194

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

In striving for international recognition and domestic secular legitimacy, all Central Asian states enforced constitutions which formally adopted many articles from Western constitutions, but actually only provided a legal framework for the dominant position of the president in relation to the executive, legislative and judicial branches of power (Constitution of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan 1998: §46-53, Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan 1992: §92, Constitution of the Republic of Turkmenistan 1997: §54-60). Since an efficient monopoly on coercive force depends on personal relations of loyalty between administrative staff members and their supervisor, the strong position of the president seems to correspond to the demands of neopatrimonial politics. The head of state not only symbolizes the state’s unity, but also appears as a de facto guardian of political stability and order in the state. For this reason, criticism of the president and his office is perceived as calling into question the polity’s order and is sanctioned by intimidation, rigorous tax inspections and actions of slander, even in the supposedly more liberal Central Asian republics like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (Olcott 2002:119-127, Geiss 2001: 321, Schmitz 2003, Collins 2009: 261-267). In view of the president’s position of power and the dependence of political stability on his person, it is not astonishing that the Central Asian presidents have tried to minimize the political risks of elections by controlling central and regional electoral commissions, the registration process of parties and candidates and by influencing mass media coverage. On the other hand, state elites have so far found political and legal ways to extend the limit of two constitutional terms in office for all acting Central Asian presidents, be it through the political instrument of referenda, through sophisticated constitutional expertise about the second term nature of the president’s next period in office or through constitutional amendments. Due to increasingly similar neopatrimonial state structures, the problem of political succession in Central Asia does not differ from that experienced in many states in Africa and the Middle East, nor has the ethnicization of state and society changed the cultural preferences of economic and political elites for informal arrangements. Political elites also aimed at establishing the nation-state as a new type of normative political order after the fall of Communism as an ideology and system of authority. The Tajik civil war illustrates the political dynamics that can emerge if the ruling elites are not ready to form informal political alliances with competing regional leaders and ignore the normative implications of their rule. The ruling elites from Khojand (Leninabad) tried to conserve Communism as a normative base of authority even after the failed August coup of 1991, and were not receptive to a new evaluation of the political role of Islam and the titular nationality’s cultural heritage. For this reason, elites from the marginalized southern regions like the Gharm valley and Kurgan Tube started to interpret and legitimize their political opposition in more Islamic terms and successfully mobilized their fellow countrymen against the ruling elites from Khojand and Kulab. This led to the civil war of 1992, which caused 50,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons (Akbarzadeh 1996: 1105-1129; Wiegmann 2007: 225-236).

Changing Political Systems and Regime Types

195

During almost 20 years of national independence, significant political, economic and cultural changes have occurred in all Central Asian republics and have led to processes of differentiation of the Soviet state structures, which – despite the initial trends of patrimonialization – exhibit considerable differences now. After the UN-mediated peace agreement of 1997, potential leaders in Tajikistan were politically marginalized and politics became more dependent upon President Rahmonov’s patronage networks from Kulyab. Nevertheless, central governmental control has remained low in regions like the Gharm valley or the Pamir where local leaders – loosely allied with the Islamic opposition – continue to maintain control of state and security apparatuses. Central state structures in Kyrgyzstan remained, but they are no longer able to perform all previous state functions. The Batken crisis of 1999 and 2000, caused by Uzbek Islamist groups occupying Southern Kyrgyz villages, indicated the weakness of the state in domains like the military and security apparatus. Many facilities in the public health and education sector are only able to continue functioning with the help of NGOs supported by Western donor organizations. Due to the dominance of Northern Kyrgyz clientele networks and the weakness of President Akaev in enforcing state interests over the private interests of officials, neopatrimonial structures increasingly set the tone in the country, although the privatization of state assets (factories, sovkhozes, kolkhozes) has limited the scope of available resources. Indicators of an increasing patrimonialization are the bureaucracy’s low competence in economic policy, increasing foreign debt, rising dependency on Western aid, the irregular and delayed payment of state salaries, the short-term appointments of ministers, governors, mayors and of the officials appointed by the latter. For this reason, pressure has increased on officials to amortize ‘business allowances’ and to present gifts to superiors in exchange for the access to state resources gained during their time in office (Graubner and Wolters 2007:195-206). Akaev’s successor, President Kurmanbek Bakiev, was not able to reform the neopatrimonial state but rather reduced the already low reform capacity of the state in Kyrgyzstan even further (Ryabkov 2008: 301-316, Marat 2008: 229-240, Cummings and Ryabkov 2008: 241-252). Uzbekistan is the Central Asian republic which has conserved its inherited Soviet state structures to the greatest extent. The state continued to control mature economic branches and to dispose of the revenues from the export of cotton, gold and other raw materials. The kolkhoz system survived within newly founded peasant associations which are still forced to accept state orders for the cultivation of land and to purchase exclusive rights to grain and cotton (Trevisani 2007: 85). This state control of resources and a slightly more effective tax system permitted the state’s infrastructure to be funded and social welfare transfers such as the payment of child benefits and public assistance for the poor to be made. This was made possible through the newly established local administration, the mahalla committee (neighbourhood committee), even though it is only low-level. Nevertheless, the high degree of state control opened up abundant opportunities to divert economic resources to officials and their clientele. In comparison to

196

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, state structures control the population more completely, with the help of the police and security apparatuses. While the constitutional system remains undifferentiated, legal protection organs – as in Soviet times – represent merely an extension of the administrative structure, which remains highly politicized as is typical for neopatrimonial states (Ilkhamov 2010: 195-210, 2007: 65-84, Melvin 2000: 29-60, Markowitz 2008: 1-14). Turkmen national independence and statehood is largely shaped by the personality of the president. Niyazov established an accelerated elite circulation starting in the mid-1990s. It was during this time that he started making short-term appointments of ministers and governors and increasingly replaced Russophile ‘fellow combatants’ and senior ministers with young inexperienced Turkmen. At the same time, his officials developed a cult of personality and a system of blind obedience which allowed President Niyazov to rule according to his own will and judgment without being bound to informal rules on how to use and share power. Thus Niyazov’s reign seemed to have established an extreme form of neopatrimonial state where the unity of the formal-bureaucratic state relies exclusively on the personal loyalty and obedience of the officials and the ability of the head of state to rule in a free and unrestrained manner. In this extreme form of neopatrimonial rule, loyalty is no longer backed by patronage, protection and the goodwill of the ruler, but is instead extremely one-sided. The administrative staff is exposed to the arbitrariness of the ruler in a way similar to the population as a whole. This is why this form of neopatrimonial rule is – to use the term coined by Max Weber – also called neo-sultanism (Geiss 2005: 103-119, Weber 1978). The unexpected death of President Niyazov ended some of the extreme features of this rule. His successor, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has started to dismantle the personality cult of Turkmenbashi, but has preserved the neopatrimonial structure of the state and has continued to exercise firm control over a 40-member Council of Ministers. In contrast to some scholars (Franke, Gawrich and Alakbarov 2009: 109-140), I hold the view that Kazakhstan is the only Central Asian country where political change can be partly interpreted – at least during the past ten years – as a move towards a more bureaucratic-developmental state structure (see also Schmitz 2009: 11-15). From the perspective of comparative regime study, the respective Kazakh and Kyrgyz decisions to abandon democratic parliamentary reforms in the mid1990s appear to be similar instances of regression into authoritarianism. From a sociological and development theory point of view, however, the two cases should be evaluated differently. Whereas in Kyrgyzstan the political marginalization of party pluralism was backed by a stronger patrimonialization of the state administration and a strengthened political orientation towards the preservation of the status quo, President Nazarbaev instrumentalized the ‘authoritarian’ manner of defusing the state crisis which emerged in the course of the political liberalization in 1994 to implement more comprehensive administrative and legal reforms. Kazakhstan is the only post-Soviet republic which reduced the number of regional units, abolished the corresponding regional administrations,

Changing Political Systems and Regime Types

197

reduced the number of ministries and rationalized ministerial commissions and committees in the mid-1990s. These reforms made one-third of the offices in the central administration obsolete and were followed by regulations establishing career tracks in the civil service (Olcott 2002: 96-101, see also Schiek and Hensell in this volume). The Civil Service Agency has been promoting administrative reform despite resistance from ministries which do not want to subordinate their recruiting practices to these constraints (Verheijen, Sirotkin and Kozakova 2001). At the same time, reforms were implemented in the sphere of property law and in the financial sector and a national system of registration of land ownership and more independent economic courts with more specialized and better-paid judges was established. The enhanced protection of property rights and the increased possibility of lawsuits in the field of contractual law also helped to strengthen private economic institutions and to promote the high economic growth rates of the past decade. The introduction of national pension funds and compulsory health insurance aimed at providing a new base for the former Soviet welfare state as well (Geiss 2007: 165-169, Ishiyama 2002: 42-58, Gullette 2007: 373387). Conclusion This overview of the development of state structures shows that the societal embeddedness of politics is central for an understanding of political change in Central Asia. From the perspective of the emergence of an enduring political order, the problem of political change is not so much linked to the question of democratic regime transition, but rather to the question of how the relatively sophisticated institutional preconditions of more lasting forms of political liberalization can be established. The mainly Anglo-American type of state development through a pre-state organized and legally integrated civil society does not function in Central Asia because the Sovietization of the region destroyed the local legal cultures which regulated political structures. Western support for strengthening ‘civil society’ in the area might successfully combat poverty, soften the state’s retreat from its social responsibilities in the health and educational sector and increase the level of economic autonomy and selforganization of individual local groups. However, these endeavours do not promote civil society as a legally integrated societal entity able to regulate and limit the consolidation of state structures. From a sociological perspective, the development problem of Central Asia is first of all a political one and is, as such, linked to the question of how bureaucratic-developmental state structures can be strengthened in order to overcome neopatrimonialism and the established primacy of politics over legal and administrative processes. Under the prevailing circumstances, this aim is unlikely to be achieved through premature forms of political liberalization, which undermine state capacity for reforms and threaten political security. Successful

198

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

institutionalization of political participation and pluralism, however, requires proper legal and administrative reforms. Considerations about reform strategies in the region have to take into account classical liberal rights agendas (protection of property, habeas corpus, internal control mechanisms in the police and security apparatuses etc.) and develop country-specific catalogues of measures to protect these rights. In Central Asia it is the neopatrimonial state which put constraints on political liberalization. For this reason it is not possible to gain any generalizable knowledge about how democratic institutions should be implemented or how electoral regimes influence democratization without taking into account how these institutions function in a certain type of political system. Neopatrimonial states can change their form of government relatively easily by organizing free elections, but this change of the electoral regime does not imply a change of the state type involved. Rather, premature political liberalization can destroy the reform capability of weak states and perpetuate an ongoing power struggle between rival clientele networks which prevent the state from implementing economic and political reform agendas. Thus the challenge of Central Asian politics is currently not linked to the question of how to institutionalize fair elections and political party pluralism, but rather to the issue of overcoming the logic of neopatrimonialism within the very state structure. References Akbarzadeh, S. 1996. Why Did Nationalism Fail in Tajikistan? Europe-Asia Studies, 1996 (7), 1105-1129. Arendt, H. 1996. Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft. Munich and Zurich: Piper. Beblawi, H. 1987. The Rentier State. London: Croom Helm. Bohr, A. 1996. Turkmenistan and the Turkmen, in The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States, edited by G. Smith. London and New York: Longman, 348-366. Bratton, N. and van de Walle, N. 1994. Neopatrimonial Regimes and Political Transitions in Africa. World Politics, 46(3), 453-489. Bratton, N. and van de Walle, N. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cleary, J.W. 1974. Elite Career Patterns in Kazakhstan. British Journal of Political Science, 4(4), 323-344. Collier, D. (ed.) 1979. The New Authoritarianism in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Collins, K. 2000, Clans, Pacts, and Politics: Understanding Regime Transition in Central Asia. PhD thesis, Stanford University. Collins, K. 2009. Economic and Security Regionalism among Patrimonial Regimes: The Case of Central Asia. Central Asian Survey, 61(2), 249-281. Critchlow, J. 1991. Nationalism in Uzbekistan. A Soviet Republic’s Road to Sovereignty. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Changing Political Systems and Regime Types

199

Cummings, S. and Ryabkov, M. 2008. Situating the ‘Tulip Revolution’. Central Asian Survey, 2008(3-4), 241-252. Easter, G.M. 1996. Personal Networks and Postrevolutionary State Building. Soviet Russia Reexamined. World Politics, 48(3), 551-578. Edgar, A. 1999. The Creation of Soviet Turkmenistan (1924-1938). PhD Thesis, Berkeley, CA. Eisenstadt, S.N. 1973. Traditional Patrimonialism and Modern Neopatrimonialism. London: Sage Publications. Fitzpatrick, S. 1982. Russian Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Franke, A., Gawrich, A. and Alakbarov, G. 2009. Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan as Post-Soviet Rentier States: Resource Incomes and Autocracy as a Double ‘Curse’ in Post-Soviet Regimes. Europe-Asia Studies, 61(1), 109-140. Friedrich, C.J. and Brzezinski, Z. 1956. Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Geiss, P.G. 2001. Wahlen und Politik in Kirgisien: Über die Parlaments- und Präsidentschaftswahlen 2000. Orient, 42(2), 309-326. Geiss, P.G. 2003. Pre-Tsarist and Tsarist Central Asia. Communal Commitment and Political Order in Change. London and New York: Routledge Curzon 2003. Geiss, P.G. 2005. Regionalism and Statehood in Soviet and independent Turkmenistan, in Towards Social Stability and Democratic Governance in Central Eurasia: Challenges to Regional Security, edited by I. Morozova. Amsterdam: NATO Science Committee and IOS Press, 103-119. Geiss, P.G. 2006. State and Regime Change in Central Asia, in Realities of Transformation. Democratisation Policies in Central Asia Revisited, edited by A. Berg and A. Kreikemeyer: Baden-Baden: Nomos, 23-42. Geiss, P.G. 2007. Andere Wege in die Moderne: Recht und Verwaltung in Zentralasien. Osteuropa, 57 (8-9), 155-173. Getty, A. 1986. Origin of the Great Purges: Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered. 1933-1938. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gill, G. and Pitty R. 1997. Power in the Party: The Organization of Power and Central-Republican Relations in the CPSU. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Graubner, C. and Wolters. A. 2007. Kirgisischer Feldversuch Demokratie: Zwischen Schattenstaat und Tulpenrevolution. Osteuropa, 57(8-9), 225-235. Gullette, D. 2007. Theories of Central Asian Factionalism: The Debate in Political Science and its Wider Implications. Central Asian Survey, 26(3), 373-387. Gullette, D. 2010. The Problems of the ‘Clan’ Politics Model of Central Asian Statehood: A Call for Alternative Pathways for Research, in Stable Outside, Fragile Inside? Post-Soviet Statehood in Central Asia, edited by E. Kavalski. Farnham: Ashgate, 53-70. Haggard, S. and Kaufman, R.R. 1995. The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

200

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Hartmann, J. 1997. Vergleichende Regierungslehre und Systemvergleich, in Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, edited by D. Berg-Schlosser and F. MüllerRommel. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 27-48. Hughes, J. 1996. Patrimonialism and the Stalinist System: The Case of S.I. Syrtsov. Europe-Asia Studies, 48(4), 551-568. Ilkhamov, A. 2007. Neopatrimonialism, Interest Groups and Patronage Networks: The Impasse of the Governance System in Uzbekistan. Central Asian Survey, 26(1), 65-84. Ilkhamov, A. 2010. Stalled at the Doorstep of Modern Statehood: The Neopatrimonial Regime in Uzbekistan, in Stable Outside, Fragile Inside? Post-Soviet Statehood in Central Asia, edited by E. Kavalski. Farnham: Ashgate, 195-210. Isaacs, R. 2010. Informal Politics and the Uncertain Context of Transition: Revisiting early Stage Non-democratic Development in Kazkahstan. Democratization, 17(1), 1-25. Ishiyama, J. 2002. Neopatrimonialism and the Prospect for Democratization in the Central Asian Republics, in Power and Change in Central Asia, edited by S. Cummings. London and New York: Routledge, 42-58. Johnson, C. 1982. MITI and the Japanese Miracle. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Jones Luong, P. 2004. Competing Views of Central Asian States and Societies, in The Tranformation of Central Asia. States and Societies from Soviet Rule to Independence, edited by P. Jones Luong. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 271-281. Junisbai, B. 2010, A Tale of Two Kazakhstans: Sources of Political Cleavages and Conflict in Post-Soviet Period. Europe-Asia Studies, 62(2), 235-269. Kadyrov, S. 2001. Rossiysko-Turkmenskiy Istoricheskiy slovar’ I. Bergen: Biblioteka Almanakha ‘Turkmeny’. Kubicek, P. 2010. Applying the Democratisation Literature to Post-Soviet Central Asian Staatehood, in Stable Outside, Fragile Inside? Post-Soviet Statehood in Central Asia, edited by E. Kavalski. Farnham: Ashgate, 37-52. Leftwich, A. 1995. Bringing Politics Back. Towards a Model of the Developmental State. Journal of Development Studies, 31(3), 400-427. Linz, J.L. 1975. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, in Handbook of Political Science. Vol. 3 (Macropolitical Theory), edited by F.I. Greenstein and N.W. Polsby. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 175-412. Luhmann, N. 1984. Soziale Systeme. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Marat, E. 2008, March and After: What has Changed? What has Stayed the Same. Central Asian Survey, 27(3-4), 229-240. Markowitz, L.P. 2008. Local Elites, Procurators and Extraction in Rural Uzbekistan. Central Asian Survey, 27(1), 1-14. Markowitz, L.P. 2010. The Limits of International Agency: Post-Soviet State Building in Tajikistan, in Stable Outside, Fragile Inside? Post-Soviet Statehood in Central Asia, edited by E. Kavalski. Farnham: Ashgate, 157-172.

Changing Political Systems and Regime Types

201

Melvin, J.M. 2000. Uzbekistan: Transition to Authoritarianism on the Silk Road. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publisher. Migdal, J. 1988. Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Societal Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Miller, J. 1983. Nomenklatura: Check the Localism?, in Leadership Selection and Patron-Client Relations in the USSR and Yugoslavia, edited by T.H. Rigby and B. Harasymiw. Winchester: Allen & Unwin, 62-97. Moses, J.C. 1983. Functional Career Specialization in Soviet Regional Elite Recruitment, in Leadership Selection and Patron-Client Relations in the USSR and Yugoslavia, edited by T.H. Rigby and B. Harasymiw. Winchester: Allen & Unwin, 15-61. Münch, R. 1987. Theory of Action: Towards a New Synthesis Going Beyond Parsons. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Münch, R. 1988. Understanding Modernity. Towards a New Perspective Going Beyond Durkheim and Weber. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Myrdal, G. 1970. The ‘Soft State’, in Underdeveloped Countries in Unfashionable Economics: Essays in Honour of Lord Balogh, edited by P. Streeten. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 226-243. O’Donnell, G. 1973. Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism – Studies in South American Politics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Olcott, M.B. 2002. Kazakhstan. Unfulfilled Promise. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment. Parrott, B. 1997. Perspectives on Postcommunist Democratisation, in Conflict, Cleavage and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus, edited by K. Dawisha and B. Parrott. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1-39. Parsons, T., Bales, R.F. and Shils, E.A. 1957. Working Papers in the Theory of Action. Glencoe, IL: Greenwood Press. Pawelka, P. 1985. Herrschaft und Entwicklung im Nahen Osten: Ägypten. Heidelberg: C.F. Müller. Pethyridge, R. 1990. One Step Backwards, Two Steps Forward. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ryabkov, M. 2008, The North-South Cleavage and Political Support in Kyrgyzstan. Central Asian Survey, 27(4), 301-316. Sartori, G. 1970. Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics. American Political Science Review, 64(4), 1033-1053. Schatz, E. 2004. Modern Clan Politics. The Power of ‘Blood’ in Kazakhstan and Beyond. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Schmitz, A. 2003. Elite Change and Political Dynamics in Kazakhstan. Orient, 2003(4), 579-600. Schmitz, A. 2009. Kasachstan: neue Führungsmacht im postsowjetischen Raum? Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) Research Paper, 2009(7), Berlin. Schwinn, T. 2001. Differenzierung ohne Gesellschaft: Umstellung eines soziologischen Konzepts. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft.

