Tag: Democracy
How to Sustain Support for Ukraine and Overcome Financial and Political Challenges | SITE Development Day 2022
This policy brief explores how Europe and global partners can sustain support for Ukraine’s reconstruction following Russia’s invasion. Drawing from expert discussions at SITE Development Day 2022, it highlights strategies for rebuilding Ukraine’s economy, democracy, and energy infrastructure.
Introduction
The Russian war on Ukraine has turmoiled Europe into its first war in decades and while the effects of the war are harshly felt in Ukraine with lives lost and damages amounting, Europe and the rest of the world are also being severely affected. This policy brief shortly summarizes the presentations and discussions at the SITE Development Day Conference, held on December 6, 2022. The main focus of the conference was how to maintain and organize support for Ukraine in the short and long run, with the current situation in Belarus and the region and the ongoing energy crisis in Europe, also being addressed.
War in Ukraine, Oppression in Belarus
Starting off the conference, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Leader of the Belarusian Democratic Forces, delivered a powerful speech on the necessity of understanding the role of Belarus in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Tsikhanouskaya argued that Putin’s war on Ukraine was partly a result of the failed Belarusian revolution of 2020. The following oppression, torture, and mass arrestations of Belarusians is a consequence of Lukashenka’s and Putin’s fear of a free Belarus, a Belarus that is no longer in the hands of Putin – who sees not only Belarus but also Ukraine as colonies in his Russian empire. Amidst the fight for Ukraine, we must also fight for a free Belarus, Tsikhanouskaya added. Not only Belarusians fighting alongside Ukrainians against Russia in Ukraine, but also other parts of the Belarusian opposition need support from the free and democratic world and the EU. The massive crackdowns on opponents of the Belarusian regime today and the war on Ukraine are not only acts of violence, but they are also acts against democracy and freedom. The world must therefore continue to give support to those fighting in both Belarus and Ukraine. Ukraine will never be free unless Belarus is free, Tsikhanouskaya concluded.
Johan Forssell, Minister of Foreign Trade and International Development Cooperation continued Tsikhanouskaya’s words on how the Russian attack must be seen and treated as a war on democracy and the free world. Belarus, Moldova and especially Ukraine will receive further support from Sweden, Forssell continued, adding that the Swedish support to Ukraine has more than doubled since the invasion in February 2022. Support must however not be given only in economic terms and consequently Sweden fully supports Ukraine on its path to EU-membership, which will be especially emphasized during Sweden’s upcoming EU-presidency. Support for the rule of law, democracy and freedom will continue to be essential and, in the forthcoming reconstruction of Ukraine, these aspects – alongside long term sustainable and green solutions – must be integrated, Forssell continued. Forssell also mentioned the importance of reducing the global spillover effects from the war. In particular, Forssell mentioned how the war has struck countries on the African continent, already hit with drought, especially hard with increased food prices and increased inflation, displaying the vital role Ukrainian grain exports play.
Andrij Plachotnjuk, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the Kingdom of Sweden, further talked about the need for rebuilding a better Ukraine, emphasizing the importance of involvement from Kiyv School of Economics (KSE) and other intellectuals and businesses in this process. Plachotnjuk also pinpointed what many others would come to repeat during the day; that resources, time and efforts devoted to supporting Ukraine must be maintained and persevered in the longer perspective.
Economic Impacts From the War and How the EU and Sweden Can Provide Support
During the first half of the conference, the Ukrainian economy and how it can be supported by the European Union was also discussed. On link from Kiyv, Tymofiy Mylovanov, President of the Kyiv School of Economics, shared the experiences of the University during wartime and presented the work KSE has undertaken so far – and how this contributes to an understanding of the damages and associated costs. Since the invasion, KSE has supported the government in three key areas; 1) Monitoring the Russian economy, 2) Analyzing what sanctions are relevant and effective, and 3) Estimating the cost of damages from the war. For the latter, KSE is collaborating with the World Bank using established methods of damage assessment including crowd sourced information on damages complemented with images taken by satellites and drones. According to Mylovanov, the damage assessment is crucial in order to counter Russia’s claims of a small conflict and to remind the international community of the high price Ukraine is paying to hold off Russia.
