developing democracy or competitive neopatrimonialism?

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The Political Regime of Ukraine in Comparative Perspective" is ... neopatrimonial system, the individual national leader controls the political and economic.
DEVELOPING DEMOCRACY OR COMPETITIVE NEOPATRIMONIALISM? THE POLITICAL REGIME OF UKRAINE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Oleksandr Fisun Petro Jacyk Visiting Scholar Associate Professor, Department of Political Science Kharkiv National University, pl. Svobody, 4, Kharkiv, 61077, Ukraine tel. +380 (572) 45-71-63 [email protected] [email protected] Presentation prepared for the workshop on “Institution Building and Policy Making in Ukraine”. Sponsored by the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine. Room 208, North Building, MCIS, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto, Canada, October 24, 2003 My

presentation

under

the

title

"Developing

Democracy

or

Competitive

Neopatrimonialism? The Political Regime of Ukraine in Comparative Perspective" is devoted to rethinking of the contemporary Ukrainian political development in comparative theoretical perspective. The initial impulse for this focus of my research was a clearer and clearer understanding that the collapse of communism does not mean the automatic transition of the former Soviet societies into new democratic ones. The hypnosis of Huntington’s theory of global “third wave” of democratization urged the majority of researchers to analyze the post-Soviet development in the context of democratic transition in other parts of the world – Latin America, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. But now, the euphoria after the downfall of the USSR in the beginning of the 90s has become skepticism and disappointment. More and more researchers talk about the development of various types of hybrid regimes, facade democracy and even quasi-democracy, which nature and “machinery” are very far from the liberal standards. These insights are useful, but incomplete for solving the puzzle of the post-Soviet political regimes. Really crucial points are answers to following two questions. First of all is the question, to what degree can the post-Soviet "developing democracies" be conceptualized as real democracies, both in form and in content? What is the distinctive characteristic of the new political regimes, which have arisen in the former Soviet area?

2 Is hybrid regime a stage on the road to competitive democracy or it’s become something else? I think that the problem with understanding post-Soviet democracy may be compared with the study of an iceberg, which has two parts – above-water, which consists of modern political institutions with elections, political competition, constitutional rules and norms, etc., and underwater, which is significantly bigger and more important than the visible half. My basic hypothesis is that post-Soviet political trajectories after the fall of Soviet Union, in most cases, are leading to renewal, modification and rationalization of the patrimonial systems of domination, but by no means to the establishment of Westernstyle rational-legal competitive democracy. In contrast to Latin America, Southern and East Central Europe, where Third wave of democratization took place after the nationbuilding and the rational-legal state-building, democratization in the post-Soviet states (with the exception of Baltic region) precedes both nation-building and rational-legal state-building. The transitions to democracy are lead more likely to the establishing of some neo-traditional political institutions. Why??? The key element of post-Soviet development is the unfinished modern state/national building and rational-bureaucratic transformation, that predetermine the compensate role of the neopatrimonial modes of rulership and state-society relations. This distinction, in my opinion, provide more articulated and clear difference between the post-Soviet transformations, on the one hand, and Latin America, Southern and (even) the most part of East Central Europe (including Baltic countries) transitions, on the other hand. I think, that the development of new theoretical frameworks to the interpretations of the post-Soviet political regimes may and must be connected with comparative macrohistorical studies of nation-building and state-building, which was elaborated from Max Weber’s theoretical legacy by wide range of scholars from different academic backgrounds. Max Weber widely used the concept of “patrimonialism”, which was opposed both the feudal form of government, and bureaucratic rational-legal domination. The main feature of patrimonialism is the private appropriation of a governmental sphere by those who carry political power, and also the indivisibility of the public and private

