Mapping Eastern Europe
1 Introduction
It is a truism to say that the present and its continuation into the
future are determined by the past. Post-communist societies, however,
have multiple pasts. We may think of, at least, three different pasts
exercising their causal influence on the present: the communist period,
the more remote pre-communist period, and the very immediate period
of extrication from the communist regimes. The critical question then
becomes how and to what extent these three pasts have shaped the
national transformation paths.
The most popular argument in "transitology" is certainly the one
which points at the negative impact of 40 years of communism on
mentalities and political culture. People in Eastern Europe, it is argued,
have become used to patronage and protection under the old regime;
they deeply distrust legal procedures and political elites; they tend to be
skeptical of anything new and, thus, resist changes. The egalitarian
ideologies of Marxism, sometimes bordering on a culture of envy, are
supposed to be an obstacle to economic reforms that will inevitably make
some groups better off than others. It is assumed that those attitudes and
patterns of behavior will continue at least during the early transition and
constrain the speed and direction of reform. Likewise, the economic
legacies of communism are supposed to impede current reform efforts.
Post-communist societies inherited, among other things, an outdated
capital stock, distorted sectoral structures, oversized firms, arbitrarily
allocated credits, a substantial monetary overhang, and a huge foreign
debt from the past regime. Those "legacies of Leninist rule" (Jowitt
35
36 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
1992a) will render a transition to democratic capitalism rather difficult in
Eastern Europe.
Yet the communist decades may well turn out to have been a brief
historical episode without a lasting impact. According to the "return of
history" argument, the cultural and institutional heritage of the precommunist
period may prove to be momentous to the processes of
consolidation in the region.1
Traditional values and orientations which
hibernated during the communist period may emerge again and determine
the future of post-communist societies. Likewise, nationalist movements
and old ethnic conflicts will revive and spread throughout the
region. In this view, the countries of "Central Europe," which had strong
cultural and institutional ties to Western Europe before the communist
takeover, appear to be in a much better position to establish democracy
and capitalism on a permanent basis than other transition countries. At
the same time, the importance of communist legacies can be questioned
by pointing at the decisive role of the choices and outcomes of the
national extrication processes (Bruszt and Stark 1991). Agreements and
decisions made in the short "historical moment" when the political
regime change was brought about may exercise a causal influence on the
speed and direction of later policy choices.
The aim of this chapter is to present comparative profiles of the three
(respectively four) countries under analysis at the outset of trans-
formation.2
We shall provide some background information for subsequent
chapters on transformation paths as well as justifying the selection
of the country sample. We shall briefly compare the socio-economic and
political development of the countries prior to 1989 and try to identify
the cultural and legal traditions they share. In order to sharpen the
country profiles, the chapter covers all CEE countries: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia,
the GDR, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. We argue that the
popular distinction between East Central and South Eastern Europe
captures only a small part of the inter-country variations in economic,
political, social, and cultural dimensions. Moreover, because of the
striking affinities between Czechoslovakia and the GDR, between
Hungary and Poland, and between Bulgaria and Romania, our three
countries are in fact representative of the whole region.
Section 2 covers the entire period before 1989 and deals with both the
pre-communist and the communist periods of the CEE countries. Section
1
See, e.g., Putnam's instant classic (1993) which convincingly demonstrates the
importance of "civic traditions" deriving from the last centuries for successful
democratic governance in Italy today.
2
In this chapter, Czechoslovakia is treated as one entity. Yet we try to hint at the
differences between the two republics.
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 37
3 focuses on the "annus mirabilis" of 1989 and compares the extrication
processes in the six countries. Here, the purpose is to identify patterns of
regime breakdown which may have shaped the character of the new
political order. Section 4 tries to spell out some of the mechanisms by
which the "three pasts" have contributed to the transformation processes.
2 Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary at the outset of
transformation: comparative country profiles
2.1 The pre-communist period
World War I brought the defeat of the German, Habsburg, Ottoman,
and Russian empires which had dominated the region. These four
empires were replaced with a dozen newly created, recreated or reshaped
nation states. Czechoslovakia and Hungary were carved out of the
Habsburg empire. Hungary became the biggest territorial loser of World
War I. With the Trianon Treaty, the country lost about two thirds of its
territory. Poland was restored by merging former German, Habsburg,
and Russian territories. Bulgaria and Romania which had been independent
states since 1878 saw sweeping territorial changes, too. Whilst
Romania was significantly enlarged, Bulgaria had to cede territories.
The new territorial settlement was fraught with problems (Rothschild
1993: chapter 1). The new states were heterogenous and suffered from
problems of national integration. They were highly involved in quarrels
over borders and the treatment of ethnic minorities. In addition, they
were in various ways caught between Germany and Russia. The demise of
the old empires was also associated with a number of economic problems
(Dornbusch 1992; Teichova 1988). New currencies had to be introduced
in a turbulent economic environment. Trade and production had to be
adjusted to the new borders.
Although they shared a number of problems, the countries in the new
Central and Eastern Europe also differed in many ways. Two main
division lines ran across the region. On the one hand, there was a
fundamental socio-economic and political divide between Czechoslovakia
(and Germany) and the other countries. A second demarcation line,
located further to the East, separated the Latin part of Eastern Europe
from Bulgaria and Romania.
In the inter-war period, Czechoslovakia was the only industrialized
country in the region.3
GDP per capita reached about two-thirds of the
3
Within Czechoslovakia, however, a huge gap between the Czech lands and the
more backward Slovakia existed. In socio-economic terms, the Slovak parts of
38 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
German level. In contrast, the other countries clearly belonged to the
European economic periphery.4
Hungary and Poland and even more so
Bulgaria and Romania were agrarian economies which suffered from
stalled land reforms and a chronic shortage of capital. Due to its more
advanced state of economic development, Czechoslovakia was the only
country in the region where sizeable and politically conscious bourgeois
and working classes as well as mature civil societies existed. It also scored
significantly better on socio-economic indicators, such as school enrollment
and life expectancy. Finally, Czechoslovakia was also the East
European country with the most liberal foreign trade regime and the best
stabilization performance during the inter-war years.
This economic divide corresponded with differences in democratic
consolidation. All East European countries saw the introduction of the
universal ballot after World War I. However, Czechoslovakia was the only
country in the region where democracy was not brought to an end from
within, but by outside intervention. Even before the shift to authoritarian
rule, democracy and parliamentarism remained largely formal outside
Czechoslovakia and Germany. The other countries were democratic in
form, but essentially bureaucratic in character. They were effectively run
by the state bureaucracy which was generally able to produce the desired
election results. The existing socio-economic stratification, the weak
national integration of the new states, and the prevalence of politicalcultural
traditions such as the acceptance of state supremacy, messianic
concepts of political change, and the disregard of institutions, proved to
be inimical to a consolidation of democracy (Bibo 1946; Stokes 1989;
Schopflin 1993: chapter 1).
A second division line separated Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland
from Bulgaria and Romania (Giaro 1993; Wieacker 1990: 7f.). Whereas
the former countries enjoyed a long tradition of affiliation with the Latin
Church and Roman Law and were part of the Austrian sphere of
legislative power, the latter had close ties with the East Roman Empire,
the Byzantine version of Roman Law, and the Greek Church. The Balkan
states turned toward West European constitutional and legal thought and
practice no earlier than the second half of the nineteenth century. They
took part in the European-wide move toward codification in the late
nineteenth century and adopted a body of law built upon West European
Czechoslovakia came closer to the other countries than to Bohemia and
Moravia.
