A. Main Hypotheses of Relevance to PDT

Political Institutions

Executive Power

In authoritarian regimes where strong state or party capacity exists, incumbent power will remain relatively stable. Therefore, democracy promoters “need to pay much greater attention to the strength of autocratic regime structures and not just the power of democratic forces” (52).

Parties

Strong parties and strong states will help incumbents stay in power despite Western leverage. Weak parties and states will be vulnerable to Western leverage.

Ethno-federalism

Especially in divided states, the party, the state, and the incumbent will use shared ethnicity as a powerful means of cohesion.

Mass Mobilization

W+L argue that recent transitions away from autocratic regimes that have been attributed to mass protests are actually rooted in state and party weakness.

Economic Institutions

Reliance on high-value raw materials

When a large amount of resources are concentrated in the hands of the government, the government can either ‘starve the opposition,’ employ a large percentage of the population (thus making their careers and livelihoods dependant on the state), and pay for the loyalty of officials.

Prior Democratic Experience/Culture:

W+L argue that “where economic, social, political and information linkage to the West is strong…Western pressure is likely to create democracies even in relatively inhospitable areas.

External Factors:

EU

In cases where strong state or party capacities do not exist, incumbents will be vulnerable to Western leverage. Where Western leverage is not possible, the incumbents will remain in power despite their otherwise fragile legitimacy. Otherwise, leverage alone cannot bring about a democracy; it must be coupled with domestic factors. Leverage has been successful in forcing transitions from autocracy to competitive authoritarianism.

Proximity to the West

Creates high Western linkage and is a powerful predictor of democratic breakthrough.

Russia

Russian aid will undermine any existing Western leverage.

B. Article Summary

In understanding why some autocratic regimes have been more stable than others, this paper focuses on the strength of autocratic regime structures, rather than the role of opposition parties or other democratic forces. Specifically, W+L have pinpointed three key factors that shape trajectories of post-Soviet authoritarian regimes.

1.     Western Linkage. High Western linkage cases should democratize, even in relatively inhospitable cases, due to overwhelming international pressure. Low linkage areas will fail to do so in the absence of a strong domestic push.

2.     Incumbent, State and Party Capacity. Incumbent governments with low linkage and high incumbent capacity states should be able to remain in power even when confronted by mobilized populations. In cases with low Western linkage, but where strong states or parties do not exist, incumbents will be vulnerable to Western leverage. Where Western leverage is not possible, the incumbents will remain in power despite their otherwise fragile legitimacy.

3.     Western Leverage. The fate of incumbents in low linkage, low incumbent capacity cases should depend on whether they face high or low Western leverage. Where countries are able to subsist outside of the economic world of the West, incumbents, both weak and strong, will have a better chance of remaining in control.

I. The International Dimension: Linkage and Leverage

Western Leverage: Governments’ vulnerability to external democratizing pressure is rooted in three factors:

1. Size and strength of the countries’ states and economies.
2. Competing foreign policy objectives Where foreign interests have countervailing economic or strategic motives, incumbents will cast themselves, and regime stability, as the best way of protecting nationalist interests.
3. Existence of countervailing powers who provide alternative sources of economic, military, and/or diplomatic support.

Leverage itself “was often effective in forcing transitions from full scale autocracy to competitive authoritarianism, but it was rarely sufficient to induce democratization.” (5) Leverage alone cannot bring democracy because it has been employed so inconsistently; it has, in the past, focused only on elections, ignoring other dimensions such as civil liberties and because western leverage often eases up after the first elections.

Linkage to the West: Linkage—defined as “the density of ties (economic, political, diplomatic, social, and organizational) and cross-border flows (of capital, goods and services, people, and information)”—is “rooted in a variety of historical factors, including colonialism, military occupation, geopolitical alliances” and is enhanced by capitalist development (6). The most important source of linkage is geographic proximity. Linkage contributed to democracy by creating democratic constituencies, who support democracy for fear of losing the benefits of Western ties. It also usually translates into large-scale support for democracy.

All post-soviet countries have Medium-low linkage. Thus, western intervention has not fundamentally altered the balance of power between opposition and incumbents as it did in Serbia or Slovakia. In the absence of a real external pressure, democratization in the former Soviet Union hinges on the presence of a strong domestic push, as in the case of the Ukraine in 2004.

