Abstract
Twenty five years after communist rule, former presidential adviser
The institutional modernisation has been in part accelerated by assistance and expertise from international organisations, such as the EU. Developing a democratic culture however takes much longer and has to do with the quality of civil society.
Democratic behaviour, rooted in active citizenship, cannot be instituted from above. The creation of a truly democratic environment is tied to people’s ability to internalise democratic values, which, in turn, is closely tied to the growth of a civil society.
Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of an independent Czechoslovakia created after World War I, was well aware of this dilemma. He famously said: “Now that we have a democracy, what we also need are democrats.”
Unfortunately, most post-1989 politicians did not realise that democracy is not just a collection of mechanisms, procedures and institutions, but is also a question of culture. That culture, in turn, is dependent on the quality of civil society. The politicians did not understand that institutional modernisation needed to apply to the state and was not just about creating a political democracy and a market economy.
The era of democracy building after 1989 was, from the beginning, saddled with the popular notion that the state was corrupt, inefficient and oppressive, because that was how the state was perceived during communism. After communism, the state was portrayed by the political elite, mesmerised by the notion of “the invisible hand of the market”, as an essentially hostile institution, which should be as small as possible.
One could argue that even a small state could be efficient. The traditions of a deep public distrust of the state, however, combined with a neo-liberal philosophy, which preferred privatising rather than modernising important state functions, conspired to maintain a state with which most Czechs do not identify, even 25 years after the fall of communism.
Part of the problem with the rather significant gap that exists between the quickly established institutions of a political democracy and a market economy, on the one hand, and a still struggling democratic culture, on the other, paradoxically has to do with a “return to Europe”, one of the most important and widely shared expectations of anti-communist revolutions of 1989.
Above: People in Prague’s Wenceslas Square hold candles and the national flag in tribute to former Czech President Vaclav Havel after his death in 2011. Havel, a dissident playwright, was jailed under communism and later led the bloodless Velvet Revolution
Credit: David W Cerny/Reuters
Unlike Czechoslovakia during its first republic (1918-1938), the newly emerged democracies in east-central Europe were, in 1989, surrounded by democratic countries. These countries were eager (both individually and also through international organisations) to assist the region with building democracy. They also wanted to integrate the region as quickly as possible into supranational organisations, such the European Union and Nato.
Both western Europe and the United States engaged in a massive transfer of know-how, providing at the same time active guidance in democracy and market economy building in the region. If we judge the results of these efforts only on the merits of the achieved institutional transformation, the change has been spectacular.
In fact, we could argue that it was a historically unprecedented development. Nowhere in the history of the world were so many countries with previously backward-looking and authoritarian political institutions, transformed so quickly into modern democratic regimes with market economies, where the rule of law prevails.
However, the speed of this institutional transformation, culminating in countries joining Nato and the EU, has had some drawbacks. It created an even larger gap between the new institutional reality, and democracy understood as culture. In other words, the very rapid institutional modernisation has intensified the problem of “democracies without democrats”.
The negative consequences of this development are numerous. The new democracies in east-central Europe suffer from a highly confrontational political environment and a political scene, which is sharply polarised. The culture of dialogue and reaching compromises is still very underdeveloped.
Mental attitudes from the communist era remain strong. Some analysts speak about “a Bolshevik mentality”, which could be best described with communist era slogans, such as “either you’re with us or against us”. This mentality is characterised by a high degree of intolerance towards others with different views: political opponents are not to be listened to, they have to be destroyed.
Reforms that have taken place in the last 25 years can be best analysed in four interconnected areas: the creation of democratic political institutions and processes; the transformation of state-planned economies into market economies; the gradual introduction of the rule of law; and the growth of a civil society.
The very rapid institutional modernisation has intensified the problem of “democracies without democrats”
The creation of democratic political institutions and processes was, in relative terms, the easiest of the four difficult tasks. There had been “cookbooks” in the form of the already existing democratic systems in the West and, in some cases, pre-communist political traditions. Institutional and political changes, such as staging free elections or introducing the necessary constitutional frameworks, could be achieved “from above”, by adopting the necessary legislative measures or, in some cases, by government decree.
The transformation of state-planned economies into market economies was a more difficult task, because the functioning of a market economy depends even more heavily than the functioning of political institutions on non-institutional factors. In other words, the notion of a market economy cannot be reduced to privatisation and free competition. If it is to function properly it needs to be recognised as a form of civil society based on certain virtues, ethical rules and respect for laws.