3 sphere of society. In the neopatrimonial system the ruling groups regard society as their own private domain and the fulfillment of public functions as a legitimate means to their own personal enrichment. Guenther Roth from so called Berkeley school of historical sociology was the first who has pointed out the rise of new modernized forms of patrimonial domination, especially in the new post-colonial states of Africa and Asia. The profound comparative and historical analysis of the distinction between the traditional patrimonialism and modern neopatrimonial structures was first presented in the innovative works of Shmuel Eisenstadt. The distinctive feature of neopatrimonialism is a symbiosis of patrimonial and modern rational-bureaucratic rule in which the formal institutions of political democracy (for example, parliament, multi-party system and electoral competition) yield and adapt to neopatrimonial logic about the operation of the political system as a whole. The foundation of neopatrimonial regimes is the patron-client relationship In the neopatrimonial system, the individual national leader controls the political and economic life of the country, and the personal clientistic relationships with the leader play a crucial role in amassing personal wealth or in the rise and decline of members of the political elite. My principal research thesis is that the main result of the collapse of the communist system at the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s is hardly a transition to democracy (like, for example, in Central and Eastern Europe, including the Baltic countries), but, on the contrary, to the formation and institutionalization of a new, modernized form of semi-traditional domination, in which patrimonial relationships play the key and structure-forming role both in the determination of the rules of “political games” and in the operation of the political system as a whole. In my opinion, the postSoviet “democratization” of the 90s transformed the sprouts of patrimonial domination, which had existed in the Soviet system, into a new form of “modernized” neopatrimonialism, appearing on the basis of the private appropriation of public realm and “electoral” benefits. I think, that neopatrimonial interpretation of post-Soviet political systems allows to conceptualize precisely enough their specific features and also to place them in wider context of political and historical comparative analysis of different

4 trajectories/patterns of transition to modernity that is well studied as for Western Europe, as for Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Post-Soviet variations of neopatrimonial structures provide a formal installation of the modern state institutions - parliament and multiparty system, electoral competition and an advanced constitution; but playing the role of system’s legitimate facade, these ones are internally subordinated to patrimonial machinery. For all that, rational-legal relations in public sphere don’t play a key role in power relation, but namely patron-client bonds do, e.g. they regulate the access of neopatrimonial players to various resources on the basis of personal loyalty and capital exchanges. The post-Soviet political regimes are characterized by concentration of power in the hands of an individual ruler who maintains control mainly by distributing patronage to a network of clients.

Neopatrimonial elites/rulers tend to monopolize material

resources turning the political game into a zero-sum

«winner-take-all» struggle for

control over the post-Soviet state and economy. Within the “party of power,” the core positions belong to the “presidential clan” which holds the key position in polity and control profitable industries of the national economy. The central element of this clan is a system of personal ties, centered on the president and based first and foremost on regional or ethnic unity, as well as on present-day rent-seeking interests. In that way, the basic elements of modern democratic system, transferred on the post-soviet ground (e.g. political parties, elections, parliament) have been fundamentally transformed to some form of Potemkin exterior that covers patrimonial and semipatrimonial political backyard. Tied together among themselves mainly not by modern, rational-legal civic relations, but by the patron-client relationships, post-Soviet modern political institutions are becoming the convenient frame, under which a process of reproduction of traditional forms of patrimonial rulership takes place. The foregoing ideas allow us to rethink the classic typology of political regimes, rooted in works of Robert Dahl about polyarchy. Dahl's classification is grounded on two dimensions: 1) contestation and 2) participation. In fact, a contestation is the level of regime’s liberalization, and participation indicates the level of democratization. As a matter of fact it generalizes the features of European and North American ways of development, where XIX century democratization (e.g. working class struggle for

5 franchise and labor rights) came in particular to expansion of participation and happened, in

most

cases,

after

nation-building

and

state-building

(through

liberalization/bureaucratization first, followed by democratization). Table 1 Dahl’s typology of political regimes

High Contestation/ Liberalization Low Contestation/ Liberalization

Low Participation/Democratization Competitive oligarchy

High Participation/Democratization Polyarchy

Closed Hegemony (pre-modern autocratic regimes)

Inclusive Hegemony (populist authoritarianism)

For the analysis of post-Soviet regimes instead of the extension of political participation we should introduce another variable. Relying on the Weberian analysis of rational-legal bureaucratic rationalization and transformation of patrimonial domination, we can propose that crucial dimension of post-Soviet development is the degree of separation rulers from means of ruling (i.e. rational-legal state/ administrative capacity), which can be following: (1)

minimal (sultanistic type),

(2)

low-medium (oligarchic),

(3)

high-medium (patrimonial bureaucracy) and

(4)

maximal or mostly completed (modern nation state and rational-legal bureaucracy).