II: Domestic Sources of Stability: Autocratic State and Party Capacity

Some autocratic regimes are extremely weak and collapse in the face of even minimal opposition (Shevarnadze in Georgia). In these cases, it was incumbent weakness rather than opposition strength that drove transitions. In contrast, regimes built on more solid foundations (backed by well financed states, strong coercive apparatuses, and/or cohesive ruling parties) survive serious challenges by the opposition.

The State and Coercive Capacity. “Authoritarian state institutions furnish governments with tools to monitor, co-opt, intimidate, and repress potential opponents, both in civil society and within the regime itself” (11). Incumbents do this by means of coercion that “enhances [their] capacity to monitor, intimidate, and when necessary, repress opponents” (11). States can employ either high intensity coercion (i.e. visible acts of violence) or low intensity coercion (i.e. more systematic efforts such as police surveillance, harassment and detention, grassroots intimidation campaigns, etc.). Low intensity coercion is often preemptive, destroying the seedlings of an opposition movement before it has time to organize. Coercive capacity can be measured along two dimensions: scope and cohesion. Scope “refers to the effective reach—across territory and into society—of the state’s coercive apparatus” (12). Variation in cohesion is rooted in a few key factors:

1. Fiscal Health. Unpaid state officials are less likely to take orders that demand repression or vote-stealing. Incumbents that rely heavily on material payoffs are often more vulnerable to insubordination during periods of crises in which their financial sources can be cut off. The highest levels of cohesion are found where material payments are complimented by another source of cohesion.
2. Shared Ethnicity. Particularly in divided societies, autocrats have enhanced loyalty within security agencies by packing them with ethnic allies.
3. Shared Ideologies.
4. Shared Military Struggles Such as war, revolution or liberation movements.

State Power and Economic Control. Incumbents’ economic power is high when resources are concentrated in state hands and when governments enjoy substantial discretionary power in allocating resources. In these cases, control of economic resources can thwart opposition challenges by substituting for coercive mechanisms because they can routinely use the tax system, the financial system, licensing, and government jobs and contracts to punish opponents and reward allies. In this way, incumbents can literally starve the opposition, making it costly for elites to defect and leaving the opposition with no other conceivable financial base.

The Role of the Party Organization. “Strong ruling parties encourage continued cooperation over defection by providing institutional mechanisms to reward loyalists…and by lengthening actors’ time horizons through the offer of future opportunities for career advancement” (15-16). Through the use of patronage, incumbents can control the electoral process. The obviation of defections creates a stronger, more appealing party organization. This stronger party is also organized to carry-out such illicit schemes as vote fraud. This more tight knit party is also better at controlling the legislature between elections. Lastly, strong parties facilitate executive succession that will ensure autocratic rule in the future.

Like state coercive capacity, party strength can be measured in terms of scope and cohesion. Here, scope refers to the size of a party’s infrastructure. Cohesion refers to “incumbents’ ability to secure the cooperation of partisan allies within the government, in the legislature, and at the local or regional level” (17). Its variation is rooted in the same factors of incumbent coercive cohesion listed above.

Linkage, Incumbent Capacity, Leverage and the Fate of Post-Soviet Competitive Authoritarianism

Competitive authoritarian regimes “are civilian non-democratic regimes in which democratic institutions exist and permit meaningful competition for power, but in which the political playing field is so heavily tilted in favor of incumbents that the regime cannot be labeled democratic.” (19)

Given the relatively similar linkage in these post-soviet cases, this section attempts to create a correlation between differences in autocratic stability and differences in state and party capacity. W+L suggest that weak states and parties in Georgia, Moldova in the 1990s and Ukraine facilitated otherwise weak opposition efforts to overthrow autocrats. Relatively strong states and/or parties in Armenia, Russia under Putin, Moldova in the 2000s and to some extent Belarus under Lukashenka helped incumbents either defeat opposition challenges or face down powerful opposition mobilization (Armenia). Relatively weak incumbents in Belarus and Russia under Yeltsin were able to stay in power because of low Western leverage.

The remainder of the article analyzes each of the above countries in detail and gives a short history of the development of the strength of their party and state capacity since the fall of the USSR.

C. Comments

This is one of the most helpful articles I have read so far. It has convinced me that the level of autocratic regime strength is a great indicator of what countries are ripe for change. External forces should try to funnel money into media and civil society where a weak state and/or parties exist.

(Summarized by Yomaira Tamayo, 07/10/06)