Democratization Challenges in Eastern Europe

Challenges of Democratization in Eastern Europe

• Capitalism by democratic design? Democratic theory facing the triple transition in East Central Europe.
• Convergence theories (1960-70s): two rival political-economic systems would converge more or less rapidly.
• East: enriched with market elements
• West: enriched with state intervention into production and distribution processes.
• "Reforms from above" ruled out by Soviet leadership, leading to complications and reforms or revolutions from below.
• Soviet revolution (Gorbachev): from the top
• Many other states and groups of states underwent a transition to democracy, but were different from central and eastern europe in two respects.
• Territorial integrity and organization of each country preserved, whereas in central and eastern Europe, the scene was dominated by territorial disputes, migrations, minority or nationality conflicts and corresponding secessionist longings.

Democratic Backsliding in Eastern Europe

• Contemporary democracies tend to erode gradually and under legal disguise
• General disagreement about how momentous the current wave of autocratization is
• Global reversal challenges many established democracies -> autocratization
• Decline of more blatant forms of backsliding (military coups and election day vote fraud)
• More clandestine ways of autocratization (harassment of opposition, subversion of horizontal accountability)
• Risk of military coups has declined, risk of self-coup remains
• Executive aggrandizement: elected executives weaken checks on executive power one by one.
• Illiberal democracy: subverting electoral standards without completely breaking the democratic facade.
• Electoral authoritarianism: winning through subtler tactics (censoring and harassing media, restricting civil society, political parties, undermining autonomy in election management).

Breakdown of Democracy

• Requires a clear approach to distinguish between democracy and dictatorship.
• Excludes: undermining of democratic institutions (autogolpe) and unfinished degeneration of qualities in democracies.
• Problematic for contemporary period (rare occurrences of sudden autocratization – coups d’état).
• Autocratization: matter of degree, possible in both democracies and autocracies.
• Democracies can lose traits without fully breaking down.

Polarisation in Austrian Politics

• Four distinct manifestations of polarisation
• Ideological consistency
• Ideological divergence
• Perceived polarisation
• Affective polarisation.
• Lelkes focuses on polarisation, mass public and partisans.
• Americans at the mass level have not become more consistent ideologically nor diverged, but partisans have.
• Perceptions of polarisation have increased among partisans and parties increasingly dislike each other.

Media and Politics in Austria

• Media capture: corrupting relationship between political actors and media organizations
• Threat to media independence, distortions of public opinion, suppression of dissent, and undermining of investigative journalism.
• Instances of media being used to manipulate public opinion.
• Lack of mechanisms for media accountability.

Party Colonization of the State

• Parties solve collective action & social choice problems.
• Collective action problem: using organizational structure and infrastructure to provide coherent positions.
• Social choice problem: resolving conflict over individual politicians' priorities with a collective consensus.
• Power of parties to appoint people in public/semi-public life.
• Parties exchange resources (public goods/services) for support from clients.
• Direct exchanges can be considered illegal.
• Motivations for power: control & reward, especially useful when meritocracy is lacking.

Revolutionary Transformation in Eastern Europe

• Territorial issue: determination and consolidation of borders
• Democracy: dissolution of party monopoly, replacement by constitutionally tamed exercise of authority and party competition, guarantees of basic human and citizen rights (glasnost) and economic and property order (perestroika)
• Stages of process in normal western states (nation-state to capitalism to democracy) occur simultaneously in eastern Europe.
• Only particular conditions enable the simultaneous implementation of market economy and democracy.