Consolidated technocratic and ethnic hollowness, but no backsliding: reassessing Europeanisation in Estonia and Latvia

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the growing debate on democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), by expanding on Béla Greskovits’s distinction between backsliding and hollowness, suggesting ways to broaden and specify the concept of hollowness, and discussing the relationship between hollowness and backsliding. Estonia and Latvia provide illustrations of two stable democracies, which nevertheless have consolidated tendencies for an elite-driven and ethnic-majority-driven democratic process hollowed out of its democratic contestation. This is what I call “technocratic” and “ethnic” hollowness. This double hollowness consolidated during EU accession, which created a favourable context for well-positioned ethnic majority elites to push forward ethnocentric and neoliberal agendas while restricting the space for debating them. However, far from a symptom of backsliding in the sense of a regression into authoritarianism, double hollowness is in fact central to these democracies’ stability. Such stability will have to be destabilised in order to improve their democratic quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Europeanisation
• EU accession
• backsliding
• hollowness
• Estonia
• Latvia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Licia Cianetti is Teaching Fellow in Politics Royal Holloway, University of London, Department of Politics and International Relations. She obtained a PhD from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. Her research interests include minority politics, post-communist politics, and the politics of diverse cities.

ORCID

Licia Cianetti http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7532-3101

Notes

1. All the major democracy indices give them consistently high marks; see for example Freedom House (where they are classed as “free”) and V-Dem (where they are in line with EU average on all main indicators).

2. See for example the assessment of the Minorities at Risk Project (http://www.mar.umd.edu/).

3. It is estimated that about 80% of Estonia’s Russian-speakers and 60% of Latvia’s were left without citizenship upon independence (Smith, Galbreath, and Swain 2010, 119; Mole 2012, 88).

4. In 2014, 22% of Estonia’s Russian speakers and almost 40% of Latvia’s were non-citizens. This corresponds to 6.6% of the Estonian total population and 12.7% of Latvia’s. A further 24% of Estonia’s Russian speakers (7% of population) and 6% of Latvia’s (2% of population) are citizens of a third country, mostly Russia (Figures retrieved from Estonian Statistical Database [www.stat.ee] and Latvian Central Statistics Database [www.csb.gov.lv]).

5. Two separate terms for supply-side and demand-side hollowness might in fact be in order.

6. Freedom of the press also worsened – mostly due to ownership concentration, legal limits on language use, and cases of attacks against anti-corruption journalists. However, Latvia’s media remain free (https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/freedom-press-2017).

7. For a different critique see Hanley (2015).

8. Nationalists were only briefly out of government in 2010.

9. For a comparison between the far right in Estonia and Latvia, see Bennich-Björkman and Johansson (2012).

10. Ther (2016) talks about a Marshall Plan for post-communist Europe.

11. For a summary of early critiques of the conflicting logics between Europeanisation and democratisation, see Ekiert (2008).

12. This is the other side of the coin of what Jacoby (2006) called “inspiration” and others called “lesson drawing” (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2004).

13. On “consensual politics” in Estonia see Lagerspetz and Vogt (1998, 75–78). On how deindustrialisation and financialisation became the undisputable economic policy in post-independence Latvia, see Sommers and Bērziņš (2011).

14. For example: “Eesti — Ida-Euroopa esimene” [Estonia is the first in Eastern-Europe], Äripäev 17 February 2005 (http://arileht.delfi.ee/archive/eesti-ida-euroopa-esimene?id=9792836); “Latvija ekonomiskās brīvības reitingā pakāpusies uz 36. vietu” [Latvia’s economic freedom rating climbed to 36th place], LETA 2 February 2016 (http://www.delfi.lv/bizness/biznesa_vide/latvija-ekonomiskas-brivibas-reitinga-pakapusies-uz-36-vietu.d?id=47014381).

15. Compared to the pressures for privatising and liberalising, these appeared in the reports less often and more as advisable rather than necessary reforms.

16. Delfi, 29 December 2008 (http://rus.delfi.lv/news/daily/versions/odnorelsovyj-put.d?id=22760833).

17. For example, local policymakers often mention Germany’s strict naturalisation policy and its treatment of Turkish settled migrants as proof of the fact that their own governments’ minority policies are in line with (or even exceed) European norms (Smith 2003). This was also the case during my own interviews with Estonian and Latvian policymakers in 2013.

18. For instance, in September 2013 National Alliance appealed to the “Latvian parties” to unite against Harmony’s electoral advance (Latvian Centre for Human Rights [LCHR], Integration Monitor, 13 September 2013 [http://cilvektiesibas.org.lv/en/monitoring/]).

19. Latvian Centre for Human Rights (LCHR), Integration Monitor, 10 February and 19 March 1999.

20. LCHR, Integration Monitor, 27 June 2000.

21. This stands in contrast with majority elites’ pride in “overfulfilling” external requirements of market liberalism.

22. That is, if we define democracy beyond its minimalist electoral form.