Valerie Bunce

Comparative Democratization: Big and Bounded Generalizations

Comparative studies of democratization have produced two types of generalizations: those having nearly universal application and those applying to a range of countries within a region. In the first category are such arguments as the role of high levels of economic development in guaranteeing democratic sustainability, the centrality of political elites in establishing and terminating democracy, and deficits in rule of law and state capacity as the primary challenge to the quality and survival of new democracies. In the second category are contrasts between recent democratization in post-Socialist Europe versus Latin America and southern Europe—for example, in the relationship between democratization and economic reform and in the costs and benefits for democratic consolidation of breaking quickly versus slowly with the authoritarian past. The two sets of conclusions have important methodological implications for how comparativists understand generalizability and the emphasis placed on historical versus proximate causation.

Rethinking Recent Democratization: Lessons from the Postcommunist Experience

This study compares democratization in the postcommunist region (or the twenty-seven countries that emerged from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) in order to evaluate some of the assumptions and arguments in the literature on recent democratization in southern Europe and Latin America. Five conclusions are drawn, all of which challenge the received wisdom about democratization in southern Europe and Latin America. First, the uncertainty surrounding the postcommunist transitions to democracy varied significantly. This influenced, in turn, the strategies of transition and their payoffs. This also meant that the most successful transitions in the postcommunist context involved a sharp break with the old order. Second, popular mobilization often functioned to support the democratic project. Third, nationalist mobilization was also helpful, though this depended upon whether it began with the breakdown of authoritarian rule or had a longer history--with the latter compromising the democratic project. Fourth, if the timing of nationalist mobilization was critical for the success of democratization in those cases where such mobilization occurred, then the strength of the opposition was the key factor in the remaining cases. Finally, while democratic consolidation necessarily enhances the prospects for democratic sustainability, the failure to consolidate democracy does not necessarily threaten the continuation of democratic rule. Indeed, as in the Russian case, such a failure may prolong democratic rule. This suggests, in turn, that a key distinction must be made between the optimal conditions for democratization and optimal strategies.

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

Uncertainty in the Transition: Post-communism in Hungary

Often the feeling prevails that everything is falling apart. In a way, this is true. The former centralist, bureaucratic, and dysfunctional system of support for order cannot be self-supporting and is collapsing. The new system, in all its aspects, is being born, prepared, thought through. But it is not yet up and working. Václav Havel

Diffusion-Proofing: Russian and Chinese Responses to Waves of Popular Mobilizations against Authoritarian Rulers

Do authoritarian leaders take preemptive actions to deter their citizens from joining cross-national waves of popular mobilizations against authoritarian rulers? Are they more likely to engage in such behavior when these uprisings appear to be more threatening—in particular, when they take place in neighboring countries and in regimes that resemble their own? We provide answers to these questions by comparing the responses of the Russian and Chinese leadership to two such waves: the color revolutions and the Arab uprisings. We conclude that, despite differences in the ostensible threats posed by these two waves, they nonetheless prompted the leaders of both of these countries to introduce similar preemptive measures in order to “diffusion-proof” their rule from the color revolutions and the Arab upheavals. These findings have some important implications for our understanding of authoritarian politics and diffusion processes. One is to reinforce the emphasis in many recent studies on the strategic foundations of authoritarian resilience. That recognized, however, we would add that the authoritarian toolkit needs to be expanded to include policies that preempt international, as well as domestic threats. The other is to provide further confirmation, in this case derived from the behavior of authoritarian rulers, of how scholars have understood the drivers of cross-national diffusion. At the same time, however, we counsel students of diffusion to pay more attention to the role of resisters, as well as to adopters. In this sense, the geographical reach of diffusion is much broader than many analysts have recognized.

The National Idea: Imperial Legacies and Post-Communist Pathways in Eastern Europe

Why has the national idea played such a powerful role, both positive and negative, in the regime, state, and economic transitions that have taken place in post-communist Eurasia? This article emphasizes the powerful but variable effects of imperial rule in this region, beginning with the Habsburgs and continuing through the more recent experiences of the Soviet bloc and the Yugoslav, Soviet, and Czechoslovak ethnofederations. The national idea, a product of very different experiences in the West, was transformed when moving eastward in the nineteenth century, largely because imperial contexts are not state contexts. The political empowerment of the national idea continued when imperial dynamics returned to the region with the rise of communism. As a result, post-communist Eastern Europe was unusually well situated to privilege nationalism in the struggles over new states and new economic and political regimes.

The Political Economy of the Brezhnev Era: The Rise and Fall of Corporatism

When Leonid Brezhnev came to power in 1964, the Soviet empire consisted of Cuba and six reliable satellites in Eastern Europe, the bloc was dominated politically and economically by the Soviet Union, and East–West interactions were kept to a minimum. Soviet military capabilities at this time, moreover, were clearly inferior to the military power of the West. And while East–West relations were testy, they had improved in the aftermath of the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

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.

The Succession Connection: Policy Cycles and Political Change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

This article tests whether economic policy in the Soviet bloc follows a cycle of change in which more mass-oriented policies rise on the agenda after a succession crisis and then fall once the succession is resolved. Changes in investment and budgetary priorities, growth rates of personal income and consumption, and finally, changes in elite rhetoric and policy pronouncements over time all support the existence of a succession cycle in economic priorities. This suggests that the mass publics do influence—albeit indirectly—the policy process in socialist states, and that chief executives change their priorities over the course of their administrations as different clienteles line up at the trough and different constraints develop. There is, then, a structural component to economic decision making in the Soviet bloc, and that component seems to be similar to the one that operates in the West—that is, the desire of politicians to expand their power and remain in office, and their willingness to use economic policy to achieve those ends.