The economic impact from the war was further accentuated during the presentation by Yulia Markuts, Head of the Centre of Public Finance and Governance Analysis at the Kyiv School of Economics. Markuts explained how the Ukrainian national budget as of today is a “wartime budget”. Since February 2022, the budget has been reoriented with defense and security spending having increased 9 times compared to 2021, whereas only the most pressing social expenditures have been implemented. This in a situation where the Ukrainian GDP has simultaneously decreased by 30 percent. Although there has been a substantial inflow of foreign aid, in the form of grants and loans, the Ukrainian budget deficit for 2023 is estimated to 21 percent. Part of the uncertainty surrounding the Ukrainian budget stems from the fact that the inflow from the donor community is irregular, prompting the government to cover budget deficits through the National Bank which fuels inflation and undermines the exchange rate. Apart from the large budget posts concerning military spending, major infrastructural damages are putting further pressure on the Ukrainian budget in the year to come, Markuts continued. As of November 2022, the damages caused by Russia to infrastructure in Ukraine amounted to 135,9 billion US Dollars, with the largest damages having occurred in the Kiyv and Donetsk regions, as depicted in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Ukrainian regions most affected by war damages, as of November 2022.
Source: Kiyv School of Economics
The infrastructural damages constitute a large part of the estimated needed recovery support for Ukraine, together with losses to the state and businesses amounting to over one trillion US Dollars. However, such estimates do not cover the suffering the Ukrainian people have encountered from the war.
The large need for steady support was discussed by Fredrik Löjdquist, Centre Director of the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS), who argued the money needs to be seen as an investment rather than a cost, and that we at all times need to keep in mind what the consequences would be if the support for Ukraine were to fizzle out. Löjdquist, together with Cecilia Thorfinn, Team leader of the Communications Unit at the Representation of the European Commission in Sweden, also emphasized how the reconstruction should be tailored to fit the standards within the European Union, given Ukraine’s candidacy status. Thorfinn further stressed that the reconstruction must be a collective effort from the international community, although led by Ukraine. The EU is today to a large extent providing their financial support to Ukraine through the European Investment Bank (EIB). Jean-Erik de Zagon, Head of the Representation to Ukraine at the EIB, briefly presented their efforts thus far in Ukraine, efforts that have mainly been aimed at rebuilding key infrastructure. Since the war, the EIB has deployed an emergency package of 668 million Euro and 1,59 billion for the infrastructure financing gap. While all member states need to come together to ensure continued support for Ukraine, the EIB is ready to continue playing a key role in the rebuilding of Ukraine and to provide technical assistance in the upcoming reconstruction, de Zagon said. This can be especially fruitful as the EIB already has ample knowledge on how to carry out projects in Ukraine.
During a panel discussion on how Swedish support has, can and should continuously be deployed, Jan Ruth, Deputy Head of the Unit for Europe and Latin America at Sida, explained Sida’s engagement in Ukraine and the agency’s ambition to implement a solid waste management project. The project, in line with the need for a green and environmentally friendly rebuild, is today especially urgent given the massive destructions to Ukrainian buildings which has generated large amounts of construction waste. Karin Kronhöffer, Director of Strategy and Communication at Swedfund, also accentuated the need for sustainability in the rebuild. Swedfund invests within the three sectors of energy and climate, financial inclusion, and sustainable enterprises, and hash previously invested within the energy sector in Ukraine. Swedfund is also currently engaged in a pre-feasibility study in Ukraine which would allow for a national emergency response mechanism. Representing the business side, Andreas Flodström, CEO and founder of Beetroot, shared some experiences from founding and operating a tech company in Ukraine for the last 10 years. According to Flodström there will, apart from a huge need in investments in infrastructure, also be a large need for technical skills in the rebuild. Keeping this in mind, bootcamp style educations are a necessity as they provide Ukrainians with essential skills to rebuild their country.
