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The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Philippe C. Schmitter  and
Terry Lynn Karl
Philippe C. Schmitter
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Terry Lynn Karl
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Slavic Review , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , Spring 1994 , pp. 173 - 185
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1994

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References

1. The most blatant examples of “early transitology” were Dankwart Rustow, “Transitions to démocracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics 2, no. 3 (April 1970): 337-63; and Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain démocracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). The latter was based on southern European and Latin American case studies. For an even earlier compilation exploiting these same countries which, however, did not attempt to draw any conclusions or interpretations, see Julian Santamaria, ed., Transición a la démocracίa en el sur de Europa y América Latina (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociologicas, 1982).

2. The locus classicus for this discussion is Giovanni Sartori, “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review 64 (1971): 1033-58. For a recent updating and extension, see David Collier and James E. Mahon, “Conceptual 'Stretching’ Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis,” American Political Science Review 87, no. 4 (December 1993): 845-55.

3. Evidence of my fascination with Machiavelli as a proto-transitologist can be found in my “Speculations about the Prospective Demise of Authoritarian Regimes and Its Possible Consequences,” Working Paper no. 60, The Woodrow Wilson Center, Latin American Program (1980). This paper was later revised and published as European University Institute Working Paper no. 85/165 (May 1985), and in two parts in Revista de Ciencia Politica (Lisbon) 1, no. 1 (1985): 83-102 and 2, no. 2 (1985): 125-44.

4. The idea and phraseology has been taken from the seminal article by Otto Kirchheimer, “Confining Conditions and Revolutionary Breakthroughs,” American Political Science Review 59 (1965): 964-74.

5. Which implies that national differences in consolidation are likely to be greater than national differences in transition.

6. The above paragraph was largely inspired by a reading of some recent essays by Ken Jowitt who admittedly may not be representative of the whole clan of ex- Sovietologists. Moreover, his misunderstanding of the literature on démocratization in southern Europe and Latin America—especially with regard to the (alleged) ease of transition and consolidation there—is such that many of the objections he raises simply do not hold. See his “Weber, Trotsky and Holmes on the Study of Leninist Regimes,” Journal of International Affairs (Summer 1991): 31-50 and “The Leninist Extinction“ in D. Chirot, ed., The Crisis of Leninism and the Decline of the Left (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), 74-99. For a more constructive attempt to suggest the “new analytical categories needed to account for the different dimensions of the current transition process (in East Central Europe),” see Grzegorz Ekiert, “démocratization Processes in East Central Europe: A Theoretical Reconsideration,” British Journal of Political Science (July 1991): 285-313. Ekiert, while noting the differences, is not so categoric about the need to reject all work on other areas. Also see Andrew C. Janos, “Social Science, Communism, and the Dynamics of Political Change,” World Politics 44, no. 1 (October 1991): 8 1 - 112; and Russell Bova, “Political Dynamics of the Post-Communist Transition: A Comparative Perspective,” World Politics (October 1991): 113-38. Incidentally, my impression from conversations and meetings with scholars from the post-communist societies is that they are much less inclined to reject the relevance of démocratization experiences in southern Europe and Latin America than are North American area specialists. This does not obviate the possibility that their fascination with the Spanish or Chilean “model” may be misguided or misleading.

7. For example, in some cases such as Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, it was at first unclear as to whether the ancien régime had indeed been deposed and whether the ensuing elections were conducted under fair enough conditions to consider that the winners were attempting to establish a different form of political domination. Subsequent events, especially in the process of government formation, have made it clear that a genuine régime change has taken place.

8. Several authors seem to have independently picked up this notion of “waves.“ I explored it in “The Consolidation of démocracy and the Choice of Institutions, “ presented at the East-South Systems Transformation (ESST) Conference, 4-7 January 1992, Toledo, Spain. See also Sidney Tarrow, “'Aiming at a Moving Target': Social Science and the Recent Rebellions in Eastern Europe,” PS (March 1991): 12-20; and Huntington, Samuel B., The Third Wave: démocratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991 Google Scholar).

9. The case of the ex-German démocratic Republic should be excluded from this universe. It was, however, equivalent, but only to the point at which the dynamics of reunification with the Federal Republic took over.

10. It should also be noted that these parametric conditions do not radically juxtapose the eastern and southern cases, but overŁAP to some degree. For example, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia are not alone in having problems of national identity and borders that complicate the démocratization process. Spain and, to a much lesser extent, Portugal had to deal with demands for greater regional autonomy, even secession. Similarly, countries in Latin America have had to cope with over-bloated state apparatuses and unproductive public enterprises, even if the issue did not approach the magnitude of the problem of privatization in ex-command economies. The Central American cases of Nicaragua and El Salvador, in particular, may have more in common generically with those of eastern Europe than with their regional brethren to the south.

11. Although I would agree that there are important qualitative differences in the pattern and scale of development, especially with regard to production and distribution systems, that may make it much more difficult for the eastern countries to exploit these aggregate assets in a more open context of political or economic competition.

12. My thinking on this matter has been influenced by the work of David Ost. See his “Shaping the New Politics in Poland,” presented at the conference on “Dilemmas of Transition from State Socialism in East Central Europe,” Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 15-17 March 1991 and “Labor in Post-Communist Transformations, “ Working Paper 5.17, Center for German and European Studies, University of California, Berkeley, July 1993.