4
Estimates of inter-war GDP regularly arrive at the same ordinal country ranking.
Yet it is not clear whether Polish GDP was closer to the (higher) Hungarian or to
the (lower) Bulgarian and Romanian level. For different estimates, see Harrison
1994.
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 39
models. Yet their law was more eclectic and less firmly established than in
the two other countries.
In the inter-war period, standardization and codification of law were
seen as essential elements of state building in most East European
countries. This particularly applied to the states which had been newly
created or significantly enlarged after World War I and had inherited a
number of different legal orders. Yet in most of the countries the process
never became fully consolidated (Korkisch 1958: 201-5). Standardization
and codification were not completed before the sovietization of the
countries, thus leaving pre-communist law in a somewhat preliminary
state.5
Hungary, for example, did not even have a written constitution
until 1949.
The disparities in socio-economic development and differences in legal
traditions also manifested themselves in the inter-war social policy
arrangements. Czechoslovakia inherited Austria's social insurance system
addressed to the needs of the industrial working class from the Danube
Monarchy. The social security net was substantially improved, especially
in terms of coverage, during the inter-war period. Czechoslovakia was
almost in step with the pioneer country Germany at that point of time
(Bohata 1990). In Hungary and Poland, too, inter-war social reforms
were essentially patterned on the German-Austrian model. Yet owing to
the lower level of socio-economic development, the coverage ratio was
much lower in both countries. The schemes covered mainly urban wage
earners, while the vast majority of the population working in agriculture
remained unprotected in the 1920s. In Bulgaria and Romania, too, the
social security system remained very patchy before the communist takeover
and left the agrarian population practically uncovered.6
2.2 The legacies of communism
The end of World War II was again associated with sweeping territorial
changes. Germany was eventually divided. Poland was "moved" to the
West. Czechoslovakia lost the Carpatho-Ukraine, Romania Bessarabia,
and northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union. Bulgaria and Hungary were
5
For a synopsis of inter-war legal provisions, see Heitger et al. 1992: 124-36,
175-92.
6
Take, e.g., the health insurance coverage. In countries, like Germany, Austria, or
Great Britain, more than 30 percent of the population were covered by the
national health insurance schemes in the mid twenties. In Czechoslovakia the
respective figure amounted to nearly 20 percent, in Hungary to 12 percent, in
Poland to 7 percent, and in Bulgaria less than 5 percent of the population were
protected (no data available for Romania, see ILO 1927: 182-87).
40 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
more or less restored in their inter-war borders. The territorial changes
and the related massive resettlements changed the countries' ethnic
composition and their balance of internal and external minorities
(table2.1).7
Poland became internally homogeneous. Relevant internal
minorities have continued to exist in Bulgaria (Turks), Romania (Hungarians),
and Slovakia (Hungarians). With a quarter of ethnic Hungarians
living abroad, Hungary has by far been the most externally heterogeneous
country.
The end of World War II brought Eastern Europe under Soviet
control (Rothschild 1993: chapter 3; Swain and Swain 1993: chapters 2
and 3). Between 1944 and 1949, communist regimes were installed in all
countries. The sovietization of the region meant the forced adoption of a
uniform model of communism. The East European countries were
incorporated into a system of Soviet-controlled supra-national organisations,
such as Cominform or CMEA. The national constitutions were
modelled upon the Soviet Constitution of 1936. The planning offices
which had been established to handle post-war reconstruction were
transformed into Gosplan-type Planning Commissions. Nationalizations
were further extended. Save for Poland, agriculture was collectivized. All
countries embarked upon forced industrialization along Soviet lines.
After Stalin's death, Soviet control loosened and a limited "return to
diversity" (Rothschild 1993) set in which gained further momentum in
the 1980s. However, this process left the essentials of the system
untouched. The suppression of workers in the GDR in 1953 and in
Poland in 1956, the invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in
1968, and the declaration of martial law in Poland in 1981 again and
again stressed the limits to reform.
All countries experienced a massive social upheaval under communism.
The industrialization of the East European economies led both to a
massive sectoral reallocation of labor and to rapid urbanization. Save for
Czechoslovakia and the GDR, the Central and East European countries
witnessed a transformation from primarily rural, agricultural societies to
industrial, urban ones. The property reforms sealed the end of the old
economic elites. Highly stratified societies were transformed into more
egalitarian ones with a low degree of stable social differentiation.
Although the political leadership formed a new type of elite, the
nomenklatura, unlike earlier elites it was not based on the possession of
inheritable property. Political power could to some extent be handed
down from one generation to the next, but the inheritance was much less
secure.
7
For the distinction between internal and external minorities, see Elster 1991: 450f.
Table 2.1. External and internal minorities in the CEE countries (millions)
Bulgarians
Czechs
Germans
Hungarians
Poles
Romanians
Slovaks
Turks
Gypsies
Others
Total
Population
Internal
Minorities (%)
Bulgaria
(1987)
7.65
—
—
-
-
0.01
-
0.82
0.16
0.36
9.00
15.00
Czech
Republic
(1991)
—
9.40
0.07
-
0.08
-
0.30
—
0.40
0.05
10.30
8.70
Slovak
Republic
(1991)
—
0.06
—
0.60
0.01
-
3.99
—
0.40
0.21
5.27
24.00
Hungary
(1987)
—
—
0.22
9.56
-
0.01
0.12
-
0.50
0.29
10.70
10.66
Poland
(1992)
—
0.01
0.35
-
37.00
-
0.02
—
0.15
0.77
38.30
3.40
Romania
(1987)
0.01
—
0.54
1.93
-
19.52
0.02
—
0.50
0.22
22.74
14.17
Others
0.14
0.01
—
0.66
1.88
0.29
0.01
—
—
-
_
Total
7.80
9.48
78.11
12.75
38.97
19.83
4.46
-
-
-
_
_
External
minorities
(%)
1.9
0.8
—
25.0
5.1
1.7
10.5
-
-
-
_
_
Source: Brunner 1993: Annex 1; Kubiak 1993: Table 1; own calculations.
42 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
At the same time, however, the traditional economic hierarchy within
the region remained largely intact (Ehrlich 1991, 1993; Janos 1994: 3-6).8
In the second half of the 1980s, per-capita incomes in Czechoslovakia and
the GDR were still significantly higher than in the other countries. At the
same time, the gap between Czechoslovakia and the GDR, on the one
hand, and the developed OECD countries had widened (Havlik 1992).
The greatest leaps forward were accomplished by Bulgaria and Slovakia.
Within Czechoslovakia, the economic gap between the two republics was
drastically reduced. Whilst in 1948 per-capita income in Slovakia was 40
percent lower than in the Czech lands, this gap was down to 13 percent in
1988 (OECD 1994a: 44).9
In the 1980s, Bulgaria surpassed Poland in
terms of per-capita income and Hungary with regard to life expectancy
and health care.10
In the political realm, the communist takeovers meant the installation
of autocratic regimes. These regimes basically persisted until 1989. Yet
governments exercised their rule in different ways and differed in their
strategies of regime stabilization and legitimation.
In the 1980s, repression was harshest in Romania, the last totalitarian
regime in our sample. The Hungarian and Polish regimes clearly were the
most liberal ones, even after the imposition of martial law in Poland in
1981. In both countries, first tendencies toward a separation of state and
party occurred. However, the nature of political pluralism differed:
whereas in Poland there existed a strong autonomous opposition,
pluralism in Hungary was largely confined to the communist party
(Frentzel-Zagorska 1990: 762-6). Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR
ranked somewhere in between.11
In Czechoslovakia, the mass exodus in
the wake of the suppression of the Prague spring led to a lasting
weakening of the oppositional potential. In the GDR, the proximity of the
Federal Republic had a similar effect. Also, in both these countries state
repression was very harsh.
