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Civil Societies and Legacies of Dictatorship
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The literature on civil society in postcommunist regimes highlights its weakness as compared with civil society in other democracies. In this article the authors make a general argument on how different patterns of antecedent dictatorship affect the development of civil society across a range of democracies. They examine the slow emergence of two behaviors associated with a robust civil society-participation in organizational life and in protest-and explain variation across countries as a function of regime history. They draw their individual-level data from the World Values Survey and analyze the behavior of over forty-one thousand citizens from forty-two democracies. Using methods of hierarchical linear modeling to control for both national-level and individual-level factors, the authors find that different types of dictatorship and variation in their duration produce different negative legacies for the development of civil society.
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... Civil society organizations (CSOs) are key for democratization (O'Donnell and Schmitter 1986;Bernhard and Karakoç 2007) and democratic consolidation (Dahl 1971;Bratton 1989;Diamond 1994;Mechkova et al. 2019;Bernhard et al. 2020). 1 However, governments increasingly restrict independent CSOs, e.g., through prohibiting foreign funding, launching smear campaigns, and arresting civil society activists (Christensen and Weinstein 2013;Glasius 2018;Glasius et al. 2020;Smidt et al. 2021). 2 We investigate whether mounting restrictions on CSOs affect the quality of horizontal accountability institutions like parliaments and courts. ...
Existing research shows that the activity of independent civil society organizations (CSOs) is an important ingredient of democratization and democratic consolidation. Yet, what happens when governments impose restrictions on CSO activity? This manuscript investigates how restrictions on CSOs affect the quality of horizontal accountability institutions like parliaments and courts. CSOs monitor and mobilize against violations of democratic norms. Thus, if governments impose restrictions on CSO activity, they may face fewer barriers (i.e., less scrutiny and criticism) to dismantling horizontal checks and balances. In addition, when restrictions prevent CSOs from supporting horizontal accountability institutions (e.g., with monitoring and expertise), the latter’s ability to control and constrain governments likely declines. Our large-N cross-country analysis supports this argument, suggesting that the imposition of restrictions on CSOs diminishes the quality of horizontal accountability institutions. We examine alternative explanations (i.e., prior autocratization trends and the authoritarian nature of governments) and offer qualitative evidence from Kenya and Turkey to illustrate the expected causal pathways. Our results imply that a crackdown on CSOs serves as a warning sign of deteriorating horizontal oversight.
... Latvia provides a suitable case study because it exemplifies both the remarkable transition of the region's countries from the communist rule to democracy and the weaknesses of their civic society observable today. Latvia's past under communism may (Uhlin, 2010) or may not (Mierina, 2011) explain the low self-efficacy, distrust in public institutions and politics, and low levels of engagement in traditional forms of civic engagement, such as participation in voluntary organizations that characterize the region (Bernhard & Karakoç, 2007;Howard, 2002). By other accounts, this region has seen the emergence of complex, vibrant civic societies with sub-regional differences in trajectories of the development of democratic governance (Foa & Ekiert, 2016). ...
Drawing on theoretical explanations of political information consumption, political self-expression, and social media affordances, this article examines the engagement of social media users from Latvia with political content in the context of parliamentary elections. According to the results of semi-structured interviews (N = 49), social media can facilitate following politics and expose users to information they have not been actively seeking out. While users are able to curate their newsfeeds, not all of the interviewees did so actively to disengage from political content even though they were not interested in it and displayed signs of information overload. This kind of incidental exposure did not substantially contribute to their willingness to engage with politics. Although many interviewees were politically active in some way, their hesitation to express their opinions about political matters persisted. This is explained by a perception of political participation as activities that should be undertaken in private, rather than publicly communicated. Furthermore, social media affordances that allow users to be visible and identifiable are shown to exacerbate the obstacles to expressing political views.
... 20 Collier andCollier 1979;Pinto 2018;Schmitter 1974;Stepan 1978. 21 Bernhard and Karakoç 2007;Haynes 1997. 22 De Vogel 2021; Hildebrandt 2013; Teets 2014; C. Zhang 2018. ...
Between 1972 and 1986, Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines headed an autocratic system that allowed him to rule with little to no accountability. Some 36 years after FM (as he is popularly called) and family were driven from power into exile in Hawaii, his son, Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos, Jr., was overwhelmingly elected President in the May 2022 general elections. This turnaround seemed puzzling to many, but others saw a long-term deliberate process of rehabilitation after the family returned to the Philippines. Our paper explores how Filipinos remembered FM in the years after his ouster. What drives the memory of dictatorship in the Philippines? Using time series data on public opinion about FM post-ouster, we find that a generally positive appreciation of Marcos as former president had crystallised early on across nearly all the major variables of age, sex, education, location and ethnicity.