202

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Service, R. 1979. Bolshevik Party in Revolution: A Study in Organizational Change, 1917-1923. London: Macmillan. Snyder, R. 1992. Explaining Transitions from Neopatrimonial Dictatorships. Comparative Politics, 24(4), 379-400. Trevisani, T. 2007. After the Kolkhoz: Rural Elites in Competition. Central Asian Survey, 26(1), 85-104. Verheijen, T., Sirotkin, S. and Kozakova, A. 2001. Reforms on the Silk Road: Institutional Reform. Central Asia. Beyond Transition. The Newsletter about Reforming Economies [Online]. Available at: www.worldbank.org/html/prddr/ trans/JulAugSep01/Pgs24-26.htm [accessed: 28 April 2011]. Weber, M. 1978 (1928). Economy and Society, edited by G. Roth and C. Wittich. Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Wiegmann, G. 2007. Staatsversagen in Tadschikistan, in Machtmosaik Zentralasien, edited by M. Sapper et al. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 225-236. Willerton, J. 1992. Patronage and Politics in the USSR. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wimmer, H. 2000. Die Modernisierung politischer Systeme. Staat – Parteien – Öffentlichkeit. Vienna, Cologne and Weimar: Böhlau Verlag.

Chapter 11

Seeing Like a President: The Dilemma of Inclusion in Kazakhstan Sebastian Schiek and Stephan Hensell

The post-Soviet development of Kazakhstan can be perceived as a typical case of the establishment of neopatrimonialism. Pervasive corruption, ‘clan politics’, authoritarian rule and the growing personalization of the state through the president are features of political authority in Kazakhstan which are also considered to be typical for neopatrimonialism (Erdmann and Engel 2007).1 In the centre of this system stands the long-term President, Nursultan Nazarbaev, who has ruled the Central Asian republic since 1989. Nazarbaev is regarded by many observers as a typical authoritarian ruler. His reputation, however, has not always been poor. Martha Brill Olcott, one of the most prominent observers of Kazakhstan and of Nazarbaev’s work, wrote in the beginning of the 1990s that Kazakhstan was facing many political and economic problems which would be nearly impossible to solve without a miracle. According to Olcott, Nazarbaev could be the man to handle these problems: ‘What makes the process so engrossing to observe is that Nazarbaev is the man who may be able to work the necessary magic’ (Olcott 1995: 169). But nearly a decade later, Olcott expressed her disappointment with the development of Kazakhstan and Nazarbaev with the book title Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise (2002). Indeed, Nazarbaev brings together the contradictions of contemporary Kazakhstani politics. He can be seen in many ways as the classical neopatrimonial patron who balances clientelist networks, appropriates material resources and sometimes rules arbitrarily. However, taking a closer look at Kazakhstani politics, things are not so clear-cut. Since the end of the 1990s, Nazarbaev has also promoted a comprehensive economic and political modernization programme. The development strategy 2030, economic and administrative reform and the building of the new capital Astana are central elements of this reform strategy. How can we explain this contradiction between neopatrimonial rule and efforts to establish a modern state? This chapter tries to explain this apparent paradox by analysing the statebuilding project and ambiguous strategies of the president. Our central assumption is that Kazakhstan’s president is a typical ambitious political leader, who acts in a 1  Some of the findings presented here are based on interviews, conducted by Sebastian Schiek (hereafter SES) in Kazakhstan between 2007 and 2010.

204

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

certain social context with structural constraints but who also pursues a political project. Nazarbaev stands at the top of a neopatrimonial system in which he also made his political career and which underpins his political position. At the same time, however, he wishes to build a strong and modern state. Hence, Kazakhstan’s president finds himself caught in a dilemma (see Geddes 1994, Schlichte 2000, Cummings 2005: 108-116). A dilemma is understood here as a situation in which a choice must be made between two options of action that are equally unfavourable or mutually exclusive. Thus, a dilemma is incapable of a satisfactory solution. In neopatrimonial systems, in which political stability depends on the distribution of economic privileges within clientelist networks, the ruling president or ‘big man’ typically faces a ‘dilemma of inclusion’ (Schlichte 2000: 14-16). The greater the number of clients and followers participating in the accumulation of resources, the more stable the position of the president is. However, the politics of inclusion also have detrimental effects. The higher the number of clients, the more pervasive corrupt practices of acquisition and appropriation are, which lead to a loss of material resources and political legitimacy (Schlichte 2000: 15). Starting from the assumption that Kazakhstan’s president is a political leader who stands at the apex of a neopatrimonial regime but wants, at the same time, to build a modern country, a dilemma of inclusion can be formulated from the perspective of the president.2 On the one hand, Nazarbaev is a part of the neopatrimonial system he promoted. In order to stabilize his position and broaden his power base during the transition from Soviet rule to independence, he has had to include and co-opt various power circles and networks. These groups, however, are involved in corrupt behaviour and acquisition practices. Nazarbaev has had to balance these groups and distribute resources and favours to them. The effect has been the patrimonialization of the state. On the other hand, Nazarbaev sees himself as a committed reformer, who tries to bolster his legitimacy and symbolic prestige by modernizing the economy and the state, thus forging a political legacy. Therefore, he also has to combat the corrupt practices of the political elites and his subordinates, because the patrimonialization contradicts his attempts at modernizing Kazakhstan. The resulting predicament or ‘dilemma of inclusion’ for Nazarbaev consists in two equally undesirable alternatives: Excluding the clients from the resources of the state and overriding the economic interests of his followers and friends creates potential opponents and political challengers, which sooner or later might threaten his power base and the overall stability of the system. Including them jeopardizes Nazarbaev’s modernization project because of the patrimonial practices of the elites. The solution to this dilemma consists in integrating the various power circles and cliques while at the same time trying to control the process of patrimonialization and keep it within limits through several control techniques. Thus, Nazarbaev can be

2  These assumptions rely on the literature of political behaviour and political psychology, for example, Blondel (1987).

Seeing Like a President: The Dilemma of Inclusion in Kazakhstan

205

considered a reluctant neopatrimonial leader whose state-building project consists in tolerating as well as combating neopatrimonialism simultaneously. We explicate this dilemma of inclusion with reference to recent political developments in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. For students of political authority in Central Asia, neopatrimonial theories have become a useful frame of reference (Ishiyama 2002, Ilkhamov 2007, Sehring 2009, Isaacs 2010). However, the paradoxical mix of patrimonial practices and strong modernization efforts can only partially be explained with reference to the neopatrimonial framework. We posit that the political habitus of the president provides a better answer to this observable contradiction. The resulting inclusion dilemma of accommodating and containing his political clients, however, produces rather ambiguous strategies, which do not solve the fundamental dilemma Nazarbaev faces. In this chapter, we begin by analysing the patrimonialization of the state in Kazakhstan from Soviet times to the 1990s. The second section explores Nazarbaev’s modernization programme, which stands in stark contrast to the above-mentioned patrimonial practices. The resolution of the resulting dilemma of inclusion through various techniques of control is discussed in the third section, which is followed by a brief conclusion. The Patrimonialization of Kazakhstan The emergence of formal state structures in Kazakhstan is closely related to the incorporation of the Kazakhstani territory into the tsarist empire. Starting in the 18th century, the tsarist regime established administrative structures and later actively involved local Kazakh clans in the state administration (Hirsch 2005: 160-165). Compared to this practice, the Soviet state-building project was rather authoritarian and destructive (Roy 2000: 26-34). The Sovietization of Kazakhstan from 1917 onwards included the application of brutal force and the destruction of the social functions of the nomadic clans and their pastoral economy (Schatz 2004a: 21-71). The socialist modernization efforts and especially the nationalization of the economy constituted a radical social and political transformation. With the consolidation of the Soviet Union and the foundation of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (KSSR) in 1936, legal forms of authority were also established. The Soviet administration featured typical bureaucratic elements such as formal rules, hierarchy of offices and recruitment of personnel according to meritocratic principles. Moreover, the state was able to develop a high infrastructural capacity, which allowed it to implement political programs and regulate social life in Kazakhstan (Tilly 2007: 16). However, in Kazakhstan as elsewhere in the southern periphery of the Soviet Union, the modernization remained limited. The inherent limits of formal rationalization within the socialist state and the simultaneous persistence of traditional forms in the periphery of the Soviet Union led to a ‘patrimonial socialism’ which became the dominant form of authority in most parts of the Soviet Union (Hensell 2009: 105-

206

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

116). In Kazakhstan, which was primarily run by local elites, the patrimonialization of the state was linked to the First Secretary of the Communist Party, Dimukhamed Kunaev. Kunaev was able to stay in office from 1960 to 1986 and recruited members of his family and clan into important positions in the state (Dave 2007: 85-86). The patrimonialization of state structures was also facilitated by the transformation of the Kazakh clans. The Soviet policy of persecuting the traditional clans led to their transformation into clandestine networks that helped their members to access scarce resources (Schatz 2004a: 46-71). State officials used public offices for the appropriation of economic resources and started to build up clientelist networks, thus also facilitating the transformation of clan structures into vertical networks based on clientelism (Simis 1977, Pakulski 1986: 8). The ‘patrimonial area’ (Critchlow 1988) in Central Asia in the 1980s led to several attempts to fight corruption and nepotism. After the replacement of party leaders in other Central Asian republics, Kunaev was also removed from his position and replaced by the ethnic Russian Gennady Kolbin in 1986. However, after demonstrations and enduring protests by students and other social groups, Kolbin was removed and Nursultan Nazarbaev took his place in 1989 (Dave 2007: 84-89). Nazarbaev grew up as a son of a peasant family in a village in southern Kazakhstan in a rather traditional context. Educated as a metallurgist in Kazakhstan and Ukraine, he made his career through the Soviet party system, receiving training in party work. He has been described as a technocrat and loyal functionary, socialized in a system that ‘… entailed distrust of spontaneity and demanded rigorous hierarchical control’ (Olcott 1995: 171). But he was also perceived as a notable expert on the Kazakhstani economy with an appreciation for its problematic dependence on the Russian economic system (Olcott 1995: 170-171). In 1986, shortly before Kunaev was removed from his post, Nazarbaev already belonged to the political elite in Soviet Kazakhstan and openly criticized the patrimonial leadership of Kunaev. Nazarbaev’s promotion to the post of first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan is not only viewed as a result of his expertise and self-promotion but also as a result of his skilful handling of clan networks (Masanov 1996, quoted in Dave 2007: 89). The Politics of Inclusion after Socialism After it became clear that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was inevitable, Nazarbaev led the country into independence and thus became the central figure in the political life of the post-Soviet republic. He started to reorganize the political system, bringing the council of ministers under his direct control and then converting his chairmanship of the Supreme Soviet to a presidency confirmed by parliamentary election. Moreover, Nazarbaev opted to build his authority on a broad basis of power by integrating as many elite members as possible into the governmental and administrative system. This included old as well as new actors.

Seeing Like a President: The Dilemma of Inclusion in Kazakhstan

207

Elite continuity was criticized as early as 1991, after Nazarbaev had pushed initial economic and legal reforms through the Supreme Soviet. Political opposition groups objected to the fact that the ministers who planned the economic reforms in the early 1990s were the same people who had controlled the command economy (Brown 1992: 52). Indeed, the turnover of elites during the transition of Soviet Kazakhstan was very limited. Between the years of 1989 and 2002 there was only a minimal replacement of elite personnel (Murphy 2006). Cummings discovered that two years after independence, two-thirds of the post-Soviet elite members had previously held positions either in the executive branch or in the party of the KSSR. The most influential members in the post-independence presidential administration also occupied top positions in the Kazakh Communist Party previously. There was also a high continuity in career sequencing between the Soviet and the post-Soviet elites. Post-independence ministers had often been members of the council of ministers and judiciary staff had frequently served in the judiciary during the Soviet period (Cummings 2005: 46-47). Despite relying on the old elite, Nazarbaev also tended to integrate potential troublemakers or counter-elites into his regime. Olzhas Suleimenov, a charismatic Kazakh poet and Soviet official, founded an environmental movement dealing with the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site and transformed it into the National Congress Party. According to observers, Nazarbaev gave his blessing to the party’s activities and the party in turn supported Nazarbaev’s first presidential campaign (Brown 1992). In the course of the political restructuring of 1995, which introduced a new, more authoritarian constitution, the party was dissolved and Suleimenov was appointed ambassador to Italy, where he served until 2002 (Ashimbaev 2008: 784-785). Even earlier, Ermukhamet Ertysbaev was co-opted into the presidential apparatus. Ertysbaev served as a party official in the Socialist Party, a party whose rhetoric can be characterized as one of moderate opposition. During 1993, he was appointed presidential adviser, later became head of a governmental think tank and then again presidential adviser (Schmitz 2003). Ertysbaev continues to hold this position today (Ashimbaev 2008: 306). Furthermore, Nazarbaev invited economic reformers to join his government from the beginning. As early as 1992 he is reported to have gathered a group of local and foreign advisers around him, among them US economic experts (Brown 1992). Sergei Tereshchenko, an ethnic Russian, was perceived as a reformer and served as first prime minister until 1994. He was in charge of overseeing economic liberalization. Under his successor, Akezhan Kazhegeldin, young economic experts and entrepreneurs, often trained abroad, were invited to join the government. Among them was Nurlan Balgimbaev, who became an adviser to the president after he completed a traineeship with Chevron. In 1997 he was appointed prime minister and brought more newcomers to the government (Schmitz 2003: 12-14). But Nazarbaev’s personnel policy is seldom clearly neopatrimonial: The co-optation of political actors perceived as potentially capable of organizing opposition movements overlaps with the invitation of young reformers to participate in the government. Oraz Zhandosov is one example of this overlap.

208

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

He served as an advisor to the president and the prime minister before becoming finance minister in 1999. Two years later he co-founded the Democratic Movement of Kazakhstan, levelling criticism at the patrimonial rule of Nazarbaev. After his dismissal as finance minister he became deputy chairman of the opposition party Ak Zhol. From this position he was asked to join Nazarbaev’s government as an economic adviser (Ashimbaev 2008: 258, Schmitz 2003: 25-27). The presidential scholarship Bolashak increased the number of students who studied abroad. It also brought young and well-trained experts to the presidential administration, as well as ‘fresh ideas’. For example, the introduction of administrative service centres, so called ‘one-stop-shops’ (see below), in Kazakhstan is linked to bolashaks who studied in Western European and American universities and later became staff members of the presidential administration (Janenova 2009: 6). Double Accumulation and Elite Straddling While the liberalization of the national economy was intended to benefit the wider society, many profiteers were either state actors or the directors of state enterprises. These actors used their positions either to transfer state assets to themselves or their relatives or to act as patrons of economic actors. The so called ‘red directors’ who headed the big socialist state enterprises utilized their knowledge and political connections to acquire these enterprises during fraudulent privatization processes (Olcott 2002: 136-143).3 As a result of the elite’s ‘straddling’ (Medard 1991) between the political and economic sphere, three types of links between these two spheres developed in Kazakhstan during the 1990s: First, some companies lack a state patron or direct affiliation with the government, but apply successful lobbying techniques to obtain protection of their interests. Second, there are companies with more direct links to state actors, who provide them protection. Usually, there is one patron in top positions who has a clientelistic network that spreads around the administration. If the patron also successfully controls officials in the tax authorities and the ‘financial police’ (see below), he is able to launch attacks against competitors, for example, through demands for tax payments. The third type consists of enterprises that directly belong to top officials who managed to privatize them in the 1990s (Kjaernet, Satpaev and Torjesen 2008: 98-99). The double accumulation of political and economic power by state actors considerably blurred the separation between the public and the private sphere. Ministers and heads of state agencies were not only holders of public offices but also became powerful economic actors. An example of the accumulation of political and economic power is Imangali Tasmagambetov, the current mayor of 3  A member of parliament from the Communist Party commented in 1992 that top officials had access to a critical resource during privatization: They received exclusive and cheap loans from the national bank (Handelman 1995: 125).

Seeing Like a President: The Dilemma of Inclusion in Kazakhstan

209

Astana. After a career in the Communist Party in the 1980s, he became an assistant to Nazarbaev in 1993 and since then has occupied high-ranking positions within the state. During this time, Tasmagambetov managed to build up a clientelistic network that controls enormous economic resources (Satpaev 2007: 294-295). Another significant example for the intersection of economic and political power is Rakhat Aliev, the former son-in-law of President Nazarbaev. Aliev used his close position to the president to control critical political resources, like the financial police and the secret service, in order to expand his business empire, taking over banks and other industries (Satpaev 2007: 291). As a result of the double accumulation, intra-elite struggles for access to political and economic resources and clientelist networks became common. They became apparent when political actors either had to flee abroad or were sentenced to prison. One of the recent escalations took place in 2010, when the struggle of power groups came to a head and resulted in a situation in which officers of the financial police and the secret service each detained staff members of the other organization.4 The neopatrimonial structure of the state was not limited to top political positions but also affected the state administration, since state agencies were instrumentalized by top officials and corruption among rank-and-file officers became a serious problem (see below). However, patrimonial practices were not the only observable tendency in the political field. In stark contrast to the patrimonialization of Kazakhstan in the 1990s are the modernization project and the reform strategies of the president. The presence of these efforts can be explained by the political habitus of the president, who sees himself as a reformer. Modernizing the society, developing the economy and building a strong and internationally-respected state are political goals which can be traced directly to Nazarbaev’s policies, which can be seen as an attempt to construct a political legacy. The Modernization Impetus Nazarbaev has worked on his image as a modernizer since the early 1990s. He started to work on a developmental strategy in 1995. The strategy was developed in the framework of the Supreme Economic Council, headed by Nazarbaev. The council invited experts from international organizations and donors (Utegenova 2011: 134). The strategy, which is divided into three stages, was published in 1997 in Nazarbaev’s annual speech. It stresses the national unity of Kazakhstan, social justice and the economic wellbeing of the people (Nazarbaev 1997). While the strategy originally advocated a ‘substantial but limited’ role of the state in the national economy and political decentralization, these two claims were revoked four years later in ‘Strategy 2010’, which delivers detailed milestones for the first 4  This interpretation by Dosym Satpaev was published in Alliance of Analytical Organizations (2010).

210

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

implementation period of the ‘Strategy 2030’, which covers the period 2001-2010. Instead of a substantial but limited role of the state in the national economy, the idea of the Asian Newly Industrialized Countries (NIC) states was adopted, which stresses the state’s role as the main economic player during the industrialization process and the foundation of large state companies (Prezident Respubliki Kazakhstan 2010a). The initial goal of political decentralization was rescinded as well. Currently, the development project 2030 is in its second stage from 20102019. The milestones for this stage are defined in the ‘Strategy 2020’ that was issued as a presidential decree in February 2010. It aims among other things at bolstering industrial diversification and infrastructure development and providing high-quality housing and public services for the population. The concentration of state companies under the roof of Samruk Kazyna (see below) is one result of the strategy (Schmitz 2009: 14). Another example of the modernization impetus is the move of the capital city from southern Almaty to Akmola in the middle of the steppe in northern Kazakhstan, which is unique in the post-Soviet area. Akmola, which was later renamed Astana, officially became the new capital in 1997 and since then billions of Kazakh tenge have been spent on creating the new city in the steppe. There are many official and unofficial reasons for moving the capital, among them Almaty’s location in an earthquake area and its peripheral position, which was not capable of linking the various regions of Kazakhstan. An interpretation of the change in capital which goes beyond the official framing refers to it as a means of statebuilding and as the creation of symbolic capital. The newly constructed city is an explicit symbol for the modernity of Nazarbaev’s Kazakhstan: ‘The symbolic face of Astana was built to underscore the outward-facing, international aspect of the city. New government buildings were amenity-rich and modern but not grandiose monuments to the self-indulgence of its leadership’ (Schatz 2004b: 127). Nazarbaev was actively involved in the construction of Astana. He located his presidential office in the centre of the new government district, allowing him virtually to oversee all other state organs, including the ministries, the constitutional court and the state companies Samruk-Kazyna and Kazmunaigaz.5 The reform of the administration is yet another example of Nazarbaev’s modernization impetus. Since the end of socialism, the bureaucratic apparatuses 5  Another interpretation could be that moving the capital enabled Nazarbaev to undermine rival clientelist networks and bolster his own. The old capital Almaty was the centre of nation-wide clientelist networks of the long-term leader Kunaev. The move of the capital was accompanied by a shrinking of the administration and a redeployment of critical positions at the top of the state. As a result Nazarbaev managed to shake up old clientelistic networks and demand loyalty of his subordinates. Only those who had shown their loyalty to the state leader had reasonable chances to be employed in the new capital. The move, involving thousands of employees, completely initiated and overseen by Nazarbaev, was a clear demonstration of his power (Schatz 2004b). Anacker (2004) provides an interpretation of the new capitol as a source of symbolic power for Nazarbaev.