Bulgaria and Romania were set apart from the other countries by
8
From a comparative perspective, convergence within the Eastern bloc was
apparently less pronounced than convergence among the industrialized market
economies (Baumol 1986: 1079f.).
9
Other estimates arrive at an even stronger equalization of incomes. According to
Myant (1993: 222), Slovakia's per-capita income in 1989 amounted to 94 percent
of the Czech level. Wolchik (1991: 187-91) reports that an earlier 66:100 ratio
was reduced to a mere 96:100.
10
In 1987, the United Nations' Human Development Index which combines percapita
income with socio-economic indicators was thus higher for Bulgaria than for
Hungary (UNDP 1990). For a critical assessment of this index, see Srinivasan 1994.
11
This ranking is confirmed by various civil liberties indexes (for an overview, see
Scully and Slottje 1991).
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 43
certain "sultanistic" tendencies and a stronger reliance on nationalist
mobilization. In Romania, the personalization of power gave rise to a
strange blend of "dynastic socialism" (Tismaneanu 1985). In Bulgaria,
similar, albeit less pronounced, tendencies came to a halt with the death
of Liudmila Zhivkova in July 1981. Both governments also shared a
strong commitment to nationalism (Troebst 1992; Verdery 1991). In the
late 1980s, they aggressively promoted the forced assimilation of ethnic
minorities.
Outside Bulgaria and Romania, conditions were less favorable to
nationalist mobilization. Czechoslovakia and the GDR were countries
with a low degree of national integration. The GDR government feared
that any tinkering with nationalism would automatically raise the delicate
issue of German unification. Likewise, the Czechoslovak government was
confronted with the tensions between Czechs and Slovaks which had been
present ever since the foundation of Czechoslovakia. In Hungary and
Poland, the countries with the highest level of national integration,
playing the nationalist card was complicated by the existence of external
minorities in communist "brethren" states12
and the traditional antiRussian
element in Hungarian and Polish nationalism.
In the economic realm, communist regimes remained characterized by
the dominance of state ownership and bureaucratic allocation. The
insistence upon the maintenance of a political monopoly affected all
moves toward market socialism (Kornai 1992). Yet substantial intercountry
differences could be observed in the political field. The deceleration
of economic growth which set in in the 1970s gave room for
economic experiments and tinkering with economic reforms. As the
legitimation of the communist regimes became increasingly based upon
the promise of a steady increase in material well-being, communist
governments desperately looked for a way out. In the late 1980s,
differences with regard both to the reform stance and to macro-economic
performance loomed large (Fischer and Gelb 1991: 92-4).
As for economic reforms, a clear divide emerged in the 1980s. Whilst
the Polish and, in particular, the Hungarian government embarked on
economic reforms in order to increase economic performance, the other
countries* governments remained resistant to reforms and committed to
the traditional notion of a centrally planned economy. Economic reforms
in Hungary and Poland mainly aimed at the decentralization of economic
decision making. Core elements included the liberalization of private
12
The increasing international isolation of Romania made it easier for the
Hungarian government to rally domestic support by protesting against the
treatment of the Hungarian minority in Romania.
44 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
economic activities, a greater tolerance toward the so-called "second
economy," the strengthening of enterprise autonomy and self-management,
price reform and subsidies reduction, as well as liberalization of
trade and a gradual opening of the economy. From a comparative point
of view, reforms were more consistent and comprehensive in Hungary
than in Poland (Kozminski 1992: 315-18). In Hungary, economic
reforms were initiated in 1968. After a period of recentralization and
reform abortion in the 1970s, these reforms were resumed in the late
1970s and gained further momentum in the mid 1980s (Berend 1990;
Revesz 1990). Among other things, reforms brought the creation of a
two-tier banking system in 1987 and the adoption of the Western-style
company, bankruptcy, competition, and tax law. In Poland, the postmartial
law governments stressed their commitment to economic reforms
along Hungarian lines. The reforms introduced in 1982, 1986, and 1988
remained, however, half-hearted (Myant 1993: 59-80).
In contrast, the Bulgarian, Czechoslovak, East German, and Romanian
economies remained fairly unreconstructed planned economies until the
end of 1989. Here, the measures which were adopted since the early 1970s
aimed at the "perfectioning" of the system and were largely limited to the
reorganization of the planning bureaucracy and the merging of firms.
Consequently, these economies were characterized by smaller private
sectors, higher degrees of monopolization, less autonomous enterprises,
and higher shares of CMEA trade than in Hungary and Poland.
Whereas the GDR and Romania resisted reforms until the bitter end,
the Czechoslovak and, especially, the Bulgarian governments, in response
to Gorbachev's "perestroika" and the increasingly visible deterioration of
the economic situation, announced and initiated some reforms along
Hungarian lines in the late 1980s. The Bulgarian reform attempts
culminated in the adoption of the famous Decree 56 which introduced a
rudimentary Western-style company law, enlarged the scope for private
economic activity, and outlined first steps toward the creation of a capital
market, in January 1989 (Wyzan 1991: 85-9). These reforms, as well as
their much more timid Czechoslovak counterparts (Myant 1993: 155-67;
Wolchik 1991: 239-48), were, however, never really implemented before
the end of 1989.
The differences in commitment to central planning partly manifested
themselves also in the field of civil law (Brunner 1992: 41f.; Giaro 1993:
342; Westen 1993: 13f.). Ironically, the countries which went furthest in
giving up the traditional unity of civil law were the most "Western" ones,
Czechoslovakia and the GDR. In Czechoslovakia, even a special Business
Code for economic transactions within the socialist sector was adopted.
In contrast, Hungary and Poland remained more strongly committed to
the Western (and their own pre-communist) legal tradition.
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 45
East European countries also differed with regard to their macroeconomic
records in the late 1980s. These differences were only loosely
related to the inclination toward economic reform. Whilst Czechoslovakia
and the GDR scored relatively well, reform-resistant Bulgaria faced severe
macro-economic imbalances in the second half of the 1980s, as did
Poland. Hungary, the forerunner of economic reforms, took an intermediate
position. As budget deficits indicate, macro-economic policy in
the second half of the 1980s was tighter in Czechoslovakia, the GDR, and
Romania than in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland. Due to price reforms
and the softening of wage policy, open inflation was highest in Hungary
and Poland. In the other countries, inflation remained repressed. In
Bulgaria, macro-economic imbalances led to the accumulation of a huge
monetary overhang.
The deteriorating economic situation of the East European countries
also manifested itself in the rise of the foreign debt. With the exception of
Romania, all East European countries saw a massive increase in foreign
debt in the second half of the 1980s. This particularly applied to Bulgaria
where net foreign debt nearly quadrupled between 1985 and 1988. In the
late 1980s, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland belonged to the group of the
most indebted countries in the world. In contrast, Czechoslovak foreign
debt, albeit increasing, remained modest. The GDR benefitted from its
special relationship with the Federal Republic which provided privileged
access to foreign credit. The Romanian Ceaucescu government followed a
historically unique policy of repaying its foreign debt ahead of schedule at
all cost which resulted in an exhaustion of the economy and a dramatic
lowering of the population's living standards.