A recurring theme in both panel discussions was how the reconstruction requires both public and private foreign investments. Early on, as the war continues, public investments will play the dominant part, but when the situation becomes more stable, initiatives to encourage private investments will be important. The potential of using public resources to facilitate private investments through credit guarantees and other risk mitigation strategies was brought up both at the European and the Swedish level, something which has also been emphasized by the new Swedish government.
Impacts From the War Outside of Ukraine – Energy Crisis and Other Consequences in the Region
The conference also covered the effects of the war outside of Ukraine, initially keying in on the consequences from the war on energy supply and prices in Europe. Chloé Le Coq, Professor of Economics, University Paris-Pantheon-Assas (CRED) & SITE, gave a presentation of the current situation and the short- and long-term implications. Le Coq explained that while the energy market is in fact functioning – displaying price increases in times of scarcity – the high prices might lead to some consumers being unable to pay while some energy producers are making unprecedented profits. The EU has successfully undertaken measures such as filling its gas storage to about 95 percent (goal of 80 percent), reducing electricity usage in its member countries, and by capping market revenues and introducing a windfall tax. While the EU is thus appearing to fare well in the short run, the reality is that EU has increased its coal dependency and paid eight times more in 2022 to fill its gas storage (primarily due to the imports of more costly Liquified Natural Gas, LNG). In the long run, these trends are concerning, given the negative environmental externalities from coal usage and the market uncertainty when it comes to the accessibility and pricing of LNG. Uncertainties and new regulations also hinder investments signals into new low-carbon technologies, Le Coq concluded. Bringing an industrial perspective to the topic, Pär Hermerèn, Senior advisor at Jernkontoret, highlighted how the energy crisis is amplified by the increased electricity demand due to the green transition. Given the double or triple upcoming demand for electricity, Hermerèn, referred back to the investment signals, saying Sweden might run the risk of losing market shares or even seeing investment opportunities leave Sweden. This aspect was also highlighted by Lars Andersson, Senior advisor at Swedenergy, who, like Hermerèn, also saw the Swedish government’s shift towards nuclear energy solutions. Andersson stated the short-term solution, from a Swedish perspective, to be investments into wind power, urging policy makers to be clear on their intentions in the wind power market.
Other major impacts from the war relate to migration, a deteriorating Belarusian economy and security concerns in Georgia. Regarding the latter, Yaroslava Babych, Lead economist at ISET Policy Institute, Georgia, shared the major developments in Georgia post the invasion. While the Georgian economic growth is very strong at 12 percent, it is mainly driven by the influx of Russian money following the migration of about 80 000 Russians to Georgia. This has led to a surge in living costs and an appreciation of the local currency (the Lari) of 12,6 percent which may negatively affect Georgian exports. Additionally, it may trigger tensions given the recent history between the countries and the generally negative attitudes towards Russians in Georgia. Michal Myck, Director at CenEa, Poland, also presented migration as a key challenge. While the in- and outflow of Ukrainian refugees to Poland is today balanced, the majority of those seeking refuge in Poland are women and children and typically not included in the workforce. To ensure successful integration and to avoid massive human capital losses for Ukraine, Myck argued education is key, pointing to the lower school enrollment rates among refugee children living closer to the Ukrainian border. Apart from the challenges posed by the large influx of Ukrainian in the last year, the Polish economy is also hit by high energy prices, fuel shortages and increasing inflation. Lev Lvovskiy, Research fellow at BEROC, Belarus, painted a similar but grimmer picture of the current economic situation in Belarus. Following the invasion, all trade with Ukraine has been cut off, while trade with Russia has increased. Belarus is facing sanctions not only following the war, but also from 2020, and the country is in recession with GDP levels dropping every month since the invasion. Given the political and economic situation, the IT sector has shrunk, companies oriented towards the EU has left the country and real salaries have decreased by 5 percent. At the same time, the policy response is to introduce price controls and press banknotes.
