Democracy, in some form or another, says Philippe Schmitter, “may well be the only legitimate and stable form o f government in the contemporary world” 117, yet despite the high legitimacy that democracy enjoys, sustaining it seems at least as problematic as establishing it. The experience o f the most recent wave of transitions to democracy suggests that the preservation o f a democratic regime is arguably more difficult than its establishment, precisely because the premise of a just rule means different things to different people who all expect their interests to be served adequately by democratic rule. The body o f this thesis explores the trajectory o f democratic transitions in two countries: in Slovenia, a linear gradual process o f democratisation from the establishment of pluralism towards increasingly more democratic order; in Slovakia on the other hand, a somewhat circular transition, from the establishment o f democratic structures through various ‘derailments’ to a new (it will be argued a third attempt) beginning of the transition to democracy. Clearly, the term democracy is used very loosely, yet the principles o f democracy are specific and definite and that is where the next section turns to.
From Rules to Substance
First, we need to defend the use of the word ‘transition’ from the accusation of
teleology. The term is used throughout this thesis with a view that the aim o f the process o f the transition to democracy is a progress towards more democracy, that is more freedom, equality, growth in individual opportunity and autonomy o f institutions, security and accountability. The new ECE democracies and their political systems are judged (for the purposes o f the European integration or by their own electorates) on how
far that process has progressed whilst the end point is assumed to be a reasonably stable democratic regime (usually compared to Western European model). However, such an outcome, whilst aspired to, is not an assumption that transition will necessarily mean a progress in that direction. Thus, the word ‘transition’ means exactly that, a process of
116 General texts are mainly: J.Dunn Democracy the Unfinished Journey as above, D.Held Prospects
fo r Democracy Cambridge Polity Press 1993 ; G.Sartori The Theory o f Democracy Revisited New
Jersey, Chatham House 1987; D.Beetham K.Boyle Introducing Democracy:80 Questions and Answers Cambridge, Polity Press 1995
change that is heading towards a goal - in the distance and sometimes vaguely outlined - but a process that can be sidelined or reversed and ultimately fail to reach the goal it set out for itself. That does not mean that there is a preexisting programme for the transition and that every country has to complete each stage o f this programme, but as long as these transition processes claim to be towards democracy they are assessed by certain preexisting criteria. If it is said that Slovakia’s transition was troubled and in danger o f regression, the question under the examination should be why it followed a different route to its neighbours and what kind o f regime would emerge from that different route. Similar consideration apply to the term democratic consolidation, o f which more
below118.
In its core meaning democracy is the implementation o f the idea o f popular sovereignty, that is the notion that the will of the people should prevail. This is done through certain procedures, that is, a system is deemed democratic, when “most powerful decision-makers are selected through fair, honest and periodic elections in which candidates freely compete for votes, and in which virtually all the adult population is eligible to vote” 119. Thus, the democratic principle o f legitimacy is that o f consent and participation, which means that all laws and obligations are considered legitimate only when people have consented to them, in our times through their representatives. Democracy here is used as a “shorthand” for liberal democracy, which consists o f two distinct components: 1) the protection o f a people from tyranny, that is liberal
constitutionalism, which concerns itself with legal and structural mechanisms against the arbitrary exercise o f power; 2) the implementation o f popular rule, which is democracy per se. As Sartori explains, if constitutional mechanisms are about ‘how’ decisions are taken, then the popular will is about ‘what’ is decided 120. Whilst mechanisms can be imposed and structures erected nearly anywhere, ‘the people’ and their decisions are less
117 P.Schmitter ‘Dangers and Dilemmas o f Democracy’ Journal o f Democracy 5:2 April 1994 p.p.57- 74 p.58
1,8 A.Schedler ‘What is Democratic Consolidation’ Journal o f Democracy 9:2 April 1998 p.p.91-105 p.95. The author agrees that democratic consolidation is an “intrinsically teleological concept”, but defends it if three conditions are met; a) we have to avoid obscuring it; b) dissociate it from any belief in inevitable progress; c) acknowledge that there is a plurality o f consolidations.
