Favorable conditions and electoral revolutions

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 17, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 5-18

  Bunce, Valerie J ^a   Wolchik, Sharon L ^b  

^a Department of Obstetrics Gynecology   (United States)

^b GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33750993488     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.2006.0056     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. On these revolutions, see Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, "Bringing Down Dictators: American Democracy Promotion and Electoral Revolutions in Postcommunist Eurasia," under review;
2. Valerie Bunce and Sharon Wolchik, "International Diffusion and Postcommunist Electoral Revolutions," Communist and Post-Communist Studies, forthcoming, September 2006;
3. Michael McFaul, "Transitions from Postcommunism," Journal of Democracy 16 (July 2005): 5-19;
4. Lucan A. Way, "Authoritarian State-Building and the Sources of Regime Competitiveness in the Fourth Wave: The Cases of Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine," World Politics 57 (January 2005): 231-61;
5. Lucan A. Way, "Ukraine's Orange Revolution: Kuchma's Failed Authoritarianism," Journal of Democracy 16 (April 2005): 131-45;
6. Vitali Silitski, "Is the Age of Post-Soviet Electoral Revolutions Over?" Democracy at Large 1 (September 2005): 8-10;
7. Vitali Silitski, "The Long Road from Tyranny: Post-Communist Authoritarianism and Struggle for Democracy in Serbia and Belarus," unpubl. ms.;
8. and Jonathan Wheatley, Georgia From National Awakening to Rose Revolution: Delayed Transition in the Former Soviet Union (London: Ashgate, 2005).
9. On the first two points, see Daniel Brinks and Michael Coppedge, "Diffusion Is No Illusion: Neighbor Emulation in the Third Wave of Democracy," Comparative Political Studies 39 (September 2005): 1-23;
10. Steven F, Finkel, Anibal Perez-Linan, Mitchell A. Seligson, and Dinorah Azpuru, "Effects of US Foreign Assistance on Democracy Building: Results of a Cross-National Quantitative Study," USAID Final Report, version 34, January 2006;
11. Scott Mainwaring and Anibal Perez-Linan, "Why Regions of the World are Important: Regional Specificities and Region-Wide Diffusion of Democracy," Working Paper 322, Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame, October 2005.
12. On the third point, see Adrian Karatnycky and Peter Ackerman, How Freedom Is Won: From Civic Resistance to Durable Democracy (New York: Freedom House, 2005).
13. See also Valerie Bunce, "Rethinking Recent Democratization: Lessons from the Postcommunist Experience," World Politics 55 (January 2003): 167-92.
14. According to Freedom House figures for 2005 (and adding our reading of the new state of Montenegro - as of June 2006 - and recent developments in Kyrgyzstan), the region was divided as follows: twelve countries are Free (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia); nine are Partly Free (Albania, Armenia, Bosnia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, and Ukraine); and seven are Not Free (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan. Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). See "Global Survey 2006: Middle East Progress Amid Global Gains in Freedom," 19 December 2005, at www.freedomhouse.org/template,cfm? page=70&release=317.
15. The four countries are Armenia (2003-2004), Azerbaijan (2005), Kazakhstan (2005), and Belarus (2006). On Azerbaijan, see Leila Alieva, "Azerbaijan's Frustrating Elections," Journal of Democracy 17 (April 2006): 147-60.
16. On Belarus, see Vitali Silitski, "Preempting Democracy: The Case of Belarus," Journal of Democracy 16 (October 2005): 83-97. His analysis of Belarus's March 2006 presidential election appears elsewhere in this issue.
17. Scott Radnitz, "What Really Happened in Kyrgyzstan?" Journal of Democracy 17 (April 2006): 132-46.
18. Marc Morjé Howard and Philip G. Roessler, "Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes," American Journal of Political Science 50 (April 2006): 365-81.
19. Turnover, in fact, is exceptional in general in sub-Saharan Africa. As Nicolas Van de Walle has recently argued, of the 92 presidential elections that took place in sub-Saharan Africa from 1990 to 2004, only 13 produced electoral turnover. See "When Do Oppositions Coalesce in Electoral Autocracies?" Working Paper 01-05, Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University, August 2005.
20. See Grzegorz Ekiert and Stephen E. Hanson, eds., Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe: Assessing the Legacy of Communist Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
21. Marc Morjé Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Postcommunist Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
22. and Bela Greskovits, "Rival Views of Postcommunist Market Society: The Path Dependence of Transitology," in Michel Dobry, ed., Democratic and Capitalist Transitions in Eastern Europe: Lessons for the Social Sciences (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer), 19-45.
