Sharon L. Wolchik

Defeating Dictators: Electoral Change and Stability in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes

What explains electoral stability and change in competitive authoritarian regimes? This article addresses the question by comparing eleven elections—six of which led to continuity in authoritarian rule and five of which led to the victory of the opposition—that took place between 1998 and 2008 in competitive authoritarian regimes countries located in the postcommunist region. Using interviews conducted with participants in all of these elections and other types of data and constructing a research design that allowed the authors to match these two sets of elections on a number of important dimensions, they assess two groups of hypotheses—those that highlight institutional, structural, and historical aspects of regime and opposition strength on the eve of these elections and others that highlight characteristics of the elections themselves. The authors conclude that the key difference was whether the opposition adopted a tool kit of novel and sophisticated electoral strategies that made them more popular and effective challengers to the regime.

Favorable Conditions and Electoral Revolutions

From 1996 to 2005 a wave of electoral revolutions swept through east Central Europe, the Balkans, and Soviet successor states. The success of these revolutions and their concentration in the post-communist world reflect favorable political and social conditions, as well as the fact that the common structures and policies of communist regimes created unusually good conditions for diffusion of the electoral model after communism’s end. These structural conditions led international donors to concentrate democracy assistance in this region. Efforts to support electoral revolutions in countries with less supportive conditions and less favorable attitudes toward the West and democracy are likely to be more problematic

Women, State, and Party in Eastern Europe

These essays, by American, Canadian, and East European scholars, provide a comprehensive look at the status of women in Eastern Europe, with particular emphasis on the postwar situation.

The Social legacy of communism

1. Introduction - social legacies and the aftermath of communism James R. Millar Part I. Ethnic Issues 2. Making up for lost choice: the shaping of ethnic identity in post-sovietia Peter Juviler 3. From ethnicity to nationalism: turmoil in the Russian mini-empire Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer 4. Ethnicity, nationalism and the communist legacy in eastern Europe Maria N. Todorova Part II. Deviance and Health 5. The social construction of deviance and the transition from communist rule Andrea Stevenson Sanjian 6. Crime and the collapse of the soviet state Louise Shelley 7. Drug abuse in eastern Europe John M. Kramer 8. Post-communist medicine: morbidity, mortality and the deteriorating health situation Mark G. Field 9. Health and mortality in eastern Europe: retrospect and prospect Nicholas Eberstadt Part III. Social Cleavages 10. Communisms legacy and Russian youth Richard B. Dobson 11. The social legacy of communism: women, children, and the feminization of poverty Gail Kligman Part IV. Labor and Elitism 12. Elitism in post-communist Russia Mervyn Matthews 13. Labour politics in post-communist Russia: a preliminary assessment Walter D. Connor 14. Unemployment in the former Soviet Union William Moskoff Part V. Conclusion 15. Reflections on the social legacy of communism Joseph S. Berliner.

Youth and Electoral Revolutions in Slovakia, Serbia, and Georgia

Since 1998, young people have played important roles in the electoral revolutions that deposed semi-authoritarian leaders in Slovakia, Serbia, and Georgia. This article examines common and disparate elements of young peoples roles in these three cases. Youth were involved in an important way in all three. However, the extent of their involvement, the forms it took, and the relationship between youth and other actors in this process differed to some degree in the three cases. Young people became involved in politics in somewhat different ways. The paths young activists have taken after the revolutions have also differed to some degree.

Getting Real About "Real Causes "

Abstract: Way is correct that structural factors make competitive regimes more or less vulnerable, but he ignores the durability of even very weak regimes. In the color revolutions, defeat occurred because of the formation of a united opposition; collaboration among oppositions, civil society groups and international democracy promoters; ambitious campaigns to win public support, register new voters, and get out the vote; and widespread use of vote monitors. Thanks to such innovations, voters selected the opposition rather than staying home or supporting the regime, and very close elections in Ukraine, Serbia and Slovakia tilted in the favor of the opposition. Structure agency, and process all are critical in explaining the uneven pattern of electoral change in postcommunist Europe and Eurasia.

Women in Transition in the Czech and Slovak Republics: The First Three Years

Women in what was, until January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia and is now the Czech and Slovak repubUcs faced many of the same issues as women in other post-communist countries after the end of communist rule. As I have argued in earlier essays,1 womens situation at present and the way in which womens issues are considered by poUtical leaders have been influenced in important ways by the economic and political transitions from communism. The dramatic political and economic changes that have followed the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe have created many new opportunities for all dtizens in the region. Thus, the end of the communist partys monopoly of power, the elimination of censorship, repluralization of political life, and the opening of the region to the rest of Europe have aUowed people in these countries to partidpate in poUtics, organize with others of similar views, and pressure political leaders to take action on issues of interest to them. Efforts to recreate the market, which have involved the relegitimization of private enterprise, restitution of confiscated economic assets to their original owners, and, in some cases, attempts to privatize state enterprises by a combination of foreign investment and mass ownership through coupons or vouchers, have opened new career possibUities and freed the creative economic energies of many. The opening of countries previously closed, with few exceptions, to influences from the rest of Europe has allowed new ideas to enter and has brought far greater levels of contad with outsiders. However, as is the case with large-scale change in other contexts, the end of Communist rule has also brought about expected and unexpeded difficulties. Women have also been affected by the legacy of communism. Many fadors have made it difficult for women to articulate their interests and put pressure on poUtical leaders. As a result, women continue to be marginalized from poUtics and womens issues continue to be seen as low-priority concerns.

Ideology and Equality: The Status of Women in Eastern and Western Europe

Socialism has had a mixed impact on the status of women in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. While womens roles have changed since the institution of socialist systems, the rate and extent of change in different areas of life have varied. The pattern of role change which has occured in these countries as the result of modernization and directed social change differs from that which has occurred more spontaneously in non-socialist countries, particularly in the areas of education and employment. Women in socialist states have greater access to higher education and are more often employed. But they remain at the fringes of economic and political power and are hindered by the persistence of a traditional division of labor within the home. This pattern is explained by reference to the differential commitments of socialist elites, who have tended to promote improvement in the status of women, only where it contributes to higher priority goals, such as modernization. Prospects for further change in the status of women in socialist and Western states are assessed.

Can There Be a Color Revolution

Abstract: The December 2011 protests in Russia raised the question of whether the Putin regime could fall to a “color” or electoral revolution like those that have ousted other autocratic regimes in postcommunist Europe and Eurasia over the past decade and a half. Valerie Bunce and I concluded that, in these prior cases, the main factor distinguishing successful from failed attempts was the extent to which an “electoral model” of regime change was implemented. Structural factors, particularly a vulnerable incumbent, played some role in the success of electoral breakthroughs, but the main explanation, we found, lay in the implementation of the electoral model.

The Politics of Transition in Central Europe

The countries of East-Central Europe may now be consolidating democratic rule, but the transition process itself is still an important feature of both private and public life in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.