Seeing Like a President: The Dilemma of Inclusion in Kazakhstan

211

and administrative routines in the states of the former Soviet Union have changed only slowly. The reorganization of the bureaucracy has proven to be difficult and the administrative modernization has stagnated in many cases. However, since 1999 Kazakhstan has pursued a consistent policy of modernization of the civil service, which has been widely-lauded (Verheijen 2007: 314). The professionalization of the civil service includes inter alia principles of meritocratic recruitment, professional training of civil servants and the establishment of the so-called ‘onestop-shops’ mentioned above, which are designed to improve the quality of service delivery and curb corruption.6 Thus, quite contrary to the development of neopatrimonialism, Nazarbaev’s politics also exhibit a strong tendency to modernize the country. This modernization programme, however, conflicts with the patrimonial practices in the political field. For Nazarbaev this contradiction constitutes a dilemma. The inclusion of predatory elites is necessary in order to strengthen the power base of his regime. However, this inclusion involves the loss of material means and political legitimacy, directly threatening the modernization programme and thus Nazarbaev’s political legacy. The Solution of the Inclusion Dilemma: Neopatrimonial Techniques of Control Nazarbaev’s response to this dilemma has consisted of various neopatrimonial techniques of control which can be summarized as follows: (1) utilizing his power to appoint officials and shuffle them from one post to another; (2) concentrating economic resources and relying on trustworthy family members; and (3) denouncing and combating corruption. The Big Shuffle One of the quite visible techniques of control is the frequent shuffling of officials across public agencies as well as across regions. This practice occasionally occurs in the form of ‘big shuffles’, a technique that Migdal (1988: 214-217) has analysed for other states. During big shuffles a majority of ministers, regional governors and heads of agencies are transferred to other positions. Between these big shuffles there are also smaller shifts. Since independence, there have been nine ministers of justice, nine ministers of foreign affairs and eight ministers of the interior. A comparably high turnover took place in the regions, where especially in the 1990s the terms in office were seldom longer than two years (Cummings 2005: 49-50). A typical tenure is that of Viktor Khrapunov. He served as Minister of Energy for two years and then was transferred to the position of Governor of Almaty in 1997, where he served until he was appointed as Governor of Eastern Kazakhstan 6  For a critical assessment of administrative reform in Kazakhstan, see EmrichBakenova (2009).

212

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

oblast in 2004. Three years later, he became minister for emergency situations. In 2007, he was dismissed as minister in relation to allegations concerning illegal land deals (Radio Free Europe 2007).7 Those ministers who are representatives of business clans are also subject to shuffling and these shuffles sometimes relate to power balancing techniques: After Nazarbaev’s son-in-law Rakhat Aliev lost his power and was exiled to Austria in Spring 2007, Imangali Tasmagambetov was transferred from governor of Almaty to the post of the governor of Astana. According to an observer, this move aimed at power balancing: When Aliev and his business group lost political and economic power, Tasmagambetov’s group gained power in relative terms. According to his interpretation, bringing Tasmagambetov to Astana enabled Nazarbaev to increase his control over the city’s new governor.8 However, while the frequent shuffles are typical for the Kazakhstani state, the dismissal of high-ranking politicians, like in the case of Khrapunov, has happened rather infrequently. Nazarbaev often tended to opt for inclusion when the question is whether to preserve an official or to fire him in the course of a scandal. In contrast to the case of Khrapunov, shuffles are usually announced without specifying the reasons behind them. The big shuffle can be considered as a control technique which allows Nazarbaev to demonstrate his power, to balance among networks and to punish single individuals. The big shuffles are possible due to Nazarbaev’s comprehensive power to appoint political officials. While the president’s competences in this field were quantitatively limited in the first constitution, nowadays he appoints more than 3,000 political officials, among them ministers, judges, the attorney general, heads and deputy heads of agencies and directors of state universities (ARKDGS 2011). In 2007, the parliament was entitled to confirm the appointments of ministers and the head of the national secret service. This additional right of the parliament was introduced in 2007 – obviously to improve Kazakhstan’s image prior to the decision about the country’s bid for the OSCE chairmanship. But at the same time the president introduced a controlling instrument to balance the partial power transfer to the parliament. He created the position of responsible secretaries, who are located in the ministries beneath the minister. However, these secretaries are appointed by the president and they are responsible to him. Thus, they provide an additional control lever from the presidential administration (akorda) into the ministry (Pravitel’stvo Respubliki Kazakhstan 2007). In addition to his formal authority to appoint political officials, Nazarbaev can in fact also decide who becomes a member of parliament. This became possible back in 2007 through a legal amendment of a law that prohibited political officials and the president from being a member of a political party. Already in that year he actively engaged in the election campaign of Nur Otan and in the end the party obtained all seats 7  Later it turned out that Khrapunov managed to earn millions during his state service (Kazakhstan segodnya 2009a). 8  SES, Author’s personal communication with a local expert, Almaty 2010, name withheld. See also Kazakhstan segodnya (2008).

Seeing Like a President: The Dilemma of Inclusion in Kazakhstan

213

in the parliament (Isaacs 2008). Nazarbaev can influence the election lists and also shuffle members of the parliament between elections. For instance, in 2009 the Minister of Justice, Sagipa Balieva, was removed from her office as part of a bigger shuffle and appointed a member of the parliament (Kazakhstan segodnya 2009b). Concentrating Economic Resources and Family Control Nazarbaev also managed to increase his control over significant economic resources. While his access to economic resources in the 1990s was rather restricted due to a weak economy and low tax revenues, since the end of the 1990s the booming economy has provided extensive economic resources that could be appropriated and distributed. A central mechanism for the monopolization of economic power became the Samruk Kazyna. The joint-stock company is a fusion of the state holding Samruk, founded by Nazarbaev in 2006, and the national wealth fund Kazyna. The holding has shares in more than 400 companies with more than 260,000 employees (IMF 2009: 9). Samruk Kazyna owns inter alia 100 per cent of the shares of the national oil and gas company Kazmunaigaz and the national railway company Temir Zholy,9 but also controls major banks such as the BTA Bank, owning about 80 per cent of its shares (EIU 2011: 15). In 2007, Samruk Kasyna generated a total volume of $46.9 billion, which was 45 percent of GDP (IMF 2009: 9). Nazarbaev appointed loyal followers or family members as heads of the state holding. Recently, Nazarbaev appointed his son-in-law Timur Kulebaev to be the CEO of Samruk Kazyna (Makulbekov 2011). As indicated above, the family of Nazarbaev began to play a significant role in Kazakhstan’s political and economic life. Nazarbaev’s son-in-law Rakhat Aliev temporarily controlled the secret service and the financial police. Before his property was confiscated, he owned shares in the financial as well as in the media sector together with his wife Dariga Nazarbaeva (Pannier 2008). The second sonin-law, Timur Kulebaev, was less directly involved in public offices but has played a significant role in the Kazakhstani energy sector for years. Besides the recent appointment of Kulebaev as head of Samruk Kazyna, a nephew of Nazarbaev, Kairat Satybaldy, was appointed as one of three secretaries of the presidential party Nur Otan in 2010 (Toguzbaev 2010). The Fight against Corruption Corruption was not limited to the elite’s double accumulation. Rather, in the 1990s corrupt practices of state officials spread across the whole state – including public offices – and led to a situation, in which ‘everything is possible’ (Werner 2002). Kazakhstan was among the first states in the post-Soviet sphere that started to 9  Overview on the company’s website, available at: www.samruk-kazyna.kz [accessed: 14 March 2011].

214

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

tackle corruption in the public sector in the second half of the 1990s. Corruption was introduced in as a criminal offense in the criminal code in 1997, followed by the act on the fight against corruption in 1998. Since then, a whole range of institutional and organizational activity has taken place. The president issued a decree on the battle with corruption in 2000, followed by a code on administrative offenses that defined corrupt practices in the public service realm. Moreover, most of the ministries and central agencies have adopted their own decrees on the internal handling of corruption. In addition, civil servants are bound to the ethical rules of the civil service that were introduced in 2005 and upgraded in 2011 and which prohibit corruption. Legal rules and state activities were backed by two strategies for the fight against corruption that led to institutional rebuilding. Among the results of this rebuilding are the Higher Disciplinarian Council with branches in all regions and the State Commission for the Fight against Corruption (Transparency Kazakhstan 2004). Eventually, in 2003, Nazarbaev created a whole new agency to tackle corruption, the department for the fight against economic crimes and corruption, which is called the ‘financial police’ for short (Prezident Respubliki Kazakhstan 2003). These ‘hard’ activities were underpinned by image campaigns in newspapers to raise awareness in society and information campaigns for civil servants. Notwithstanding the continued activities to tackle corruption of public officials, corruption did not decline noticeably. Opinion polls and recent studies indicate that the results of the ongoing attempts to get corruption under control are rather tenuous. While in some areas the situation improved, in others it actually worsened.10 A local expert stated in 2010 that corrupt practices are so deeply-entangled in public administration and the whole society that the problem of corruption cannot be solved in the near future. We argue that the cause for the at least partially failed fight against corruption is not just the observation that corruption is difficult to eradicate, but the inclusion dilemma, which can be observed in cases of resistance. If the resistance originates from those actors on which Nazarbaev depends, the ‘inclusion dilemma’ is at work. ‘Resistance’ is understood in a broader sense than openly opposing or openly contradicting orders. It also refers to omissions or to giving new meanings to an idea which contradict its original intention. Methodologically, resistance as understood here is difficult to observe and requires the interpretation of contexts of meaning attached to particular practices. The financial police as created in 2003 was intended to combine the competencies of several public agencies and thus mark a new stage in combating corruption. The financial police’s authority to investigate economic crimes and corruption made it a powerful agency and, from the viewpoint of neopatrimonial logic, a critical player in the elite’s double accumulation. Under control of the president’s son-inlaw Rakhat Aliev, the agency soon gained the image of being corrupt instead of 10  For an overview on corruption in Kazakhstan, see Dzhansova et al. (2002), Turisbekov (2007) and IRI (2010).

Seeing Like a President: The Dilemma of Inclusion in Kazakhstan

215

fighting corruption. Amongst other things, the agency was involved in struggles in which Aliev tried to get full control over the bank Nurbank (Dubnov 2007). After the affair involving Nurbank became a public scandal, Nazarbaev initially tried to bring his son-in-law out of the line of fire and appointed him ambassador in Vienna, but later dropped him and ordered criminal procedures against him. After Aliev’s dismissal from the political field the financial police was subject to allegations of the misuse of its competencies. One former top official stated in an interview that the ‘financial police is the worst of all’.11 After it and other state agencies continuously received complaints about the misuse of their competencies, Nazarbaev founded the so called ‘Presidential Initiative for the Protection of Business’. This new institution allows companies to issue complaints about official misbehaviour directly to the president (Prezident Respubliki Kazakhstan 2010b). According to the website of the initiative, the financial police receive most of the complaints. Although it is currently not possible for outsiders to scrutinize whether or not these complaints are legitimate, the very foundation of the initiative allegorizes the core of the inclusion dilemma: Because the intermediaries are only partially trustworthy, the president must establish a direct line between himself and the private business that he wants to protect. Resistance to anti-corruption measures can also be observed on other levels. Department chiefs are responsible for the control of their staff. If they detect misbehaviour by their subordinates they are required to initiate proper procedures. But in fact, as interview data suggests, superiors very seldom initiate such procedures but rather tend to ask for their share. While this behaviour could be explained by the fact the department chiefs are remote from presidential control, this is not the case for the presidential administration. However, the presidential administration itself is a source of resistance to rational reform. In 2010, Nazarbaev confirmed the widespread belief that high-ranking officials fill strategically important offices with their relatives, when he complained about the ‘young boys’ sitting in top positions within the state administration for which they can hardly be qualified (Akkulyuly 2010). As early as 2008, Nazarbaev suggested a new career system that introduces opportunities of promotion for civil servants and includes top state positions. After a group of reformers worked out the new career model and submitted a prepared presidential decree to the akorda, the presidential administration rejected the draft, asserting that it fails to conform to the constitution.12 According to the interpretation of experts, staff members of the presidential administration were less concerned about the constitution and more worried about access to political offices that they wanted to control through their own clients.

11  SES, Author’s personal communication with a former top official in Almaty, 2010, name withheld. 12  SES, Author’s personal communication with former officials in Almaty, names withheld, October 2009.

216

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Bullying of reformers or ‘complainers’ has been known to happen in Kazakhstan. One of the most prominent reformers eliminated from politics is Alikhan Baimenov. He was the first head of the civil service agency and started to introduce a formal testing procedure that all civil servants had to undergo. Highranking officials who did not want to lose control of the selection procedure of their subordinates managed to dismiss Baimenov from his office. A former top official complained to the president about the corrupt behaviour of other ministries and agencies and provided obvious evidence of this misbehaviour. According to his interpretation his complaint never reached the president. Some days later, officers of the secret service (KNB) showed up in his agency, clearly indicating that he should stop such complaints.13 The bullying of ‘complainers’ seems to be structural. Non-corrupt officials are tolerated but as soon as they complain, they are edged out of politics. A more subtle form of resistance sheds more light on the inclusion dilemma. In 2005, a team in the Kazakh government started to work on the introduction of so called ‘one-stop-shops’ where citizens could obtain the administrative services of all ministries in one place. The idea was to improve service quality but also to prevent a direct contact between the citizen and the official who is in charge of the service and thus prevent chances for corruption (Janenova 2009). The formerly complicated procedure to obtain services from the ministries enabled officials to sell administrative services. The fairly prompt delivery of travel passports required a bribe of up to $200. The high illegal revenues shape the prebendal structures within the Ministry of Justice. The creation of the ‘one-stop-shops’ destroyed these structures or made it more complicated to maintain them. But after a certain time, the ministry managed to get back control.14 This was made possible when the supervision of the one-stop-shops was transferred from the Ministry of Justice to the regional administration bodies (akimat). This move was justified by expectations of improved effectiveness (Gazeta 2010). After the transfer of the centres to the akimats, the Ministry of Justice claimed that the administrative processing of passports must be done by staff members of the ministry and thereby reclaimed the procedure for issuing passports. Recently, cases of prosecution on corruption charges have increased. Most affected are deputies, seldom the ministers themselves. Sentenced on corruption charges were the Minister of the Environment, Nurlan Isakov, and two of his deputies, the head of the national company Kazatomprom, Mukhtar Dzhakishev, the chairman of the committee on water resources, the deputy head of the statistics agency and the deputy head of the Ministry of Defence, Kazhimurat Maemanova (Kozybaeva 2010). The deputy head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Ablai Sabdalin, was sentenced on corruption charges, while his minister, Viktor 13  SES, Author’s personal communication with a former top-official, name withheld, Almaty, June 2010. 14  SES, Information based on an interview with the director of a one-stop-shop, Almaty, 2010, name withheld. See also Turisbekov (2007).

Seeing Like a President: The Dilemma of Inclusion in Kazakhstan

217

Khrapunov, fled abroad to Switzerland. There are several interpretations concerning the recent waves of arrests. Some analysts such as Dosym Satpaev argue that the arrests that happened in 2009 and 2010 are visible eruptions of intensifying conflicts between business clans. According to Satpaev, the fact that the officers of the secret service and the financial police arrested officers of the other agency supports this interpretation (Alliance of Analytical Organizations 2010). Another interpretation is that the conviction primarily of deputy heads spares the more powerful actors, but nevertheless is a clear sign to them. A third interpretation comes from Nazarbaev himself. According to a cable from the US embassy in Astana, Nazarbaev told the Israeli Ambassador, who was born in Kazakhstan, that he is currently trying to destroy certain business clans involved in corrupt practices and the financial police acts as his instrument for doing so. According to the cable, Nazarbaev is afraid that the continuing high level of corruption will jeopardize his legacy (US Cable 2009a; see also US Cable 2009b). Conclusion Kazakhstan is often seen as a typical case of neopatrimonial rule in Central Asia. The neopatrimonial concept does indeed capture some of the important dynamics in the political field. However, a closer look at Kazakhstani politics since the 1990s also raises some doubts about the applicability of the concept. In stark contrast to the patrimonial practices we find an extensive modernization programme and diverse reform strategies used by the regime, which cannot be explained with the concept of neopatrimonialism. We have claimed that the ambiguous politics pursued by the president provides a better way of explaining this contradiction. Trying to bridge power politics and modernization efforts, however, results in a dilemma of inclusion for Nazarbaev, the solution of which is rather unsatisfying. While the technique of shuffling officials produces unstable career patterns and insecurity among the political and administrative personnel, the concen­tration of economic resources in the hands of Nazarbaev’s family resembles the construction of a family empire. Combating corruption has brought about equally ambiguous results. Hence, the overall consequences of the president’s strategies are uncertain. Thus, Nazarbaev can be characterized as a rather reluctant neopatrimonial leader. He needs the structures and wants to overcome them at the same time. Taking into account that the stability of the institutional arrangement depends on Nazarbaev’s power techniques, rather than on an impersonal institutional order, the unsolved question of succession poses a danger to Nazarbaev’s modernization project and his political legacy. While Nazarbaev, born in 1940, is in good health, sooner or later it will be necessary to establish a potential successor. Whether this person will be able to hold a comparable position of power in order to balance influential cliques, continue modernization efforts and create state legitimacy vis-à-vis the society remains an open question.

218

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

References Akkulyuly, S. 2010. Nazarbaev udivilsiya nepotizmu [Online, 26 February]. Available at: http://rus.azattyq.org/content/Nepotism/1967068.html [accessed: 28 July 2010]. Alliance of Analytical Organizations. 2010. Kazakhstan: Annual Report on the Development of Society and State. Almaty. ARKDGS (Agenstvo Respubliki Kazahstan po Delam Gosudarstvennoy Sluzhby). 2011. Gosudarstvennaya sluzhba v tsifrakh [Online]. Available at: http://www. kyzmet.kz/?lang=ru&id_1=62&month=6 [accessed: 13 May 2011]. Anacker, S. 2004. Geographies of Power in Nazarbaev’s Astana. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 45(7), 515-533. Ashimbaev, D. 2008. Kto est kto v Kazakhstane: Bibliograficheskaya Enciklopediya. Almaty: Credo. Blondel, J. 1987. Political Leadership: Towards a General Analysis. London: Sage Publications. Brown, B. 1992. Central Asia emerges on the world stage. RFE/RL Research Report, 1(1), 51-56. Critchlow, J. 1988. ‘Corruption’, nationalism, and the native elites in Soviet Central Asia. The Journal of Communist Studies, 4(2), 142-161. Cummings, S. 2005. Kazakhstan: Power and the Elite. London: I.B. Tauris. Dave, B. 2007. Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, Language and Power. London: Routledge. Dubnov, A. 2007. Nazarbaev vygnal starshego zyatya iz politiki. Vremya [Online, 28 May]. Available at: http://www.vremya.ru/2007/90/5/179064.html [accessed: 18 May 2011]. Dzhandosova, Z., Baitugelova, N., Dzhandosova, F. and Kunitsa, S. 2002. Korruptsiya v Kazakhstane glazami gosudarstvennykh sluzhashchikh, predprinimateley i naseleniya. Astana: Issledovatel’skii Tsentr Sandzh. EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit). 2011. Country Report Kazakhstan. April. Emrich-Bakenova, S. 2009. Trajectory of Civil Service Development in Kazakhstan: Nexus of Politics and Administration. Governance, 22(4), 717745. Erdmann, G. and Engel, U. 2007. Neopatrimonialism Reconsidered: Critical Review and Elaboration of an Elusive Concept. Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 45(1), 95-119. Gazeta. 2010. Tsony pereshli pod yurisdiktsiyu akimatov [Online, 5 January]. Available at: http://news.gazeta.kz/art.asp?aid=141607 [accessed: 15 May 2011]. Geddes, B. 1994. Politician’s Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Handelman, S. 1995. Comrade Criminal: Russia’s New Mafiya. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hensell, S. 2009. Die Willkür des Staates: Herrschaft und Verwaltung in Osteuropa. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.

