The sources and dynamics of competitive authoritarianism in Ukraine

Abstract

Competitive authoritarianism describes countries in which elections are competitive and the primary means of gaining power but in which civil and political liberties are regularly abused by incumbents seeking to preserve power. Such regimes need to be treated as a separate regime type rather than as in transition to democracy. They have existed for long periods of time, do not necessarily democratize, and raise a set of questions ignored in studies of either fully democratic or fully authoritarian regimes. Competitive authoritarianism in Ukraine can best be seen as the outgrowth of supply-side rather than demand-side structural factors from the Soviet era. The failure of democracy is explained not by popular demands for authoritarian rule or the strength of extremist groups – as feared in the early 1990s – but by opportunities for incumbents to abuse democratic norms created by Soviet institutional legacies.

Notes

The conceptual discussion of hybrids in this article draws heavily from a joint research project with Steven Levitsky on competitive authoritarian regimes after the Cold War. For some conclusions, see Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, ‘The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.13, No.2 (2002), pp.51–65.

Korosteleva, in this collection, refers to these regimes as ‘demagogical democracies’.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of the world's modern regimes have been undemocratic, the field of political science over the last 100 years has overwhelmingly focused on democracy. A May 2002 JSTOR search of political science journals going back to about 1900 found 2,690 references in titles of articles and book reviews to pluralism and democracy, compared with 681 references to virtually all types of non-democracies (including autocracy, authoritarianism and subtypes of authoritarianism, dictatorship, fascism, monarchy, one-party and single-party regimes, patrimonialism, sultanism, totalitarianism and tyranny). Since 1990, the imbalance has been even more extreme: 881 references to democracy or pluralism, compared with 84 references to different types of non-democracy.

Ken Jowitt, ‘Dizzy with Democracy’, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol.43, No.1 (1996), pp.3–8.

Marina Ottaway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism (Washington, DC: Carnegie, 2003), pp.3 and 15. She puts these countries, which have all had recent alternations of power, in the same category as Egypt and Kazakhstan that have had no recent alternations.

Compare Marco Bojcun, ‘The Ukrainian Parliamentary Elections in March–April 1994’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol.47, No.2 (1995), pp.229–49; Stephen Sestanovich, ‘Russia Turns the Corner’, Foreign Affairs, Vol.73, No.1 (1994), pp.83–99; Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). For a similarly broad definition of democracy that focuses on alternation, see Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

See, for example, articles on Russia in the New York Times, 9 Nov. 2003.

Local and Presidential Elections in Ukraine (Kiev: Democratic Elections in Ukraine Observation and Coordination Centre, 1994); Bojcun, ‘The Ukrainian Parliamentary Elections’.

See Thomas Carothers, ‘The End of the Transition Paradigm’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.13, No.1 (2002), pp.5–21; Levitsky and Way, ‘Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism’.

In Russia, the Communist Party leader Gennadii Zyuganov, who challenged Yeltsin in the 1996 elections, was an exception to this rule in large part because the Communist Party was almost the only non-governmental organization that could draw on extensive organizational experience.

In 1993, in Russia Vice-President Alexander Rutskoi attempted to overthrow the Yeltsin government. In 1999, many felt the Russian Prime Minister Yevegenii Primakov presented the most serious challenge to Yeltsin. In Moldova in 1996, Prime Minister Andrei Sangheli and the head of parliament, Petru Lucinschi, ran for the presidency against the incumbent Mircea Snegur.

For a complete list, see David Collier and Steven Levitsky, ‘Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research’, World Politics, Vol.49, No.3 (1997), pp.430–51; Levitsky and Way ‘Competitive Authoritarianism’; Ottaway, Democracy Challenged.

Philip Roeder, ‘Varieties of Post-Soviet Authoritarian Regimes’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol.10, No.1 (1994), pp.61–101.

Guillermo O'Donnell, ‘Delegative Democracy’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.5, No.1 (1994), pp.55–69.

Andreas Schedler, ‘The Menu of Manipulation’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.13, No.2 (2002), pp.36–50; Jason Brownlee, ‘Double Edged Institutions: Electoral Authoritarianism in Egypt and Iran’, paper presented to the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), San Francisco, 30 Aug.–2 Sept. 2001; Steven Fish, ‘Authoritarianism Despite Elections: Russia in Light of Democratic Theory’, paper presented to the Annual Meeting of APSA, San Francisco, 30 Aug.–2 Sept. 2001.

Levitsky and Way ‘Competitive Authoritarianism’.

Such elections in the Soviet Union seem to have generated disproportionately high turnout among the poor in the early post-Soviet period, but did absolutely nothing to create greater pluralism before Gorbachev came to power: Donna Bahry and Lucan Way, ‘Civic Activism in the Russian Transition’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol.10, No.4 (1994), pp.330–66.