In Hungary and Poland, economic reforms were accompanied by
certain cautious social policy reforms. While the Czechoslovak, Bulgarian,
Romanian, and East German social policy systems remained fairly unchanged
till the end of communist rule, some gradual changes in employment
policies could be observed in Hungary and Poland in the 1980s.
Well before the demise of the communist regime, a sort of unemployment
benefit was set up and a number of employment promotion measures,
although insignificant in quantitative terms, were introduced. From the
mid 1980s on, the Hungarian and the Polish governments became more
open-minded and honest concerning the problems of poverty and hidden
unemployment (Ferge 1989: 99f.; Sziraczki 1990: 717f.; Szurgacz 1991:
298).
The Czechoslovak and the Bulgarian social policy systems remained
closely oriented toward the Soviet model, set up in the early 1950s, during
the communist period. Hungary, by contrast, was the country that went
furthest in departing from this model. In particular, Hungary blazed a
trail in family policies. The country was the first in the region to set up a
4 6 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
system of paid child-care leave (already in 1967) and, altogether, had a
very generous family benefit system (Voirin 1993: 39). This family policy
record provides one important explanation, as to why Hungary had by
far the lowest female labor force participation rates among the East
European countries in the 1980s.13
There was a close correlation between reform-readiness and greater
income inequalities. Economic reforms tended to allow for wider income
differentials within and between state enterprises. Moreover, chances to
engage in lucrative private sector activities were unevenly distributed.
Hungary and Poland were thus set apart from their neighboring countries
by their relatively inegalitarian income distribution. According to most
estimates, gross earnings as well as net household incomes were more
equally distributed in the latter countries than in the former (cf. Atkinson
and Micklewright 1992). Moreover, in Hungary and Poland the level of
poverty was significantly higher than in Czechoslovakia (cf. Sipos 1992).
2.3 Summary assessment
The analysis leads to the question whether the similarities and
differences mentioned permit a clear-cut clustering of the six countries.
In the literature an "invisible map" drawing a distinction between East
Central and South Eastern Europe plays a prominent part.14
It underlies
the Visegrad cooperation as well as the traditional segmentation of
research on Eastern Europe, with most comparative studies being
confined either to East Central European or to the Balkan countries.
However, the evidence presented above suggests that this distinction with
its familiar discriminatory connotations15
is a rather shaky basis for
13
While in Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria well over 70 percent of the women at
employable age were integrated into the labor market in the eighties, female
participation rates amounted to slightly over 60 percent in Hungary; Poland and
Romania were equally ranked in between (Boeri and Sziraczki 1993: 244).
14
For useful summaries of the extensive literature on "Central Europe" which has
mushroomed since the mid 1980s, see Feher 1989; Judt 1990; Miszlivetz 1991.
15
Agh (1993: 235f.), for example, distinguishes between the Eastern part of Central
Europe and "Eastern Europe proper," thus clearly confirming Miszlivetz's
observation: "To be a Central European means to be neither an East European
nor the citizen of a Balcan state. It means to be better than the Russians, the
Bulgarians, the Montenegrines. Central Europe became a program which allowed
one to distinguish oneself from the 'barbarians*". (Miszlivitz 1991: 975) The
authors also recall the mixture of surprise and indignation with which several
Czech and Hungarian colleagues reacted when being confronted with the fact
that the research project provided for a comparison of their countries with
Bulgaria.
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 47
comparative research on East European transitions. This is not to deny
the existence of different cultural traditions in the region. Nor is it to
neglect the role of geography which clearly favors the Visegrad countries
as against the Balkan states. Due to their geographical location, they are
in a better position to benefit from West European economic growth and
to attract Western financial support. Yet the distinction captures only a
small part of the relevant initial conditions of societal transformation. On
the one hand, it abstracts from the different - and not unequivocally
positive - pre-communist legacies in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and
Poland. On the other hand, the map neglects the lasting impact of 40
years of communism on these societies, the effective "desertification"
(Schopflin 1993: 256) of traditional ideas, values, institutions, and
solidarities under communist rule.
Taking the communist period into account, Hungary is set apart from
Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria in having a long tradition of economic
reforms and irresolute attempts to liberalize society. Kadar's "reform
communism" had a formative influence on society and paved the way for
more far-reaching reforms in the late 1980s. By contrast, Czechoslovakia
and Bulgaria were "tough" communist regimes in the 1970s and 1980s.
In both cases, the communist leadership remained strongly committed to
central planning and authoritarian rule. Yet the imprint of communism
on Bulgarian society was much stronger than in the Czechoslovak case
(and within Czechoslovakia on the Slovaks than on the Czechs). The
reason was that Czechoslovak society experienced the communist takeover
at a different stage of socio-economic and political development
than Bulgaria. Czechoslovakia had been a highly industrialized and
democratic country in the inter-war period sharing the cultural and legal
traditions of Western Europe. In contrast, Bulgaria did not catch up with
the industrialized world until communist rule and significantly improved
its relative socio-economic position in that period. Bulgaria had never
truly experienced democracy in its history before the breakdown of the
communist regime and was culturally separated from its Western neighbors.
Inter-war Hungary has to be located somewhere in between. Like
Bulgaria, it had been an agrarian society and lacked a democratic political
culture. But Hungary had always had strong cultural ties to Western
Europe.
Altogether, both Czechoslovakia and Hungary appear to be in a rather
fortunate position at the outset of the transformation process: Czechoslovakia
because of its pre-communist traditions and its favorable
economic balance sheet in 1989, Hungary because of its reform communist
legacies. Bulgaria initially was facing extremely bad conditions: it could
not refer to a "golden" pre-communist period, it did not experience
48 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
reform communism, and it was severely hit by macro-economic imbalances
at the outset of transformation.
Hence, this study's country sample appears to be representative, as it
covers relevant variations in important variables that are supposed to
determine national transformation paths. To be sure, the discrepancy
between the small number of countries and the large number of variables
prevents any causal testing in the strict sense. But our sample at least
allows us to consider various hypotheses which have been developed
within "transitology." In addition, the three cases may be regarded as
representative, as it is possible to construct "affinity pairs" (Jowitt 1992:
186f.) of countries which share a large number of relevant characteristics.
It seems that for each East European country included in the analysis a
complementary country outside the sample exists: Czechoslovakia and
the GDR, Hungary and Poland, Bulgaria and Romania make up "twin
pairs" prior to 1989 (for this argument, see also Offe 1994: 241-9).
Needless to say that affinities at the outset of transformation must not
turn into commonalities in overall transformation records.
3 The demise of communist rule: modes of extrication
3.1 Systemic and political revolutions
Among past periods which have left traces on the structure of the
newly emerging polities, the period of extrication is the most short-lived
one. Yet, its short duration is probably offset by its density and intensity,
which are habitual features of revolutionary situations. Frequently they
form the basis of long-lasting elements of the new order. When we speak
of extrication we refer only to the political order, not to the economic
and much less to the cultural sphere. Extrication means the countries'
disentanglement from the main political properties of communist
regimes, such as the dominant power position of the communist parties,
the pervasive role of the security apparatus, or the comprehensive state
and party control and streamlining of the public sphere. Hence, this
period started out when the regime was challenged for the first time in
full public view by opposition groups, however small, weak, and disorganized
they may have been. It was the beginning of the end, the juncture
where the old regime lost its total grip on the public sphere and its
monopoly to define the field of political action. The period ended when
the main features of the new order were established and worked, i.e.,
immediately after the first free elections of parliaments or presidents, as
the case may be. In Poland this period began with the opening of the RTT
on February 6, 1989 and ended in October 1991, the time of the first
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 49
entirely free elections (Rothschild 1993: 227 ff.; Banac 1992a).16
In
Hungary it lasted from March 1989 (the first huge anti-systemic demonstrations
on the anniversary of the revolution of 1848) until March/April
1990 (Bozoki 1993: 277 f.), in Bulgaria from about October 1989 (the first
street demonstrations of Ecoglasnost) until June 1990, in (what was then)
Czechoslovakia from November 1989 until June 1990, and in Romania
from December 15, (the first spontaneous anti-regime rally in Timisoara)
until May 20, 1990, (the day of the elections of both the president and the
parliament) (Rothschild 1993: 226 ff.; Banac 1992).
