Democratization at the grassroots: the European Union's external impact

Abstract

By the end of Russia's regime transition to democracy (1991–2001), Russia displayed a mosaic of different sub-national regimes. A number of economic, social, and cultural factors have been investigated to explain how the sub-national regime transitions produced such heterogeneous results. This article intends to contribute to the debate by focusing on the role of the European Union (EU) in the democratic regime transition in the regions of Russia and, in this context, explores the international dimension of sub-national regimes. The main question raised in this article is what was the role of the EU, if any, in the formation of different outcomes of sub-national regime transitions? The analysis is based on a quantitative study that is combined with a number of interviews assessing the EU's impact on sub-national regime formation in Russia during the period of regime transition. The article explores the international dimension in sub-national regime change in Russia while controlling for a number of social, economic, and cultural variables. It argues that the EU has indeed contributed to the process of democratization in the regions of Russia. The approach developed in this article arguably has implications for both area studies and studies of democratization.

Keywords:

• regime transition
• democratization
• regions
• the EU
• Russia

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Adam Przeworski for his comments on the peculiarities of sub-national regime transition versus a national one and to the two anonymous referees for their comments and insights. I am also grateful to the Ramony Cajal programme of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN, Madrid) and to the Universitat Pompeu Fabra for financial and intellectual support provided for this project. I would like to acknowledge the help of the participants of the seminars at the Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies (Madrid), the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, the Jena Graduate School, the Institute of Economics of Russian Academy of Science (Moscow), and the conference participants in the session on “The Role of Sub-national Authorities in Multi-Level Systems” organized by the IPSA on 20 March 2010 in Luxembourg. I would like to thank Alexander Libman for his help in obtaining the data on natural resources which were used in this analysis, and Sandra Leon and Dionysia Tamvaki for their comments on this paper.

Notes

The definition of ‘regime transition’ is borrowed from Freedom House. Regime transition at the sub-national level is described in detail in Section four of this article. According to the evaluation of Freedom House, regime transition in Russia was over by 2001. By 2001, Freedom House, Freedom of the Press, described Russia as ‘partially free’. However, after 2001, Russia was ranked as a ‘non free’ state.

For very interesting studies on sub-national regime disparity across the regions of Russia, see, for example: Gill, Politics in the Russian Regions; Gel'man, ‘The Politics of Local Government’, 43; Petrov, ‘Regional Models’, 236; Göler, ‘Russia's Northern Periphery in Transition’, 188; Hahn, Regional Russia in Transition; Kynev, ‘Rol gubernatorov’, 112; Lankina and Getachew, ‘A Geographic Incremental Theory’, 536.

A number of studies refer to the ‘external impact’ as interchangeable with other terms: ‘the international dimension of regime change’; ‘international linkages and leverages’ (Levitsky and Way, ‘Linkages versus Leverages’, 379); ‘the international diffusion’ (Simmons, Dobbin, and Garrett, ‘The International Diffusion of Liberalism’, 781); ‘transnational factors’ meaning ‘ideas and norms’ (Lankina and Getachew, ‘A Geographic Incremental Theory’, 536), ‘international dimension’ (Whitehead, International Dimensions of Democratization). This study uses ‘the external impact of the EU’ to refer to the role of the EU's programmes and projects in democratization (for example, exchange of experts, joint seminars, educational programmes of the EU, trainings, various programmes of TACIS in the 1990s). This study uses ‘the EU's actors’ to refer to the municipal and regional governments, entrepreneurs, trade partners, universities, etc., of the EU's states. A detailed description of the EU's impact and its operationalization can be found in Section 3.

See, for example, the studies on diversity of sub-national regimes in Argentina in Gervasoni, ‘A Rentier Theory’, 302; and on the coexistence of sub-national authoritarianism and sub-national democracy in Mexico in Gibson, ‘Boundary Control’, 101.

See for example Gel'man, ‘The Politics of Local Government in Russia’, 43; Petrov, ‘Regional Models’, 236; Gill, Politics in the Russian Regions.

See, for example: Kopstein and Reilly, ‘Geographic Diffusion’, 1.

Lankina and Getachew, ‘A Geographic Incremental Theory’, 536.