Seeing Like a President: The Dilemma of Inclusion in Kazakhstan

219

Hirsch, F. 2005. Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ilkhamov, A. 2007. Neopatrimonialism, interest groups and patronage networks: The impasses of the governance system in Uzbekistan. Central Asian Survey, 26(1), 65-84. IMF (International Monetary Fund). 2009. Republic of Kazakhstan: 2009. Article IV. Consultation – Staff Report, Supplement, and Public Information Notice on the Executive Board Discussion [Online]. Available at: http://imf.org/external/ pubs/ft/scr/2009/cr09300.pdf [accessed: 29 August 2010]. IRI (The International Republican Institute). 2010. Kazakhstan National Opinion Poll [Online, April]. Available at: http://www.iri.org/news-events-presscenter/news/iri-releases-survey-kazakhstan-public-opinion-3 [accessed: 13 May 2011]. Isaacs, R. 2008. Managing dissent, limiting risk and consolidating power: The process and results of constitutional reform in Kazakhstan. Central Asia and the Caucasus, 49, 16-25. Isaacs, R. 2010. Informal politics and the uncertain context of transition: Revisiting early stage non-democratic development in Kazakhstan. Democratization, 17(1), 1-25. Ishiyama, J.T. 2002. Neopatrimonialism and the prospects for democratization in the Central Asian republics, in Power and change in Central Asia, edited by S. Cummings. London: Routledge, 42-58. Janenova, S. 2009. Public Service Integration in Kazakhstan: Why AlternativeAccess rather than Single-Access. Paper presented at the 17th NISPAcee Annual International Conference ‘The State and Administration in a Changing World’. Montenegro. Kazakhstan segodnya. 2008. Akimom Astany naznachen Imangali Tasmagambetov [Online, 4 April]. Available at: http://www.zonakz.net/articles/21574 [accessed: 18 May 2011]. Kazakhstan segodnya. 2009a. Khrapunov voshel v spisok 300 samykh obespechennykh zhitelei Shveitsarii [Online, 15 December]. Available at: http:// www.kt.kz/?lang=rus&uin=1133168071&chapter=1153505534 [accessed: 18 May 2011]. Kazakhstan segodnya. 2009b. Eks-ministr yustitsii RK naznachena deputatom mazhilisa parlamenta RK [Online, 8 April]. Available at: http://www.kt.kz/? lang=rus&uin=1133168193&chapter=1153482519 [accessed: 18 May 2011]. Kjaernet, H., Satpaev, D. and Torjesen, S. 2008. Big Business and High-level Politics in Kazakhstan: An Everlasting Symbiosis? China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 6(1), 95-107. Kozybaeva, Z. 2010. Za shto v Kazakhstane osudili vitse-ministra Sabdalina. DW World News [Online, 7 May]. Available at: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/ article/0,,5551103,00.html [accessed: 12 May 2011].

220

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Makulbekov, M. 2011. Naznachenie T. Kulibaeva na post glavy FNB ‘SamrukKazyna’ oznachaet nachalo ... [Online, 12 April]. Available at: http://www. centrasia.ru/newsA.php?st=1302628620 [accessed: 14 March 2011]. Masanov, N. 1996: Kazakhskaya politicheskaya i intellektualnaya elita: klanovaya prinadlezhnost’ i vnutriethnicheskoe sopernichestvo. Vestnik Evrazii (1-2), 4661. Migdal, J. 1988. Strong Societies and Weak States. State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Medard, J-F. 1991. The Historical Trajectories of the Ivorian and Kenyan States, in Rethinking Third World Politics, edited by J. Manor. London and New York: Longman, 185-212. Murphy, J. 2006. Illusory Transition? Elite Reconstitution in Kazakhstan, 19892002. Europe-Asia Studies, 58(4), 523-554. Nazarbaev, N. 1997. Message of the President of the Country to the People of Kazakhstan (Strategy 2030) [Online]. Available at: http://www.akorda.kz/en/ kazakhstan/kazakhstan2030/strategy_2030 [accessed: 18 May 2011]. Olcott, M.B. 1995. Nursultan Nazarbaev and the Balancing Act of State Building in Kazakhstan, in Patterns in Post-Soviet Leadership, edited by T.J. Colton and R. Tucker. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 169-190. Olcott, M.B. 2002. Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Pakulski, J. 1986. Bureaucracy and the Soviet System. Studies in Comparative Communism, XIX(1), 3-24. Pannier, B. 2008. Kazakhstan: President’s Former Son-In-Law Sentenced To 20 Years in Jail. RFE/RL [Online, January 16]. Available at: http://www.rferl.org/ content/article/1079360.html [accessed: 12 May 2011]. Pravitel’stvo Respubliki Kazakhstan (Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan). 2007. Konstitutsionnyi zakon Respubliki Kazakhstan ot 19.06.2007 N 267-3 ‘o vnesenii izmenenii i dopolnenii v konstitutsionyi zakon respubliki Kazakhstan‘ o pravitel’stve respubliki Kazakhstan [Online]. Available at: http://www.zakon. kz/88997-konstitucionnyjj-zakon-respubliki.html [accessed: 18 May 2011]. Prezident Respubliki Kazakhstan. 2003. Ukaz Prezidenta ot 23.12.2003 N 1255 ‘о Merakh po dal’neishemu Sovershenstvovaniyu Sistemy Gosudarstvennogo Upravleniya Respubliki Kazakhstan’ [Online]. Available at: http://www. pavlodar.com/zakon/?dok=02937&ogl=all [accessed: 18 May 2011]. Prezident Respubliki Kazakhstan. 2010a. Strategicheskiy plan razvitiya Respubliki Kazakhstan do 2020 goda [Online]. Available at: http://www.minplan.kz/2020/ [accessed: 12 May 2011]. Prezident Respubliki Kazakhstan. 2010b. V sootvetstvii s porucheniem Prezidenta Respubliki Kazakhstan … otkryvaetsya special’nyi razdel ‘Prezidentskaya zashchita biznesa’. [Online, 1 March] Available at: http://www.akorda.kz/ ru/news/2010/03/v_sootvetstvii_s_porucheniem_prezidenta_respubliki [accessed: 12 May 2011].

Seeing Like a President: The Dilemma of Inclusion in Kazakhstan

221

Radio Free Europe (RFE/RL). 2007. Kazakh Minister fired over Land Deal. [Online, 30 October]. Available at: http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1143986.html [accessed: 12 May 2011]. Roy, O. 2000. The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations. London: I.B. Tauris. Satpaev, D. 2007. An Analysis of the Internal Structure of Kazakhstan’s Political Elite and an Assessment of Political Risk Levels, in Empire, Islam, and politics in Central Eurasia, edited by T. Uyama. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 283-300. Schatz, E. 2004a. Modern clan politics: The Power of ‘Blood’ in Kazakhstan and Beyond. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Schatz, E. 2004b. What capital cities say about state and nation building. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 9(4), 111-140. Schlichte, K. 2000. The President’s Dilemmata. Problems of State-Building in Uganda: Working Paper of the Research Unit of Wars, Armament and Development. Hamburg: University of Hamburg. Schmitz, A. 2003. Elitenwandel und politische Dynamik in Kasachstan [Online]. Available at: http://www.swp-berlin.org/common/get_document.php?asset_ id=179 [accessed: 31 May 2009]. Schmitz, A. 2009. Kasachstan: Neue Führungsmacht im postsowjetischen Raum? [Online]. Available at: http://swp-berlin.org/common/get_document. php?asset_id=5818 [accessed: 31 May 2009]. Sehring, J. 2009. Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Simis, K. 1977. The Machinery of Corruption in the Soviet Union. Survey: A Journal of East & West Studies, 23(4), 35-55. Tilly, C. 2007. Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Toguzbaev, K. 2010. Plemyannik Kairat Satybaldy teper’ stal sekretarem partii ‘Nur Otann’. Radio Azattyk. [Online, 24 May]. Available at: http://rus.azattyq. org/content/Kairat_Satybaldy_Kayrat_Satybaldy/2051365.html [accessed: 12 May 2011]. Transparency Kazakhstan. 2004. Gosudarstvennaya antikorrupcionnaya strategiya v Respublike Kazakhstan [Online]. Available at: http://www. transparencykazakhstan.org/UserFiles/file/64a.pdf [accessed: 12 May 2011]. Turisbekov, Z., Djandosova, J., Tagatova, A. and Shilikbaeva, N. 2007. Administrativnye bar’ery kak istochnik korruptsionnykh pravonarusheniy v sfere gossluzhby. Almaty: Sandzh. US Cable. 2009a. Kazakhastan: What’s behind the Current Anti-Corruption Campaign? No. 1464. Astana [Online]. Available at: http://wikileaks.fi/ cable/2009/09/09ASTANA1464.html [accessed: 12 May 2011]. US Cable. 2009b. Government’s Anti-Corruption Campaign – Sweeping Effort or Selective Targeting? No. 677. Astana [Online]. Available at: http://wikileaks.fi/ cable/2009/04/09ASTANA677.html [accessed: 12 May 2011].

222

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Utegenova, A.R. 2011. Kazakhstan’s 2030 Development Strategy: Significance and Results. OSCE Yearbook, 133-143. Verheijen, T. 2007. Public Administration in Post-Communist States, in Handbook of Public Administration, edited by B.G. Peters and J. Pierre. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 311-319. Werner, C.A. 2002. Gifts, Bribes, and Development in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan, in Economic Development: An Anthropological Approach, edited by J.H. Cohen and N. Dannhaeuser. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira, 183-208.

Chapter 12

The Loss of Difference: The Conditions of Modern Politics in Kyrgyzstan Alexander Wolters

In Central Asian studies, the analysis of the political system has produced a variety of descriptions about the nature of the informal institutions that are held responsible for the organization of rule in the region. Clanism, regionalism, or localism are just some of the concepts that have emerged from this discussion (Collins 2006, Jones Luong 2002, Radnitz 2005). Most of them follow a distinction drawn between the informal and the formal, which is supported by a second distinction drawn between society and state. The latter, scholars argue, with its formal organizations and rules is captured by social agents whose actions are governed by informal, or traditional, institutions. It is assumed that, when interrelating with the state, the informally structured society suspends an office holder’s motive to adhere to legal procedures, to the modern rationale of the state. He rather proves his loyalty to fellow members of an exclusive societal group. As a result, the state in Central Asia falls victim to non-modern principles for accumulating and distributing political power. Thus, such scholarly work refers to the artificiality of the modern political systems in Central Asia and emphasizes the supremacy of informal or traditional institutions (Collins 2006: 23-61). Accumulating knowledge about these strange and unfamiliar institutions is considered the golden path, then, to develop a better understanding of the dynamics of politics in the region. The political system in Kyrgyzstan, though often used as proof of these explanatory models, seems to regularly produce conflicting evidence. The recent overthrow of President Bakiev in April 2010 led to new initiatives to experiment with forms of parliamentary rule. In 2006 and 2007, opposition movements challenged the presidential regime, from time to time advancing ideas of democracy and the rule of law. Finally, in March 2005, the Tulip Revolution ended the repressive rule of President Akaev and accelerated the public debate on democratic reform.1 In all these events the modern rationale became manifest to some degree and, at least for selective periods, determined the political development in the Republic. Such evidence suggests suspending the idea of a merely artificial modernity of the political system and demands instead to account for the condition of modern politics in the region. One way to accomplish this task is provided by the concept of neopatrimonialism. Here, a combination of two of Weber’s pure types 1  For an overview of the first post-revolutionary year, see Marat (2006).

224

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

of domination, legal-rational and patrimonial, is used to investigate the peculiar logic of state action that follows neither modern nor clearly traditional modes of rule. Another approach, suggested in this chapter, starts with the suspension of the strict distinction between state and society. The question now is what one can learn about forms of rule, if emphasis is put on the societal embeddedness of the political system and less on manifestations of state action. To bring politics and society closer, to enquire after their interrelated nature, urges one furthermore to pose the question on the role of modernity and tradition, on formality and informality, in this new setting. How are these features re-integrated, if they are supposed to serve as a source for explaining the eruptive nature of politics in Kyrgyzstan, where the manifestation of modern politics seems to alternate with indications of informality and tradition? Modern Politics in Social Systems Theory Social systems theory, as developed by Luhmann since the 1980s, offers an interesting, albeit unusual, alternative to develop an approach for explaining the conditions of politics outside the OECD world. Its radical constructivism at least shares common ground with critical remarks that have been raised in cultural anthropology regarding repeated attempts to identify the nature of informal institutions in Central Asia. Although descriptions of clans, regional factions or traditional countrymen associations (usually referred to in Russian as zemlyaki) have enriched our understanding of the manifold social forces in the region, their epistemological assumptions have been questioned by scholars in cultural anthropology and political sociology (Gullette 2007). It is argued that any form of informality, or any expression of tradition, must be understood within the framework of the contemporary means for its reproduction (Rasuly-Paleczek 2005). From this constructivist perspective any historical legacy, be it traditional clans or Soviet Komsomol bonds, only bears meaning according to its actual mode of reproduction (Schatz 2004). On the other hand, concepts which take social forces as historically given and unchangeable structures risk producing descriptions that are too static, or too exclusive, to account for changes and development in the political system. Social systems theory with its radical departure from the concept of agency and its assumption of society as communication even further emphasizes the constructed nature of social phenomena. Communication does not only appear as conditioned by a contemporary context but at the same time reproduces the very conditions for its continuation (Luhmann 1996). On the level of social systems, Luhmann proposes the term autopoiesis, self-creation, to designate this specific capacity. The political system for example, when preserving the capacity to make collectively binding decisions, not only fulfills its function but also reproduces the difference from its environment, thus re-constituting the system (Luhmann 2000). Other systems in a functionally differentiated society, like economy or law, operate in the same way with reference to a distinction between system and environment.

The Loss of Difference: The Conditions of Modern Politics in Kyrgyzstan

225

Following these theoretical assumptions, an analysis of the political system in Kyrgyzstan should abandon the idea of a modern state in conflict with a traditional society. Politics is society, it constitutes it and is constituted by it. Now we have to ask how a system reproduces its difference from the environment and, secondly, what conditions the capacity of the political system to do so. According to Luhmann the political system’s well-being, and in fact that of any social system, depends on its ability for self-observation, for reflection. Decisions made in the system to respond to challenges that occur in the environment must be observed with regard to their effects. This way politics preserves the capacity to react to new challenges – by revising decisions, for example. Luhmann (2000) singles out public opinion as the mechanism for carrying out such a form of reflection on the political system. Public opinion, he explains, must be understood as a special structural link between the political system and the system of mass media or, according to Görke (2003), the public system. In public opinion observers communicatively deliberate upon political topics and develop opinions which serve as an orientation for decision-making in the political system. From the perspective of the participants in the political game, public opinion allows for navigation by observing the public reaction to political events. It helps politicians to formulate positions and to prepare for possible public reactions. On the other hand, any declaration or public statement by a participant in the political game is already structured in line with an anticipated reaction (Luhmann 2000: 274-318). For a modern political system to operate successfully, public opinion therefore provides the imperative link to the system’s environment. Public opinion, in other words, empowers the political system to find orientation in a world that is made up of various functional systems. In public opinion, the political system reacts to changes in its environment, whereas the public system reacts to political decisions. Here the interdependency between the two sides of the distinction, the difference between the system and the environment, becomes central. If one follows these considerations and agrees with the distinctive position of public opinion, its role in Kyrgyz politics comes to the fore of the analysis. How do public observers in Kyrgyzstan observe politics and each other? And what are possible blockades preventing public opinion in Kyrgyzstan from serving as a tool for orientation? Conditions of Public Observation in Kyrgyzstan I claim that public opinion in Kyrgyzstan continuously runs the danger of disabling its function to provide orientation by producing a practice which I call oppositional mimicry. This hypothesis starts with the assumption that public observation in Kyrgyzstan is conditioned by the presence of two underlying yet opposing structures. They can be considered fundamental in the sense that they contribute to a basic understanding of the world in general and the society within it. In regard to politics these structures provide clear points of departure for any observation and

226

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

help to formulate specific expectations. One such structure proposes to observe and understand political decisions as an expression of conflict between a government and an opposition. According to this structure, for analytical purposes referred to as the modern script, political competition regularly produces showdowns on election day and thus allows for a revision of past decisions. The second structure, referred to as the traditional script, provides an alternative ‘reading’ of politics. Here conflicts are understood as the manifestation of contradicting interests between social units that are identified along territorial or kinship, in short exclusive, markers. Political competition between such units translates into a zero-sum game without any opportunity to expect the revision of past decisions. Using insights from systems theory, one can proceed from here in a second step to better grasp the interdependency of the scripts. Where many scholars try to observe the static effects of the scripts’ influence, a radical constructivist approach suggests analysing the repercussions of their operations in the medium of public opinion (Luhmann 2009). What happens when the conditions for public observation, in particular the possibility of observers to observe each other, enable the scripts to observe each other’s application? Or to put it differently, what transpires when attempts to ‘read’ politics according to the modern script confront competing attempts to understand political decisions as the result of a conflict between two groups, for example Northerners and Southerners and vice versa? The modern and the traditional scripts compete in telling the story of Kyrgyz politics and in so doing they produce mutually exclusive accounts. Where the modern script identifies government and opposition, the traditional script frames politics in Kyrgyzstan as a conflict between regions, between clans or between extended families. In public opinion both resulting accounts are observed as providing equal guidance with regard to political orientation without generating any chance to produce an integrated version. It is further hypothesized that an enduring process of repeated attempts to produce coherent stories leads to public disorientation in Kyrgyzstan. Observing the constant production of contradictory accounts, observers in the public opinion are left without any guidance on which opinion to follow. The public in Kyrgyzstan develops an inability to connect to events in the form of a public reaction. This public blockade on framing politics translates into a sharp reduction of chances for politicians to mobilize public support behind their claims for power. Public opinion, it can be expected, observes its own incapacity and now expects every observer to anticipate this new condition. Under it any politician’s claim to lobby for public support will be met with growing public suspicion. With the peculiar effect of this specific reaction being observed publicly and thus further contributing to the public inability to frame politics. A vicious circle sets itself in motion. Finally, it is argued here that the inability of public opinion in Kyrgyzstan to provide for political orientation leads to a shift to a new set of rules. A rather disturbing phenomenon appears in which politicians start to use the modern script to position themselves as members of the opposition but thereby discredit their own efforts at the same time. A possible opposition demand in the form of a protest

The Loss of Difference: The Conditions of Modern Politics in Kyrgyzstan

227

or a public accusation directed at the government starts to lose all touch with reality when it is limitlessly exaggerated and when the facts contained in it are completely distorted. In the same way threats against a political opponent become idle when the tone of these threats turns hypocritical. The public opinion reacts to such attempts of oppositional mimicry with growing suspicion and then with resignation. It is now considered that claims for power serve the pure purpose of signalling to the rulers that someone is applying for a position within the power apparatus. With this development, politics in Kyrgyzstan evolves into a false game and the vicious circle becomes fully established. Now a suspicious public opinion observes politicians’ attempts to become incorporated into the state apparatus by applying a technique that publicly suggests the unmasking of the opposition as fake. This practice of a mimicking opposition appears to reproduce the public inability to frame politics and to develop self-sufficiency. It seems that, disregarding actual cases of incorporation into the power apparatus, the performance of mimicry alone already guarantees its own perpetuation. In the case of Kyrgyzstan, this specific form of communication reproduces public suspicion and continuously prevents public opinion from providing political orientation. Political Conflicts in Post-revolutionary Kyrgyzstan The investigation of politics in Kyrgyzstan has been a theoretical endeavour up to this point. The following section serves the purpose of taking a closer look at the empirical manifestation of public opinion in Kyrgyzstan. Some scholars have pointed out the emergence of similar forms of mimicking opposition in other parts of the former Soviet Union (Christophe 2005). In the past, politics during the Akaev period also exhibited incidents of this practice.2 It is the specific context of post-revolutionary Kyrgyzstan, however, where this concept unfolds its full explanatory capacity. The dynamics of political developments from 2005 onwards can be best understood when analysed in accordance with the peculiar logic of public observation. The Tulip Revolution and its Aftermaths To start the explanation, one must first enquire into the role of the Tulip Revolution. The ongoing debate on its roots and causes notwithstanding, the discussions about its meaning suggest that the events in March 2005 have served as a reset button within the political system (Central Asian Survey’s Special Issue 2008, Lewis 2008: 119-159, Marat 2006, Fuhrmann 2006). It regained its freedom and was stripped of authoritarian blockades so it could evolve in line with an unrestrained public 2  See former prime minister Chyngyshev’s account of the relation between Askar Akaev and his vice-president Feliks Kulov as an example (Chyngyshev 2008: 192-201).

