Electoral Democracy or Electoral Clanism? Russian Democratization and Theories of Transition

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It seems clear that Russia's attempts at democratization and Westernization will not meet the expectations of Russia's democratic reformers. As happened in previous eras of Westernization, only some elements of Western liberal democracy have taken root in Russian soil, the most important of them being competitive elections. Other fundamental elements of liberalism have not only failed to flourish, but have degenerated since the late Soviet era. Compared with the late Gorbachev period of 1990-91, the mass media and courts in today's Russia are less independent, society's role is weaker, personal rights and freedoms are less secure, and even elections are less free and fair than they were in 1990. To understand this outcome of Russian democratization, the correlation between the electoral process and the development of liberalism should be examined.

Elections and Liberal Democracy

By the second half of the twentieth century, the belief that democracy is the ideal or at least the best possible organization of human society has become dominant among political scientists, and especially among the political elites of most countries of the world. There are virtually no discussions today of whether democracy is good or bad; opinions differ only on what kind of democracy is more democratic, or what kind of democracy is genuine. Some political scientists have pointed out that the desire of every leader and political movement in today's world to be seen as democratic led to such stretching of the term that it turned into "not so much a term of restricted and specific meaning as a vague endorsement of a popular idea."(1)

But the meaning of "democracy" has not withered away completely. Authors of its numerous modern definitions can be divided into two major groups. Those who belong to the first, following Joseph Schumpeter, maintain that elections are the only practical criterion of democracy.(2) The other group believes that democracy cannot be defined by elections alone. It can in turn be divided into two subgroups. The first consists of those who include the fundamentals of political liberalism in their definition of democracy. They argue that a democratic society should be characterized not only by the freedom and fairness of elections but also by a broadly defined pluralism. Thus, they identify democracy with its liberal-democratic form.(3) Others add social and economic democracy, guarantees of social equality, or at least of some level of social justice.(4)

Discussions about democracy are carried on almost exclusively among political theorists. In practical politics, however, Schumpeter's definition has prevailed. In today's world, governments and nongovernmental groups in the West, and their supporters from the opposition forces advocating democracy and liberalization in nondemocratic countries, call for immediate general elections according to the rules that exist in contemporary, developed liberal democracies. Regardless of whether it is Bosnia, Russia, Rwanda, China, or Nigeria, elections are promoted as the first and primary remedy for societal evils. In many cases, this approach has led to success, and using the criterion of elections alone, the number of democracies in the world is growing steadily. On these grounds, supporters of the electoral approach have begun to speak of the "third wave" of democratization, which even led to the emergence of such bizarre concepts as Francis Fukuyama's "end of history."

At the same time, several theorists have observed that in many countries elections did not produce liberal democracy, with its widely accepted traits: a high level of freedom, the rule of law, secure rights and freedoms of individuals and minorities, and so forth.(5) In fact, in some cases they led to the reverse. Analysis of this phenomenon resulted in a new formulation that separated elections from liberalism and (when elections were still considered to be the essence of democracy) democracy from liberalism. The political systems that allow regular and relatively free elections but by all other dimensions do not meet the standards of liberal democracy were defined as "electoral," "illiberal," or "delegative" democracies.(6)

According to the supporters of these new definitions, although the number of illiberal democracies in the world is growing fast, very few of them evolve into liberal democracies of the Western type. They warn that the formal electoral method of evaluation does not allow understanding of the more fundamental dimensions of a political system.(7) The experience of democratization in such a vast country as Russia can provide important material for this discussion.

Russian Democratization and Theories of Transition to Democracy

There are two main approaches to the attempt at democratization in Russia. One employs popular theories of "transition" and "rational choice" and rejects cultural explanations. The other uses the traditional stereotypical view of the Russian political culture, according to which Russia's authoritarian cultural tradition rejects liberal democracy. The second approach is clearly simplistic and stunted, since it is static by definition and does not allow any significant change of political culture. The very fact that in some countries liberal democracy has finally stabilized suggests that preexisting culture is not an absolute and deterministic factor but can significantly change over time. This, however, does not mean that beliefs do not play a role in each specific period. As Larry Diamond put it, "Whether changing or enduring, political culture does shape and constrain the possibilities for democracy."(8)

Nevertheless, one often finds attempts to theorize about Russian democratization without employing the cultural factor. One of the most consistent attempts was undertaken by Michael McFaul. McFaul sees today's Russia as a country that has completed its transition to electoral democracy, where all major political actors have "acquiesced to a new, albeit minimal, set of rules of political competition in which popular elections were recognized as the only legitimate means to political power."(9) In his analysis, McFaul combines two approaches. According to one, "the rational choice" theory, political process is determined by individuals who make rational decisions, pursuing their own interests and maximizing their own expected utility. Accordingly, political transition is seen as a struggle between the two groups: proponents of change and supporters of the ancien regime, the incumbents and the challengers. Sometimes these two groups come to an agreement on a new set of rules determining political behavior. In that case, the transition goes on smoothly and succeeds. In other cases, they do not agree and the transition fails. The second approach provided by the modern studies of transitions defines conditions under which a successful transition is possible: "the narrower the contested agenda of change, the more likely that agreement will emerge."(10)

McFaul divides the Russian transition into three periods. The first two attempts were unsuccessful: one ended in the putsch in August 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union; the next, in the armed conflict between the president and the Supreme Soviet in 1993. In both cases, "agreement over new rules was not reached, pacts were not negotiated, and actors went outside of the existing rules of the game to pursue their interests. Opposing, polarized camps pursued zero-sum strategies until one side won because the contested agenda of change was wide and the balance of power between opposing actors ambiguous." Thus, the reason for the failure is found in the excessive agenda of change, which included not only reform of political institutions, but also the introduction of new types of property relations, changes in sovereignty, and the need to redraw national and internal borders.

During the third stage, the number of issues on the agenda for change significantly narrowed. The questions of state sovereignty, borders, and property redistribution had already been largely settled, and the only important remaining problem was to find a new balance of political power. That is why, in McFaul's view, this problem was solved much more easily: the strongest actor imposed an explicit set of new rules and codified them in the new constitution of 1993, the distribution of power between actors changed, the balance of power was recognized by all significant actors, and the author of the new rules, Boris Yeltsin, although to a limited extent, "submitted to self-binding mechanisms built into the new institutional order."(11)

Explaining successful political change is in fact simply common sense: the less you change, the easier it is to achieve change. It does not, however, provide an answer to an important question: When the agenda of change is roughly the same, why in some …