The impact of this short period of extrication in terms of the risks and
chances of creating a consolidated democratic political order cum market
economy is ambiguous. There is, of course, the negative historical
experience of the last 300 years which teaches us that the overthrow of an
existing regime by a violent revolution tends to produce quite unstable
democratic systems (Dahl 1991: 13; see also Karl and Schmitter 1991: 280).
But this does not tell us whether the non-violent modes of extrication from
the communist regimes which have been characteristic of the CEE
countries are likely to contribute to the consolidation of the newly
emerging polities. In order to understand the contribution of this particular
period it seems appropriate to make use of the distinction between
systemic and political revolutions offered by Zygmunt Bauman. According
to this distinction, political revolutions adjust a political regime to the
requirements of the socio-economic system and are launched by agents
who represent more or less established collective "transformative" interests
which cannot find an appropriate institutional expression in the extant
political structure; these interests will immediately gain from the change of
the political regime. In contrast, the agents of a systemic revolution do not
only dismantle an old regime, but find themselves in the situation that a
new society and its actors have still to be constructed (Bauman 1993).
Evidently it is this "systemic" brand which characterizes the regime
transitions in the post-communist societies of the CEE. In none of the CEE
countries did the old regime generate interests and actors that could easily
slip into the institutional forms hastily created after the breakdown of the
old regime. Everywhere it was not only necessary to produce new spaces of
action and new rules of action, but at the same time the actors who were
capable of making use of these new openings. This has several important
implications. First, the forces which brought the old system down are not
16
It might also be claimed that the extrication period ended on December 9, 1990,
the date of the runoff presidential elections where Walesa was elected president.
Yet we believe that the free election of the parliament is a more significant
criterion for the establishment of a new political order.
50 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
likely to be those which will benefit from the "revolution," because they
represent merely the dissatisfaction with the old regime which, in contrast
to the conditions of a political revolution, does not yet bear the new order
in its womb. Second and consequently, it is not likely that those united
forces which brought the old regime down will continue to be united in the
vision of a new order or will be satisfied with the outcomes which the new
order yields for them (Bauman 1993: 5 f.). In other words, there is no
determinate relation between the forces which dismantled the old regime
and the character of the emerging new order. Third, systemic revolutions
create an empty space which is left over after the fall of the old regime and
onto which the new order has not yet had the chance to instill its mark. In
this extremely open situation the actors are truly acting behind a veil of
ignorance: they have no knowledge about the actual distribution of power,
about the motives, interests, and actions of other (internal or external)
actors, and they find themselves in the situation where huge masses of
people are easily mobilized, without knowing the focal point of mobilization
other than the purely negative resentment against the old regime.
Thus, actions and decisions which in the situation of a political
revolution would be ephemeral and negligible because they do not meet
the requirements of the "transformative" constituencies and interests,
may acquire a thoroughly disproportionate relevance and exercise a
lopsided influence on the evolution of the new order simply because there
are no forces and structures which would assign them their relative
weight(lessness). Conversely, there may be discernible patterns of the
downfall of the old regime which pre-establish the boundaries and
perhaps even the main elements of the space in which the actors of the
extrication make their choices which then may predetermine future
structures. These patterns are likely to have been shaped by the particular
historical traditions of the relevant countries which, as it were,fillthe
vacuum which has been left by the waning regime. Hence, it can be
surmised that the modes of extrication, by defining the starting point for
the creation of the new polity, served as a vehicle for the transfer of
historical legacies into the future. Both interpretations suggest that it
cannot be ruled out that the distinct modes of extrication in the several
CEE countries do matter for the character of the future political order
and obtain an importance which is perhaps not inferior to the influence
of the pre-communist and the communist pasts.
3.2 Different character of the breakdowns, identical causes
In saying this, we presuppose that the regime breakdowns in the
diverse countries did not have the same political character, the same
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 51
meaning and the same consequences in all pertinent countries. Before
1989 it was justified to speak of a "Soviet Bloc," a term which referred to
the homogeneity which had been imposed on the East and Central
European countries by the Soviet Union after World War II (Comisso
1991: 123 f.; v. Beyme 1994: 52). After 1989 it became obvious that the
homogeneous bloc had encapsulated rather diverse countries. Given the
diversity of the pre-communist countries in terms of socio-economic
development, political and legal traditions and cultural orientations, the
extent to which the Soviet system had been compatible with the respective
host societies diverged considerably. For instance, the much appreciated
historical role which Russia played in the liberation struggles of Bulgaria
against the Ottoman empire, the fact that after World War II Soviet
troops were never stationed in the country (Todorova 1992: 159; Rothschild
1993: 212), and that the communist regime has rightly been credited
for its industrialization made the imposition of the Soviet system far
more acceptable to the Bulgarians than in, say, Poland where strong antiRussian
resentments and feelings of superiority have been common for a
long time. Likewise, Slovakia as a more traditional society was more
receptive to the "real socialist" system than the more industrialized Czech
lands. Thus, the gradual weakening and final abandonment of the
coercively homogenizing force of Soviet power did not only allow these
countries to retrieve their regional differentiation and to "return to
diversity" (Rothschild 1993), but to pursue quite different paths of
extrication.
On the other hand, it is of course not by mere accident that all East
and Central European communist regimes collapsed almost simultaneously.
This suggests the assumption that they all died from the same
disease. As has been expounded in more detail in the introductory
chapter, these countries were part of a project which aimed at the
historically predetermined liberation of mankind from the yoke of
capitalism and imperialism. This entailed the establishment of social
structures (institutions, habits, values, modes of thinking, etc.) which
claimed to be universally valid and beneficial for all peoples and which,
consequently, were very much the same in countries which lived under
Soviet-type regimes, irrespective of their economic, political, cultural, and
historical diversity and geographical dispersion. These common properties
have been called the "Leninist legacy." It was imprinted on all
pertinent countries and created a number of shared institutional, ideological,
economic and social elements (like, e.g., the preference for largescale
heavy industry or the absence of a politically integrating national
public realm and of a shared public identity as citizens) (Jowitt 1992a; cf.
also Machonin 1993).
52 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
There were essentially three common causes which finally led to the
breakdown of the communist socio-policical systems. First, there was
massive economic inefficiency. Second there was a complete collapse of
the ideological legitimation of the systems. Third, there was a structural
incapacity to adjust to new problems due to the lack of institutional
devices for observing and learning. The economic failure of the system,
well-known to experts both from the West and the East, became squarely
visible for the East European masses through the pictures and information
conveyed by the international electronic mass media. Still,
economic inefficiency as such need not cause a system to collapse as long
as it is accepted as either inevitable or legitimate. The view that the illperformance
of the socialist economy was widely accepted as the price
which had to be paid for economic and social equality - one of the
pivotal elements of the socialist ideology - is hard to validate empirically.
