Slovakia: Preface

Slovakia:
Problems of Democratic Consolidation
and the Struggle for the Rules of the Game

New York

1997

Preface

As recently as 1994, Slovak accession into both the EU and NATO seemed quite likely to occur in conjunction with its most advanced Central European neighbors: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Today, in all probability, Slovakia will be left out. Not only has Slovakia failed to join the first group of Central European countries to be invited to the first wave of negotiations on NATO expansion, but the country is no longer even mentioned as a likely candidate for the second wave. Similarly, the European Union appears increasingly decided against inviting Slovakia to oncoming membership talks.

International and domestic commentators alike attribute this remarkably rapid fall from Western grace to an increasingly apparent "democratic deficit." They refer specifically to the current government's disregard for the rule of law, its sub-standard human and minority rights, guarantees, and its weakened democratic institutions. They also point to the relatively better - if still far from perfect - performance of Slovakia's neghbors: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Increasingly, commentators have come to view Slovakia as the deviant country in Central Europe.

Since then, several additional deviations from emerging Central European standards have occurred that render analysts more likely to group Slovakia among its neighbors to the east than with Poland, the Czech Republic, or Hungary. Chief among these was the recent action of the ruling coalition which deprived Member of Parliament, Frantip pek Gaulieder of his parliamentary mandate after he resigned from the ruling movement's parliamentary club. A subsequent European Parliament resolution has declared that the Slovak Parliament's action violates the basic democratic principle that elected representatives should be free to exercise the voters' mandate in accordance with their conscience.

This principle is incorporated in the Slovak Constitution and was recently reaffirmed by an independent ruling of Slovakia's Constitutional Court. More recently, Minister of the Interior Gustav Krajai, acting in the name of the govenrment, unilaterally cancelled a popularly supported referendum on direct elections for the office of the President. The decision followed a Constitutional Court ruling that supported the referendum as a non-binding indication of popular will on the issue.

These events, observers claim, have pushed Slovakia further away from democratic standards. Indeed, the practices of the current Slovak government are beginning to diverge even from those of the wider group of ten European Union Associate countries. The growing recognition of the progress made by Estonia and Slovenia among Western officials - and particularly, Eurepresentatives - is another telling indicator of regressive trends in Slovakia. Like Slovakia, both of these countries are small, recently independent states, possessing relatively little experience with self-rule and complex relations with ethnic minorities which have kinship ties with potentially powerful and once-dominant neighbors. Their success undermines Slovak governmental claims that Slovak conditions merit exceptional consideration. Perhaps more damaging, Slovakia recently has been compared to Serbia and Belarus. Again, the common denominator is a basic disregard of democratic principles. Some analysts, for example, have pointed out that intense economic and political harassment of the independent media is common in all three countries. The Meciar government's efforts to exclude the opposition from all politically relevant parliamentary functions also finds its parallels in Minsk and Belgrade. While repression in Serbia and Belarus is indeed markedly greater, the values of the ruling governments appear similar. To external observers in the EU or NATO, these are violations of the same kind, varying only in degree.

Variations in degree rather than kind, however, contribute to the ambiguity which currently pervades domestic discussions over the fate of democratic consolidation in Slovakia. A debate is raging over whether critiques of Slovak democratic practices - or lack thereof - are based on objective evidence or merely reflect the bias of a politically-motivated opposition and, possibly, of a conspiratorial international elite. Elite conduct of the debate deeply influences public perceptions of reality. The government portrays these problems as mere growing pains - typical of any "young state." The opposition squarely blames the government and holds it responsible for practices which, in their estimation, cannot be reconciled with democratic norms.

Such elite exchanges have also helped shape perceptions of the state of democracy in Slovakia - both of Slovak citizens and of the international community. The government and its supporters argue that Slovakia is a fully democratic country. The opposition, by contrast, warns about the growing danger of a fully authoritarian regime and fears the end of the rule of law. Divergent elite perceptions have helped polarize the country into bitterly opposed camps with mutually exclusive perceptions of what constitute democratic norms. Increasingly, on both sides, political judgment has become a matter of faith rather than the result of a reflective thought process.

This volume is an attempt to help move this debate into constructive channels. The authors' collective goal is to assemble the information that is available and unambiguously locate Slovakia on a map of democratic consolidation as well as chart the direction of its movement. They seek to identify the major actors, their interests, the resources they possess or seek to control in order to realize these interests, and, finally, how the pursuit of these interests can block or enhance the consolidation of democracy. In short, this is a collection of critical empirical analyses - a collection which seeks to identify the formation and maintenance of contemporary structures of power and which questions whether, given the analysts' normative preferences, there is not some better way of doing things.

What follows is thus a broad snapshot of the changing political regime of Slovakia circa 1997 as well as a substantial explanation of how it arrived here. Each author focuses on his or her specific area of expertise: the role of national elites in democratic development, the political party system, the political economy, civil society and interest group representation, regional administration, public opinion, the Constitution, human and minority rights, the mass media, and foreign political orientation.

Taken together, these studies form a detailed portrait of the crucial trends and controversies in Slovakia today. They provide insight into the direction of regime and civilizational change in Slovakia with the understanding that the future remains an open-ended and malleable process.

This English-language version is substantially different from its Slovak twin. The editors have asked the Slovak authors to make a number of concessions to Western academic and intellectual style. As a result, the English-language versions of the articles presented here are similar in substance but less discursive and more methodically constructed. Some of the original Slovak-language articles were written for Slovak readers on the assumption that they would intuitively grasp the familiar context and direction of the argument. For the sake of clarity, these authors were urged in this edition to make explicit those background assumptions and lines of argument that would otherwise remain unfamiliar to the non-Slovak reader. Wherever necessary, the authors have included additional explanatory footnotes or text to help non-Slovak readers understand the wider context of events. Throughout, the editors have sought to preserve the authenticity of each authors' style of intellectual thought and argument.

Non-Central European scholars who strive conscientiously to expunge value-laden statements from their own work may find many of the normative judgments of this volume disconcerting. They should remember, however, that the authors' collective experience withP authoritarianism has led many to fear that value-free social science' is a luxury they might not be able to afford under the current conditions. There is an engaged and urgent tone to their work that is heightened by the very real fear that the current trend towards authoritarianism could jeopardize the continued development of free, academic research in Slovakia.

In the tradition of Robert Dahl, Juna Linz and Alfred Stepan, as well as Guillermo O'Donnell and Phillipe Schmitter, most of the authors would openly admit a normative preference for democratic systems of rule. Within this framework, the authors have tried to remain as analytically objective as time and information allow. While they have made efforts to employ the objective modes of inquiry that were prohibited under communism, both time and information are in short supply. Too many of Slovakia's important decisions are already made "behind the scenes," by the country's ruling coalition. Many processes that are entirely public in other countries - from oppositon participation in the parliamentary supervision of sensitive state functions to the distribution of resources to localities - have been hidden from public view. Thus, jounalists, the general public, and even academics are often under-informed. Where the following articles refer to speculative or unverified press reports, one must keep in mind the constraining effects of a government that fears a truthfully informed public.

We would like to thank Michael Petrano, Director of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, for his supportive and understanding approach to the creation of this publication - the third in a series. We would also like to thank Karen Ballentine of Columbia University for her intensive editorial work on several of the articles. Finally, we owe many additional thanks to Carole Cuffs, Ian Harris, and Eric "Boomer" Koomen for edits and critical comments.

Sona Szomolányi & John A. Gould
November 1997