228

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

opinion. The political future opened up and public debate faced a new horizon full of contingency. Now public observers were free to expect political events to unfold in new and yet unknown ways and they found themselves confronted with new opportunities to make another attempt at ‘reading’ them.3 In 2005, competing attempts to frame politics could exist next to each other; Different events were framed differently and only rarely did these observations interlock. The situation changed when political conflicts erupted in spring 2006 and led to the first contradictions in the production of public narratives. In February 2006, the speaker of the Kyrgyz parliament, Omurbek Tekebaev, was forced to resign after an argument with Bakiev (Marat 2006: 113-114). After some while he was succeeded by a deputy allegedly loyal to the president. In public opinion many accounts emphasized the rather personal tone in this conflict. They identified it as a struggle between two strongmen that were fighting for their influence in the same locality, namely the southern region Dzhalalabad, and transferring this conflict to the national level (Osorov 2006a). Here, in line with the traditional script, it was reformulated as a conflict between a southern clan group and a northern clan federation, the latter acting through Tekebaev (Analiticheski Tsentr 2007, Akipress 2006a). Other observers, in contrast using the modern script, made out a conflict between an opposition parliament that refused to simply fulfill the president’s orders on the one hand and an executive branch that was eager to get its government programme implemented on the other (Skorodumova 2006). A New Opposition: The For Reforms Movement The founding of the movement ‘For Reforms’ opened a new page in the political development of the Kyrgyz Republic. In April and May 2006, this movement organized demonstrations and rallies in Bishkek and brought up to 15,000 followers to the capital’s central square Ala-Too (Obshchestvennyi Fond 2006b, Akipress 2006c). Step by step the protesters formulated a political agenda and presented the ruling elite with a list of ten steps, at the top of which they placed the demand for a constitutional reform (Akipress 2006b, 2006d). In public opinion this development was met with a certain surprise. None of the rallies evolved into violence and every organizational question was answered in a civilized manner (Timirbaev 2006). The political claims in combination with the loosely coupled organization ‘For Reforms’ as their main carrier seemed to express a new, modern form of political acting. Observers emphasized the progressive character of the reform agenda and stressed the evolutionary creation of the opposition movement, whose members seemed to unite behind an agenda and not out of particularistic interests (Sariev 2008: 56, Obshchestvennyi Fond 2006a). Some opinion makers, however, continued to mention possible indications of ‘clanism’ or ‘regionalism’ in the ongoing political battle. They suspected the ‘For Reforms’ Movement of 3  See memories of politician Temir Sariev (Sariev 2008); a collection of expectations of participants and witnesses is provided in Shishkaraeva (2005).

The Loss of Difference: The Conditions of Modern Politics in Kyrgyzstan

229

mounting an attack against a competing faction (Osorov 2006b). Such observations decreased in scope and range once the public impression of the peaceful character of the movement grew stronger. In a unique turn for politics in Central Asia, this conflict between ‘For Reforms’ and the Kyrgyz government around President Bakiev led to the adoption of a new constitution in November 2006. In the ‘Legendary November Rally’,4 thousands of demonstrators camped in the centre of Bishkek for days and peacefully demanded reforms. President Bakiev and opposition parliamentarians finally agreed on a revised version of the July 2005 constitutional proposal, which was signed by the president on 9 November (Obshchestvennyi Fond 2006d, 2006e). The result was acclaimed by public observers as the most progressive constitution in Central Asia since independence (Tazabekov 2006). It reduced the powers of the president, foresaw the establishment of a parliamentary structure and strengthened the role of the parties in political competition (Kachkeev 2008). Critics, however, voiced doubts that such reform could happen in the heart of ‘oriental’ Central Asia (Akipress 2006e). Occasionally, observers went public and interpreted the current conflict as a simple confrontation between the South and the North (Obshchestvennyi Fond 2006c). When only several weeks later a deal behind closed doors returned many powers to the president, public opinion reacted with shock. What was staged in the beginning as a continuation of the reform process completely disappeared from public view in the end (Kachkeev 2008). No script could be applied to make sense of the reversal of democratic achievements. When politics switched to secrecy, relying on deals behind closed doors and informal negotiations, when political leaders finally resorted to repression, public opinion was forced to experience a temporary inability to observe politics altogether.5 This experience contributed to general public suspicion, in which context the ability to read politics was called into question due to the anticipation of a hidden, unobservable game. This suspicion manifested itself in countless comments on the Internet, where readers expressed their disbelief at official explanations of the recent reform (Diesel Elcat 2007). For most public observers, the reasons behind the changes remained unclear. The United Front and the End of Opposition Tainted with this suspicion, public opinion faced even more difficulties in ‘reading’ politics when a new opposition movement appeared in February 2007, the ‘United Front for a Worthy Future for Kyrgyzstan’ under the leadership of ousted Prime Minister, Feliks Kulov. This movement called on President Bakiev to step down and end the political manoeuvring and the family business. Its members, among 4  So-called, for example, by Temir Sariev, a member of the ‘For Reforms’ Movement (Sariev 2008). 5  First evidence about repressive methods being used is provided by politician Bolot Sherniyazov in an interview (2007).

230

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

them many former ‘For Reforms’ activists, planned to stage new protests and engaged the public to generate support (Obshchestvennyi Fond 2007). Seemingly unable to tell a coherent story of the December events in line with the modern script, many opinion makers now started to question the legitimacy of the new opposition (Timirbaev 2007). Rumours circulated according to which the United Front was mobilizing the Northerners against the Southerners (Ryabkov 2008: 307). At some point parts of the former opposition, among them For Reforms leader Almazbek Atambaev, publicly broke with Feliks Kulov and his movement, accusing them of exacerbating the regional divide in the country (Akipress 2007b). The United Front continued to demand Bakiev’s resignation and tried to disperse the rumours about the purposeful exploitation of the north-south divide (Akipress 2007c). In their reaction public observers did not resort to the modern script to ‘read’ but often used the traditional distinction, identifying a confrontation between north and south (Kommersant 2007, Osorov 2007). The majority, however, raised general doubts regarding the intentions of the United Front. Public voices began to recognize the discredited nature of the ongoing political battle (PR.kg 2007a, Akipress 2007a). This public mistrust materialized when the United Front called for a rally in April, a second Kyrgyz ‘Maydan’. From the first day onwards the number of followers was low, whereas the public observation of the response was extensive (Ryabkov 2008: 313-314, Bogatyrev 2007a). Long before the United Front made an effort to readjust, public opinion generally doomed the demonstrations to failure (IPP 2007a, Bogatyrev 2007a). Subsequent attempts to mobilize supporters were met with sarcasm and questioned the benefit of joining a lost cause (IPP 2007b). When United Front members like parliamentarian Melis Eshimkanov eventually started to promise the arrival of an additional 100,000 protesters and a speedy transfer of power, public opinion had already stopped using the scripts (Akipress 2007d). Threats to resort to radical measures, such as self-immolation and hunger strikes, were greeted with shallow laughter and were no longer taken seriously (Akun 2007, IPP 2007a). To the public eye, the events in the centre of Bishkek increasingly took the form of a show. In the end, after a week of protests, police forces dispersed the crowd. Commenting on the protests, political expert Valentin Bogatyrev publicly asked whether the past weeks had been more than the simple staging of a hidden political game. He eventually found himself unable to identify an authentic opposition claim, taking into account the discrediting effects of the United Front’s performance (Bogatyrev 2007b). Many observers, when looking back, take a similar position and doubt that the meeting was actually an attempt to represent an authentic opposition.6 They formulate conspiracy theories instead and consider a possible alliance between single Front members and the president that pursued the goal of discrediting and annihilating the opposition in Kyrgyzstan. 6  Author’s interview with former participants of the United Front’s protests, Bishkek, 2008.

The Loss of Difference: The Conditions of Modern Politics in Kyrgyzstan

231

Public suspicion was nurtured when leading front personnel moved into higher state positions only a few months after the April events. Melis Eshimkanov, for example, was appointed to the post of Director of the National Broadcasting Corporation, whereas the official United Front coordinator Omurbek Suvanaliev received the governor’s position in the Naryn region. In public opinion, these events were understood as a clear confirmation of the suspicion that a hidden game was being played (Akipress 2007e). Suspicion eventually turned into public resignation when Bakiev set out to rebuild the political institutions in Autumn 2007. Another move by politicians Eshimkanov and Front member Kabai Karabekov had paved the way for the president’s initiative. Their appeal to the Constitutional Court resulted in the judges’ decision that both constitutions, the November and December versions, were invalid. The public opinion reacted with sarcasm, commenting on this as a fundamental sell-out of opposition ideas (PR. kg 2007b, 2008). The peak of this sell-out occurred after Bakiev announced the founding of a new party called Ak-Zhol. No participant in the political game stood aside; rather, everyone attempted to become incorporated into the new structures. Former opposition-minded politicians, or those that called themselves ‘centrists’, made every effort to get one of the few seats on the party list. Formerly strong political parties such as the Moscow-financed Sodruzhestvo (Friendship) or the centrist Moya Strana (My Country) lost all political credibility when they publicly dissolved themselves so that their leaders could fill positions in Ak-Zhol (Akipress 2007g, KyrgyzNews 2007). The former Vice Speaker of Parliament, Kubanychbek Isabekov, performed particularly well when he publicly discussed his future plans, debating his reasons for joining Ak-Zhol and, at the same time, hinting at missing opportunities for suitable positions higher up in the party hierarchy (Akipress 2007f). The powers that be understood his terms of negotiation and soon he was granted ticket number six on the party list for the parliamentary elections in December 2007. Repressing the Public and the Second Revolution Since the beginning of 2008 the opposition ceased to play a decisive role in Kyrgyz politics. The Civic Parliament, a gathering of opposition parties and NGO representatives founded in January 2008, managed to continue political debate for some time, but was widely ignored by the government and the public (Marat 2008a). Throughout 2008 and most of 2009 only minor initiatives were undertaken to express opinion publicly (Marat 2009a). Demonstrations and protests, the most prominent form of political opinion making in 2006 and 2007, were almost completely absent in this period. Even during the presidential election in Summer 2009 no opposition candidate, not even Temir Sariev from the party Ak-Shumkar (White Falcon) or Almasbek Atambaev from the Social Democrats, managed to present a valid political challenge to incumbent president Kurmanbek Bakiev (Najibullah 2009).

232

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Bakiev’s presidency appeared to be unchallenged in public during the last two years of his power. In fact, while politics turned non-public for the most part, they also, it seems, turned informal, repressive and unpredictable.7 Informality became the mode of decision-making when Ak-Zhol, shortly after its foundation, only halfheartedly transformed itself into a real party of power that engages the public. In fact, Ak-Zhol lost its power when Parliamentary Speaker Madumarov decided to reform the house regulations to further restrict deputies’ opportunities to address the public (Akipress 2008). The parliament lost its role as the central legislative body and was reduced to performing shows of allegiance to the president.8 Informality ruled the political system in Kyrgyzstan during the following months, when rumours about deadly battles within the elite between competing clan factions or groupings circulated and forced political observers to engage in speculation (Wolters 2008: 3, Marat 2009b). Politics even turned repressive when in 2008 a hunt against journalists and human rights activists began which forced many activists to seek refuge abroad, and established new obstacles for rights defenders attempting to pursue their work in Kyrgyzstan (Marat 2008b). In Autumn 2009, Bakiev announced wide-ranging plans to reform the current institutional system (Marat 2009c). The foundation of a central agency charged with regulating all financial investments in the Republic attracted particular attention. This new ‘super agency’ took responsibility for all major state expenses and ensured close presidential surveillance of the main financial flows in the Republic. Bakiev appointed his son Maksim director (Marat 2009d). From that point on, people were sure that the president was preparing his son to become his successor. State affairs, rumours suggested, had evolved into one huge family business. It became difficult to predict political decisions, as reforms were hastily announced and immediately implemented. The new law on local self-government, for example, came as a complete surprise to most, since no accompanying debate could be observed.9 The reform strengthened central supervision over the provinces and guaranteed Bishkek a say in local affairs. With public opinion selfrestricted and media harassed by state authorities, no debate existed that could have served as preparation for future political decisions. What was decided inside the presidential administration was not a response to an observable societal claim rather the result of bureaucratic constraints, formulated in secret and erratic in nature.10 7  Informality is understood here as a non-public and interactive form of communication; repression is understood as the suspension of power as a ‘symbolically generalized medium of communication’ and the resort to coercion as a means to physically subordinate others (Luhmann 2003). 8  See, for example, the conflict about the renovation of the building of the national parliament that ended the parliamentary career of speaker Madumarov (Madumarov 2008). 9  Author’s interview with member of UNDP, Bishkek, 2008. 10  See for example the reaction to the increase in tariffs in Winter 2009/2010 (Asman 2010).

The Loss of Difference: The Conditions of Modern Politics in Kyrgyzstan

233

It was not until early 2010 that a distinctive public reaction could again be observed in Kyrgyzstan (Akipress 2010a). The remnants of the opposition tried to connect to such spontaneous protest and organized a kurultai, a traditional people’s gathering, where they formulated a new opposition agenda, in particular mirroring the public anger regarding the increase in tariffs for energy and heat (Akipress 2010b, Temirov 2010). Neither the government nor the opposition, however, seemed to be prepared for the rapid evolution of events, when on 7 April an angry mob stormed the White House and forced Bakiev to flee Bishkek (Marat 2010a). This sudden turn of events was reflected in the surprise of even those who were fighting against it (Marat 2010a). After the events of April 2010 the temporary government, headed by Roza Otunbaeva, tried to stabilize the situation. It promised transparency and a way back to democracy and the rule of law. A new constitution is to guarantee this transfer from closed and authoritarian to open and accountable politics. The new politicians in charge invite public opinion to help structure their political decision making, understood as a modern game where government and opposition compete for support by formulating attractive ideas (Marat 2010b). The success of this plan remains uncertain, however, since this new phase in Kyrgyz history has had a tragic beginning. The public response to the bitter experience of paying the price of the death of more than 80 compatriots has manifested itself in the form of increased expectations towards the new government. Public opinion demands that lessons be learned from the experience of two dictatorships, it demands that the new leadership honour the dead and refrain from corruption and political wrongdoing. This public expectation, it can be assumed, creates a hyper-critical atmosphere, where politicians are not allowed to make mistakes and thus do not have the opportunity to learn.11 The challenge under such circumstances, it seems, is for politicians to find the best ways to publicly communicate mistakes and for public opinion to refrain from immediate calls for the resignation of public officials. These tasks look even more challenging taking into account early corruption scandals among the leaders of the new government (Marat 2010c) and, in an altogether different dimension, the disastrous ethnic clashes in the South of the country in June 2010. The latter might evolve into something so significant that it exceeds the capacity of the fragile political system in Kyrgyzstan to produce adequate decisions (Marat 2010e). Conclusion This article began with the observation of a peculiar evolution of rule in the case of Kyrgyzstan. How can we explain the apparently contradictory tendencies of movement towards further democratization on the one hand and regression into authoritarianism on the other? Most accounts in Central Asian studies reject the 11  This dilemma is described by Erica Marat (2010d) to some extent.

234

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

importance of formal institutions in the region and deny them a significant role in politics. Instead, they concentrate on informal institutions of all kinds, but in the end they fail to provide satisfying explanations for progressive moments in political development. Signs of democratization and political opening are simply discarded as a façade of modernity but not taken seriously in analytical terms. If one wants to oppose this perspective and its consequences for theorizing and conducting research, a new approach is needed which takes into account both aspects equally, the ‘modern’ and the ‘traditional’ one. The idea proposed here is a re-conceptualization of public opinion as a condition for politics with the help of concepts from newer systems theory. According to this approach, we may ask which forms of rule appear dependent on the capacity of public opinion to structure political decision-making. The purpose of the account of major conflicts and their public observation in Kyrgyzstan in 2006-2010 was to demonstrate the logic of observation in public opinion that can unfold when two different social prescriptions for framing politics interlock. A specific practice, the mimicry of opposition, comes about as a result of the inability of public opinion to continue to condition political decision-making. As this practice emerges it ensures the reproduction of a disabled public opinion, thus replicating the very base for its continued existence. Where this form of mimicking appears, it undermines the capacity of the political system to adapt to a changing environment by making contingent but binding decisions. This practice plays with representations of the government and opposition and publicly reveals the game as a simple simulation of a political contest at the same time. Here public opinion is deprived of its modern tools to organize political orientation and the political system must confront its environment without any guidance. The future, in modern politics anticipated along the lines of the distinction between government and opposition, becomes unclear in political systems where this practice dominates. In the long run even the present seems to lose its structure when no political decision is expected to be of any real value, since its significance can no longer be publicly evaluated and estimated. Two more points seem worth further consideration. Returning to the debate about traditionalism versus modernity, it now appears appropriate to follow the radical-constructivist turn and to ask questions about reciprocal forms of conditioning.12 Every tradition, if one chooses to preserve the term, must be analysed in terms of its capacity to reproduce the very foundations of its own existence or, in terms of systems theory, the difference between itself and its environment. The present analysis shows that tradition, if understood as a specific social prescription, faces difficulties in reproducing itself when conditioned by public observation. It loses its capacity to provide orientation. The result of such difficulties, however, is not necessarily the simple disappearance of tradition but the reduction of the capacity of the political system to function altogether. The concept of ‘modernity’ does not serve as the other side of the coin here, but rather 12  On this particular problem see Rudolf Stichweh 2000: 207-219.

The Loss of Difference: The Conditions of Modern Politics in Kyrgyzstan

235

figures as a specific condition that is itself conditioned by its own manifestations. The resulting interpretation of politics in Kyrgyzstan then starts with a more complex picture but eventually allows for the integration of phenomena that have long been perceived as contradictory. The form of rule one confronts in this picture is less an issue of domination techniques; rather, it is primarily concerned with the societal embeddedness of any given type of domination. Trends towards democracy or authoritarianism now appear as manifestations of the capacity of public opinion to structure political developments, to provide or not to provide participants in the political game with the symbolic means for orientation. A final question refers to possibilities to break the vicious cycle. The chances for an opposition to do so are dim at best. Any attempt to create a public following must be doomed to fail when mimicking opposition as a practice dominates. To pursue the goal of political opposition, members might turn to organizational work, the creation of party cells and the reform of the party structure. Apart from such activities the opposition is forced to wait for its moment and maintain a constant state of preparedness. It cannot, however, clearly estimate the exact arrival of this perfect moment. Along with any other politician, real opposition, if present, confronts the blockade of public observation and thus the inability to generate orientation. Ultimately, the political system, when deprived of its mechanism for self-reflection, creates an atmosphere of erratic decision-making and unpredictability for any observer. The suddenness with which the April events occurred and the helplessness on the part of the new rulers provides evidence of this peculiar development in the case of the political system in Kyrgyzstan. References Akipress. 2006a. Novoispechennyi Toraga oprovergaet utverzhdenie, shto on stavlennik «Belogo doma» [Online, 2 February]. Available at: http:// kg.akipress.org/news:26394 [accessed: 21 April 2011]. Akipress. 2006b. Oppozitsiya predlagaet Prezidentu sdelat’ «10 prostykh shagov k narodu» [Online, 18 April]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:27509 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2006c. Na ploshchadi Ala-Too nachalsya mirnyi miting [Online, 27 May]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:28621 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2006d. Dvizhenie «Za reformy!» prinyalo rezolyutsiyu mitinga 27 maya [Online, 27 May]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:28626 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2006e. Rossiiskii ekspert: Kirgiziya ne stanet «vtoroi Ukrainoi» [Online, 9 November]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:33396 [accessed: 20 April 2011].

