The failure of democratization in Russia: A comparative perspective

AbstractDuring the 1990s American leaders and many others in the West viewed Russia as the most important test case for a transition to democracy. Today the consensus of scholarly analyses in the West concludes that, if Russia did enter a transition to democracy, that transition was not successful. This article attempts to suggest some of the main lessons about democratization that may be derived from the study of the experience of post-communist Russia, seen in a comparative perspective.The thesis that the first competitive national election after the downfall of an authoritarian regime marks a decisive breakthrough for forces striving for democratization has not proved true for Russia. Yet the withering of democracy and the consolidation of a semi-authoritarian regime followed the period of competitive elections in Russia.In the early and mid-1990s scholars who had specialized in the study of communist regimes warned that the post-communist states would need to carry out radical economic and social changes as well as sweeping political transformation. In Russia, however, the consequences of a corrupted process of privatization of state assets were enormously damaging for the institutionalization of democracy.As was shown in a number of countries in the 1970s and 1980s, a strong civil society can play an important role in a nation's transition to democracy. The barriers to the development of civil society within the Soviet system and the conditions causing weakness in social organizations in post-communist Russia made it easier for members of the elite to subvert reform and guaranteed that there would be fewer restraints on the tendency toward more authoritarian control after 2000.Among post-communist nations, those in which a consensus of most segments of the elite and the public was committed to a radical break with the old system have been much more successful in carrying out marketization and democratization. The combination of historical conditions that had created a strong anti-communist consensus in most of Eastern Europe had not taken shape in Russia. The absence of a fusion of democratization and national liberation in Russia explained the lack of a clear national consensus in favor of political and economic transformation.One of the main lessons from the course of events in Russia from the early 1990s to the present is that change away from one form of authoritarian rule, which usually has been labeled as a transition to democracy, is not irreversible. Some democratic transitions may prove to be shallow, and the changes in post-communist Russia have provided a good example of a shallow transition. The scholarly literature on transitions to democracy that appeared after the early 1980s departed from earlier writings' emphasis on the growth of social, economic, and cultural conditions for the institutionalization of democracy in the political system. The experience of Russia may encourage us to return to the study of the long-term trends facilitating or inhibiting the growth of democratic institutions