But even if this trade-off was ever accepted as a justification for economic
frugality, it lost credibility during the eighties when the principle of
equality increasingly failed to meet the test of reality. The gap between the
economic and political elite which had privileged access to society's
resources and the masses who lived far below the mass consumption
standards of the populations of the West became more and more visible
(Jowitt 1992a; v. Beyme 1994: 54 ft).
In itself the erosion of the basic legitimation of weak economic
productivity did not necessarily doom the regimes to their eventual
breakdown. The most serious problem which they could not solve and
which finally left them unprotected was the lack of institutional learning
devices which would provide them with the appropriate means to
overcome their problems or at least keep them at bay. The communist
regimes have become the victims of their alleged strength: the omniscience
of the party and the omnipotence of the state deprived them of
the capacity to learn, i.e., to adapt themselves to social change and to
challenges which could not be answered in the language of state power.
Gorbachev's often-invoked decision to refuse the Soviet Union's "fraternal
help" for its satellite regimes finally removed a crucial constraint
which up until this time had discouraged and repressed opposition
tendencies which to different degrees and in different social, cultural, and
political forms had emerged during the eighties; after this decision the
causes which had undermined the systems long before could become
operative (Przeworski 1991: 5 ff.).
Thus, the crises of the communist regimes in East and Central Europe
had essentially identical causes. Yet the manifestation and intensity of the
reactions were specific to the host country. The questions, then, are
whether the mode of extrication in the respective countries led to the
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 53
expression of particular "transformative" interests and the emergence of
particular constituencies, whether it determined the political, social,
religious, or economic actors who controlled the course of events and
who survived the extrication period, and whether it has left lasting
institutional traces on the new polity.
Poland was the only country where a broad social movement not
controlled by the regime could emerge and maintain a considerable
strength under the communist regime.17
For the first time in a communist
country a device of power sharing between the regime and the
opposition emerged, and the novel institution of a Round Table was
invented and established. During the transition period it was the main
source of legitimate institutional change. Among other things, it produced
- also for the first time in a communist state - the recognition of
an independent workers' union, parliamentary elections whose results
were not entirely predetermined by the monopoly of the communist
party, i.e., an, if limited, electoral competition to which the communists
were exposed under equal conditions, and finally a non-communist
government in a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Poland remained the
only CEE country with a genuine counterforce of the regime rooted in
the society. Paradoxically, Poland was also the only country in which
initially the negotiations between the regime and the opposition were not
designed to abolish the regime altogether, but to reform it, the primary
(non-revolutionary) request of the opposition being the legal recognition
of the Solidarity Union. Consequently, the disastrous communist performance
in the semi-contested elections of June 4 and 18, 1989 created a
situation in which the country's politico-institutional framework was still
largely communist, although the spirit of the regime was clearly broken.
In all other countries the opposition consisted of "a set of weak,
diverse, and fragmented organizations" (Bruszt and Stark 1992: 30, with
respect to Hungary) which could even not think of challenging the power
of the regime, much less participate in anything like a power-sharing
structure. Yet, in all countries they had an influence on the course of
events. In Hungary the regime was pulled down mainly by the interplay of
a powerful reform wing of the communist party and the opposition
which was able to mobilize huge masses in critical moments. The
reformers had emerged during a period of gradual economic reform
which had been inaugurated at the beginning of the eighties and whose
limited results had convinced them of the necessity for major politico-
17
We dismiss the Catholic Church, another important actor on the Polish scene,
because it cannot be counted as an anti-regime force which struggled directly for
a downright change of government.
54 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
institutional reforms. The opposition had, as in Bulgaria, been organized
mainly around environmental causes. Mutual support between the
reform wing of the party and the weak opposition was essential to the
Hungarian way of extrication. The former needed the voice (and at least
the appearance of strength, as expressed in their capacity to mobilize
more masses in the streets than the regime) of the latter in their struggle
against the orthodox hardliners of the party, and the latter needed the
protection of the reformers within the party for their survival (Bruszt
1991; Bruszt and Stark 1992; Bozoki 1992). As in Poland, these interactions
took place (at least initially) under the shadow of possible Soviet
intervention.
The GDR, suffering from the congenital defect that it was not an
entrenched nation-state ruled by a communist regime, but rather a
communist regime ruling over a more or less randomly shaped territory
and its population, had to cope with two difficulties which were absent in
the other countries: first, it had to prove itself successful in order to
legitimize not only the regime, but the existence of the country itself as an
independent state; second, it was exposed to the unique threat of an
attractive exit option for its citizens, namely the alternative to escape the
rule of the regime without at the same time being forced to take the heavy
burden of emigration into a foreign country. The impossibility to draw a
distinction between the regime and the country, i.e., between ideological
and national interests may be one of the reasons why after 1961 the
communist party of the GDR did not generate a reform wing that
struggled for liberalization of the regime. Not surprisingly, the regime
finally became the victim of this particular weakness, viz. mass exit which
merged with mass mobilization in the streets.
While the GDR was probably the regime most dependent upon the
Soviet Union's promise of "fraternal help," in contrast, the Bulgarian
regime was least vulnerable to Gorbachev's abandonment of this guarantee.
Due to the traditionally friendly relations between Bulgaria and
Russia, the communist regime was not seen as being imposed by an
unfriendly foreign power and therefore did not stir up questions of
national sovereignty and anti-Russian sentiments. Also its authoritarian
character was barely challenged. The opposition was extremely weak,
consisting of a loose coalition of small groups with almost no national
organization, incompatible political goals and platforms and more or less
amateurish leaders (Todorova 1992; Rothschild 1993: 250 ff.; Kolarova
and Dimitrov 1994). Hence, the turnabout of the regime started with
what was largely regarded as a coup, namely the deposition of Zhivkov on
November 10, 1989. Despite the establishment of Round Table Talks
between the regime and the opposition, the change was by and large
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 55
pursued as the politics of perestroika, i.e., as a reform of the regime from
above.
In Czechoslovakia the regime was as orthodox, rigid and inflexible,
and at the same time clearly as vulnerable to the Soviet Union's
abandonment of its survival guarantee as that of the GDR. Thus it is not
surprising that this regime, being the second last domino to fall (just
before Romania), was the only one which simply capitulated before
peaceful mass rallies in the streets and simply collapsed. It is part of the
weakness both of the regime and of the opposition that the negotiations
which they conducted during the short period between November 17
and mid-December did not deal with the institutional structures of the
transition period, but with the changes in the party leadership, the
executive and the parliament. Another reason which would put this
country still closer to the GDR may also apply. Whilst the regime
breakdown in the GDR gave rise to the dissolution of the state and its
unification with the Federal Republic, which was regarded as the single
legitimate German nation-state, in Czechoslovakia the same regime
collapse was soon overshadowed by the conflicts between the new Czech
and Slovac political elites over the appropriate structure of a Czechoslovakian
bi-national state. Eventually the overthrow of the regime entailed
the separation of the Czech and the Slovak parts of the country into two
distinct nation-states. For some it was simply a secession. At any rate, as
in the case of the GDR the breakdown of the regime caused the
foundering of the state itself.
Romania was the only country among the communist regimes of East
and Central Europe which did not enjoy a completely non-violent path of
transition to a democratic form of government. One may even doubt
whether this country is really an exception to the rule, since it is plausible
to assume that the formerly communist character of the Romanian
dictatorship had changed into a personal, almost sultanistic dictatorship
in which not the party and its historical mission, but the "individual
leader is the source of the authority" (Huntington 1992: 581). Perhaps
the personal character of the dictatorship is the reason why the old
regime did not surrender peacefully. The official version of the events
claims that in December 1989 a popular uprising was supported by the
army which heroically defended the people against the armed and brutal
attacks of the notorious Securetate which had remained loyal to Ceaucescu.