236

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Akipress. 2007a. Edil’ Baisalov vidit kompromiss v novoi Konstitutsii, novom Pravitel’stve i novom Parlamente [Online, 16 March]. Available at: http:// kg.akipress.org/news:37806 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2007b. Zayavlenie o sozdanii Obshchestvenno-politicheskogo Dvizheniya «Za edinnyi Kyrgyzstan!» [Online, 28 March]. Available at: http:// kg.akipress.org/news:38301 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2007c. Ob’edinnyi Front: Regionalizm – poslednee pribezhishche merzavtsev [Online, 10 April]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:39048 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2007d. Oppozitsiya namerena sobrat’ na ploshchadi 100 tysych chelovek [Online, 16 April]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:39474[accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2007e. Prezident predlozhil deputatu M. Eshimkanovu post posla Kyrgyzstana v Shveitsarii [Online, 22 May]. Available at: http://kg.akipress. org/news:41119 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2007f. Prezident ne budet raspuskat’ parlament, schitaet vitse-spiker Kurbanychbek Isabekov [Online, 16 October]. Available at: http://kg.akipress. org/news:46730 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2007g. Partiya «Sodruzhestvo» blagodarit Prezidenta K. Bakieva za referendum [Online, 21 October]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/ news:47031 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2008. ZhK IV sozyva prinyal novyi reglament [Online, 24 January]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:51223 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2010a. V Naryne zavershilsya miting. [Online, 10 March]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:178821 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akipress. 2010b Miting oppozitsii v Bishkeke zavershilsya prinyatiem rezolyutsii. [Online, 17 March]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:181611 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Akun. T. 2007. Golodovka – eto riskovannaya aktsiya dlya zdorov’ya uchastnikov aktsii, no eto ikh pravo [Online, 5 April]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/ news:38745 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Analiticheski Centr Razumnye Resheniya. 2007. «Serye kardinaly» Central’noy Azii [Online, 3 November]. Available at: http://www.analitika.org/article. php?story=20071025040726846 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Asman, L. 2010. Kyrgyzstan: Utility Price Hike Squeezes Citizens. EurasiaNet. [Online, 7 February]. Available at: http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/ insightb/articles/eav020810.shtml [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Bogatyrev, B. 2007a. Vlast’ posle segodnyashnego mitinga podumyvaet, shto vse uzhe resheno i ne nado nichego delat’ [Online, 11 April]. Available at: http:// kg.akipress.org/news:39152 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Bogatyrev, B. 2007b. Nas zhdet ser’eznaya smena politicheskogo prostranstva [Online, 23 April]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:39922 [accessed: 20 April 2011].

The Loss of Difference: The Conditions of Modern Politics in Kyrgyzstan

237

Cummings, S. (ed.) 2008. Domestic and international perspectives on Kyrgyzstan’s ‘Tulip Revolution’: Motives, mobilization and meanings. Central Asian Survey, 27(3-4), Special Issue. Christophe, B. 2005. Metamorphosen des Leviathans in einer post-sozialistischen Gesellschaft. Georgiens Provinz zwischen Fassaden der Anarchie und regulativer Allmacht. Bielefeld: Transcript. Chyngyshev, T. 2008. Vospominanija: Sobytija, Ljudi. Bishkek: Biiiktik. Collins, K. 2006. Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diesel Elcat. 2007. Tak shto skazal Kulov? Press Conference [Online, 14 February]. Available at: http://diesel.elcat.kg/index.php?showtopic=470420 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Fuhrmann, M. 2006. A tale of two social capitals: Revolutionary collective action in Kyrgyzstan. Problems of Post-Communism, 53(6), 16-29. Görke, A. 2003. Das System der Massenmedien, öffentliche Meinung und Öffentlichkeit, in Das System der Politik: Niklas Luhmanns politische Theorie, edited by K.U. Hellmann, K. Fischer and H. Bluhm. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 121-135. Gullette, D. 2007. Theories on Central Asian factionalism: The debate in political science and its wider implications, Central Asian Survey, 26, 373-387. IPP (Institute for Public Policy). 2007a. Assessment of Political Situation in Kyrgyzstan. [Online, 12 April]. Available at: http://www.ipp.kg/en/ analysis/459/ [accessed: 20 April 2011]. IPP (Institute for Public Policy). 2007b. К oseni deputaty navernyaka initsiiruyut rospusk ZhK. [Online, 14 April]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/ news:39327 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Jones Luong, P. 2002. Institutional Change and Political Continuity in PostSoviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kachkeev, M. 2008. Die Verfassungsentwicklung in Kirgistan nach der “Tulpenrevolution” von 2005. Osteuropa Recht, 54(1-2), 59-67. Kommersant. 2007. Kurmanbek Bakiev poteryal nadzor nad Kirgiziei. Prezidentu prishlos’ uvolit’ genprokurora [Online, 20 March]. Available at: http://www. kommersant.ru/Doc/751308 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. KyrgyzNews. 2007. Rashid Tagaev nazval korruptsionerom No. 1 v KR Kurmanbeka Bakieva. [Online, 2 December]. Available at: http://www. kyrgyznews.com/news.php?readmore=4229 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Lewis, D. 2008. The Temptations of Tyranny in Central Asia. New York: Columbia University Press. Luhmann, N. 1996. Social Systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Luhmann, N. 2000. Die Politik der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Luhmann, N. 2003. Macht. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius. Luhmann, N. 2006. Einführung in die Theorie der Gesellschaft. Heidelberg: Carl Auer Systeme.

238

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Madumarov, A. 2008. My budem delat’ remont v ZhK, nravilsya eto M. Sadyrkulovu ili net [Online, 21 May]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:57381 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Marat, E. 2006. The Tulip Revolution: Kyrgyzstan One Year After. March 15, 2005–March 24. Washington: The Jamestown Foundation. Marat, E. 2008a. Kyrgyz Opposition Forms Shadow Parliament. Eurasia Daily Monitor 5/49 [Online, 14 March]. Available at: http://www.jamestown.org/ single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=33462 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Marat, E. 2008b. Freedom of Speech in Kyrgyzstan Continues to be Cut Back. Eurasia Daily Monitor 5/208 [Online, 30 October]. Available at: http://dev. jamestown.org/124/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=34065 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Marat, E. 2009a. Kyrgyz Opposition Plans Spring Revolt. Eurasia Daily Monitor 6/4 [Online, 08 January]. Available at: http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_ cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=34317 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Marat, E. 2009b. Bakiyev Regime Suspected in Political Assassination. Eurasia Daily Monitor 6/50. [Online, 16 March]. Available at: http://www.jamestown. org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=34711 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Marat, E. 2009c. Bakiyev Reshapes the Kyrgyz Government to Suit his Interests. Eurasia Daily Monitor 6/194. [Online, 22 October]. Available at: http://www. jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=35643 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Marat, E. 2009d. Bakiyev Promotes his Son to Key Post. Eurasia Daily Monitor 6/204 [Online, 5 November]. Available at: http://www.jamestown.org/ single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=35699 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Marat, E. 2010a. Tulip Revolution Reloaded. Eurasia Daily Monitor 7/68. [Online, 8 April]. Available at: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ ttnews[tt_news]=36246&tx_ttnews[backPid]=484&no_cache=1 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Marat, E. 2010b. Kyrgyzstan’s New Government Struggles to Implement Change. Eurasia Daily Monitor 7/73 [Online, 15 April]. Available at: http://www. jamestown.org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=36276&tx_ ttnews[backPid]=484&no_cache=1 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Marat, E. 2010c. Divided Government Plagues Otunbayeva. Eurasia Daily Monitor 7/103 [Online, 27 May]. Available at: http://www.jamestown.org/ single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=36428&tx_ttnews[backPid]=13&c Hash=1801965991 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Marat, E. 2010d. Kyrgyzstan Learns to Survive in Chaos. Eurasia Daily Monitor 7/111 [Online, 9 June]. Available at: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/ edm/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=36469&tx_ttnews[backPid]=27&cHash=e5 4870ebaf [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Marat, E. 2010e. Rebuilding Inter-Ethnic Trust Becomes Kyrgyzstan’s Major Concern. Eurasia Daily Monitor 7/117 [Online, 17 July]. Available at: http://

The Loss of Difference: The Conditions of Modern Politics in Kyrgyzstan

239

www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[swords]=8fd5893941d 69d0be3f378576261ae3e&tx_ttnews[any_of_the_words]=Kyrgyzstan&tx_ ttnews[tt_news]=36507&tx_ttnews[backPid]=7&cHash=06c90a4703 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Najibullah, F. 2009. Dispute Dogs Kyrgyz Poll Ahead Of Results Announcement. EurasiaNet [Online, 25 July]. Available at: http://www.eurasianet.org/ departments/insight/articles/pp072709a.shtml [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Obshchestvennyi Fond ‘Za Mezhdunarodnuyu Tolerantnost’. 2006a. Ezhenedel’nyi Vestnik 36 [Online, 12 April]. Available at: http://fti.org.kg/files/bulletins/ Edition_36-12_apr_2006.pdf [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Obshchestvennyi Fond ‘Za Mezhdunarodnuyu Tolerantnost’. 2006b. Ezhenedel’nyi Vestnik 39 [Online, 3 May]. Available at: http://fti.org.kg/files/ bulletins/Edition_39-3_may_2006.pdf [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Obshchestvennyi Fond ‘Za Mezhdunarodnuyu Tolerantnost’. 2006c. Ezhenedel’nyi Vestnik 44 [Online, 1 November]. Available at: http://fti.org.kg/files/bulletins/ Edition_44-1_nov_2006.pdf [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Obshchestvennyi Fond ‘Za Mezhdunarodnuyu Tolerantnost’. 2006d. Ezhenedel’nyi Vestnik 46 [Online, 15 November]. Available at: http://fti.org. kg/files/bulletins/Edition_46-15_nov_2006.pdf [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Obshchestvennyi Fond ‘Za Mezhdunarodnuyu Tolerantnost’. 2006e. Ezhenedel’nyi Vestnik 45 [Online, 18 November]. Available at: http://fti.org. kg/files/bulletins/Edition_45-8_nov_2006.pdf [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Obshchestvennyi Fond ‘Za Mezhdunarodnuyu Tolerantnost’. 2007. Ezhenedel’nyi Vestnik 62 [Online, 15 March]. Available at: http://fti.org.kg/files/bulletins/ Edition_62-15_mar_2007.pdf [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Osorov, Z. 2006a. Vostochnye skazki ot Tekebaeva. MSN. [Online, 24 February]. Available at: http://www.msn.kg/ru/news/13101/ [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Osorov, Z. 2006b. Chego ne nado delat’ v epokhu bol’shikh peremen. MSN. [Online, 26 May]. Available at: http://www.msn.kg/ru/news/14124/ [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Osorov, Z. 2007. Ubit’ v sebe Akaeva. MSN [Online, 16 March]. Available at: http://www.msn.kg/ru/news/17715/ [accessed: 20 April 2011]. PR.kg. 2007a. Reader’s commentary [Online, 28 February]. Copy in author’s possession. PR.kg. 2007b. M. Eshimkanov dal soglasie na svoe naznachenie Poslom KR v Shveitsarii. PR.kg. [Online, 28 July]. Copy in author’s possession. PR.kg. 2008. Deputaty ZhK KR vosstanovili deyatel’nost’ Konstitsionnogo suda. PR.kg [Online, 11 January]. Copy in author’s possession. Radnitz, S. 2005. Networks, localism and mobilization in Aksy, Kyrgyzstan. Central Asian Survey, 24, 405-424. Rasuly-Paleczek, G. 2005. Comparative perspectives on Central Asia and the Middle East in social anthropology and the social sciences (Part 1 of 2). Central Eurasian Studies Review, 4, 2-17.

240

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Ryabkov, M. 2008. The north-south cleavage and political support in Kyrgyzstan. Central Asian Survey, 27(3-4), 301-316. Sariev, T. 2008. Shakh kyrgyzskoi demokratii. Bishkek: Salam. Schatz, E. 2004. Modern Clan Politics: The Power of ‘Blood’ in Kazakhstan and beyond. Washington: University of Washington Press. Sherniyazov, B. 2007 Kto stanet prem’erom, znaet prezident – v ego rukakh pul’t upravleniya (Interv’yu) [Online, 15 January]. Available at: http://kg.akipress. org/news:35361 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Shishkaraeva, E. (ed.). 2005. The Spring of 2005 through the Eyes of People of Kyrgyzstan: Anxieties, Expectations, and Hopes (Oral Histories). Bishkek: Foundation Publishing Development Centre. Skorodumova, E. 2006. Ushel. Po sobstvennomu zhelaniyu. MSN [Online, 28 February]. Available at: http://www.msn.kg/ru/news/13150/ [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Stichweh, R. 2001. Die Weltgesellschaft. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Tazabekov, M. 2006. Konstitutsiya kur’ezov: Premier nabral polnomochii, no poteryal shans stat’ i.o. Prezidenta (obnovleno). [Online, 10 November]. Available at: http://kg.akipress.org/news:33427 [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Timirbaev, V. 2006. Shto pokazal miting. MSN. [Online, 3 May]. Available at: http://www.msn.kg/ru/news/13847/ [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Timirbaev, V. 2007. Zayavlenie: minusy i plusy. MSN. [Online, 16 February]. Available at: http://www.msn.kg/ru/news/17327/ [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Temirov, U. 2010. Kyrgyzstan: Opposition and President Spar before National Conclave. EurasiaNet [Online, 15 March]. Available at: http://www.eurasianet. org/departments/insightb/articles/eav031610.shtml [accessed: 20 April 2011]. Wolters, A. 2008. Auf der Suche nach der Tulpenrevolution: Kirgistan im Herbst 2008. Zentralasienanalysen, 11, 2-5.

Conclusion Susan Stewart, Margarete Klein, Andrea Schmitz and Hans-Henning Schröder

A key goal of this volume was to place research using the traditional regime typology and the hybrid regimes approach on the one hand alongside investigations invoking the neopatrimonalist approach on the other.1 This juxtaposition was deemed fruitful because both approaches represent efforts to deal with the failure of the ‘transition paradigm’. Recent developments within the hybrid regimes literature indicate that its representatives have attempted to eliminate the ‘democratization bias’ while other authors have turned to different approaches – neopatrimonialism in particular – with a similar aim, to provide a neutral basis for analysing developments in the political sphere. The idea behind offering a series of case studies representing both approaches is to assess the potential of each of them for dealing with some of the difficulties which have emerged in the field of transition research, evaluating each approach separately and enquiring into the potential merits of combining them in future research efforts. Our focus has been on the post-Soviet space as an area towards which both of these approaches have frequently been applied in recent years. If we start by simply examining the theoretical approaches selected by our authors, some interesting observations emerge. First, we find an essentially even division between neopatrimonialist and hybrid regime frameworks. Second, several authors attempt to advance theory-building within their selected approach. Third, no author genuinely attempts to combine both approaches, although Mommsen does advocate doing so within the context of an overall plea for theoretical pluralism. Fourth, some authors go beyond the framework of hybrid regimes on the one hand and neopatrimonialism on the other to rely on other approaches for the bulk of their analysis. In particular, structuralist-functionalist categories were seen by Mommsen as a useful tool for analysis, while Wolters chose systems theory as his framework for investigation. 1  The distinction between the ‘hybrid regimes approach’ and the ‘neopatrimonalist approach’ is not intended to imply that neopatrimonialist regimes cannot be hybrid, or that the triad of democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes is completely separate from the concept of neopatrimonialist regimes. A regime can, for example, be authoritarian and neopatrimonialist simultaneously. However, both in this volume and in the literature more generally, individual authors have tended to select an approach which draws either on the literature about hybrid regimes or on that about neopatrimonialism as a framework for their analysis. It is this distinction in choice of approach which is relevant here.

242

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

The authors of the case studies were not selected primarily because they were likely to adopt one or the other theoretical approach. However, the project concept provided to all authors, as well a conference at which the theoretical approaches presented in the book were discussed in detail, made our overall theoretical focus evident. It is therefore interesting that the authors fell into two basically equal groups in terms of their choice of concept: five authors can be placed in the ‘hybrid regimes’ category (if one includes the traditional regime typology) and four in the ‘neopatrimonialism’ category. Even Wolters, who opts to work exclusively with a framework drawn from systems theory, explicitly distinguishes his approach from the neopatrimonialist alternative and thereby engages with the concept of neopatrimonialism rather than that of hybrid regimes. A further interesting point is that the distribution of the authors according to theoretical approach appears to reflect current developments in the literature on the post-Soviet space. None of the three authors writing on Russia chose to work within the framework of neopatrimonialism. This reflects the situation in the literature on Russian politics overall. Despite the numerous contributions to this literature, very few authors have selected a neopatrimonialist approach, and these few have done so only quite recently (Sakwa 2009, Whitmore 2010). In contrast, all three authors on Central Asian topics in our volume dealt with neopatrimonialism in one way or another. Schiek and Hensell chose to utilize the concept in their analysis of administrative reform and the role of the president in Kazakhstan, Geiss used it as a foil for his concept of a bureaucratic-developmental state, and Wolters took it as a reference point which he then rejected in favour of Luhmann’s approach to social systems. The other two cases explored in the volume, Georgia and Ukraine, fall somewhere in the middle. In the contributions presented here, one author in each case chose to apply (and further develop) the hybrid regimes approach (Pleines for Ukraine and Jawad for Georgia), while Timm opted to engage with the concept of neopatrimonialism when investigating the Georgian case. This reflects the situation in the literature to the extent that neopatrimonialist approaches have increasingly made their way into analyses on Georgia (as well as Ukraine and other states of the western CIS and South Caucasus) in the past decade (see for example, Fisun 2003, Franke, Gawrich and Alakbarov 2009, Losaberidze 2003, Zimmer 2006). Nonetheless, one cannot yet assert that the neopatrimonialist approach is particularly prominent with regard to areas of the post-Soviet space outside Central Asia, where it seems to have made more significant inroads in part through the research of sociologists and cultural anthropologists, as well as those working in the field of development policy. Judging from the various combinations of theoretical approach and empirical research focus dealt with by the authors, there is no clear separation between foci better addressed with a neopatrimonialist approach and those better handled with a hybrid regimes approach. That said, certain trends do become visible. For example, those interested in going beyond an analysis of the political regime to concentrate on questions of state development, for example, the functioning of the state administration (Geiss, Schiek and Hensell, Timm) tended to draw on