13. Although it is hard to beat the initial Portuguese case for sheer surprise and unpreparedness to rule. Elsewhere in southern Europe and Latin America—except, most notably, in Nicaragua—opposition groups had much more time to anticipate coming to power and even to prepare elaborate contingency arrangements. On the unexpectedness of the eastern European transitions, see Kuran, Timur, “Now out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989,” World Politics (October 1991): 7–48 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. No doubt, this generalization overlooks the possibility, even the likelihood, that forces from the ancien régime are still well entrenched in local units of governance and production and can, therefore, pose much more of an obstacle to démocratic consolidation than would be apparent from the parties and persons governing at the national level. I am indebted to Steve Fish for this point. See his “The Emergence of Independent Associations and the Transformation of Russian Political Society, “ Journal of Communist Studies 7, no. 3 (September 1991): 299-334 and his forthcoming démocracy from Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution.

16. For the initial observation, see Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, op.cit., 17-21. It should be noted that the cases upon which this generalization was based did not include those of Central America. In that subregion, external influence and intromission have been (and continue to be) much more significant. For a criticism with regard to southern Europe, see Pridham, Geoffrey, ed., Encouraging démocracy: The International Context of Regime Transition in Southern Europe (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991 Google Scholar).

17. Greece's (temporary) withdrawal from NATO is a minor exception—counterbalanced by Spain's (contested) entry into NATO. The decision by all of the southern European countries to become full members of the EC did not so much alter existing patterns of economic dependence as intensify them. For an assessment of the impact of démocratization upon regional security, cooperation and integration in the southern cone of Latin America, see Philippe C. Schmitter, “Change in Regime Type and Progress in International Relations” in Adler, E. and Crawford, B., eds., Progress in Postwar International Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 89–127 Google Scholar.

18. This issue is discussed at greater length in Schmitter, Philippe C., “The International Context for Contemporary démocratization Stanford Journal of International Affairs II, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 1993): 1–34 Google Scholar. To the above general observations about the external context in eastern Europe, one could add another, more specific, condition: the sheer fact that it is located in such close geographic proximity to centers in western Europe of much greater prosperity and security. This makes the “exit option,” especially for relatively skilled persons, much easier. On the one hand, this threatens to deprive these emergent démocracies of some of their most highly motivated actors and to leave their consolidation in the hands of less talented ones; on the other hand, the very prospect of such a mass exodus increases the prospects for their extracting external resources intended precisely to prevent that from happening. Again, the parallel with Central America emerges. Here, too, the indirect influence and direct intromission of foreign agents has been of considerable importance, both in determining the timing and nature of their transitions from authoritarian rule and in “conditioning” the consolidation of their respective démocracies. These actions by the United States, in particular, are not unrelated to the region's geographical location and the threat that sizable flows of refugees could pose to its security. The present case of Haiti well illustrates the problem—and the difficulty of bringing effective external power to bear on an issue as complex and uncertain as régime change.

19. “Transitions to démocracy,” Comparative Politics 2 (1970): 337-63.

20. Since writing the above comments, we have read Terry, Sarah Meiklejohn, “Thinking about Post-communist Transitions: How Different Are They?” Slavic Review 52, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 333–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While two of the points she raises concord easily with mine: the “dual-track nature” of their transitions (my “simultaneity“), the “potential influence of the international environment” (my “enhanced role of external actors“), on other grounds I would differ. For example, I would contest that all the earlier transitions took place at a lower level of socio-economic development and argue that the two sub-samples in fact overŁAP considerably—while conceding that certain qualitative aspects are significantly different. It may, in fact, be more difficult to dismantle an uncompetitive industrial apparatus ex post than to create one ex ante, but that ignores the major effort that many capitalist neodémocracies have had to make in deregulation, privatization and industrial restructuring. On the issue of civil society, Guillermo O'Donnell and I argued not for their “resilience” in southern Europe and Latin America, as she claims, but for their “resurrection“—in most cases after, not before the transition. The unruliness, cacophony, political paralysis and demagogy she sees are by no means confined to post-communist civil societies. The only issue which does strike me as apposite is greater ethnic complexity. Several of the neodémocracies are exceedingly complex from any objective ethnic perspective— Brazil and Peru, for example—but the subjective political consequences of this diversity seem less compelling. Spain successfully confronted the assertion of regional and linguistic demands during its transition—even if, I would admit, conflicts over national identity and national purpose played little or no role in the initial versions of transitology.

21. The one thing that cannot be done is to take refuge in empirie—in the diligent collection of facts without any guidance from theories and models. Given the sheer volume of data, not to mention their frequently contradictory referents, without some sense of priorities and categories for classification no analyst is likely to be able to make much sense of what is going on—much less within a time frame that might be of some use to the actors themselves. Former Sovietologists converted to the new tasks of explaining transition and consolidation would be better advised to spend more effort on conceptualization—even an alternative conceptualization—than on diligent data gathering. Sarah Meiklejohn Terry's suggestion that former Soviet area specialists wait for ten to fifteen years before making their (presumptively) original contribution to transitology or consolidology strikes me as ill advised. Fortunately, there are those such as Laszlo Bruzst, David Stark, Grzegorz Ekiert, Andrew Janos, Russell Bova, Steve Fish, David Ost and Michael McFaul who have already begun such an effort.

22. Romania and, more recently, Georgia are obvious exceptions to the generalization about non-violence, the (ex-)Soviet Union and (ex-)Yugoslavia to the relatively short transitional period.