On institutional unsettlement in Russia under Yeltsin's government, see Steen and Gel'man, Elites and Democratic Development; Obydenkova, ‘Regime Transition in the Regions of Russia: The Freedom of Mass Media’, 221; and on the role of uncertainty in the regime transition, see, for example: McFaul and Stoner-Weiss, After the Collapse of Communism.

On de-centralization in the 1990s, see, for example: Kahn, Federalism; Ross, Federalism and Democratisation.

On the institutional mechanisms regulating the foreign policy of the regions, see, for example: Demchuk, ‘External Relations’, 111; and on the high level of institutional contradictions between regional and federal laws by the end of the transition period in 2001, see Kahn, Federalism.

See, for example: Hale, ‘Regime Cycles’, 133; Bunce, ‘Rethinking Recent Democratization’, 167; Bunce, ‘Comparative Democratization’, 207; Fish, Democracy Derailed in Russia.

For excellent qualitative analyses of the regions of Russia, see, for example: Gill, Politics in the Russian Regions; Gel'man, ‘The Politics of Local Government in Russia’, 43; Petrov, ‘Regional Models of Democratic Development’, 236; Göler, ‘Russia's Northern Periphery in Transition’, 188; Hahn, Regional Russia in Transition; Ross and Campbell, Federalism and Local Politics in Russia; Stoner-Weiss, Resisting the State.

For example, Dinino and Orttung, ‘Explaining Patterns of Corruption in the Russian Regions’, 500, focuses on the corruption in the regions of Russia, and Obydenkova, ‘Regime Transition in the Regions of Russia’, 221, highlights mass media in the regions.

For EU-Russia relations and the EU Neighborhood Policy, see Bordachev, ‘Russia and the European Union after 2007’, 51; Haukkala, Dynamic Aspects; Aalto, European Union.

The initiatives of the EU's actors targeted at sub-national units of the EU's members and candidates are analysed as external regionalization in these studies. It is argued that these initiatives contribute to regionalization within any country. See, for example, Keating, ‘Europeanism and Regionalism’, and Hughes, Sasse, and Gordon, Europeanization and Regionalization.

Among the studies mainly focusing on the analysis of the Northern Dimension, see for example: Alexandrov, ‘The Northern Dimension’, 6; Haukkala, Dynamic Aspects; Aalto, European Union.

On the interconnectedness between the EU and the regions of Russia, see for example Lankina and Getachew, ‘A Geographic Incremental Theory’, 536; Gel'man and Lankina explore evaluate external democratic versus internal authoritarian diffusions (Authoritarian versus Democratic Diffusions‘, 40); Obydenkova tests the parsimonious approach to the European external impact on individual aspects of regime transition (e.g., civil society) in ‘The International Dimension’, 473; Lankina looks into the EU's aid distribution across the regions of Russia (Lankina, ‘Explaining European Union’, 309).

The interviews were conducted with Russian regional and local (ex-) politicians, academics, entrepreneurs, and journalists in the period of 2005–2009. All interviews were conducted in Russian and translated by the author. Questions on the role of external European factors in the regional regime transition in the 1990s and changes of the 2000s were raised.

For the debates on regime transition and on different forms of outcomes of transition see, for example: Diamond, Linz, and Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries; Diamond, Developing Democracy; Diamond, ‘Thinking About Hybrid Regimes’, 25.

Fish, ‘Democratization's Prerequisites’, Przeworski et al., Democracy and Development.

Balmaceda, Energy Dependency; Stoner-Weiss, Resisting the State; Stoner-Weiss, Local Heroes.

Kopstein and Reilly, ‘Geographic Diffusion’, 1; Lankina and Getachew, ‘A Geographic Incremental Theory’, 536.

Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition.

This debate is very complex. Some studies hold that democracy is incompatible with Islam (for example, Karatnycky, ‘Muslim Countries’, 99), while others challenge this argument (for example, Wright, ‘Two Visions of Reformation’, 64).

Fish, ‘Islam and Authoritarianism’, 4.

Bunce, ‘Rethinking Recent Democratization’, 167.

Ibid., 170.

Fish, ‘Democratization's Requisites’.

The detailed description of these control variables are presented in Section Four of the article.

Jacoby, ‘Inspiration’, Levitsky and Way, ‘Linkages versus Leverages’; Bunce, ‘Rethinking Recent Democratization’.