Consequences of War: An Academic Perspective
The later part of the afternoon was kicked off by a brief overview of the FREE Network’s research initiatives on the links between war and certain development indicators. Pamela Campa, Associate Professor at SITE, presented current knowledge on the connection between war and gender, with a focus on gender-based violence. Sexual violence is highly prevalent in armed conflict and has been reported from both sides in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since 2014 and during the ongoing war, with nearly only Russian soldiers as perpetrators. Apart from the direct threats of sexual violence during ongoing conflict and fleeing women and children risking falling victims to trafficking, intimate partner violence (IPV) has been found to increase post conflict, following increased levels of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While Ukrainian policy reforms have so far strengthened the response to domestic violence there is still a need for more effective criminalization of domestic violence, as the current limit for prosecution is 6 months from the date crime is committed. An effective transitional justice system and expertise on how to support victims of sexual violence in conflict, alongside economic safety measures undertaken to support women and children fleeing, are key policy concepts Campa argued. Coming back to the broader topic of gender and war, Campa highlighted the need for involvement of women in peace talks and negotiations, something research suggests matter for both equality, representativeness, and efficiency.
Providing insights into the relationship between the environment and war, Julius Andersson, Assistant Professor at SITE, initially summarized how climate change may cause conflict along four channels: political instability and crime rates increasing as a consequence of higher temperatures, scarcity of natural resources and environmental migration. Conflict might however also cause environmental degradation in the form of loss of biodiversity, pollution and making land uninhabitable. As for the negative impact from the war in Ukraine, Andersson highlighted how fires from the war has caused deforestation affecting the ecosystems, that rivers in conflict struck areas in Ukraine and the Sea of Azov are being polluted from wrecked industries (including the Azovstal steelworks) and lastly that there is a real threat of radiation given the four major nuclear plants in Ukraine being targeted by Russian forces. Coming back to a topic mentioned earlier during the day, Andersson also emphasized potential conflict spillovers into other parts of the world due to the war’s impact on food and fertilizer prices.
Concluding the session, Jonathan Lehne, Assistant Professor at SITE, reviewed how war and democracy is tied to one another, highlighting that while studies have found that democracies per se are not necessarily less conflict prone, it is still the case that democratic countries almost never fight each other. As for the microlevel takeaways from previous research, it appears as if individuals and communities having experienced violence and casualties actually reap a democratic dividend in some respects, such as greater voting participation. On the other hand, while areas with a large refugee influx also experience an increased voter turnout, voting for right-wing parties also increase with politicians exploiting this in their communication.
Book Launch – Reconstruction of Ukraine: Principles and Policies
The Development Day was also guested by Ilona Sologoub, Scientific Editor at VoxUkraine, Tatyana Deryugina, Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Torbjörn Becker, Director of SITE, who presented their newly released book “Reconstruction of Ukraine: Principles and policies”. Sologoub started off by giving an overview of the mainly economic topics covered in the book and pointing out that the main purpose of the book is to inform policy makers about the present situation and to suggest needed reforms and investments. Becker outlined the four key principles recommended to stem corruption during reconstruction; 1) Remove opportunities for corruption and rent extraction, 2) Focus on transparency and monitoring of the whole reconstruction effort, 3) Make information and education an integral part of the anti-corruption effort, and 4) Set up legal institutions that are trusted when corruption does occur. Deryugina focused on the energy sector and related back to what had previously been discussed throughout the day, the need to “build-back-better”. Deryugina mentioned that Ukraine, previously heavily reliant on coal and gas imports from Russia, now have the opportunity to steer away from low energy efficiency and bottleneck issues, towards becoming a European natural gas hub. The book is available for free here. There will also be a book launch on the 11th of January 2023 at Handelshögskolan.
Concluding Remarks
Via link from Kyiv, Nataliia Shapoval, Head of KSE Institute and Vice President for Policy Research at Kyiv School of Economics closed the conference by emphasizing the urgency of continued education of Ukrainians in Ukraine and elsewhere to avoid loss of Ukrainian human capital. Shapoval also stressed how universities can act as thinktanks, support policy makers in Ukraine and Europe to come up with effective sanctions against Russia and provide a deeper understanding of the current situation – a situation which will linger and in which Ukraine needs continued full support.