Andrew Wilson, ‘Ukraine's 2002 Elections: Less Fraud, More Virtuality’, East European Constitutional Review, Vol.11, No.3 (2002), available at <http://www.law.nyu.edu/eecr/vol11num3/focus/wilson.html> (accessed in Nov. 2003); Erik Herron and Paul E. Johnson, ‘It Doesn't Matter Who Votes, But Who Counts the Votes: Assessing Election Fraud in Ukraine's 2002 Parliamentary Elections’, unpublished manuscript, University of Kansas, available at <http://www.ku.edu/∼herron/elections/papers/fraud.pdf> (accessed 15 Oct. 2003).

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Republic of Azerbaijan Presidential Election, 15 October 2003: OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission Report (Warsaw: OSCE, 2003), pp.17–18 and 20–25, available at <http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2003/11/1151_en.pdf> (accessed 30 Nov. 2003).

The communist parties in both Russia and Ukraine have relied extensively on parliamentary funds to staff their parties: see Luke March, The Communist Party in Post-Soviet Russia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002). In the 1999 presidential election in Ukraine, the parliamentary paper Holos Ukrainy was one of the few major papers to come out against Kuchma.

For examples of when parliament thwarted Kravchuk's initiatives in late 1993, see FBIS-SOV, 29 Nov. 1993, p.61; FBIS-SOV, 26 Nov. 1993, p.53; FBIS-SOV, 10 Nov. 1993, pp.77–8; FBIS-SOV, 15 Nov. 1993, p.68.

See Levitsky and Way, ‘Competitive Authoritarianism’.

See ‘Ukraine’, Communications Law in Transition Newsletter, Vol.1, No.7 (2000), available at <http://pcmlp.socleg.ox.ac.uk/transition/issue07/ukraine.htm> (accessed 15 Nov. 2003).

Andrei Tychina, ‘Pressa: Rabota pod pressom’, Zerkalo nedeli, No.37, 28 Sept.–5 Oct. 2002.

European Institute for the Media, The 1994 Parliamentary and Presidential Elections in Ukraine: Monitoring of the Election Coverage in the Ukrainian Mass Media (Düsseldorf: EIM, 1994), pp.189–91.

Bohdan Nahaylo, ‘After Glasnost: Ukraine’, RFE/RL Research Report, 2 Oct. 1992, pp.10–17; idem, ‘Media in the Countries of the Former Soviet Union: Ukraine’, RFE/RL Research Report, 2 July 1993, pp.5–6.

Human Rights Watch, Ukraine: Negotiating the News: Informal State Censorship of Ukrainian Television (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2003), available at <http://hrw.org/reports/2003/ukraine0303> (accessed 1 Nov. 2003).

Internews, Report on Internews Activities for the Fourth Quarter, 1997 (Kiev: Internews, 1998).

OSCE, Ukraine Presidential Elections, 31 October and 14 November 1999: Final Report (Warsaw: OSCE/ODIHR, 2000), available at <http://www.osce.org/odihr/documents/reports/election_reports/ua/ukr99-1-final.pdf> (accessed 30 Nov. 2002); ‘Ukraine’, Communications Law in Transition Newsletter.

Internews Report, 1998.

OSCE, Ukraine Presidential Elections, 1999.

Internews Report, 1998, p.7.

Human Rights Watch, Ukraine: Negotiating the News, pp.21–2.

Robert Moser, ‘Introduction’, in Zoltan Barany and Robert Moser (eds.), Russian Politics: Challenges of Democratization (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.1–19 (p.10).

Juan J. Linz, and Arturo Valenzuela (eds.), The Failure of Presidential Democracy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).

Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, ‘Autocracy by Democratic Rules: The Dynamics of Competitive Authoritarianism in the Post-Cold War Era’, paper presented to the Annual Meeting of APSA, Boston, MA, 19 Aug.–2 Sept. 2002.

Gerald Easter, ‘Preference for Presidentialism: Postcommunist Regime Change in Russia and the NIS’, World Politics, Vol.49, No.2 (1997), pp.184–211.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘Ten Years After the Soviet Breakup: The Primacy of History and Culture’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.12, No.4 (2001), pp.20–26.

Ilya Prizel, ‘Assessing a Decade: Eastern Europe and the FSU after the Fall of the Berlin Wall’, SAIS Review, Vol.19, No.2 (1999), pp.1–15; Laurence Whitehead, ‘Geography and Democratic Destiny: Eastern Europe a Decade Later’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.10, No.1 (1999), pp.74–9; Jeffrey S. Kopstein and David A. Reilly, ‘Geographic Diffusion and the Transformation of the Postcommunist World’, World Politics, Vol.53, No.1 (2000), pp.1–37.

Prizel, ‘Assessing a Decade’; Andrew Janos, East Central Europe in the Modern World: The Politics of Borderlands from Pre- to Post-Communism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); Kopstein and Reilly, ‘Geographic Diffusion’.

