Post-communist system transformation

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In comparative political science, post-communist or post-socialist system transformation is a special form of transformation of a political system in which the transition from a formerly communist or socialist autocracy to a market-based - liberal democracy takes place.

Features and periods

According to Jerzy Maćków (2005), the following six characteristics characterize the post-communist system transformation as such:

  • the so-called " simultaneity dilemma " also called the "simultaneity dilemma " (as named by Claus Offe : all aspects of the country's social order are changed at the same time; Offe, however, assumes an authoritarian state, Maćków a totalitarian one),
  • the lack of a civil society or civil society in the respective country,
  • the change from plan - to market economy and the associated change in ownership from collective - to private property ,
  • an omnipresent but inefficient state ,
  • the "post-totalitarian voluntarism " (democratization is the officially defined goal),
  • the role of the military (unlike in other authoritarian systems, it was not one of the initiators of the system change).

Maćków (2005) differentiates in the post-communist system transformation between two periods after the upheaval phase:

Period of extraordinary politics
New government receives great legitimacy . The willingness of the population to endure the negative social consequences of the economic reforms is high, because there is great hope that the system change will have a positive and rapid effect on the common good.
Period of normal politics
As in “normal” political systems, government is judged on what it achieves for the people in the short and medium term.

Phases

One distinguishes between

  1. the end of the respective autocratic regime,
  2. the institutionalization of the new democracy and
  3. the phase of consolidation of democracy.

The end of the regime

According to Wolfgang Merkel (2010), the collapse of an autocratic regime can be based on various complexes of causes:

  • System-internal causes (legitimacy crises due to economic efficiency or inefficiency or key political events),
  • External causes (war defeat, loss of external support or domino effect ).

He differentiates between six typical forms for the replacement of an autocratic regime:

  • a long evolution,
  • a system change directed by the old elites ,
  • a system change forced from below,
  • a negotiated system change,
  • a regime collapse,
  • a disintegration and the immediate re-establishment of the state.

Democratization processes

According to Maćków (2005), transformation research distinguishes between when analyzing democratization processes

  • Liberalize the old authoritarian systems and
  • Institutionalization and consolidation of the new democratic systems.

In the post-communist system transformation, Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union were the only ones in which some form of liberalization took place from the second half of the 1980s. In the other Warsaw Pact countries, the collapse of communism was abrupt.

Institutionalization

In this context, institutionalization is the phase in which political rule passes from the old ruling elite to a set of institutionalized rules. So when the control of political decisions slips away from the old political elites and is turned over to democratic procedures, one speaks of the beginning of the democratization phase. The democratization phase ends with the adoption of a democratic constitution, provided that this constitution makes political competition and political decision-making processes binding. At this point new democratic structures are being formed in the state.

Maćków (2005) criticizes this “rigid” division of maximalist authors. Among other things, he lists sociological theories that call into question the sharp distinction between the building of democratic institutions and the internalization of democratic values, norms and procedures. According to Mackow, institutionalization has a structural and cultural dimension. Democratic institutionalization therefore means the establishment of legitimate democratic institutions. These include a. free elections, parliaments, governments, constitutional courts, other organs of justice. Democratic institutionalization must be completed by the beginning of the “normal politics” period. As soon as democracy is institutionalized, it begins to consolidate, which extends well into the period of "normal politics". (see Mackow, 2005)

Consolidation

However, the system transformation does not end with the adoption of a democratic constitution. The newly created or restructured institutions have yet to gain legitimacy and stability in a consolidation process .

Geoffrey Pridham (1995) differentiates between “negative” and “positive” consolidation of democracy. For him, a democracy is “negatively” consolidated when no relevant political or social actor outside of the democratic institutions pursues his interests and goals. On the other hand, he describes a democracy as “positively” consolidated if the entire system is not only legitimate in the eyes of the elite, but the attitudes, values ​​and behavior patterns of the citizens also reflect a stable belief in legitimacy in democracy.

Merkel (2010) takes up the concept of positive consolidation of democracy and differentiates the consolidation process into four chronological levels :

Institutional Consolidation
Constitutional institutions such as head of state, government, parliament, judiciary and electoral system
Representative consolidation
territorial and functional representation of interests by parties and interest groups
Behavior consolidation
informal political actors and potential veto groups such as B. military, entrepreneurs or radical groups
Consolidation of a citizenship culture
Formation of a civil society that actively supports the new system

Scientists consider a system to be democratically consolidated and, maximalistically, to be a consolidated democracy if all these levels are fulfilled.

Since Maćków regards the rigid division between “institutionalization” and “consolidation” as wrong, he naturally also criticizes the approach to consolidation of the theorists of the maximalist approach. In his opinion, democracy is consolidated when the elites and the people have learned

  • to use the democratic procedures and
  • have internalized the basic democratic principles and norms.

In this context, Maćków cites Adam Przeworskis and Samuel P. Huntington's theories critically (cf. Mackow, 2005).

With the third wave of democratization , however, transformation research was, contrary to expectations, confronted with new problems. While democracy initially seemed to have started its triumphal march in the 1980s and 90s, the signs mean that “the 'third wave' is less the triumph of liberal, constitutional and constitutional democracies than the success story of a restricted or defective one Variant of democracy is. ”To put it more concretely, in the course of the third wave of democratization, political systems arose in many countries in which equal and more or less free elections were allowed, but in which, for example, political participation rights were withdrawn from certain sections of the population in which democratic legitimacy was granted Governments use their political decision-making powers e.g. B. have to share with the military or in which the liberal-constitutional component of democracy is only partially effective. This has made it more difficult to distinguish between autocratic and democratic systems, especially on the structural level. Hardly any political system is not based on the holding of elections, does not have a constitutional text that invokes popular sovereignty, human and civil rights or whose system of government is not based on the basic principles of the separation of powers and the intertwining of powers. A large number of scholars try to grasp this phenomenon theoretically and to provide the concept of democracy with suitable adjectives: O'Donnell's “delegative democracy”, Zakaria's “ illiberal democracy ”, Diamond's “electoral democracy”, Merkel's “ defective democracy ” or, above all, the off “managed democracy ” shaped by Putin circles . However, are Linz and Mackow believes that it is appropriate in this context, the authoritarianism to attributions, because the said systems were simply not democracies is, no matter how modest it may define the term.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Merkel: System Transformation. P. 96 ff.
  2. ↑ Merkel: System Transformation. P. 101 ff.
  3. ↑ Merkel: System Transformation. P. 110 ff.
  4. ↑ Aurel Croissant , Peter Thiery: Defekt Demokratie. Concept, operationalization and measurement. In: Hans-Joachim Lauth, Gert Pickel, Christian Welzel (eds.): Democracy measurement. Concepts and findings in an international comparison. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 3-531-13438-8 , pp. 89–111, here p. 89.