From elections to democracy in central Europe: Public participation and the role of civil society

East European Politics and Societies

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 31-47

  Rose Ackerman, Susan ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Administrative law; Democracy; Hungary; Poland; Public accountability

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846555596     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: 15338371     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325406297132     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. This view of democracy builds on Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1942). chap. 12. It has been most forcefully expressed in recent years by Adam Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
2. For example, Jon Elster, Claus Offe, and Ulrich Preuss, Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 110-111, mention three elements of the transition from socialism that the book ignored in spite of their importance. Two of these are devices for interest articulation besides political parties and the reform of the state administration.
3. Elster, Offe, and Preuss, Institutional Design. See also Susan Rose-Ackerman, "Trust and Honesty in Post-Socialist Societies," Kyklos 54 (2001): 415-43; and Susan Rose-Ackerman, "Trust, Honesty and Corruption: Reflections on the State-Building Process," Archives of European Sociology 42 (2001): 526-70.
4. Jana Kunicová and Susan Rose-Ackerman, "Electoral Rules and Constitutional Structures as Constraints on Corruption," British Journal of Political Science 35 (2005). 573-606. The exception here is a very unstable system where incumbents, if overthrown, do not expect to reenter politics. In such cases, they may try to steal as much as possible before leaving office. See Susan Rose-Ackerman, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences and Reform, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 113-21.
5. Susan Rose-Ackerman, Controlling Environmental Policy: The Limits of Public Law in Germany and the United States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). and Bo Rothstein, Just Institutions Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
6. Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971). and Guillermo O'Donnell, "Illusions about Consolidation," Journal of Democracy 7 (1996): 34-51.
7. Elster, Offe, and Preuss, Institutional Design ; Grezegorz Ekiert and Jan Kubik, Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland, 1989-1993 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Marc Morjé Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and János Kornai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992).
8. See Susan Rose-Ackerman, From Elections to Democracy: Building Accountable Government in Hungary and Poland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). The quoted phrase is from the title of Elster, Offe, and Preuss, Institutional Design. According to Anna Grzymała-Busse and Pauline Jones Luong, "Reconceptualizing the State: Lessons from Post-Communism," Politics and Society 30 (2002): 529-54, at 544, Poland and Hungary in 2002 were "nearly consolidated democratic states." They also place the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and the Baltic States in that category. Anna Grzymała-Busse, "Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East Central Europe," Comparative Political Studies 20 (2003): 126-51, argues that Hungary and Poland are similar in their relative success in establishing a depoliticized bureaucracy. Graeme Gill, Democracy and Post-Communism, (London: Routledge, 2002), 24-31, places Poland and Hungary alone in the category where civil society forces emerged before the fall of the regime and were seen as appropriate negotiation partners by the incumbent leaders. The result is a stable democracy where the former Communist Party has transformed itself into a social democratic party.
9. Table 1.2 in Rose-Ackerman, From Elections to Democracy, 10, reports on the low levels of political activity other than voting in Central and Eastern Europe.
10. Linda Cook and Mitchell Orenstein, "The Return of the Left and Its Impact on the Welfare State in Russia, Poland and Hungary," in L. J. Cook, M. A. Orenstein, and M. Rueschemeyer, eds., Left Parties and Social Policy in Postcommunist Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999). 47-108; and Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society. On the Czech Republic, see Milada Anna Vachudova, "The Czech Republic: The Unexpected Force of Institutional Constraints," in Jan Zielonka and Alex Pravda, eds., Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe, vol. 2, International and Transnational Factors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 337.
11. This section is based on Rose-Ackerman, From Elections to Democracy, 126-162, which provides sources for the material discussed here.
12. This section is based on Rose-Ackerman, From Elections to Democracy, ibid., 163-215, which includes references to published sources and interviews with the leaders of environmental groups in Hungary and student groups in Poland.
13. For a more comprehensive review of the literature on the U.S. case, see Rose-Ackerman, From Elections to Democracy, ibid., 219-233.
14. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) passed in 1946 is at 5 U.S.C. §§ 551-559, 701-706. It has been amended through 552 (Freedom of Information Act), 552b (Government in the Sunshine Act), 561-570 (Negotiated Rulemaking Act), Appendix 2 (Federal Advisory Committee Act).
15. The Taiwanese APA has notice and comment rule making with no requirement for reason giving and limited judicial review. The act provides only limited public accountability. See Wen-Chen Cheng, "Alternative Agenda[s] in Constitutional Reengineering: Ensuring the Rule of Law and Political Trust in Taiwan" (Presented at the International Conference on Constitutional Reengineering in New Democracies: Taiwan and the World, Taipei, Taiwan, 28-29 October, 2005 ).
16. Cornelius M. Kerwin and Scott R. Furlong, "Time and Rulemaking: An Empirical Test of Theory," Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 2 (1992). 113-138. A major rule making at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) averages almost three years and requires many hours of input from both bureaucrats and outside interests from industry and the environmental community. Many rules are challenged in court before they go into effect, introducing further delay. See Cary Coglianese, "Assessing Consensus: The Promise and Performance of Negotiated Rulemaking," Duke Law Journal 46 (1997): 1255-1349.
17. William F. West, "Formal Procedures, Informal Processes, Accountability, and Responsiveness in Bureaucratic Policy Making: An Institutional Analysis," Public Administration Review 64 (2004). 66-80.
18. Between 1992 and 2001, the number of final rules issued each year ranged from 4,132 in 2001 to a high of 4,937 in 1996. Of the 4,509 rules in the pipeline in October 2001, 149 were major rules, defined as those with at least a $100 million economic cost. Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2002). 11-16.
19. West found that a common reason for delay was agency lawyers' efforts to withstand court challenges (West, "Formal Procedures," 72). In one rule that was substantially changed after notice and comment, he quotes an official who claimed that the agency staff had "failed to do their homework on this one" by neglecting to consider the interests of some of the producers affected by the rule.
20. See, for example, Wesley A. Magat, Alan J. Krupnick, and Winston Harrington, Rules in the Making: A Statistical Analysis of Regulatory Agency Behavior (Washington, D.C.: RFF Press, 1986). and Nina A. Mendelson, "Agency Burrowing: Entrenching Policies and Personnel before a New President Arrives," New York University Law Review 78 (2003): 557-666.
21. Rose-Ackerman, From Elections to Democracy, 37-54.
22. Rose-Ackerman, From Elections to Democracy, Ibid., 55-99.
23. Case studies of several of these experiments are reviewed in Susan Rose-Ackerman, "Governance and Corruption," in Bjørn Lomborg, ed., Global Crises, Global Solutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 316-322.