Cf. William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959).

Jowitt, New World Disorder, p.288.

Charles Gati, ‘Mirage of Democracy’, Transition, Vol.2, No.6 (1996), pp.6–12.

Cf. Stephen Shenfield, ‘The Weimar/Russia Comparison: Reflections on Hanson and Kopstein’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol.14, No.4 (1998), pp.355–68.

This is not to say that extremist ideology played no role in regime outcomes in the post-communist world: Gamsakhurdia in Georgia and Milošević and Tudjman in Yugoslavia are obvious examples. However, in many other countries, including Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, such factors have played a minor role in the decline of democracy.

Timothy J. Colton and Michael McFaul, ‘Are Russians Undemocratic?’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol.18, No.2 (2002), pp.91–121.

Dzerkalo tizhnya, No.26, 12–25 July 2003.

For comparative voter turnouts, see <http://www.idea.int/Voter_turnout/othereurope> (accessed 15 Nov. 2003).

Ellen Carnaghan, ‘Thinking about Democracy: Interviews with Russian Citizens’, Slavic Review, Vol.60, No.2 (2001), pp.336–66.

Joan M. Nelson and Stephanie J. Eglinton, Encouraging Democracy: What Role for Conditioned Aid? (Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council, 1992); Olav Stokke, ‘Aid and Political Conditionality: Core Issues and the State of the Art’, in Olav Stokke (ed.), Aid and Political Conditionality (London: Cass/EADI, 1995); Gordon Crawford, Foreign Aid and Political Reform: A Comparative Analysis of Democracy Assistance and Political Conditionality (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Ottaway, Democracy Challenged. For an in-depth discussion of the role of international factors, see Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, ‘Ties that Bind? International Linkage and Competitive Authoritarian Regime Change in Africa, Latin America, and Postcommunist Eurasia’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of APSA, Philadelphia, PA, 27–30 Aug. 2003.

Kathryn Hendley, Trying to Make Law Matter: Labor Law and Legal Reform in Russia (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996).

Keith A. Darden, ‘Blackmail as a Tool of State Domination: Ukraine under Kuchma’, East European Constitutional Review, Vol.10, Nos.2–3 (2001), available at <http://www.law.nyu.edu/eecr/vol10num2_3/focus/darden.html> (accessed 1 Oct. 2003).

Thus, it is probably not coincidental that in L'viv in 1991 a new building initially intended for the Communist Party was handed over to the tax administration following the collapse. In many ways, the tax administration fulfils the party functions of vertical control.

RFE-RL Newsline, 18 June 1998 and 18 Oct. 2000.

Human Rights Watch, Ukraine: Negotiating the News.

RFE/RL Newsline, 9 June 2000 and 30 Aug. 1999.

Ibid., 18 Sept. 1998.

Darden, ‘Blackmail’.

Lucan Way, ‘The Dilemmas of Reform in Weak States: The Case of Post-Soviet Fiscal Reform’, Politics and Society, Vol.30, No.4 (2002), pp.579–98.

Lucan Way, Pluralism by Default: Challenges of Authoritarian State-Building in Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine, working paper No.375 (Glasgow: Centre for Studies of Public Policy, 2003).

RFE/RL Newsline, 9 and 24 Nov. 1999.

Lucan Way, ‘Understanding the Role of Historical Constraint in Post-Communist Development’, Studies in Comparative and International Development, Vol.37, No.2 (2002), pp.97–8.

In the very early 1990s, like many others Yulia Timoshenko used government contacts to buy raw materials at state-controlled prices and resell them for a huge profit on the international market.

Lazarenko and Timoshenko became very rich through access to gas monopolies. Viktor Medvedchuk has made substantial money through control of electricity distribution.

While just nine per cent of media outlets in Ukraine are state-owned, the president has de facto control over television through informal networks (see discussion above).

Marc Morjé Howard, ‘The Weakness of Postcommunist Civil Society’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.13, No.1 (2002), pp.157–69; Adrian Karatnycky et al., Nations in Transit 2001 (New York: Freedom House, 2001).

For comparable discussion about the connection between turnout and political engagement in Russia, see the contributions in this collection by White and McAllister, and Hutcheson.

Steven Levitsky, personal communication.

Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, ‘Ties that Bind?’. For further discussion of the impact of EU accession on ‘democracy’ in Eastern and Central Europe, see McManus-Czubińska et al. in this collection.

Melanie Ram, ‘Romania's Reform through European Integration: The Domestic Effects of European Union Law’, Kokkalis Program on South-Eastern and East-Central European studies, available at <http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/kokkalis/GSW1/GSW1/20%20Ram.pdf> (accessed 20 Oct. 2003).

Paul Kubicek (ed.), The European Union and Democratization (London: Routledge, 2003).