Despite the central place of democratization studies in comparative politics, scholars still lack both theory and empirical evidence to understand institutional change in hybrid regimes (characterized by a collapse of one authoritarian regime and failure to transition to a consolidated democracy). This article makes a contribution to the emerging study of hybrid regimes by developing a middle-range theory for a medium-N set of previously neglected cases in Southeast Europe. It theorizes institutional change as a process initiated by the elites in power but then either accelerated or hampered by structural factors. After decomposing the effects of state capacity, opposition, and international influence in this dynamic and focusing on the process rather than the outcome, it is possible to refine the standard assumptions of democratization paradigm. The study finds that a strong state, a united opposition, and Western assistance can help authoritarian-leaning governments consolidate their coercive power.
According to the 2003 Freedom House survey, only 44 percent of the world's population lives in free states, despite the spread of formal, electoral democracy.
2.
Barbara Geddes , "What Do We Know About Democratization After Twenty Years?"Annual Review of Political Science2 (1999): 115-44.
3.
By 2002, of the twenty-eight mostly newly independent states in which communism fell, only eight were liberal democracies. See Michael McFaul, "The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World,"World Politics54 (2002): 212-44.
4.
Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way , "Autocracy by Democratic Rules: The Dynamics of Competitive Authoritarianism in the Post-Cold War Era" (paper, American Political Science Association annual meeting, Boston, 28-31 August 2002; rev. 25 October 2002).
5.
Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown, and Reequilibration (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).
6.
R. Kelemen and Giovanni Capoccia , "Theory, Narrative and Counterfactuals in the Analysis of Critical Junctures" (paper, American Political Science Association annual meeting, Washington, DC, 1 September 2005).
7.
It is important to recognize recent studies that have made a significant contribution to studying particular institutional arrangements in Eastern and Central Europe, most notably Arend Lijphart and Carlos Waisman's Institutional Design in New Democracies: Eastern Europe and Latin America (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996). This study departs from the previous work by considering "institutional change" in more fundamental terms to include a development of a new regime type and representing an integrated view of state and regime development rather than narrowly focusing on particular institutions such as the presidency, the judiciary, or an electoral system.
8.
The lack of democratic consolidation is widely associated with opposition failure. Levitsky and Way, "Autocracy by Democratic Rules."
9.
For a defense of such a methodological approach, see Ian Shapiro and Donald Green, Pathologies of Rational Choice: A Critique of Applications in Political Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). A key motivation behind this article's middle-range approach is also that given many different ways in which democracy arises (from the French revolution to the 1989 revolutions), it makes sense to begin with a middle-range theory in close proximity to the cases it intends to illuminate.
10.
In a critique of the structural approach, Przeworski and Limongi propose that democracy appears exogenously, dues ex machina, in regard to a country's level of development or modernization. See Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi, "Modernization: Theories and Facts," World Politics49 (1997): 155-83, esp. 159. According to them, "The protagonists in the struggles for democracy could not and did not believe that the fate of their countries would be determined either by current levels of development or by the distant past." They maintained that, albeit with constraints, democratization was an outcome of actions, not just of conditions (176). Also see Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
11.
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
12.
See, e.g., Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Guillermo O'Donnell, Counterpoints: Selected Essays on Authoritarianism and Democratization ( Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999); and Francisco Gonzalez and Desmond King, "The State of Democratization: The United States in Comparative Perspective," British Journal of Political Science34 (2004): 193-210.
13.
See Archie Brown , "From Democratization to `Guided Democracy,'"Journal of Democracy12 (2001): 35-41; Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999); David Collier and Steven Levitsky , "Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research," World Politics49 (1997): 430-51; Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Terry Karl, "The Hybrid Regimes of Central America,"Journal of Democracy6 (1995): 72-87; Lucan Way , "Pluralism by Default in Moldova," Journal of Democracy13 (2002): 127-41; Fareed Zakaria, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy," Foreign Affairs76 (1997): 22-41.
14.
See the Turnovers and Crises section below for discussion of operationalizing the dependent variable.
15.
Przeworski, Democracy and the Market.
16.
Robert Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956); and Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, 1971).
17.
See Acemoglu and Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy; and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alistair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow , The Logic of Political Survival ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).
18.