Depending on a structure of the neopatrimonial elites, it is possible to delineate few basic forms of the neopatrimonial post-Soviet regimes: Table 2 Basic forms of the neopatrimonial post-Soviet regimes Basic forms Bureaucratic neopatrimonialism (high-medium separation) Oligarchic neopatrimonialism (low-medium

Distinctive feature of policy-making State-bureaucratic monopolization and semi-coercive centralization of neopatrimonial domination, operating via secret police structures; populist/patriotic mobilization and plebiscitarian elections. Formation of wide strata of oligarchic and/or regional rent-seeking actors, acting together with/or in place of governmental

Ideal-type cases Belarus, Future of Putin’s Russia???? Yeltsin’s Russia, Ukraine, Georgia

6 separation) Sultanistic neopatrimonialism (minimal separation) •

institutions primarily via clientistic networks of patronage and pork barrel rewards Extreme concentration of power, pure Turkmenistan, personal rulership, façade elections, and Uzbekistan, clan models of voting

sultanistic neopatrimonialism, which is characterized by extreme concentration of power, pure personal (often lifelong or hereditary) rulership, facade elections, and clan models of voting;



oligarchic neopatrimonialism, linked with the formation of a rather wide strata of neopatrimonial rent-seeking actors, acting together with/or in place of governmental institutions via clientistic networks of patronage and pork barrel exchange;



bureaucratic neopatrimonialism, based on state-bureaucratic monopolization and semi-coercive centralization of neopatrimonial domination, operating via secret police structures; populist/patriotic mobilization and plebiscitarian elections. The combination of this classification and a second Dahl’s analytical variable –

the level of public competition (or contestation/liberalization) of neopatrimonial elites – allows the developing of a more detailed typology of the post-transitional (i.e. after 1994/1995) post-Soviet neopatrimonialism which reveals the dynamic and variation of political-regime changes. Table 3 Comparative typology of the post-transitional post-Soviet regimes Level of Competition /Separation Competitive

Sultanistic Neopatrimonialism minimal

Semicompetitive

Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan (under Aliev) Kyrgyzstan (under late Akaev) Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan

Lowcompetitive

Oligarchic Neopatrimonialism low-medium Russia (under Yeltsin), Georgia, Ukraine (2002 – to present), Moldova Ukraine Armenia (after 1998) Kyrgyzstan (under early Akaev) Tajikistan

Bureaucratic Neopatrimonialism high-medium Russia (under Putin I) Belarus (under Lukashenka) Russia (under Putin II?)

Rational-legal Bureaucracy mostly completed Baltic states

7

Now we can observe very interesting divergence of development ways of Russia and Ukraine. After "neopatrimonial restructuring" of the presidential-parliamentary regime in 1994-1999, the main focus of political struggle in Russia and Ukraine is the victory in presidential run, where a winner-take-all - first and foremost a full neopatrimonial control over the state and economy. Namely a seizure of the presidential authorities is the basic focus and the latent nerve of all political contestation, because the victory in presidential elections gives the winners everything, and losers nothing. The Russian way in the time of Putin's presidency can be characterized as movement from Yeltsin's high-competitive oligarchic neopatrimonialism to Putin's semi-competitive bureaucratic neopatrimonialism with strong (Suharto Indonesia-like) military-KGB bias. And Ukraine turns towards the forming of competitive neopatrimonial regime with strong intra-oligarchic competition (some kind of oligarchic cartel pluralism). The March 2002 parliamentary elections have demonstrated a tendency to parliamentarization of the Ukrainian political life, and intensive formation of the new elite coalitions on ruins the former neopatrimonial «party of power». The main focus of the

political

struggle

parliamentarization

of

in

Ukraine

during

the

regime

and

2003/2004

dismantling

will of

the

be

demands

for

«winner-take-all»

neopatrimonial system. In fact, it means the radical reduction of importance of the «presidential prize/roulette» in political life via transition to more risk-sharing parliamentary political system, within which political conflicts are carried out in a positive-sum game for all players.