119 S.Huntington cited in D.Beetham ‘Conditions for Democratic Consolidation’ Review o f African
Political Economy 60 1994 p.p. 157-172 p. 158
120 G.Sartori ‘How Far Can Free Government Travel?’ Journal o f Democracy 6:3 July 1995 p.p. 101-111 p. 102
predictable and influenced by socio-economic and cultural factors, and nationalism constitutes one such very important factor.
For democracy to be assessed there must be some objective criteria. So, when it is said that in ECE democratic structures are sufficiently in place to call them
democracies, that means that nearly all formal qualifications necessary for a regime to be cafled democratic are functioning, obviously with varying degrees o f success. Those are: 1) inclusive citizenship for all people living in the territory o f the state; 2) rule o f law, whereby the government must respect the law, with individuals and minorities protected from the ‘tyranny o f the majority’; 3) legislature, executive and judiciary must be
separate and the judiciary sufficiently independent to be able to uphold the law; 4) power holders must be elected in free elections; 5) freedom o f expression, sources of
information and associational autonomy must exist and be protected by law; 6) the armed forces and police should be politically neutral and independent12'.
On a moment’s reflection it is obvious that the above criteria should be regarded as minimal, or rather formal122 conditions o f democracy - procedures are necessary conditions for democracy, but never sufficient. Clear cut definitions and formally fulfilled procedures still raise considerable questions about the actual performance o f democracy. For the ‘rule o f law’ to be upheld, the state must be strong and autonomous enough not to be captive to the interests o f one dominant group, either an ethnic one, or dominated by a concentration o f political and economic interests. On the other hand the power of the state needs to be counterbalanced by the strength o f civil society so as not to overpower the society itself and thus avoid accountability. Unless the relationship between the state and society is balanced, formal democracy cannot be maintained. Another example is freedom o f expression and alternative sources o f information which are protected by law, for example in Slovakia. Yet, after the 1994 elections most media executives who were not members o f the leading HzDS party were dismissed and the government regularly challenged and defied its own Constitutional Court, ff we now consider that this is a country that emerged from a system which employed secret police as an arm o f government control, it is open to debate whether the population in the initial
Compiled from M.Kaldor and I.Vejvoda ‘Democratization in Central and East European Countries’
International Affairs 73:1 January 1997 p.p.59-82. See also R.Dahl Dilemmas o f Pluralist Democracy
New Haven Yale University Press 1982 and D.Beetham in D.Held ed. Prospects fo r Democracy E.Huber, D.Rueschemeyer. J.Stephens ‘The Paradoxes o f Contemporary Democracy’ Comparative
stage o f democratisation trusts the rights provided by the constitution, when there is evidence that such authoritarian practices are still in operation123.
There is a more substantive component to democracy, concerned less with institutional practices and more with the substance, that is the degree to which
democratic institutions can be implemented and yet, undemocratic practices persist, or a problem o f new democracies whereby old embedded practices function within the newly emergent system. This substantive element o f the democratic process remains
‘unfinished’124 and should be continuously reexamined, so that individuals are always in position to influence the conditions in which they live and decisions that affect their lives. Democracy is a “mode o f decision-making about collectively binding rules and policies over which the people exercise control”, hence the most democratic arrangement is that “where all members o f the collectivity enjoy effective equal rights to take part in such decision-making directly - one that is to say which realizes to the greatest conceivable degree the principles o f popular control and political equality in its exercise” 125.
