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Spring 1995: The Processes Of Democratic Transition
Collective Action and Political Transition in Africa: The National Benin Conference (PDF, 36 pages, 102.1 KB) , by Richard Banegas
Deemed as a pioneer of the democratic movement in Africa, the People's Republic of Benin stands out as a successful model of a pacific transition. Indeed, the two years long switch from a Marxist-military regime to a democratic presidential regime occurred "smoothly". In December 1989 the president Mathieu Kérékou, who seized power after a coup on October 30th 1972, renounced the "one-party regime" after months of internal protests and external pressures and overture attempts. He gave up "Marxism Leninism" and called for a "National Conference gathering the living forces of the nation", which was to become a basis for the definition of a new order. After having proclaimed the sovereignty and the enforcement principle of any of the decisions taken, this conference started up the regime overturn. A year after this conference, N. Soglo was elected president (March 21st 1991) and he officially set up the democratic new order. Today "the Beninese Model" is severely criticised by "freedom disillusionment" and seems to have lost its exemplarity status in such proportions that many voices have risen to denounce that "everything changed so that nothing changes". Instead of a nice teleological perspective of the Beninese Model, and instead of the common visions of a pacific and consensual change, it is necessary to replace this process in its own conflictual and extremely tense context, and to insist on its temporary state in order to recall the reversibility of any transition process. Further than the search for the causes of this change, it is a matter of analysing this crisis and transition process in itself to understand its route and its final aim. It is also a question of underlying the importance, via the Beninese example, of a fact neglected and underestimated by the transition analysts: collective action. It is first essential to investigate on the dynamic of a collective mobilisation and political change and secondly to observe how this double protest and reform movement was taken up by an institutional procedure: the National Conference.
Causalities of the likely and the unlikely (PDF, 23 pages, 68.9 KB) , by Michel Dobry
Though often neglected by researchers, street demonstrations constitute a privileged empirical ground for the comparative analysis of the "transitions" to "democracy". On the one hand, they enlighten the process as political mobilisations, particularly when it comes to explaining how the collective action "takes off" and "catches on." On the other hand, they enable us to seize the importance, within the transition process, of the political situations' swings: these processes are indeed unequally affected by political crises; that is to say by the irruption of situations of strong political fluidity. In the three cases analysed in this article – those of GDR, Czechoslovakia and Romania in 1989 – this irruption of political flow was highly associated with the visible collapse of the "collusion" between strategic sectors of these political systems, a collapse that one could also observe on the global scene..
The political elite under Gorbachev and Yeltsine at the beginning of the transition period: a reputational analysis (PDF, 30 pages, 69.5 KB) , by David Lane
The demise of the communist political systems in the early nineties, culminating in the collapse of Soviet power in 1991, has brought into focus the role of political elites in the transition of these societies from state socialism to capitalism. This study is a «reputational " analysis of the views of forty-eight influential people, based on interviews carried out in Moscow in autumn 1992. Questions were devised to identify institutions and people in the Gorbachev and Yeltsin periods having influence at the top level. There can be no doubt that the political constituencies and constellations of political power have changed decisively. Under Gorbachev the political elite originated from single political constituency of persons with positions within the Communist elite. In addition, particularly with respect to foreign policy issues, our respondents identified an influential group of foreign statesmen and political forces. Under Yeltsin, both of these groups were of less significance and the political constituencies of influence were more diverse forming fragmented political elite. It is concluded that three major groupings appear to be dominant in the reform period of Gorbachev and that of radical change under Yeltsin. First, bourgeoisie and democratic forces seeking an economic and political system based on markets, civil society and pluralism: this group, however, is internally divided - not all who support the idea of "civil society" benefit from "marketisation". Second is a group of national and "patriotic forces" emphasising solidarity on national and traditional values (including ones shared with the government administrative control of resources rooted in the command structure of the previous economic and political order). These interests seek different kinds of political and economic institutions as an objective of transition and create a fundamentally unstable political elite structure. .
Hungary's transformation: hunger strikers, unionists, and members of the government (PDF, 33 pages, 97.3 KB) , by Béla Greskovits
To introduce Hungarian democracy "in operation", the political conflict preceding and following an economic austerity package had been selected, with special attention to the social pact, solving the conflict. The author identifies various active threats against the planned reforms, introduces the organisations behind the protests, and assesses their organisational strength and political clout. Based on the case study, the author comments on some findings of the international literature on social pacts. Moreover, some reflections are formulated on the typology of democracies in poor countries with special attention to the characteristic features of the Hungarian democratic system, revealed by the socio-political conflict and its solution. .
The discourse on civil society and the communist party's self-elimination in Eastern Europe (PDF, 29 pages, 88.1 KB) , by Agnes Horvàt and Arpád Szakolczai
The aim of this article is to introduce a perspective and hopefully some conceptual clarity into the huge and often confusing literature on "civil society". It is not possible to revisit the use of this notion without paying attention to the exact historical circumstances of its emergence in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but also to those historical realities, the absolutist government practices, that immediately preceded it, and to which it rhymes, even when contradicting. The concept of civil society is incomprehensible without paying attention to the full import and ambivalence of the Western "civilising process". Such reconstructive historical study is necessary to understand Eastern Europe, its recent past and current reality. In the perspective offered in this article, beyond the mere antithesis between party state and civil society, it is possible to understand the absurd and even perverse way in which communist parties repeated, in a particular form, absolutist practises and institutions of government, in the name of a particular "civilising mission" to build up a "true society". Thus, the communist party was a resurrection of the absolutist "police", which was much more an overall institution of social control than a contemporary police force. It was the peculiar combination of modern and pre-modern "police" powers that made the communist system so intolerable, and that made the regime able to operate so long between softer and harder regimes, without ever losing their peculiar specificity - until the final, complete breakdown. It is the lasting effect of this same combination that can help us understand the striking success of post-communist parties.