This year’s SITE Development Day conference gave an opportunity to discuss the need for continued support for Ukraine and the implications from the war in a global, European, and Swedish perspective. Representatives from the political, public, private and academic sectors contributed with their insights into the challenges and possibilities at hand, providing greater understanding of how the support can be sustained, with the goal of a soon end to the war and a successful rebuild of Ukraine.
List of Participants in Order of Appearance
- Anders Olofsgård, Deputy Director at SITE
- Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Leader of the Belarusian Democratic Forces
- Johan Forssell, Minister of Foreign Trade and International Development Cooperation
- Andrij Plachotnjuk, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the Kingdom of Sweden
- Tymofiy Mylovanov, President of the Kyiv School of Economics (on link from Kyiv)
- Yuliya Markuts, Head of the Centre of Public Finance and Governance Analysis, Kyiv School of Economics
- Jean-Erik de Zagon, Head of the Representation to Ukraine at the European Investment Bank
- Cecilia Thorfinn, Team leader of the Communications Unit at the Representation of the European Commission in Sweden
- Fredrik Löjdquist, Centre Director of the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS)
- Jan Ruth, Deputy Head of the Unit for Europe and Latin America at Sida
- Karin Kronhöffer, Director of Strategy and Communication at Swedfund
- Andreas Flodström, CEO and founder of Beetroot
- Chloé Le Coq, Professor of Economics, University Paris-Pantheon-Assas (CRED) & SITE
- Lars Andersson, Senior advisor at Swedenergy
- Pär Hermerèn, Senior advisor at Jernkontoret
- Ilona Sologoub, VoxUkraine scientific editor (on link)
- Tatyana Deryugina, Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (on link)
- Torbjörn Becker, Director at SITE
- Michal Myck, Director at CenEa, Poland
- Yaroslava Babych, Lead economist at ISET Policy Institute, Georgia
- Lev Lvovskiy, Research fellow at BEROC, Belarus
- Pamela Campa, Associate Professor at SITE
- Julius Andersson, Assistant Professor at SITE
- Jonathan Lehne, Assistant Professor at SITE
- Nataliia Shapoval, Head of KSE Institute and Vice President for Policy Research at Kyiv School of Economics (on link)
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Further Reading on Support for Ukraine’s Reconstruction and Post-Conflict Recovery
Additional analyses related to Ukraine’s reconstruction, European security, and post-conflict policy are available in the following reports and policy briefs:
- How to Rebuild Ukraine – Report by FREE Network authors, “A Synthesis and Critical Review of Policy Proposals.”
- How should Europe rethink its security in the face of the russian threat? – Report by the KSE Institute, “Rethinking European Security in the Face of the Russian Threat.”
- Should frozen russian state assets be seized to support Ukraine’s reconstruction? – Policy brief by Anders Olofsgård, Associate Professor at SITE, “The Case for Seizing Russian State Assets.”
Related publications addressing European policy toward Eastern Europe, post-conflict recovery economics, and the energy crisis in Europe further contribute to understanding the broader geopolitical and economic dimensions of the war’s impact. For comprehensive research and expert insights on Ukraine’s reconstruction, European aid, and post-war recovery, explore the FREE Network policy briefs under the Ukraine and Russo-Ukrainian War categories.
The Long Shadow of Transition: The State of Democracy in Eastern Europe
In many parts of Eastern Europe, the transition towards stronger political institutions and democratic deepening has been slow and uneven. Weak political checks and balances, corruption and authoritarianism have threatened democracy, economic and social development and adversely impacted peace and stability in Europe at large. This policy brief summarizes the insights from Development Day 2019, a full-day conference organized by SITE at the Stockholm School of Economics on November 12th. The presentations were centred around the current political and business climate in the Eastern European region, throwing light on new developments in the past few years, strides towards and away from democracy, and the challenges as well as possible policy solutions emanating from those.