23. See Valerie Bunce, "Sequencing Political and Economic Reforms," in John Hardt and Richard Kaufman, eds., East-Central European Economies in Transition (Washington, D.C.: Joint Economic Committee, 1994), 46-63;
24. M. Steven Fish, "Democratization's Prerequisites," Post-Soviet Affairs 14 (July-September 1998): 212-47;
25. and Valerie Bunce, "Enabling and Enhancing Democracy: Global Patterns and Postcommunist Dynamics," paper prepared for the Project on Democratic Transitions, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, 10 December 2005.
26. Victor Zaslavsky, and Robert Brym, "The Functions of Elections in the USSR," Soviet Studies 30 (July 1978): 362-71;
27. Barnabas Racz, "The Parliamentary Infrastructure and Political Reform in Hungary," Soviet Studies 41 (January 1985): 39-66;
28. and Barnabas Racz, "Political Participation and Developed Socialism: The Hungarian Elections of 1985," Soviet Studies 39 (January 1987): 40-62.
29. The comparative data that follow are all based upon The World Development Report 2006: Equity and Development (New York: World Bank, 2005), 284-85, 292-93.
30. See, for example, The 2005 NGO Sustainability Index for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Washington, D.C.: USAID, May, 2006).
31. The communist region as an antechamber for wave-like changes has been analyzed by Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
32. and Mark Beissinger, Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
33. For an early analysis of such dynamics, see Zvi Y. Gitelman, "The Diffusion of Innovation from Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union," Sage Professional Paper in Comparative Politics Series, Vol. 3, 1972.
34. This article draws on an ongoing research project for which we have conducted approximately 100 interviews with participants and observers in the United States, Europe, and the countries involved.
35. Steven F. Finkel et al., "Effects of U.S. Foreign Assistance on Democracy Building."
36. Steven F. Finkel et al., "Effects of U.S. Foreign Assistance on Democracy Building," 14.
37. In the absence of continued engagement, for example, the institutionalization of fair elections suffers. There is a large literature on this problem for sub-Saharan Africa. See Lise Rakner, "Electoral Administration in Sub-Saharan Africa: Why Does It Not Improve? The Role of Foreign Finances," paper presented at a conference on "External Actors and State (Re)-Construction," Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University, 11-12 November 2005.
38. Steven F. Finkel et al., "Effects of U.S. Foreign Assistance on Democracy Building," 29-32.
39. See Sabine Fischer, "The EU Strategy of 'New Neighborhood' and its Impact on International Relations with the Former Soviet Union," paper presented at the International Studies Association, Honolulu, 1-5 March 2006.
40. See Jos van Wersch and Jeroen de Zeeuw, "Mapping European Democracy Assistance: Tracing the Activities and Financial Flows of Political Foundations," working paper 36, at www.clingendael.nl/publications/2005.
41. Countries with prospects for positive impact have "absorptive capacity," to borrow a phrase from analysts of development and state building. For more evidence on international assistance in general, including development assistance, see Arthur A. Goldsmith, "Fool's Errands? Nation-Building in the Twenty-first Century," paper presented at the conference on External Actors and State (Re)-Construction.
42. On the contradictions built into electoral autocracies, see Andreas Schedler, "The Nested Game of Democratization by Elections," International Political Science Review 23 (January 2002): 103-22;
43. and Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, "The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism," Journal of Democracy 13 (April 2002): 51-65.
44. This distinction was drawn most helpfully in Larry Diamond, "New Foreign Policies: Promoting Democracy," Foreign Policy, Summer 1992.
45. There is a substantial literature on some of the unanticipated costs of civil society promotion in the postcommunist world. See Anna Aksartova, "NGO Diffusion in the Former Soviet Union and Its Effect," ch. 4 in "Civil Society Abroad: U.S. Donors in the Former Soviet Union" (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 2005);
46. Sarah Henderson, "Selling Civil Society: Western Aid and the Non-Governmental Organizations Sector in Russia," Comparative Political Studies 35 (March 2002): 136-67;
47. Alexander Cooley and James Ron, "The NGO Scramble: Organizational Insecurity and the Political Economy of Transnational Action," International Security 27 (Summer 2002): 5-39
48. ; and Sarah Mendelson and Theodore Gerber, "Local Activist Cultures and Transnational Diffusion: An Experiment in Social Marketing Among Human Rights Groups in Russia," unpubl. ms., April 2005.
49. See Wade Jacoby, The Enlargement of the EU and NATO: Ordering from the Menu in Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).