Abstract
In the first decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, mass political behaviour in Europe’s eastern half exhibited several discomfiting characteristics. Low turnouts have plagued many electoral contests in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, referendums in Lithuania and other public votes.1 In other countries, the number of people who say they intend to cast ballots in future elections dropped, reflecting a widespread difficulty with voter turnout.2
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Notes
The coalescence between action and attitude, forming a composite political apathy, was observed in Polish political behaviour of the late 1980s and in 1990: see David Mason, Daniel Nelson and Bohdan Szklarski, ‘Apathy and the Birth of Democracy: The Polish Struggle’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol.5, No.2, Spring 1991, pp.205–33.
Concerning the dangers of disorder in nascent democracies see Robert A. Dahl, ‘The Newer Democracies: From the Time of Triumph to the Time of Troubles’, in Daniel N. Nelson (ed.), After Authoritarianism: Democracy or Disorder? (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995), pp.1–14.
Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), Chapter 2.
Of the many authors who stress elite negotiation and pact formation in democratisation processes, some (such as Samuel Huntington) have long pointed out the dangers of mass political mobilisation — for example, his Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968). In the 1980s, he continued to expect that political elites would be the principal determinant in answering the question ‘Will More Countries Become Democratic?’: Political Science Quarterly, No.99, Spring 1984. Giuseppe Di Palma’s To Craft Democracies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), however, goes much further in seeing pact formation among elites — to create mutual guarantees to live within a competitive system — as essential for democratisation.
Michael Ignatieff’s review of Ernest Gellner’s book, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Penguin, 1994), which appeared in Foreign Affairs Vol.74, No.2, March/April 1995, pp.128–36, includes a succinct and evocative portrait of East Europeans’ underground civil societies: The philosophical study groups in basements and boiler rooms, the prayer meetings in church crypts, and the unofficial trade union meetings in bars and back rooms were seen as a civil society in embryo. Within those covert institutions came the education in liberty and the liberating energies that led to 1989. In the revolutions of that year … civil society triumphed over the state. (p. 128) I have explored the expansion of the public political realm in European communist systems, leading towards the demise of communist party rule, in ‘The Rise of Public Legitimation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe’, in Sabrina Ramet (ed.), Adaptation and Transformation in Communist and Post-Communist Systems (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993), pp.11–49.
Javier Ruperez, rapporteur, ‘Democratization in Eastern Europe: An Interim Report’, Draft General Report, NATO Civilian Affairs Committee, Intemational Secretariat, May 1994, p.6.
This debate was summarised in Jiři Pehe, ‘Civil Society at Issue in the Czech Republic’, RFE/RL East European Report, Vol.3, No.32, 19 August 1994.
See Richard Rose and Christian Haerpfer, New Democracies Barometer III (Glasgow: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, 1994).
Juan Linz, ‘Transitions to Democracy’, Washington Monthly, No.13, Summer 1990.
See, for example, Daniel N. Nelson, ‘The Diffusion of Non-Supportive Participatory Involvement in Eastern Europe’, Social Science Quarterly, Vol.67, No.13, Winter 1986, pp.636–44.
Samuel Huntington in his The Third Wave (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), Chapter 1, argues for a procedural definition of democracy based on the presence of elections. Even the most ‘free and fair’ elections, however, do not ensure that access to political candidacy will be available to all, that policies pursued by the victor will be guided by tolerance and the rule of law, or that the international behaviour of the elected government will follow peaceful relations with neighbours. Democracy, in other words, cannot be dissociated from who is elected, why they are elected, and what they do once they are elected.
Trust in institutions, politicians and policies of post-communist systems is explored by Richard Rose, ‘Postcommunism and the Problem of Trust’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.5, No.3, July 1994, pp.18–30.
Comparative data are reported in David G. Gibson, ‘High Public Confidence in the Church’, Transition, 5 April 1996, p.29.
Branko Milanovic, ‘A Cost of Transition: 50 Million New Poor and Growing Inequality’, Transition: The Newsletter About Reforming Economies (World Bank), Vol.5, No.8, October 1994, p.1.
Mieczyslaw Kabaj and Tadeusz Kowalik, ‘Who Is Responsible for Postcommunist Successes in Eastern Europe’, Transition, Vol.6, No.7–8, July-August 1995, p.8.
For one study that offers such a conclusion, see Roman Frydman and Andrzej Rapaczynski, Privatization in Eastern Europe: Is the State Withering Away? (Budapest and Prague: Central European University Press, 1994).
One example is Edward N. Muller, ‘Democracy, Economic Development and Income Inequality’, The American Sociological Review, Vol.53, No.1, 1988, pp.50–68; Muller’s citations include numerous other studies with related fmdings.
Vladimir Shlapentokh, ‘Russia — Privatization and Illegalization of Social and Political Life’, unpublished manuscript (Michigan State University, Department of Sociology, 1995).
Mary E. McIntosh, Martha Abele Maclver and Daniel G. Abele, ‘Publics Meet Market Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, 1991–1993’, Slavic Review, Vol.53, No.2, Summer 1994, p.502.
Aleksandr Kuranov writing in Nezavisimaya gazeta (Moscow), reprinted in World Press Review, August 1994, p.31.
See Edward N. Muller and Mitchell A. Seligson, ‘Civic Culture and Democracy: The Question of Causal Relationships’, American Political Science Review, Vol.88, No.3, September 1994, pp.635–52.
To the best of my knowledge, J. Roland Pennock coined the term ‘political goods’ in his article ‘Political Development, Political Systems, and Political Goods’, World Politics, Vol.18, No.2, April 1966.
For accounts of these efforts, one might examine financier George Soros’s Underwriting Democracy (New York: Free Press, 1991), or the National Democratic Institute’s volume New Democratic Frontier (Washington, DC: NDI, 1992).
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Nelson, D.N. (1999). Civil Society Endangered. In: Sakwa, R. (eds) The Experience of Democratization in Eastern Europe. International Council for Central and East European Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14511-9_7
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