The purely institutional efforts to privatise and reform the economy were also very complex, taking on different forms. They ranged from traditional methods, such direct sales of state assets to both domestic and foreign investors, to more experimental ones, such as Czechoslovakia’s voucher privatisation. Various post-communist states also used, to varying degrees, the restitution of assets to owners and their descendants whose property had been expropriated by the communists as a way to privatise what was in public ownership.
The introduction of the rule of law has been even more difficult than political and economic modernisation, because the rule of law is heavily dependent not only on the quality of legislation and institutions, such as the courts, but also on the ability of people to respect the law. Not surprisingly, it eventually became clear that good institutions and laws do not suffice to build the rule of law; law-abiding citizens are equally important. Respect for the law is directly tied to the maturity of civil society.
Indeed, the most difficult area to reform, is civil society, where immaturity means the democratic culture remains underdeveloped. Civil society cannot really be created from above by laws, decrees or by adopting EU legal standards. It is an organism that needs to grow from below, from the grass-roots.
In other words, a robust civil society is a precondition for the internalisation of democratic values. The proper functioning of the system of liberal democracy is based not only on the existence of democratic institutions and appropriate constitutional frameworks but also on individuals’ ability to respect democratic values and rules.
The transition to liberal democracy in the Czech Republic has taken place amid the accelerating process of globalisation, which calls into question the very notion of the nation state, the foundation upon which liberal democracy first developed. So, the Czechs are struggling not only with internally generated problems, but with dilemmas created by supranational integration, and by changes in the very paradigm of liberal democracy. The declining role of traditional political parties is an example of this, as is the growing influence of the media on democratic systems.
The most important Czech political parties were created after 1989 by small groups of newly born elites. Even some of the historic political parties, such as the Česká strana sociálně demokratická (ČSSD – Social Democratic Party) were re-established as basically elite projects.
In combination with a high level of mistrust among citizens in partisanship after more than 40 years of one-party rule, the creation of parties as elite projects has caused them to be small and weak. There are no mass parties now to speak of. In fact, the communist party, Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy (KSČM), which inherited a large membership base, still remains the largest party in Czech politics.
The fact that such small and weak parties presided over an extensive privatisation process caused the parties themselves to be “privatised”. Leading parties played a crucial role in creating the new entrepreneurs and the powerful economic groups that dominated the newly privatised economy. They then, because of their internal weaknesses, became not only intertwined with the new economic actors but also dependent on them.
Today, Czech political parties often act more as business entities trading political influence than defenders of public interests. High levels of corruption are prevalent because political parties are often controlled by behind-the-scenes economic interests.
When the privatisation process, which was a source of major corruption, ended, many of the newly created business interests used their close contacts with political parties to manipulate the state tendering process and win large contracts. The influence of big money on political parties, has, of course, been a problem in all democratic societies, but the kind of mass parties with long independent traditions that still exist in the West have been able to resist the dictate of big money better than the weak, “privatised” parties in the Czech Republic.
Czech democracy has further been crippled by the fact that the creation of a market economy has depended heavily on foreign capital, mainly foreign direct investment by large multinational companies. Unlike in established Western democracies, domestic capital has played a relatively small role in the new market economy.
Corruption is prevalent as political parties are often controlled by behind-the-scenes economic interests
If we take into account that market entities, such as small and mid-size businesses, played a crucial role in the creation of civil societies in traditional democracies, the relative absence of this segment of the market economy in post-communist countries has been an obstacle to building vibrant civil societies.
Public space, one of the pillars of modern democracies, is not such a developed principle as it is in established democracies and it may, in fact, never be so. Economic policies dominated the process of democracy-building, with the unfortunate result that the importance of anything “public” diminished. As a result, wherever public space began appearing it quickly came under pressure from markets and was often colonised by private interests.
The pressure that globalisation puts on the very concept of nation state combines with the traditional Czech distrust of the state to create an explosive mix. In other words, the Czech state is not only under pressure from globalisation but also from a number of traditional prejudices against the state.
Combined with the traditionally strong anti-elitist sentiments in Czech society, which, in turn, come from plebeian traditions and the provincialism of a country that did not have its own political elites for centuries, these are potentially dangerous trends. The jury is still out on the question of whether the Czech post-communist era will in the end be replaced by a fully functioning democracy and a state people trust and with which they identify.