In that respect, democracy is not a static state o f affairs, “there are no ‘final’ democracies” 126, only more or less established ones, nearer or further away from the ‘ideal’, which remains elusive. All democracies, including the long established ones must renew and restructure according to the changing socio-economic developments, thus all democracies must be engaged in the continuous process o f democratisation. The
dichotomy o f democracy and authoritarianism might have always been too simplistic, but the latest ‘third wave’ o f transitions, including those o f Eastern Europe and Asia,
illustrate the shortcomings o f such a distinction. There are many forms o f democracies on the continuum between the minimal-formalist (free and fair elections and inclusive citizenship are the two conditions beyond any discussion, for in the absence o f those principles one cannot talk o f even minimal democracy) and more substantive
123 In order to make a clear break with the previous administration, one o f the first measures taken by the post-1998 government in Slovakia was to charge the Head of the Slovak Information Service (secret police) I.Lexa for his role in the kidnapping o f the president’s son M.Kovac Jr. and Minister Krajcf for thwarting o f the referendum in May 1997.
^D.Beetham ‘Conditions for Democratic Consolidation’ Review o f African Political Economy 60 p. 125 D.Beetham ‘Liberal Democracy and the Limits o f Democratization’ chpt.2 in D.Held ed. Prospects
fo r Democracy p.p.55. Surprisingly, this book about democracy does not have one reference to
nationalism in its index.
democracies, whereby all the above criteria would be in place to such an extent that economic and societal cleavages are minimal.
So what about democratic consolidation? The first thing to mention is that this discussion concentrates on liberal democracy, thus a regime such as Slovakia in the period 1992-1998, described as a ‘semi-democracy127’ is somewhere between an authoritarian regime and liberal democracy, which is what some scholars call ‘electoral’128 democracy. Even among these ‘electoral’ democracies there are differences129. Slovakia for all its semi-democratic characteristics was hardly Serbia which could, at a stretch, count as an electoral democracy, or Russia, where democracy has been reduced to a series o f rituals. In Slovakia an elected parliamentary majority party proceeded to remove the opposition not only from parliamentary procedures, but reduce all competition in political (and social) life, thus the legitimately elected leadership descended into a kind o f ‘tyranny’, with Meciar assuming the role o f ‘saviour’ o f the Slovak nation. A similar type o f politics could be observed in Croatia and Belarus and in attempts o f the nationalist-conservative coalition in Hungary between 1990-1994, an observation which brings to the fore one o f the problems faced by nascent democracies - what is often being consolidated is not a liberal-democracy, but a regime with fewer or more democratic features.
The next question then is whether the change o f government in such
democracies means democratic consolidation and the answer is, no. In the first place, the assessment o f democracy depends largely on the point from which one observes the length o f route traveled between the point o f departure and the aims one wants to reach on the continuum between non-democratic and democratic regime. As has been said before, the latter is a normative concept, each fulfilled aim is not beyond improvement, therefore consolidation is difficult to quantify. Secondly, if a semi-democratic type of regime is defeated by a more democratic one, the change constitutes a progress towards the establishment o f a fully democratic regime, not its consolidation. So, there are only
127 S.Szomolanyi Slovensko:Problemy Konsolidacie Demokracie Bratislava, Nadacia Friedricha Eberta 1997 p .ll
128 A.Schedler ‘What is Democratic Consolidation’. The author uses the term as a “convenient shorthand for any kind o f “diminished subtype” o f democracy, p.93
129 A.Agh identifies four types o f distorted democracies, particularly important to postcommunist states: 1) formalist (e.g.Serbia, Russia); b) elitist (in the early 1990s Romania, Albania, Bulgaria); c) partyist, whereby parties are the only actors and try to exclude all other political and social actors from the policy-making. All ECE democracies were and it is suggested by the author will remain in this form of democracy; d) tyrannical majorities (e.g.Slovakia, Croatia) p.p. 11-15
more or less ‘consolidated’ transitions. Slovenia is further on the way towards
consolidation than Slovakia, because the system has been functioning for a much longer period o f time under relatively democratic conditions and because the continuation o f its liberal-democratic structures is under less pressure. Thus, by the term ‘consolidated democracy’ should be meant a regime whose demise is less likely and that is expected to continue without challenges to its basic principles and norms.