Conclusion

243

the neopatrimonalism framework. Those focused primarily on high-level political elites and parties preferred to work with either the hybrid regimes approach (Pleines, Jawad) or with the typology democracy – authoritarianism – totalitarianism (Gel’man, Motyl), in Motyl’s case expanded to include his definition of fascism. Another less prominent trend was discernible in which issues of reproducing the regime, either by creating sources of ideological legitimacy or through other stabilizing mechanisms, were embedded in the context of a neopatrimonialist approach (Timm). However, Jawad also dealt to some extent with legitimacy in the context of elections in Georgia. As this last example indicates, there was some overlap among the topics addressed within each theoretical framework. Questions of resource distribution and the importance of regional networks were addressed by multiple authors with differing theoretical approaches (Gel’man, Pleines, Geiss) and the regime level was targeted to some extent by Geiss as well as by those authors working with the concept of hybrid regimes. In the introduction, we pointed out the seminal nature of Thomas Carother’s article ‘The End of the Transition Paradigm’ for the debate which has provided the impetus for this volume. Carothers’ first and overarching assumption, that ‘any country moving away from dictatorial rule can be considered a country in transition toward democracy’ offers a partial basis for our examination of the advantages and shortcomings of the theoretical approaches dealt with here (Carothers 2002: 6, emphasis in original). Implicit in this assumption is not only the direction of the change but also the idea of movement. Thus some scholars have pointed out that the transition approach is not suitable for explaining the inertia of a regime or system, because of the built-in assumption that it is dynamic, even if one accepts that the direction of development is not necessarily towards democracy (Timm 2010). This raises a larger issue, which is whether the hybrid regimes framework is appropriate for going beyond description of various regime types to provide explanations for regime development. Choosing another approach has at times also implied the criticism that transition research frameworks emphasize the political realm in too narrow a fashion, leaving out aspects such as constitutional, legal and administrative developments. Further, the intertwined nature of politics and economy (or politics and society), which is especially relevant in the postSoviet space with its totalitarian antecedents, can arguably not be sufficiently captured by a focus on regime character. Rather, a more comprehensive level of analysis, such as the state, the political system or the concept of rule/authority may be necessary to encompass such phenomena. These are all potential arguments for giving neopatrimonial approaches a larger role when studying the former USSR. We can now assess on the basis of both the theoretical chapters and the case studies presented in this volume the extent to which the hybrid regimes and neopatrimonialist approaches have shown themselves capable of addressing the problems mentioned above. Researchers working to refine the hybrid regimes approach have been developing strategies for dealing with previous deficits by helping to specify certain regime (sub)types and exploring paths from one subtype to another. We have examples of each of these types of refinements within this

244

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

volume. Alexander Motyl suggests adding fascism to the existing trio of regime types (democracy – authoritarianism – totalitarianism) and proposes a series of criteria according to which a regime should be evaluated to determine whether its regime can be deemed fascist. Pamela Jawad points to the blurry nature of the subtype ‘competitive authoritarianism’, which makes it difficult to apply in the Georgian case. She finds it helpful to introduce another description for the Georgian regime under Shevardnadze, ‘hegemonic electoral authoritarianism’. While not necessarily claiming the generalizability of this term to other contexts, she does highlight the need for further specification of existing terminology in order to develop more precise tools for regime analysis. Finally, Heiko Pleines uses the example of Ukraine to explore one path within the ‘grey zone’ of regime subtypes, in this case from ‘competitive authoritarianism’ to ‘defective democracy’. He suggests that certain paths are more likely than others due to theoretical considerations. In addition, Gel’man reminds us with his study of subnational authoritarianism in Russia that the existing regime typology can be applied to levels below the central one. On the neopatrimonialism front, the emphases are different. One benefit claimed for neopatrimonalism is that it attributes equal status for the purpose of analysis to informal structures and behaviour patterns, unlike the hybrid regimes approach, which allegedly treats informality as a deviation from formal rules and institutions rather than a different and equally legitimate logic of authority (Timm 2010: 101, 102). Indeed, it seems fair to posit that the insecurity generated by the simultaneous presence of legal-rational and patrimonial codes of behaviour highlighted by Erdmann on the theoretical level is a common feature of some of the contexts found in the post-Soviet space and possesses a certain explanatory power with regard to the stability of these contexts. Christian Timm demonstrates in his case study on Georgia that ‘basic patterns’ of decision-making based on these dual codes are retained by both Shevardnadze and Saakashvili and that this mode of governance impedes a transition to the more transparent logic inherent in bureaucratic authority. Sebastian Schiek and Stephan Hensell make a similar argument with regard to Kazakhstan, showing that neopatrimonial logic has hindered the implementation of administrative reforms predicated on a more bureaucratic logic. While Geiss does not emphasize the simultaneity of formal and informal patterns to the same extent, he does make clear that while both logics functioned in the Soviet state apparatus, the dissolution of the central control mechanism in post-Soviet times has led to more informal power arrangements by the ruling presidents, as is shown by Schiek and Hensell in the case of Kazakhstan. Furthermore, Geiss argues for the necessity of distinguishing between regime change and reform of the political system and thereby points to the utility of the state as the primary level of analysis, since changes in the electoral regime or the leadership do not alter the logic of the state administration. Thus Geiss is cautiously optimistic with regard to the possibility of reform directed at a strengthening of rational-legal elements in the neopatrimonial states of Central Asia.

Conclusion

245

In short, both approaches are evolving in parallel, both within the context of this volume and in the research community more broadly.2 However, it does appear that developments in research on (hybrid) regime typology are more focused on providing accurate descriptions of how regimes function and finding appropriate terms to characterize them, while research in the area of neopatrimonialism is more concerned with the logic of governance and therefore with questions regarding the (in)stability of political systems. This would seem to imply that the two approaches could indeed be mutually complementary. However, neither one is currently clearly delineated enough to allow the other to attach itself to a well-defined analytical model. Rather, the hybrid regimes approach is exploring new directions after confronting the ‘end of the transition paradigm’, whereas the neopatrimonialism literature is still in an early stage of development and must confront the numerous challenges outlined by Gero Erdmann in this volume. The juxtaposition of the two approaches in this volume and this brief comparison of their relative merits do, however, clearly indicate that it makes sense to continue observing the evolution of each approach and to remain attuned to possibilities for cross-fertilization. Two of our authors found the choice between hybrid regimes and neopatrimonialism too confining and decided to adopt another approach altogether. Systems theory was the alternative selected by Wolters, while Mommsen opted to apply the structuralist-functionalist approach of Gabriel Almond to her analysis of the Russian regime. In her case this is not a rejection of the hybrid regimes approach, from which she borrows concepts to describe the evolution of the regime from Yeltsin to Putin and during the years of Putin’s presidency. Rather, she deems this approach insufficient to capture certain aspects of the regime – aspects she considers it necessary to analyse in order to reveal the regime’s shortcomings and provide an overall assessment of its performance. Wolters, on the other hand, prefers systems theory as elaborated by Niklas Luhmann as a framework for observation. Contrary to neopatrimonialism and other theoretical variants of critical rationalism, this approach makes it possible to include the observers of politics in the analysis and thereby to focus on the function of public opinion as responding to political events and thus providing points of orientation for both decision-makers and the public. These two contributions point out that the two approaches we have focused on in this volume have their limits. Depending on the research emphasis chosen, even in hybrid and/or neopatrimonial contexts, it will at times be more appropriate to select an alternative theoretical framework. Empirical Results Beyond the theoretical level, we can also compare the contributions in terms of their responses to the questions posed in the introduction concerning developments 2  For relevant literature on each of the two approaches, see the references cited by Beichelt, Erdmann and Way/Levitsky in this volume.

246

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

in the post-Soviet space in three areas: (1) decision-making processes (and their formal or informal nature); (2) the relationship between state and society; (3) sources of regime legitimacy. A further common theme of the chapters has turned out to be explaining the (in)stability of regimes, states and systems, so the findings on this issue will also be presented here. Most of the authors point to the lack of transparency in decision-making processes in the post-Soviet space. Many of them highlight the importance of informal networks in these processes. Even where decisions are taken in a formal institutional context the logic of clientelism is often dominant (Schiek and Hensell). In all cases decision-making seems to be the prerogative of a small group of leaders. In Georgia, President Saakashvili monopolized decision-making processes in order to push through a specific reform agenda (Timm). However, in the cases of Ukraine and Russia (Pleines, Mommsen) the role of ‘oligarchs’, key businesspeople with political influence, is particularly emphasized. Pleines concludes that the involvement of the oligarchs contributes to the undemocratic and non-transparent nature of decision-making because of the means they use and the fact that they pursue narrow special interests. Several authors mention the role of regional elites (Mommsen, Gel’man, Pleines, Geiss) as well, although this role is often limited by constraints placed on regional actors by the centre. Mommsen suggests the possibility of a two-tier model of decision-making, in which a variety of influential groupings have input into the process but the final decision is taken by a very small group of powerful individuals. Some authors (Mommsen, Gel’man, Motyl, Geiss) stress the significance of the Soviet legacy and point to a certain degree of path dependency with regard to decision-making. Timm discovers a continuity in ‘basic patterns’ of decisionmaking in Georgia which also allows for a suspicion that path dependency is at work, although he does not cover the Soviet period. Jawad notes that the population is largely excluded from political decision-making in Georgia, which appears to be an implicit consequence of the lack of transparency and informal networks mentioned by the other authors and therefore to go significantly beyond the Georgian context. Wolters believes that the decision-making capacity of the political system in Kyrgyzstan is significantly hindered by the failure of public opinion to deliver coherent reactions to events and previous decisions. This reminds us of the inadequate feedback mechanisms between state and society observed by other authors (see below). Mommsen and Gel’man agree that the Russian regime strives for strong state control over society. Gel’man points out that state domination over society is partially achieved through the vehicle of subnational authoritarianism, which relies on the ‘unchallenged dominance’ of a centralized party (United Russia). This party incorporates subnational elites who then exercise domination over voters in the regions through the mechanisms of ‘machine politics’. Mommsen, however, sees the function of political parties in Russia as usurped in part by large corporations. She applies to them the same term, ‘machine politics’, which Gel’man uses for the practices of United Russia. Mommsen further points out

Conclusion

247

that the feedback mechanisms between the state and society are limited and primitive, from Putin’s regular staged dialogues with citizens to Medvedev’s blogging initiatives. Finally, she observes that corruption at the top levels of the state serves as a pattern for rest of society to follow. Jawad points out that parties are inadequate mediators between state and society in the Georgian context, which tallies with the implications of Mommsen’s discussion of corporations as fulfilling party functions, since this means that parties in Russia are failing to do so. Timm essentially concurs with Jawad, referring to parties in the Georgian context as ‘political machines’ which are patronage networks rather than intermediaries between the state and societal levels. The authors point to a diverse variety of sources of regime or state legitimacy. As Geiss indicates, in the early phases of their independence, several Central Asian states attempted to gain legitimacy through the adoption of constitutions with elements imported from Western political systems. The role of constitutions in generating legitimacy is indirectly confirmed by Mommsen for the Russian case in that she emphasizes the democratic nature of the Russian constitution itself, as opposed to the daily political interpretation thereof. Gel’man sees legitimacy as stemming in part from the electoral results ensured in the Russian regions through the mechanisms of ‘machine politics’. These results are then presented (and to some extent perceived) as popular support for the incumbent regime and the ‘party of power’, United Russia. Motyl, on the other hand, asserts that the leader cult around Putin and a related ideology being developed by the Russian regime serve as a basis for its legitimacy. Mommsen presents a broad panorama of sources of legitimacy in Russia. Most importantly, she believes it derives from the economic prosperity which has been ensured in the Putin era through high oil and gas revenues. However, this focus on prosperity functions only because of the presence of a traditional mindset and widespread apathy among the Russian population, which is much more concerned with social protection networks than with opportunities for political participation. Finally, Russian regime legitimacy is bolstered through the successful domestic presentation of Russia as a rising power, juxtaposed with the supposed hostility of the West in general and the US in particular. In Georgia, Jawad points out that Shevardnadze gained initial legitimacy for his regime by restoring order after the chaotic violence of Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s presidency. Saakashvili, on the other hand, started with a certain amount of legitimacy based on his personal charisma. However, in both cases this legitimacy was temporary. Shevardnadze lost legitimacy primarily due to his increasing disregard for the rule of law and his blatant manipulation of election results. Saakashvili failed to build on his charisma by establishing complementary sources of legitimacy such as stable elite support. In the Central Asian context, Schiek and Hensell claim that in the case of Kazakhstan economic success and the portrayal of the state as development-oriented provide the elite with legitimacy, which is supported on the personal level through patrimonial structures.

248

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

A fourth question can be added and answered here, which draws on the responses to the first three and goes beyond them to address an issue of both theoretical and practical importance: How and to what extent is the stability of the regime or political system ensured? Interestingly, with regard to Russia the authors emphasized numerous sources of instability. Mommsen asserts that the mode of decision-making in Russia (see above) implies that decisions lack both stability and functional efficiency. Although many efforts are made by the regime to create the image of political stability, it is in fact undermined by the ad hoc manner of decision-making which depends on particular power constellations that are constantly subject to change. Motyl points to three sources of instability in Russia: petro-state tendencies, the inevitability that Putin will eventually lose popularity and likely future demands by the emerging middle class for the rule of law and greater political participation. Gel’man does find a source of stability in the integration of regional elites within a centralized party-based system. He indicates, however, that this stability depends on the continued unchallenged dominance of one centralized party. Timm defines stability as the retention of basic patterns in decision-making power. He locates the reproductive mechanisms of these patterns in the Georgian case in the presence of corruption pyramids under Shevardnadze and cadre rotation under Saakashvili. He further points to the creation of an all-embracing clientelistic network as a source of stability under Shevardnadze, attributing special importance to the loyalty of the law enforcement agencies. Jawad, however, interprets the cadre rotation under the Saakashvili regime as a potential indication of instability resulting from the president’s inability to translate his charismabased popularity into a stable power base. In a related conclusion, Geiss mentions that stability in Central Asian systems is strongly correlated with the person of the president. Schiek and Hensell continue this emphasis on individual actors, focusing on the role of the president in Kazakhstan and his use of neopatrimonial practices such as clientelism as safeguards for a stable state order in the sense that they guarantee allegiance to the formal institutional framework. The key conclusion of the empirical section is that there is an extremely high level of consensus among the authors about the type and direction of developments in the post-Soviet space, independent of the theoretical approach used. Even where the level of analysis differs, the results of the research evidence a high degree of compatibility rather than revealing contradictory interpretations. This lends further support to the conclusion reached in the theoretical section above, that there is a fundamental potential for combining approaches in the areas of hybrid regimes and neopatrimonialism. While this potential has so far gone untapped due to the relative immaturity of both approaches, their continuing evolution may lead to a future incorporation of both in a more comprehensive study of politics in the post-Soviet space. The increasing application of neopatrimonialist approaches in this area can be seen as an indirect response to Carothers’ plea for a ‘better lens’ with which to observe the ‘grey zone’ following the failure of the transition paradigm (Carothers 2002: 6).

Conclusion

249

References Carothers, T. 2002. The End of the Transition Paradigm. Journal of Democracy, 13, 5-21. Fisun, O. 2003. Developing Democracy or Competitive Neopatrimonialism? The Political Regime of Ukraine in Comparative Perspective. Presentation prepared for the workshop on ‘Institution Building and Policy Making in Ukraine’, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto, 24 October. Franke, A., Gawrich, A. and Alakbarov, G. 2009. Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan as Post-Soviet Rentier States: Resource Incomes and Autocracy as a Double ‘Curse’ in Post-Soviet Regimes. Europe-Asia Studies, 61, 109-140. Losaberidze, D. 2003. Citizenship Regimes in the South Caucasus, in Reinventing Citizenship in the South Caucasus: Exploring Dynamics and Contradictions between Formal Definitionsand Popular Conceptions, edited by C. Bachmann, C. Staerklé and W. Doise. Zürich: Scientific Cooperation between Eastern Europe and Switzerland (SCOPES), Swiss National Science Foundation, available at: http://www.cimera.org/en/research/citizenship.htm. Sakwa, R. 2009. Liberalism and Neo-Patrimonialism in Post-Communist Russia, in Private and Civil Law in the Russian Federation: Essays in Honor of F.J.M. Feldbrugge, in the series ‘Law in Eastern Europe’, no. 60, edited by W. Simons. Leiden and Boston, MA: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 327-346. Timm, C. 2010. Jenseits von Demokratiehoffnung und Autoritarismusverdacht: Eine herrschaftssoziologische Analyse post-transformatorischer Regime, in Autoritarismus Reloaded. Neuere Ansätze und Erkenntnisse der Autokratieforschung, edited by H. Albrecht and R. Frankenberger. BadenBaden: Nomos, 95-118. Whitmore, S. 2010. Parliamentary Oversight in Putin’s Neo-patrimonial State. Watchdogs or Show-dogs? Europe-Asia Studies, 62, 999-1025. Zimmer, K. 2006. Machteliten im ukrainischen Donbass: Bedingungen und Konsequenzen der Transformation einer alten Industrieregion. Münster: LIT Verlag.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Index

Abashidze, Aslan 170 Abkhazia 144-145, 150, 170 Adjara 170 administration central 190, 193, 197, 205 city 75 election 147, 157 in general 24, 26, 48, 51-52, 68, 70, 77, 144, 151, 171, 174-177, 189, 190, 191, 208, 210 military 187 presidential 32, 68-69, 74-76, 207208, 212, 215, 232 public 51, 142, 150, 174, 214, regional 65, 196, 216 state 8, 52, 131, 169, 171, 176, 193, 196, 205, 209, 215, 243-244 tax 52 Ak Zhol (opposition party in Kazakhstan) 208, 231, 232 Almaty 191, 210-212 Armenia 24-25, 29, 39, 145 Ashgabat 191 Astana (formerly Akmola) 203, 209-210, 212, 217 Atambaev, Almazbek 230-231 authoritarianism bureaucratic 65, 68, 71 comparative 3 competitive 2, 4, 7-8, 18, 20-21, 25, 33, 63, 69, 125-135, 140-141, 143, 157, 160, 244 diminished 20-21 electoral 25, 100, 160, 244 glamorous 80 hybrid 20 plebiscitarian 65, 70 regional 6, 89 neo-Soviet 63-80

subnational 6-7, 89-103, 244, 246 authority bureaucratic 177-179, 244 in general 3, 44, 70, 73, 112, 116, 118, 127-128, 145, 156, 178, 205-206, 212, 214, 243-244 neopatrimonial 173-174, 178-179 political 8, 168-169, 175, 179-180, 203, 205 autocracy 3-4, 15-17, 20-21, 23-26, 54, 63, 125, 141 Azerbaijan 22, 24, 26, 119, 145 Bakiev, Kurmanbek 195, 223, 228-233 Batken crisis 195 Belarus 22, 24, 26, 29, 31, 32, 34, 37, 39-40, 92, 100, 119 Berdymukhamedov, Gurbanguly 196 Bishkek 228-230, 232-233 Bloc Tymoshenko 132 Brezhnev era 192 bribes 154, 172-174 bureaucracy legal-rational 46-55, 168, 177 state 51, 55, 93, 129, 172-175 bureaucratic developmental state 8, 187, 189, 193, 196-197, 242 Burjanadze, Nino 149, 153, 174 Burjanadze-Democrats (Georgian electoral alliance) 149 business activities 128, 154 actors 97-98 big business 65, 74, 79 clans 212, 217 community 31 connections 132 elite 37, 129 empire 31, 128, 209

252

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats family 229, 232 in general 6, 31, 33-34, 37, 74, 79-80, 91, 96, 100, 103, 195, 215 interests 129, 189 leaders 64-65 local 94, 97-98 men/people 36-37, 70, 128, 133, 246 oligarchs’ 128 organizations 91 private 154, 189, 215 state-run 71

cabinet 49-51, 68, 74, 76, 151 cadre 8, 37, 74, 79, 95, 108, 113, 117, 145, 176-177, 190-192, 248 capitalism 64, 66, 93, 112, 115, 118 Central Asia 52, 93, 188, 190-198, 206, 223, 233, 247 centralization 25, 94, 97, 100, 118 civic rights 19, 126, 131 civil liberties 23, 33, 35-36, 40, 156 civil servant 51, 64-65, 68, 77, 128, 171, 178, 211, 214-216 civil society 6, 19, 40, 98, 102, 147-148, 152, 175, 177, 197 clan 8, 64, 74-77, 133, 187-188, 203, 205-206, 212, 217, 224, 226, 228, 232 clanism 223 clientelism 18, 30, 45, 48, 49, 63, 76, 94-95, 133, 169-171, 173, 188-189,191-193, 206, 246, 248 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) 9, 144, 242 Communist Party of Georgia 144 of Kazakhstan 206-209 of Russia 100 of Turkmenistan 191 of Ukraine 129 of the Soviet Union (CPSU) 67, 74, 94-96, 116, 145, 191, 193, 206 competition 8, 16, 20-21, 29, 34-36, 40, 52-53, 67, 77, 90, 92, 95, 99, 116,