Obydenkova, ‘Regime Development’, 327.

Jacoby, ‘Inspiration’.

Ibid., 625.

Ibid., 628.

Ibid., 629.

Ibid.

Some recent studies on the topic are, for example: Hughes, Sasse, and Gordon, Europeanization and Regionalization.

Among recent studies on the transition in Central European countries and the EU impact is, for example, Hughes, Sasse, and Gordon, Europeanization and Regionalization; Carothers, Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion.

See, for example, De Silva et al., Intergovernmental Reforms; and Obydenkova, ‘Institutional Tools of Conflict Management’. For detailed analysis of the re-federalization of the 1990s, also see Ross, Federalism and Democratisation; Kahn, Federalism.

Ross, Local Politics and Democratization, 14.

De Silva et al., Intergovernmental Reforms; Ross, Federalism and Democratisation; Kahn, Federalism.

Ross, Federalism and Democratisation, 19.

For excellent analysis of the decentralization in the 1990s, see Ross, Local Politics and Democratization; Ross and Campbell, Federalism and Local Politics; Kahn, Federalism. For example, Ross, Local Politics and Democratization, points out the weakness of Yeltsin in the beginning of the 1990s to explain his goodwill in conceding wide powers to the regions.

On the EU's role in democratization, see, for example: Kubicek, The European Union and Democratization.

See, for example: Aalto, European Union; Haukkala, Dynamic Aspects.

For example, even in such an exceptional case as the region of Kaliningrad, the visa-regime became stricter from 2007 when Poland and the Baltic republics entered the Schengen Agreement. Before 2007, citizens of Kaliningrad could travel to these states with free-of-charge many-entry visas, but this has since been changed (Vardomsky ‘Prigranichnoe sotrudnichestvo’, 90).

See, for example, Obydenkova, ‘Democratization’; Vardomsky, ‘Prigranichnoe sotrudnichestvo’, 90.

The earliest EU initiative was the Tacis Programme which was explicitly meant to sustain the transition to democracy in Russia and other post-Soviet States. From 2007, the Tacis programme was replaced by ‘the European Neighborhood Policy and Russia’.

An exception could be the relations with Belarus which attempted to develop a ‘cultural component’ as well. However, trade is still the main core of this relationship (see, for example, Vardomsky, ‘Prigranichnoe sotrudnichestvo’, 90. However, it is important to notice that there have been some exceptions. For example, the Yekaterinburg region (Sverdlovsk) developed very intensive paradiplomatic relations with the PSSs in the areas of culture and education. However, these cases remain exceptional (Vardomsky, ‘Prigranichnoe sotrudnichestvo’, 90). Moreover, the paradiplomacy of the regions of Russia with PSSs and China never focused explicitly on the promotion of democracy.

On the institutional framework of the paradiplomacy of the regions of Russia, see Demchuk, ‘External Relations’, 111.

See, for example, European Union: External Action, ‘Northern Dimension’.

For example, Vardomsky (‘Prigranichnoe sotrudnichestvo’, 90) highlights the importance of such Euroregions as ‘Neman’ (established in 1997), the ‘Baltic’ Euroregion (from 1998), the ‘Saule’ Euroregion (established in 1999). The ‘Karelia’ Euroregion created another framework for cooperation between the officials from the Russian region Karelia and Finnish municipalities. The Pskov region and neighbouring regions in Estonia and Latvia established still another ‘Pskov-Livonia’ Euroregion.

See, for example: Alexandrov, ‘The Northern Dimension’, 6; and Obydenkova, ‘Democratization’.

Lankina and Getachew, ‘A Geographic Incremental Theory’, 536.

Indeed, the EU's projects and initiatives went beyond northwestern Russia and reached regions even located in central Russia, in Southern Russia, and even in Ural (see the data on the EU's projects and investment in the regions of Russia in Lankina, ‘Explaining European Union’, 309).

Lankina, ‘Explaining European Union’, 309.

Ibid.

Freedom House referred to the end of the regime transition at the national level. However, we extend this conclusion of Freedom House to apply it to sub-national regime transitions across 89 regions of Russia, each of which has exhibited its own transitional strategy or path during the period of the 1990s.