According to a less heroic assessment the popular uprising was
successful only because it was supported by a simultaneous coup d'etat
conducted by the alienated elites of the old regime (Verdery and Kligman
1992; Rothschild 1993: 247 ft).
56 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
3.3 Institutional effects
This sketchy overview shows that the CEE countries clearly add to the
diversity of the modes of extrication from authoritarian rule which have
occurred in the twentieth century in other parts of the world. A few
general observations seem appropriate. First, in the broad scope of
configurations of extrication — involving cases with strong independent
actors who were already prominent under the old regime and the
opposite cases of the complete absence of such actors even in the
advanced phases of the extrication process (viz., Poland and Romania,
respectively), or cases with and without major mass mobilization in the
streets (viz., Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, respectively) - it is not easy to
identify cases where the political actors of the opposition, who had played
a major role in the overthrow of the regime, survived and became the
representative of "transformative interests." Characteristically "the opposition"
had consisted of umbrella organizations of the Forum-type
(Hungary, Czechoslovakia, GDR, Bulgaria) which soon after the first free
elections disintegrated into small and often irrelevant groups. This fate
even fell on the Solidarity Movement which under the old regime had
mainly represented workers' interests and which one would have expected
would most easily and most likely represent "transformative interests,"
i.e., become the core of a workers' party in the framework of the newly
emerging democratic government.
A second observation pertains to the institutional heritage of the
extrication period. Some authors have claimed that the particular mode
of extrication in a country is an important explanatory variable for the
institutional outcomes which eventually shape the new polity (Bruszt and
Stark 1992; Alexander and Skapska 1993). Indeed, it may be part of the
paradoxical character of the "systemic" revolutions in the CEE countries
that in the absence of entrenched transformative interests and constituencies
the contingencies of the extrication process and its events may
have a more significant influence on the institutional structure of the new
order than would be the case in "genuine" revolutions.
The most profound institutional trace which is conceivable is of course
the dissolution of the state itself as an effect of the breakdown of the
regime. This is likely to happen after a violent change of regime, be it a
war or a civil war. In our sample of countries which includes only
peaceful transitions (Romania being no real exception) two such cases
occurred (GDR, Czechoslovakia). It is striking that these two countries
were also those in which the regime simply collapsed, i.e., was overturned
without negotiating the institutional conditions of the change. There is
obviously an interdependence between the downfall of a regime and the
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 57
dissolution of a country. The precarious status of the country as an
entrenched nation-state weakened the regime's capacity and resources to
defend itself by arranging at least a negotiated transition which would
include basic institutional provisions. Conversely, the regime was the
major force to maintain the country as an independent state. When the
regime eventually collapsed, there was (almost) nothing left to keep up
the state.
Leaving these two extreme cases of state dissolution aside, the mode of
extrication may positively affect the institutional devices of the polity
under construction. The hypothesis that initial institutional choices are
not easily changed once a new system has been established (Lijphart
1992:99) has clear implications for the fate of the new polity. Did the
particular mode of extrication create specific institutional devices that
imposed a distinct logic on the decisions of the actors? There is one
element of the extrication process which all countries with the exception
of Romania have in common, namely Round Table Talks. These had
considerable influence, albeit to varying degrees in the respective countries,
both on the extrication process itself and on the institutional fate of
the future polity. With regard to the former, they helped to avoid violent
forms of the downfall of the old regime and hence provided the most
important conditions for the peaceful formation of a democratic order.
Moreover, in many cases they laid the institutional foundations for the
future order, most visibly by creating the institutional framework for free,
fair and competitive elections. Hence, so far the answer to the question
whether the mode of extrication has affected the structure of the newly
created polities is affirmative. Although this result is not surprising, the
more interesting question is whether the particular mode of extrication in
the several countries have generated particular institutional outcomes.
Of course, in all countries we can identify decisions or actions which
were shaped by the particularity of the situation. For instance, the
decision of the Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia to opt for proportional
rather than for majority voting for the parliamentary election in 1990,
although the latter would have guaranteed a clear victory for the Civic
Forum and the choice of the former would have guaranteed the survival
of the communists, or the decision to limit the term of the first assembly
to two years (Elster 1995), did not reflect strategic interests of any of the
involved individuals, groups or constituencies. Both decisions were the
result of the transitory situation of extrication which did not necessarily
follow from the particular mode of extrication in Czechoslovakia. A quite
similar counter-intuitive decision with regard to the electoral system can
be observed in Romania. According to a well-established hypothesis
(Rokkan 1970: 157fif.;Lijphart 1992; see also Rub 1994) one would have
58 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
expected that the successors of Ceaucescu would choose a majority voting
system cum a strong presidency. Whilst in fact a strong presidency was
established, the National Salvation Front (NSF) which inherited the
communist party and which could expect to gain a sweeping electoral
victory with majority voting, opted for an extreme version of PR, thus
favoring the access of a huge number of parties to the electoral race. This
decision has been interpreted as the result of the NSF's concern to avoid
an excessive and self-discrediting electoral victory (Stefoi 1994: 55). These
examples, to which others could certainly be added, give sufficient
evidence that the extrication period leads to actions and decisions which
are thoroughly contingent upon individual persons, situations, and
circumstances and hence unaccessible to structural explanations.
Having said this, the question is still open as to whether we can
observe structural affinities between a particular mode of extrication and
particular institutional outcomes or features of the newly emerging
political and economic order. There are some striking correlations which
may reflect causal mechanisms. For instance, is there such a causality
between the radical break with the communist past in Czechoslovakia
and the formidable economic performance and political stability in the
Czech Republic? Could one explain this correlation by arguing that where
the obstacles of the old regime are pushed away most radically the field is
free for the establishment of the most efficient economy? Could one
explain the political stability of the Czech Republic in a like manner? The
hypothesis seems to be corroborated if we look at Bulgaria, where the
extrication period has been more dominated by the principle of continuity.
Our analysis shows that the country ranks lowest in terms of
economic performance (chapter 5). The recurring government crises also
show that the country cannot be credited for political stability. One of the
reasons could be that the extrication process was not radical enough in
abolishing the structures which discourage the establishment of an
efficient economy and, consequently, of interests and constituencies
which organize along socio-economic cleavages (chapter 4). On the other
hand, Slovakia which experienced the very same extrication process as the
Czechs does far less well in terms both of economic performance and
political stability. Evidently other factors must have played an important
role.
Some authors have offered typologies of modes of extrication in order
to better understand their relevance for the further political development
of the countries which they compared (Share and Mainwaring 1986;
Huntington 1992: 583). Karl and Schmitter (1991) offer an analytical
distinction of four ideal types which result from a table whose y-axis
covers a continuum which ranges from unilateral recourse to force to
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 59
multi-lateral willingness to compromise, and whose x-axis comprises
actions from below and actions from above. Thus, there is a transition by
pact when "elites agree upon a multilateral compromise among themselves";
by imposition, when "elites use force unilaterally and effectively to
bring about a regime change against the resistance of the incumbents"; by
reform, "when masses mobilize from below and impose a compromised
outcome without resorting to violence"; and by revolution when "masses
rise up in arms and defeat the previous authoritarian rulers militarily."