118, 131, 134, 142, 153, 189, 191, 193, 226, 229 constitution in general 51-52, 67, 80, 134, 207 of Georgia 139, 141 of Kazakhstan 207, 212, 215 of Kyrgyzstan 194, 228-229, 233 of Turkmenistan 194 of Ukraine 125, 131 of Uzbekistan 194 of Russia 63-80, 134, 247 co-optation 38-39, 75, 102, 207 corporation 65, 74-77, 231, 246-247 corruption anti- 146, 149, 173, 215 charges 216 fighting corruption, battle against 78, 80, 142, 146, 149, 175, 206, 213-217 in general 8, 30, 50, 78-80, 91, 95, 97, 120, 128, 131, 133, 145-146, 168, 171-175, 177, 179, 203, 209, 211, 213, 233, 247 grand 175-176 hierarchical 172 indexes 50 petty 50, 175 political 128 pyramids 172-173, 175, 177, 248 rating 49 scandals 95, 173, 233 Corruption Perception Index 49, 142, 175 Council of Europe 147 coup d’état 144, 170 crisis economic 44, 47, 68, 71, 79-90, 96, 118-119, 178 in general 72, 95, 96, 118, 120 political 95, 142, 153, 158 state 93, 196 crony, cronies 70, 127, 132-133 crony capitalism 66 cult 7, 78, 109-114, 119, 196, 247 decentralization 89, 93, 95, 97, 102, 209-210 democracy

Index consolidated 24, 152 defective 7-8, 16, 20, 54-55, 64, 69, 125, 127, 131, 134-135, 142-143, 160, 244 delegative 18-19, 126, 131, 140 domain 134, 140 electoral 24, 54, 159-160, 167 elite 54 in general 2-4, 7, 8, 15-26, 29-40, 47, 51, 54-55, 63-64, 67-69, 71, 75, 79-80, 107-111, 113, 115-120, 125-126, 131, 134-135, 139-146, 152, 156, 160, 167-168, 178-179, 189, 223, 235, 243-244 illiberal 19, 55, 131, 140 liberal 54-55, 140, 159, 188 measuring/measurement 25, 36 multiparty 142, 153 neopatrimonial 54 (over-) managed 64, 67, 71, 75 post-transition 17 promotion 2, 160 sovereign 64, 69, 113 threshold 21, 23, 25 unconsolidated 142 Western 69 with adjectives 16, 125 democratization in general 1-2, 8, 22, 36, 39, 44, 55, 92, 110, 127, 143, 167-168, 179-180, 198, 241 in Georgia 8, 139, 142-145, 149150, 167-168, 175, 178-179 in Kyrgyzstan 233-234 in Russia 69, 79, 92, 99, 102-103 in Ukraine 125, 127 dilemma of simultaneity 140 discourse 9, 113, 115 district committee (raykom) 192 Dnipropetrovsk 128, 132 domination 4, 8, 46-48, 51-52, 54, 68, 73, 110, 118, 168-169, 173-174, 177-179, 224, 235, 246 Donetsk 127-129, 132-133 Duma 68-70, 74, 97-99, 113, 232 Dzhalalabad 228 Eastern Europe 3, 23, 25, 44, 55

253

economic growth 33, 69, 91, 98, 101, 118, 197 economy in general 37, 64, 68-69, 71, 76, 78, 110, 120, 129, 140, 144, 150, 193, 205, 207, 224, 243 Georgian 144, 150 Kazakhstani 204-210, 213 Russian 64, 68-69, 71, 76, 78, 120 Ukrainian 129 election/s clean 34, 131 competitive 4, 25, 29, 90-91, 93, 96, 158 democratic 26, 148-149 direct 69 Duma 70, 97-99 fair 7, 18, 21, 135, 141, 143, 156, 167, 188, 198 free 18, 21-22, 36, 188, 190, 198 in general 8, 17-18, 20-22, 25, 29-30, 32-38, 54, 67-69, 74, 97, 99, 131, 157, 175, 194, 213, 226, 243 manipulating 64, 247 mayoral 97 multiparty 29, 36 national 7, 97, 99 non-free 22 non-manipulated 18 open 22 parliamentary 68, 99, 130, 132, 141-142, 146-149, 154-159, 231 pluralist 15, 24 popular 89, 99 presidential 70, 116, 129-130, 142, 146-147, 155, 159 regional 74, 79 unfair 34, 131 electoral regime 8, 19, 21-22, 54, 140, 142-143, 156, 198, 244 electorate 49, 70 elite business 37, 129 circulation 196 competition, competing elite groups 52, 134 continuity 207

254

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

co-optation 75 coordination 188 counter- 130-131, 135, 207 democracy 54 economic 21, 133-134 fragmentation 120 in general 5, 18, 20, 26, 52-54, 80, 89, 109, 115-120, 128, 130-131, 139140, 150, 178, 189, 191, 194, 204, 206-208, 211, 213-214, 232, 247 infighting 119-120 intra-elite struggle 209 local 6, 90, 97, 100-101, 145, 206 opposition 22, 115, 135 political 50, 127-129, 133-134, 139, 141, 148, 152, 178, 189, 191, 193194, 204, 206, 243 power 52, 146 regional 6, 128, 191-192, 246, 248 rival elite factions 126 ruling 8, 38, 110, 116, 120, 126, 130131, 149, 169, 171, 173, 176, 179, 194, 228 selection 20 state 120, 176, 194 structure 18, 130 subnational 96-100, 246 traditional 109 urban 31 Enough (Georgian civil movement: kmara) 148 ethnicization 194 European Union/EU 1, 79 external actors 4 external influence 52 façade 8, 70, 148, 156, 158-159, 234 fascism 7, 107-113, 115, 117-120 Fatherland - All Russia (Russian party) 97-98 Ferghana 191-192 For Reforms Movement (Kyrgyz political movement) 228-229 fraud 8, 17, 19, 29, 33-34, 36, 40, 54, 148-149, 155-158, 208 Freedom House 23-24, 33, 35, 55, 167, 175 freedom of speech 112

fuzziness, fuzzy-type 17-19, 21-25, 141 Gachechiladze, Levan 155, 157, 159 Gamsakhurdia, Zviad 141-145, 149, 159, 170, 247 Gazprom 76-77, 100 Georgia 6-8, 22-26, 29, 36, 39, 119, 139160, 167-180, 242-244, 246-248 Georgian Citizens’ Union (Georgian party) 145-147, 149, 158 Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) 172 Gorbachev, Mikhail 67, 72, 78, 96, 107, 115-116, 141, 192 governance 6, 51-56, 89, 91, 96, 102, 175, 244-245 government in Belarus 31, 35 in Georgia 35, 142, 144-160, 172-179 in general 6, 9, 19, 31, 35-39, 50-53, 55, 65, 72-73, 75-76, 79, 90-97, 100, 110, 187-188, 190, 198, 226227, 234 in Kazakhstan 206-208, 210, 216 in Kyrgyzstan 226-229, 231, 233-234 in Russia 30, 31, 35, 37, 65, 68-70, 72-76, 79, 89, 93, 97, 100, 102, 115 in Tajikistan 195 in Ukraine 35, 39, 130, 135 grey zone 2, 7, 125-127, 134-135, 139141, 160, 244, 248 Higher Disciplinarian Council (Kazakhstan) 214 holding 34, 129, 213 hybrid regimes 2-8, 15-26, 29, 36, 44, 54, 64, 80, 125, 140-141, 157, 160, 167-168, 241, 243-245, 248 hyper-masculinity, hyper-masculine 7, 78, 110-114 hyper-nationalism 7, 110-112-113, 118, 119 ideology 7, 64-65, 74, 77, 108-117, 120, 135, 145, 158, 176, 194, 243, 247 Imedi television (Georgia) 153-154 Industrial Union of Donbas (Ukraine) 129

Index informality 3-7, 32, 36, 44-56, 63-65, 70, 76-77, 80, 94-101, 127-128, 132-133, 142, 145, 153, 169-179, 187-196, 223-224, 229, 232, 234, 244, 246 insecurity 4, 9, 46, 119, 217, 244 instability 5, 24-25, 80, 128, 144, 170, 178, 248 institutionalization 171, 173, 190, 197 institution-building 90, 101 institution/s administrative 8, 189 bureaucratic 191 constitutional 79 cultural 113, 191 democratic 8, 20, 69, 103, 116, 156, 159-160, 179, 198 economic 197 electoral 156 formal 45, 47, 50, 56, 171, 173, 190, 234 in general 44, 55-56, 68-69, 79, 90, 102, 107, 111, 113, 116-117, 140, 149-152, 171, 174, 179, 188, 198, 215, 223 government, governmental 53, 150 informal 3, 45-50, 153, 173, 190, 223, 224, 234 judicial 189 legal 46 market 89 political 48, 72, 177, 188, 231 state 29-30, 33, 46, 48, 148-153, 169, 173, 189, 191, 192 western 45 Interim State Council (Georgia) 144 International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED, Georgia) 147 intimidation 32-33, 147, 154-155, 194 Iosseliani, Djaba 170 judiciary 20, 24-26, 32, 78-79, 131, 150-151, 207 Karimov, Islam 193 Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (KSSR) 205-207

255

Kazakhstan 8, 93, 119, 187, 191, 194, 196, 203-217, 242, 244, 247-248 Kazatomprom 216 Kazmunaigaz 210, 213 KGB 75, 96, 116-117, 193 Khodorkovski, Mikhail 66 Kiev 127, 132-133 kinship 9, 187-188, 226 Kitovani, Tengiz 170 Kremlin 64-74, 77, 89, 96-101 Kuchma, Leonid 7, 32, 39, 76, 125, 127135 Kulebaev, Timur 213, Kulov, Feliks 227-230 Kurultai 233 Kyrgyzstan 9, 24-26, 29, 187, 191, 194196, 223-235, 246 Labour Party (Georgia) 155 law enforcement 78, 92, 145, 173-174, 248 leadership 4, 9, 64-67, 69, 71-74, 77-79, 90, 93, 144-145,148, 151, 154, 190, 191, 203-204, 206, 210, 229, 233, 244 legacy 6, 37, 73, 76, 102, 177, 204, 209, 211, 217, 224, 246 legislation 20, 99, 147, 151, 172 legitimacy 5, 33, 49, 63, 66, 77-78, 118, 125, 131, 140, 144-145, 147, 149, 151, 153, 155, 168-169, 175, 194, 204, 211, 217, 230, 243, 246-247 level playing field 4, 29-40 localization 89-90 localism 96, 100, 223 loyalty 8, 44, 66, 75, 94, 96, 100-101, 145, 169, 171, 175-177, 194, 196, 210, 223, 248 market, markets 31, 38, 64, 68-69, 89, 94, 98, 110, 140, 144, 171, 176 media 4, 6, 15, 20, 26, 29, 30-40, 64-65, 68-70, 78, 110, 127-132, 144, 148, 150, 154-155, 157-159, 167, 176, 194-195, 213, 194-195, 213, 225, 232 Medvedev, Dmitri 64, 67, 70-75, 78-79, 247

256

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Mkhetrioni 170 mobilization 48, 93, 97, 108-109, 111, 149 modernization 9, 44, 72, 79-80, 90-91, 187, 203-205, 209-211, 217 Moldova 22, 24-25, 38, 119 monopolization, monopoly 33, 36-37, 53, 65, 67, 89-101, 132, 151, 175-176, 194, 213, 246 Moscow 67-68, 75, 98, 119, 144, 191-193, 231 Moya Strana (Kyrgyz party) 231 National Congress Party (Kazakhstan) 207 National Guard (Georgia) 170 nationalism 7, 109-114, 118, 119 Nazarbaeva, Dariga 213 Nazarbaev, Nursultan 9, 196, 203-217 neopatrimonialism 2-4, 8, 26, 43-56, 168169, 177-179, 197-198, 203-205, 211, 217, 223, 241-245, 248 neo-sultanism 196 network/s broadcasting 38, 154, clan 206 clientelist, clientelistic, client, clientele 144-145, 170-171, 173, 178, 187-195, 198, 203-210, 248 decision 18 in general 9, 48, 129-130, 204, 206, 212 informal 32, 127-128, 132-133, 191, 246 insider 129 power 176, 187, 204 patronal, patronage 170-171, 177, 195, 247 protection 247 regional 7, 127-129, 132, 134, 243 social 188 Soviet 128 vertical 206 New Georgia (Georgian election bloc) 147 Newly Industrialized Countries (NIC) 210 NGO 142, 147, 155, 231 Niyazov, Saparmurat 193, 196 nomenklatura 76, 145, 170, 172 Nur Otan (Kazakh party) 212-213

Okruashvili, Irakli 153-154 oligarchy 6, 63-65, 70, 74, 76, 94, 128 opposition in general 20-22, 29-40, 54, 112, 131, 157, 176, 231 in Georgia 7, 139-160, 174, 176-177 in Kazakhstan 207-208 in Kyrgyzstan 9, 223-235 in Russia 31, 79, 98, 112, 115, 120 in Tajikistan 194-195 in Ukraine 125-131, 135 Orange Revolution 39, 125, 127, 129-134 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 18, 147-148 Otunbaeva, Roza 233 Our Ukraine (Ukrainian party) 132 Party of Regions (Ukrainian party) 130, 132 Patarkatsishvili, Arkady ‘Badri’ 153 paternalism 71,78 path dependency 63, 95, 178, 246 patrimonialism 4, 8, 45-55, 66, 76-77, 90, 91, 93, 95, 97, 107, 114, 169, 189-190, 192-193, 204-206, 208-209, 211, 217, 224, 244, 247 patronage 37-39, 45, 48, 63, 120, 132, 169, 187, 195-196, 247 patron-client 94, 96, 98, 100, 171 patronal presidentialism 6, 63-80 perestroika 67, 72, 78-80, 96, 107, 115116, 141 personalization 8, 64, 203 pluralism 7, 18, 20, 22, 94, 96, 188, 196198, 241 Politburo 191-193 political communication 6, 73, 80 political machine 74-75, 90-94, 98-99, 127, 170, 176-179, 247 popular support 7, 114, 118, 151, 247 poverty 37, 146, 148, 153, 197 power vertical 6, 69, 74, 102 president, presidency in general 18, 19, 35, 39, 48-49, 51, 110, 190 in Georgia 7, 142-159, 167, 170-171, 174, 246-248

Index in Kazakhstan 9, 196, 203-217, 242, 244, 248 in Kyrgyzstan 194-195, 223, 227-232 in Russia 63-78, 113, 116, 245 in Tajikistan 195 in Turkmenistan 193-194, 196 in Ukraine 7, 32, 125, 127-135 in Uzbekistan 193-194 presidentialism 6, 48, 63-80 Primakov, Yevgeni 68 private sector 31-38 privatization 31, 37, 64, 76, 96, 129, 145, 195, 208 property rights 6, 66, 79, 89, 189, 197 public observation 9, 225-227, 230, 234-235 public opinion 9, 71, 73, 127-128, 152, 225-235, 245-246 Putin, Vladimir 6, 63-65, 67-73, 75, 77-78, 80, 98, 112-118, 131, 245, 247-248 Rahmon, Emomalii (formerly Rahmonov) 195 recentralization 6, 89, 95, 98-99, 101 regional committee (obkom) 192, 193 regionalism 188-189, 191-193, 223, 228 rent-seeking 44, 53, 93, 120 repression 1, 15, 22, 29, 33-34, 40, 65, 112, 118-119, 156, 229, 232 resources 4, 6, 29-40, 49-50, 66, 71, 74, 89, 96, 98, 100-101, 118, 120, 129, 134, 144, 152, 156-157, 165, 170, 174, 176, 178, 187-189, 191, 193, 195, 203-204, 206, 209, 211, 213, 216-217 revenues 118, 171, 175, 195, 213, 216, 247 Rose Revolution 39, 143, 145, 148-151, 155-159, 167-180 rubber-stamp parliament/institution 110, 112-113 rule anarchic 78 authoritarian 32, 40, 44, 52, 55, 119, 126, 203 bureaucratic 50-51, 53, 76 Communist, of the Communist Party 89, 96, 100, 145

257

dictatorial 117-118, 139, 243 multiparty 33, 35, 37 neopatrimonial 9, 46, 196, 203, 217 (non-)democratic 1, 19, 55 of law 17-18, 52, 54-55, 119, 126, 131, 140, 142, 145, 151, 179, 189, 223, 233, 247, 248 one-party 92 parliamentary 223 patrimonial 91, 93, 95, 97, 208 repressive 223 sovereign 179 Soviet 6, 193, 204 rule of law 17-18, 52, 54-55, 119, 126, 131, 140, 142, 145, 151, 179, 189, 223, 233, 247, 248 Russia 63-80, 107-120 Rustavi2 (Georgia) 149 Saakashvili, Mikheil 7-8, 142-143, 146, 149, 150-160, 167, 174-178, 244, 246-248 Samruk Kazyna 210, 213 Satybaldy, Kairat 213 Shevardnadze, Eduard 7-8, 142-160, 167, 170-177, 244, 247, 248 silovik 76-79, 116-120 Social Democrats (Kyrgyz party) 231 socialism 7, 37, 112, 205-206, 210 Sodruzhestvo (Kyrgyz party) 231 South Ossetia 144, 150, 170 Soviet Union 1, 4, 25, 31, 39, 64-65, 72, 76, 92, 95-96, 100-102, 113, 141, 145, 149, 167, 170, 172, 190-193, 205-206, 211, 227 state apparatus 31, 71, 92, 95, 98, 120, 171, 189, 191-192, 227, 244 state-building 90, 101, 103, 117, 176, 203, 205 Suleimenov, Olzhas 207 Supreme Economic Council (Kazakhstan) 209 supreme leader 7, 110, 112-114, 118, 120 Supreme Soviet 192, 206-207 Surkov, Vladislav 64, 69 systems theory 9, 63, 67, 72, 76, 80, 224-226, 234, 242, 245

258

Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats

Tajik civil war 194 Tajikistan 1 87-198 Tbilisi 144, 147, 154, 155 technocrat 65, 68, 75, 77, 80, 206 Third Wave (of transition) 15, 139 totalitarianism 1, 7, 17, 107-118, 125, 188, 190, 241-244 transformation economic 6, 69, 140, 145 in general 1, 76, 89-90, 98-99, 101102, 116-117, 140, 151, 153-154, 190, 206 political 6, 65, 67, 140, 205 state 140, 151 transition country/countries 126, 141, 168 democratic 148, 167, 197 economic 69, 96 in general 1, 3, 7, 15, 24-25, 32-34, 37, 64, 67, 103, 167, 126, 131, 139-141, 144, 146, 148, 160, 167-168, 204, 207, 243-244 literature 2, 16 paradigm 2-3, 139-140, 167, 179, 241, 243, 245, 248 paths 1, 127 studies 16, 25, 167 Transparency International 49, 65, 142, 172, 175 Tulip Revolution 9, 223, 227 Turkmenistan 26, 187, 191, 193-194, 196 Turkmenbashi 196

Tymoshenko, Yulia 128-132 Ukraine 6-7, 22, 24-25-26, 31-32, 39-40, 76, 119, 125-135, 206, 242, 244, 246 United National Movement (Georgian Party) 149, 151, 155-156, 175-176 United Opposition (Georgian opposition movement) 157-158 United Public Movement (UPM, Georgian opposition alliance) 154 United Russia (Russian party) 70, 71, 74, 79, 89, 99-101, 113, 246-247 Uzbekistan 37, 92-93, 188, 191-195 veto player 6, 89, 96-97 Victorious Georgia (Georgian party) 157158 violence 1, 68, 109-111, 144-147, 170, 228, 247 World Bank 50, 142 Yanukovych, Viktor 128-132 Yeltsin, Boris 6, 30-32, 63-69, 75, 78, 80, 115-116, 245 Yukos 66 Yushchenko, Viktor 7, 39, 125, 128-130, 132 Zhvania, Zurab 149, 154, 174