For a detailed analysis, see De Silva, Intergovernmental Reforms.

See for example: Ross, Local Politics; Ross and Campbell, Federalism and Local Politics in Russia; Kahn, Federalism; Obydenkova, ‘Regime Transition’. Obydenkova, ‘A Triangle of Russian Federalism’.

During the meeting on 13 September 2004, Putin announced the reform that would abolish elected regional governors and instead call on regional parliaments to ratify regional governors on the recommendation of the Rissian Federation.

The phenomenon of stability of sub-national regimes, once formed, was highlighted in Petrov (‘Regional Models’, 236) and reports of the Carnegie Centre in Moscow. Following this suggestion, the analysis presumes that once sub-national political regime is established, it remains over some time – the product of previous reforms.

The initial ratings for 88 regions can be found in Petrov, ‘Regional Models’, 244–7.

The dataset had been published electronically by the Independent Institute of Social Politics, Social Atlas.

Ibid.

The project was organized and implemented by the Public Expertise Institute, the INDEM Foundation and the Mercator Analytical Centre, ‘Demokraticheskii audit regionov’.

See Freedom House, Advancing Freedom for 70 Years: ‘Freedom House measures freedom according to two broad categories: political rights and civil liberties. Political rights enable people to participate freely in the political process, including through the right to vote, compete for public office, and elect representatives who have a decisive impact on public policies and are accountable to the electorate. Civil liberties allow for the freedoms of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and personal autonomy without interference from the state.’

For a detailed description of the criteria, see ibid., 234. These criteria were also cited in the dataset of the Independent Institute of Social Politics, Social Atlas and were used in a variety of articles on the on the regions of Russia. See for example, Lankina and Getachew, ‘A Geographic Incremental Theory’, 536; Obydenkova, ‘The International Dimension’, 473.

The project was organized and implemented by the Public Expertise Institute, INDEM Foundation and the Mercator Analytical Centre, ‘Demokraticheskii audit regionov’.

Ibid.

Lankina, ‘Explaining European Union’.

This is a rough calculation by the author from the data on the EU projects in the regions of Russia during the period of 1992–2005, as presented in Lankina, ‘Explaining European Union’, 318.

With respect to GRP, we use the data from 2005, so it coincides with the last measurement of the democratization in the regions and with the cutoff date for the EU's projects and investment (which was also 2005). Also, it fits the measure of democracy until 2005 as we apply in our data and the measure of the EU-related variables which also goes up till 2005. Since we do not have a time-varying measure of democracy, disaggregation of other variables per year cannot help to improve the analysis.

The scores and ratings of the regions according to the number of economic funds and a number of industries presented in each of the regions for the period 1995–2005 were derived from Federal State Statistics Service, ‘Regioni Rossii 2007’.

Federal State Statistics Service, ‘Regioni Rossii 2007’.

The first indicator is the sum of the total oil extraction in the region divided by total oil extraction in Russia. The second is the sum of oil extraction (tons) and gas extraction (square metre), where each component is multiplied with a fixed ‘coal equivalent’ factor to make them compatible. However, the first two variables produced almost identical results. The third indicator was simply the logarithm of the revenue received by the region for the production of natural resources. Each indicator was run separately in correlations and regressions with different parameters of democracy.

The first Mongol invasion took place in 1223 and is known as The Battle of the Kalka River. The invasion lasted throughout the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries until the final battle in 1480. For the long-term cultural-historic impact of the Tatar-Mongol invasion on Russia, see for example: Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols.

A number of studies argue that democracy is incompatible with Islam (for example, Fish, ‘Islam and Authoritarianism’, 4; Karatnycky, ‘Muslim Countries’, 99; while others contest this argument (for example, Wright, ‘Two Visions of Reformation’, 64).

An alternative way of measuring the historical legacy, a proxy for the path-dependency concept, would be to take into account the number of years a region has formed part of Russia (be that Tsarist, pre-Tsarist or Soviet Russia). However, including this measurement in preliminary calculations revealed insignificance of the variable (the calculation demonstrated unstandardized coefficient of only ‘-0.018’ with a standard error of ‘0.017’ and statistical significance of ‘0.312’). Two measurements were considered. The first is the length of time the region has been considered part of Russia and the second is the length of time the region has been considered a ‘constituent unit’ of Russia (or a so-called highest status ‘region of the first level’. By 1993, there were 89 ‘first level’ regions). All the data on the ‘age of a region’ within Russia was derived from Petrov, ‘Nasledie imprerii’, 381.

