Second Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship

In 2001, a decade after the Soviet Union’s collapse, three clear regime types had emerged—democracies (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), autocracies (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan), and semi-autocratic, semi-democratic regimes in the reminder of the post-Soviet countries. Those regimes falling in the third category were hard to classify. Yet these regimes, stuck somewhere in the twilight zone between democracy and dictatorship, seemed stable. At the end of the decade, few predicted fundamental regime change in these places or anywhere else in the region.

For the consolidated democracies and autocracies, stability has continued for the first five years of their second decade of rule since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The pull of the European Union has helped to guide democratic consolidation in the Baltic states. Likewise, autocracy still seems stable in most of Central Asia. In response to a popular protest in Andijon, Uzbekistan in the spring of 2005, President Islam Karimov ordered the use of lethal force against innocent demonstrators, raising questions about the long-term stability of his dictatorship. To date, however, signs of genuine regime collapse in Uzbekistan are few.

Democratic Revolutions

Several of the “twilight zone” regimes, however, have witnessed rapid and unexpected motion in the last five years. Three of the semi-autocratic regimes crumbled—Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, and Kyrgyzstan in 2005. To varying degrees the new regimes that emerged after the collapse of semi-autocracy in each of the countries have been more democratic than the previous regimes. At the same time, Russia has moved in the opposite direction, towards greater autocracy. Russia’s move toward greater authoritarianism has helped to shore up embattled autocracies in Belarus and Uzbekistan, and indirectly, in large measure by example, helped to inspire a similar drift towards autocracy in Azerbaijan. These shifts are puzzling. What caused this second wave of regime change towards both democracy and autocracy?

The democratic breakthroughs in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan shared several features. First, in all three cases, the spark for regime change was a fraudulent national election, not a war, an economic crisis, a coup, or the death of a dictator. The trigger was an event scheduled and organized by those in power, not those challenging power. Second, in all three cases, the challengers to the incumbents in power deployed extra-constitutional means to insure that the formal rules of the political game embodied in the constitution were followed. In each of these cases, the challengers to the existing regime were not seeking new rules or a different kind of regime. Instead, they were defending the political rights of citizens and the democratic practices already codified in existing constitutions. Negotiation was only one of several means used to achieve this end in one case, Ukraine. In the two other cases, roundtables or negotiations between the ancien regime and its challengers did not play a central role. Third, for different time periods, all three cases experienced some period of “dual sovereignty,” in which both incumbents and challengers claimed to be the sovereign authority of the same territory. Fourth, all of these revolutionary situations ended without the massive use of violence by either the state or the opposition. To varying degrees, the opposition groups in all of these countries used extra-constitutional tactics, but did not resort to violence. Those who eventually fell from power did entertain using coercive methods to stay in power, but all of these incumbent leaders, when push came to shove, refrained from calling on troops to repress popular protests.

When observed comparatively, several conditions seemed necessary for a successful democratic breakthrough, including (1) a semi-autocratic regime, (2) an unpopular leader of the ancien regime, (3) a strong and well-organized opposition, (4) an ability to create the perception quickly that the elections results were falsified, (5) enough independent media to inform citizens about the falsified vote, (6) a political opposition capable of mobilizing tens of thousands of demonstrators to protest electoral fraud, and (7) divisions among the intelligence forces, military, and police. To varying degrees, all three cases of democratic transition drew upon this long list of conditions necessary for breakthrough.

Russian Retraction?

By contrast, since becoming president in the spring of 2000, Putin has made sure that his regime has avoided the development of any of these factors. Instead, in the name of trying to make the Russian state stronger, Putin has systematically weakened all institutions and organizations that might constrain the power of the Kremlin. Putin did not inherit a consolidated democracy when he became president in 2000 and he has not radically violated the 1993 constitution, cancelled elections, or arrested hundreds of political opponents. Russia today remains freer and more democratic than the Soviet Union.

However, if the formal institutions of Russian democracy remain in place, the actual democratic content of these institutions has eroded considerably on Putin’s watch. Putin has effectively seized control of all national television networks and has begun to reign in several prominent print outlets such as Izvestiya and Moscow News. He has tamed regional barons who once served as a powerful balance to Yeltsin’s presidential rule, first by emasculating the Federation Council on which they served and then by canceling direct elections for all governors. His regime has arbitrarily used the law to jail or chase away political foes, remove candidates from electoral ballots, weaken Russia’s independent political parties, and harass NGO leaders by recently passing very restrictive laws regulating their activities. At the same time, Putin has increased the role of the Federal Security Service (FSB, the successor to the KGB) and has arbitrarily wielded state institutions such as courts, tax inspectors, and police forces for political ends. Today, power is more concentrated in the office of the president than at anytime in Russia’s post-Soviet history, while the Russian polity has considerably less pluralism in 2006 than it did in 2000. In 2004, Russia became the only country in the region to be downgraded from partly free to not free by Freedom House since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

After a decade of revolution and anarchy, Russians yearned for more stability. Putin met that demand, however, in a particularly autocratic way, which was not determined by Russia’s history or culture. He was empowered to pursue his autocratic proclivities due to a key resource at his disposal, which his quasi-autocratic counterparts in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan did not have—oil. The spike in oil prices over the last several years has endowed Putin with the financial power to build a more autocratic regime. To a lesser extent, the same is true for Ilam Aliev in Azerbaijan. By providing cheap gas, Putin has also subsidized autocratic consolidation in Belarus. It is no accident that each of the countries that underwent recent democratic revolutions in the region lacked this valuable commodity.