Can legacies of fascism threaten democracies with political violence? Democracies aim to peacefully manage incompatible interests in a society. Yet, few democracies avoid violence altogether. Legacies of fascism may re-emerge because local networks can transfer their ideational tenets - supremacist identities and anti-democratism ( know what), violent practices ( know how), and paramilitary networks ( know whom) - to the new generations. Thanks to an original subnational dataset, we study if the Italian fascist movement that emerged in the 1920s affected political violence in the 1970s–1980s. The local strength of the fascist party before the institutionalization of the fascist regime predicts neofascist political violence more than forty years later. New catalysing events facilitate the resurfacing of local fascist legacies: when a Minister of Interior is appointed, we observe higher levels of neofascist violence in provinces where the early presence of the fascist party was stronger.
What are the longer-term consequences of premigratory experiences on the political attitudes of those who migrate out of extremely authoritarian regimes? In this paper, using data from an original survey of North Korean defectors in South Korea conducted in 2022, we examine whether attitudes on executive power, self-sacrifice for the sake of the national community (postmigration), state ownership, and the duty to participate politically, vary among North Korean defectors, and whether those attitudes are based on their individual experiences in North Korea. Although we find little evidence that defectors express a greater willingness to sacrifice for the nation, former members (especially male members) of the Workers’ Party of Korea are significantly more likely than nonparty members to express support for a strong unchecked leader. Some other indicators of elite status (such as higher education and organizational leadership) also suggest that defectors who were elites are more likely than defectors with less elite backgrounds to retain elements of the authoritarian socialization they experienced in North Korea.
Party system institutionalization (PSI) is regarded as a critical underpinning of democracies, but its role in non‐democratic systems has been understudied. In this paper, we evaluate whether the concept has meaningful and perhaps unique implications for the durability of competitive authoritarian regimes. We argue that a modified version of electoral volatility – the most common measure of PSI in democracies – conveys useful information about PSI in competitive authoritarian contexts by signalling the ability of the ruling party to manage the opposition. To this end, we construct an original data set that disaggregates electoral volatility into ruling party seat change and opposition party seat volatility and further divides opposition party volatility into Type‐A and Type‐B volatility. We find robust results that democratization becomes more likely when decreases in the ruling party's seat share coincide with an increase in opposition party Type‐B volatility. This paper demonstrates that the concept of PSI has utility for understanding regime dynamics in competitive authoritarian contexts.
In The Two Logics of Autocratic Rule, Gerschewski argues that all autocracies must fulfil three conditions to survive: the co-optation of key elites into their inner sanctum, the repression of potential dissent, and popular legitimation. Yet, how these conditions complement each other depends on alternative logics: over-politicization and de-politicization. While the former aims at mobilizing people via inflating a friend-foe distinction, the latter renders the people passive and apathetic, relying instead on performance-driven forms of legitimation. Gerschewski supports this two-logics theory with the empirical analysis of forty-five autocratic regime episodes in East Asia since the end of World War II. In simultaneously synthesizing and extending existing research on non-democracies, this book proposes an innovative way to understand autocratic rule that goes beyond the classic distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. It will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, political theory, and East Asian politics.
Over a decade has passed since the collapse of communism, yet citizens of post-communist countries are still far less likely to join voluntary organizations than people from other countries and regions of the world. Why do post-communist citizens mistrust and avoid public organizations? What explains this distinctive pattern of weak civil society? And what does it mean for the future of democracy in post-communist Europe? In this engaging study, Marc Morjé Howard addresses these questions by developing a provocative argument about the powerful and enduring impact of the communist experience on its countries and citizens. Howard argues that the legacy of the communist experience of mandatory participation in state-controlled organizations, the development and persistence of vibrant private networks, and the tremendous disappointment with developments since the collapse of communism have left most post-communist citizens with a lasting aversion to public activities. In addition to analyzing data from over 30 democratic and democratizing countries in the World Values Survey, Howard presents extensive and original evidence from his own research in Eastern Germany and Russia, including in-depth interviews with ordinary citizens and an original representative survey.
Although Russia experienced dramatic political breakthroughs in the late 1980s and early 1990s after shedding the shackles of Soviet rule, it subsequently failed to continue progressing toward democracy. M. Steven Fish offers an explanation for the direction of regime change in post-Soviet Russia, relying on cross-national comparative analysis as well as on in-depth field research in Russia. Fish demonstrates that Russia's failure to democratize has three causes: too much economic reliance on oil, too little economic liberalization, and too weak a national legislature.