With respect to Hungary, Kis (1995) distinguishes between revolution,
reform and regime change, the property of the latter being that it changes
the basis of legitimacy without affecting the continuity of legality, while
revolutions change both legitimacy and legality and reforms neither. In a
broader comparative perspective Bruszt and Stark (1992: 16 ff.) in their
analysis of the regime transitions of 1989 in Eastern Europe distinguish
four forms of confrontations between the regime and society, namely use
of violence by the regime (China), capitulation of the regime (GDR,
Czechoslovakia), compromise of the regime with the opposition (Poland),
and constrained or unfettered electoral competition (Bulgaria, Romania,
Albania for the former, Hungary for the latter). Finally, v. Beyme (1994:
95 f.) offers a classification which focuses on the ideological formation of
socialism as the essential element of the old regimes in Eastern Europe. In
his matrix the y-axis ranges from regulation from above to pressure from
below, and the x-axis comprises all cases reaching from pragmatic
muddling through to ideologically motivated innovation of socialism. As a
result, he identifies four cases: (1) change of the character of socialism
(Bulgaria, Romania), (2) rejuvenation of socialism (perestroika in the
Soviet Union), (3) erosion of socialism (Poland, Hungary), and (4)
collapse of socialism (Czechoslovakia, GDR).
Since we are mainly interested in the potential role which the
particular mode of extrication in the several countries has played for the
creation of the basic elements of a new social and political order and of
independent agency in particular, our account of the modes of extrication
in the CEE countries produces a somewhat different classification. As we
stated earlier, in all CEE countries, with the possible exception of Poland,
the communist rule disintegrated in an anonymous and subjectless
process which did not generate a powerful counter-elite which had the
clear mandate to lay the ground for the new order. The resulting new
space for action and the potential for innovation which emerged gradually
or suddenly - could have been exploited in quite different ways.
It could have been "invested" into the creation of new institutions, or it
could have been "consumed" for the accumulation of power and the
ad-hoc dealing with new problems. Furthermore, both alternatives are
60 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
Table 2.2
'investive* use
of new space of
action
'consumptive' use
of new space of
action
Exclusion of old
elites
GDR
Czech Republic
(1)
Czechoslovakia
Slovakia
(3)
Inclusion of old
elites
Poland
Hungary
(2)
Romania
Bulgaria
(4)
conceivable as either excluding or including the elites of the old regime. If
we combine these possibilities, table 2.2 ensues, the insertions being mere
hypotheses at this stage of our analysis:
Case (1) represents the most uncompromising attempt to construct an
entirely new polity, while case (2) represents different forms of cooperation
and compromise between old and new political elites with regard to
the construction of the new polity. Cases (3) and (4) represent political
games in which the actors are less concerned with rules, institutions,
structures than with the distribution of power, be it contested almost
exclusively among the new political elites (3) or between old and new (4).
The following analysis of the constitutional, political, economic and
social policy elements of the transformation processes will provide us
with more detailed information that may allow us to validate the
insertions in the table and to draw some conclusions about the relation
between the mode of extrication and the chances of consolidation.
4 The shadow of the past: methodological remarks
The "triple past" of post-communist societies influences the present in
manifold ways. This section tries to isolate four causal mechanisms that
may be at work in the political and economic reform processes in Eastern
Europe: (1) The past can shape values, beliefs, habits, and frames of the
peoples in CEE. (2) Past choices can serve as a constraint on political
actors' behavior. (3) Past regimes may serve as models or focal points in
the search for new economic and political institutions. (4) The past
provides a repertoire of arguments that can be used in political discourse.
Sometimes, an influence from the past has a positive effect, in the sense of
making survival or adoption of past institutions more likely. At other
times, the influence has a negative effect, leading to "reactive institution
building."
MAPPING EASTERN EUROPE 61
(1) One mechanism by which the past makes itself felt in the present is
socialization and cultural tradition. Citizens in post-communist societies
developed their beliefs and desires, values and frames, roles and routines
in past periods of life, that is under the communist regime or even earlier.
We cannot expect those value patterns and ways of thinking to change all
at once. They will continue to be pervasive after the political regime
change, at least for a certain period of time. "Mental residues of
communism" are usually stereotyped in the following way: people in
Eastern Europe developed, under the old regime, bad work habits, a
contempt for effort and initiative, a fear of innovation, and an inclination
to trade the expression of their loyalty for patronage and protection.
Egalitarian and envious attitudes create reactions both against excessive
poverty and excessive wealth. Due to their experiences under communist
rule, citizens do not believe in the rule of law, tend to distrust political
elites, and they are rather skeptical that political and economic reforms
will bring about the desired outcomes. Conversely, we should bear in
mind attitudes and skills unofficially cultivated under the old regime.
People in Eastern Europe developed virtues such as self-reliance, flexibility,
effort, and inventiveness in order to cope with the vast inefficiencies
of the past system. Those "unofficial virtues" turn out to be wellsuited
to the needs of a market economy. In addition, we can observe the
survival of pre-1949 attitudes throughout the region. Traditional values
such as religion or various craft traditions which were preserved during
the communist period could become important again. Likewise, traditional
animosities between ethnic groups may reemerge.
(2) Even if the past had no influence on individual motives and attitudes,
it could still play an important role in post-communist politics as a
constraint on behavior. This applies, in the first place, to the communist
past. The economic legacies of communism, for instance, form serious
obstacles to current efforts to achieve stabilization and restructuring.
Governments have to contend with macro-economic imbalances resulting
from previous policies. Part of the inheritance is also a particular
structure of ownership, production, and trade with which post-communist
reforms have to deal. Likewise, the legal and political apparatus that is
in place in 1989 will constrain efforts to change the system, including
changes in that apparatus itself. The existing constitution-making framework,
for example, may turn out ill-suited for designing new constitutions,
in that it is not sufficiently flexible to allow for rapid, massive
changes. Consider also the old administrations. The administrative
apparatus was highly centralized and used to a top-down style of
governance under the old regime. Those administrative structures are
62 CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
likely to constrain the design and implementation of reforms at the start
of transition. Further constraints for current policy making may result
from the very recent past, the period of extrication. Contingent choices
early in the reform process, for example, the decision for a particular
election system, will influence later developments, such as the formation
of party systems.
(3) In addition, the past can play a role as a cognitive point of reference
or focal point in the search for new institutions. Reformers may choose to
model constitutional provisions, economic laws, or the social policy
framework on institutional arrangements that have existed during the
inter-war period. In a situation where options are numerous and
everything must be accomplished at once, the return to the "golden" precommunist
past can serve as a clue to come to an agreement. However,
pre-communist traditions providing a sense of direction seem rarely
strong enough to override interest-based preferences. Only when interest
is relatively weak, such as in the choice between a three-fifth or a twothird
majority for constitutional amendment, can we expect tradition to
emerge as an independent causal force.
(4) Moreover, the past provides an arsenal of arguments in the processes
of institution building. Political actors will make continuous reference to
the past, so as to disguise more partisan motives. Solutions may be
rejected on the grounds that they smack of central planning or authoritarian
rule, others may be explicitly justified by appeal to the "golden"
pre-communist era.18
To sell institutional designs as copies of past
regimes (and/or the West) is to pose them as superior to other solutions
and to generate trust in the quality of the new institutions.
The following chapters that expound and analyze the political and
economic changes in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and
Slovakia will provide empirical evidence for the shadow of the past in
post-communist politics.
18
Admittedly, it is hard to reconstruct ex post whether institutional choices are
modelled or only alleged to be modelled on historical precedents.