Lankina, ‘Explaining European Union’, 312.

For analysis of the EU's aid to Central European states and contrasting these two approaches, see, for example, Schmitter, ‘Assessing the Macro-Impact’.

See, for example: Jacoby, ‘Inspiration’.

For example, Finland always advocated additional help to the Russian Karelia region (Karelia republic) due to a number of cultural, ethnic, and historic factors. The region of Karelia lies on both sides of the Russian-Finnish border. It encompasses two regions in Finland (called Southern Karelia and Northern Karelia) and two administrative regions of Russia (republic of Karelia and Leningrad oblast).

This observation partially addresses the problem of reversed causality. With some caveats, it refutes the argument that the EU's investments flowed only to the most democratic regions. If the EU had invested only in the regions which had been initially the most democratic ones, then both the coefficient and the statistical importance of the first model would be higher.

The interview with Leonid Smorgunov, professor of St Petersburg State University, took place in Luxembourg on 19 March 2010. The statement referred to the seminars organized for regional and local officials from different regions of Russia which took place in St Petersburg. All interviews with Russian regional politicians and scholars were conducted in Russian and translated into English by the author.

This was the case with the Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan regions. Both welcomed the EU's entrepreneurs over the period of the 1990s. Specifically, the possibility of growing vineyards and producing wine was discussed with French entrepreneurs. The possibility of developing the oil industry was raised by German businessmen. However, both initiatives failed because of the lack of transparency of regional laws and obscure land property issues. However, both events remained a memorable episode for regional politicians in the 1990s and raised awareness about the necessity of changing the regional political and economic climate in order to attract foreign investment in the future (this information comes from the interviews with regional and local officials of Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria, December 2009).

Also as previous studies have demonstrated, geographic proximity may have an important impact of dissemination of foreign aid (Lankina and Gettachew, ‘A Geographic Incremental Theory’, 536), and it also can be an example of ‘geographic contagion of democracy’ (Kopstein and Reilly, ‘Geographic Diffusion’, 1).

Carnegie Centre of Moscow's surveys and projects are partially available online.

For example, the importance of the EU projects had the highest statistical significance at 0.000, while both GRP and religion were less significant statistically.

On the failure of the EU to impact regime transition in Russia on the national level, see, for example: Haukkala, ‘Lost in Translation?’, 1757. http://monitoring.carnegie.

The classification of the external impact on democratization into ‘inspiration’, ‘coalition’ and ‘substitution’ approaches was developed by Jacoby, ‘Inspiration’, 623.

On the interconnection between de-centralization, asymmetric federalism, and external influence of the EU on sub-national regional regimes, see Gel'man and Lankina, ‘Authoritarian Versus Democratic’, 40; Obydenkova, ‘Regime Transition’. On the dynamics of federalism in Russia, see Obydenkova, ‘A Triangle of Russian Federalism’.

Jacoby, ‘Inspiration’.

The interview with the ex-deputy of Leningrad oblast took place on 19 December 2009.

Ibid.

This idea was expressed by different regional policy-makers in a number of interviews. This specific quote comes from the interview with the United Russia party representative of Irkutsk (14 December 2009, Moscow).

The overall level of democracy started declining in 2001, which is the beginning of re-centralization under Putin's government. However, detailed analysis of these two trends, sub-national democratization and national (de-)centralization is clearly the topic of a different study. On the interconnection between sub-national regimes and the re-centralization reforms of Putin, see for example Gel'man and Lankina, ‘Authoritarian Versus Democratic’, 40; Obydenkova, ‘A Triangle of Russian Federalism’.

See for example Ross, Local Politics; Ross and Campbell, Federalism and Democratisation; Kahn, Federalism; Obydenkova, ‘Regime Transition’.

The interview with Professor of Moscow Lomonosov State University took place on 5 September 2008, Moscow.

The interview with Denis Sokolov, the Director of the Institute for Regional Analysis of Russia, took place on 20 March 2008, Madrid.

Freedom House, ‘Freedom of the Press’.