Individual Democratic Institutions Research Fellowships 1994-1996

The research reports reproduced here are the responsibility of the individual authors. Their reproduction does not imply any form of official or unofficial endorsement by NATO. The reports are offered in unedited form, as presented by their authors, with a view to make their findings available to a wide audience. Tendencies Towards Authoritarianism: A Comparative Analysis of Russia and Bulgaria Georgi Dimitrov, Petia Kabakchieva, Jeko Kijossev [Back to Index] I. Theoretical and Methodological Background 2. Defining the Problem of Postcommunist Transition World history has proved conclusively that strong, effective executive power is essential in periods of profound modernizational changes. In this case it does not matter whether the executive will be exercised by prime minister or head of state, president or monarch. The problem is that when strong power evolves into military dictatorship it is no longer subject to public control and inevitably deteriorates into ineffective government. Come what may, the military eventually hand over power to civilian governments since they are incapable of settling a fundamental contradiction. Military dictatorship rules out any spontaneous civic agency of civil society, hence any social activity must be organized by the authorities - an impossible task on the scale of a national society. Military regimes can cope with certain ad hoc tasks only. They cannot replace the self-reproduction of public life. Any crisis in a national process of modernization raises this very question with particular urgency: finding effective strong central authority without evolving into a form of military dictatorship. That motivates the interest in authoritarian regimes as a form of settling the aforementioned contradiction. Authoritarianism ensures the strong central power needed for national mobilization, but its authority (based on, among other things, the awareness that it would legitimately resort to ultimate violence) enables purposeful government of society while keeping the freedom of subjects in everyday life. The crucial prerequisite for the efficiency of authoritarian regimes lies precisely in their legitimacy. Therefore the main question is: to what extent could the specific national situation produce legitimate authoritarianism; who could be the agent of authoritarian government in a way that would make it legitimate. Interestingly, the theme of authoritarianism was very marginalized in the first years of the postcommunist transition. That is strange since it is well known from classical theoretical studies - suffice it to mention Zbigniew Brzezinski- that authoritarian regimes are among the most probable mechanisms of effecting this transition. In the euphoria of the "gentle revolutions," however, the academic discourse prevalent in the early 90s consistently tried to interpret events in the light of democratic values and institutions (Rau 1991). Interest in Alexis de Tocqueville and the problematics of "civil society" virtually boomed. The dominant interpretative system presented events from the late 80s and early 90s as a natural process in the course of which national societies in Eastern Europe reverted to their normal state of civil society from which the communist regimes had diverted them by force. Communist regimes were seen as superficial, without any roots in the respective country's social life. That is why the postcommunist transition seemed natural, easy, normal, self-evident. It seemed to be but a short affliction from which national civil societies would recover, stabilizing the inherent linkage between market economy and political democracy. The main problem facing social scientists was to find the argument why the respective national society bore the viable germ of civil society (thanks to some sort of ancient national tradition, hidden presence of the latter notwithstanding the communist regime, or in the form of spontaneous associations, the classical case being the trade union Solidarity in Poland, Miller 1992; Bryan & Mokrzycki 1994; Connor & Ploszajski 1992 ). Academic circles sobered up only when political processes in the mid-90s reinstated communists in power even in Poland. Only then did academics eventually realize that the problem had been misphrased. The problem is not why is the potential of civil society viable but what can be done if its germ is still in embryo. If in the early 90s Polish society was regarded as a typical case, as a model of interpretation of general processes in Eastern Europe, the Bulgarian case might prove paradigmatic of processes throughout the region in the late 90s. For more than any other, precisely the Bulgarian social experience in the past few years has unambiguously shown that the processes of economic liberalization, de-etatization of public life and political democracy are in quite a controversial relationship. It has become clear that the very achievements in the institutionalization of democracy could become an obstacle to economic liberalization and integral social reform in postcommunist societies. The major question Bulgarian society faces today is will it find the strength and resources to complete its be it late but inevitable modernization within a democratic framework? Or as in many other countries faced with the same problems, will Bulgaria depart from the democratic model, reverting to an authoritarian, non-democratic society? And isn't there a third alternative: establishment of a powerful - partly democratic, though authoritarian in essence - structure of state rule. In the paradigmatic framework of "the natural civil society," any authoritarianism is a form of social pathology - that, however, is an ideological position that upholds a priori values; that is trivial value-prejudice. Adhering to the imperatives of Weber's "value-neutral sociology," we will try to identify the most probable variants of socio-political development of national societies. That should be done not from the standpoint of some sort of desirable state, but from the positions of the correlation between the structural tasks that the respective national society must solve, and its structural and cultural potential. Within this frame of reference the spectrum of authoritarian solutions is neither good nor bad. The problem is whether any of those solutions are adequate to the problem situations and how likely is it that any of them would be actually implemented. Admittedly, present-day Bulgaria automatically equates the idea of "strong executive power" with totalitarianism or dictatorship. Indeed, the tradition of antidemocratic government - be it Ottoman domination or communist dictatorship - predominates in the political history of Bulgarian society. Furthermore, in the relatively short period between 1878, the year of formal liberation from Ottoman rule and 1948, when Bulgaria's first Constitution was abrogated, the country was rushed through a series of abridgements and even suspension of democratic freedoms. That is precisely why the Bulgarian public today is very sensitive about strong executive power. Hence the main problem: denunciation of the very principle of strong state authority per se as an instrument of social transformation, due to a national tradition of political deformities of strong central power in the Modern Age. The problem is further complicated by the fact that it is formulated in rather imperative terms on the level of everyday life. Many people in Bulgaria today - and, for that matter, in the world - are logically wondering whether it is possible to build a modern civilized state on an empty stomach? Or wouldn't the general economic stagnation and constant pauperization of the public irreversibly discredit democratic principles and values in the eyes of the Bulgarian? Then s/he will accept - one of these days - authoritarian dictatorship as entirely normal and "vital" - irrespective of the agent of this dictatorship and the country's ensuing prospects. In other words, establishing anti-democratic rule not even through a coup d'etat but through the democratic mechanisms themselves. Many people have lost their sleep over the sinister precedent of 1933 Germany. To say nothing of international concern on the eve of the presidential elections in Russia...