Michael Mann , "The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results," European Journal of Sociology 25 (1984): 185-213. Mann distinguishes between coercive (or despotic) and infrastructural state capacity. Infrastructural state capacity is seen as an ability of the state to penetrate civil society to implement state policies and reforms. Low despotic and high infrastructural powers are associated with bureaucratic systems, while high despotic and high infrastructural power characterize authoritarian regimes. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914, vol. 2 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993). For a discussion of Mann's theory, see Abby Innes, "The Changing Power of the State in Eastern Europe" (paper, European Consortium for Political Research Enlargement and European Governance workshop, Turin, Italy, 22-27 March 2002). An example of a variation and refinement of Mann's theory is a distinction between penetrative and extractive elements of infrastructural state power and how they contribute to state development and economic development. See Linda Weiss and John M. Hobson , States and Economic Development: A Comparative Historical Analysis (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1995).
19.
Innes, "Changing Power ." Grzymala-Busse focuses on elite competition and party building to analyze the unexpected growth of the state following the fall of communism in East Central Europe. Anna Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming the Communist Past: The Regeneration of Communist Successor Parties in East Central Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press , 2002). Also see Anna Grzymala-Busse and Pauline Jones-Luong, "Reconceptualizing the State: Lessons from Post-Communism," Politics and Society30 (2002): 529-54.
20.
Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan, "Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction," In Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan, eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives ( New York: Free Press, 1967), 1-64.
21.
Anna Grzymala-Busse , "Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East Central Europe," Comparative Political Studies36 (2003): 1123-47; and Innes, "Changing Power."
22.
Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory; and Dahl, Polyarchy.
23.
We recognize the difficult methodological question of whether Bosnia should be included in our sample. We include it for three reasons: to avoid case selection bias, because our theory suggests regime and institutions can be separated from state capacity, and because of a normative and substantive concern of furthering our understanding of democratization in Bosnia instead of aiming for an easy answer to ignore cases when they fail to fit our theoretical predispositions.
24.
We consider Montenegro and Serbia as separate political entities, examining electoral and crisis data available of the "republic" level for each. The two political units were de facto governed by two different governments, conducted independent electoral contests, faced different crises of authority, and went through different institutional changes in the 1989 to 2002 period.
25.
Initially there were only four-Yugoslavia (SFRJ), Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania-then eight after the breakup of SFRJ from 1990 to 1992, then nine after the increasing independence of Montenegro from Serbia from 1999 to 2003.
26.
The primary data source is the Human Rights Watch Report for the years 1989 to 2002. These are qualitative data from field reports and NGO testimonies. They were cross-checked with data from the Amnesty International Annual Reports (1993-2001) and the U.S. Department of State human rights country reports (1996-2001). Data for Slovenia and Montenegro were also supplemented from news reports. The main criterion used for identification of crises is whether they can be judged, from the historical context, to have challenged the authority of the government and its probability of survival. Crisis intensity is judged by the number of participants and those affected by the crisis, the level of violence, the degree to which the challenge to the government is made explicitly, and the level of attention the crisis attracted nationally and internationally. For example, we have classified highly localized demonstrations that did not capture national attention as "low" as well as prolonged minority rights abuses such as the discrimination against the Roma in several of the countries. For example, classified as "medium" is local ethnic violence that leads to a breakdown of public order. For example, classified as "high" are mass demonstrations in the capital demanding resignation of the government. In recording government response, we relied on the Human Rights Watch judgment of government actions. The reports include reliable testimony from the field and brief mentions of reports by other NGOs. In judging whether an institutional change is democratic or autocratic, it is important to separate the nature of the government's response and the resulting institutional change, even if immediate. Therefore, in coding the nature of institutional change, we have recorded the immediate aftermath of the government's response on political institutions (broadly conceived) in the country.
27.
However, in the Bulgarian case, the discrimination against the minority Turkish population began long before the formal fall of communism and gradually subsided during the first part of the 1990s.
28.
Reliability concerns are at issue here, especially in the cases such as Albania and SFRJ, where even European Bank for Reconstruction and Development estimates depend on information from within these countries.
29.
For a discussion of the Central European cases, see Oliver Blanchard, The Economics of PostCommunist Transition: Clarendon Lectures in Economics ( Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1997).
30.
Council of Europe, The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics (Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe, 2000). Available online at www.europeansourcebook.org.
31.
Levitsky and Way identify opposition structure and popularity as the two important independent variables in their study of opposition. Levitsky and Way, "Autocracy by Democratic Rules."
32.
Despite international criticisms of Romanian and Bulgarian discrimination against Roma and other minorities, these countries did score better than most Yugoslav republics that pursued violent suppression of minorities.
33.
Foreign direct investment is also influenced by many country-specific conditions, such as infrastructure, level of economic transition, monetary and fiscal policy, and so on.