The State of Democracy in the Region
From a regional perspective, Eastern Europe has seen mixed democratic success over the years with hybrid systems that combine some elements of democracy and autocracy. Based on the V-Dem liberal democracy index, ten transition countries that have joined the EU saw rapid early progress after transition. In comparison, the democratic development in twelve nations of the FSU still outside of the EU has been largely stagnant.
In recent years, however, democracy in some of those EU countries, such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania have been in decline. Poland, one of the region’s top performers in terms of GDP growth and life expectancy, has experienced a sharp decline in democracy since 2015. Backlashes have often occurred after elections in which corruption and economic mismanagement have led to the downfall of incumbent governments and a general distrust of the political system. Together with low voter turnout, this created fertile ground for more autocratic forces to gain power helped by demand for strong leadership.
An example from Ukraine illustrated the role of media, both traditional and social, for policy-making. In some countries of the region, traditional media is strictly state-controlled with obvious concerns for democracy. This is less the case in Ukraine, where also social media plays an important role in forming political opinions. The concern is that, as elsewhere, opinions that gain traction on social media may not be impartial or well informed, affecting public perception about policy-making. A recent case showing the popular reaction to an attack on the former governor of the Central Bank suggests that those implementing important reforms may not get due credit when biased and partial information dominates the political discourse on social media.
Another case is the South Caucasian region: Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. The political situation there has been characterized as a “government by day, government by night” dichotomy, implying that the real political power largely lies outside the official political institutions. In Georgia, the situation can be described as a competition between autocracy and democracy, with a feudalistic system in which powerful groups replace one another across time. As a result, trust in political institutions is low, as well as citizens’ political participation.
In the case of Azerbaijan, there is an elected presidency, but in reality, power has been passed on hereditarily, becoming a de facto patrimonial system. Lastly, in Armenia, the new government possesses democratic credentials, but the tensions with neighbouring Azerbaijan and Turkey have given increasing power to the military and important economic powers. Overall, democratisation in these countries has been hindered by a trend for powerful politicians to form parties around themselves and to retain power after the end of their mandates. Also, the historical focus on nation-building in these countries has led to a marked exclusion of minorities and a conflict of national identities.
The last country case in this part of the conference focused on the current political situation in Russia and on the likely outcomes after 2024. The social framework in Russia appears constellated by fears – a fear of a world war, of regime tightening and mass repressions, and of lawlessness – all of them on the rise. Similarly, the economy is suffering, in particular from low business activity, somewhat offset by a boost in social payments. Nonetheless, it was argued that it is not economic concerns, but rather political frustration, that has recently led citizens to take to the street. Despite this, survey data shows that trust in Putin is still over 60%, and that most people would vote for him again. However, survey data also points out that the most likely determinant of this trust is the lack of another reference figure, and that citizens are not averse to the idea of political change in itself. Lastly, Putin will most likely retain some political power after 2024, transiting “from father to grandfather of the nation”.
Voices from the civil society in the region also emphasized the importance of a free media and an active civil society to prevent the backsliding of democracy. With examples from Georgia and Ukraine, it was argued that maintaining the independence of the judiciary, as well as the public prosecutor’s office, can go a long way in building credibility both among citizens and the international community. The European Union can leverage the high trust and hopeful attitudes it benefits from in the region to push crucial reforms more strongly. For example, more than 70% of Georgians would vote for joining the EU if a referendum was held on the topic and the European Union is widely regarded as Georgia’s most important foreign supporter.
Weak Institutions and Business Development
The quality of political and legal institutions strongly affects the business environment, in particular with regards to the protection of property rights, rule of law, regulation and corruption. Research from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) highlights that the governance gap between Eastern Europe and Central Asia and most advanced economies is still large, even though progress in this area has actually been faster than for other emerging economies since the mid-‘90s. This is measured through enterprise surveys as well as individual surveys. In Albania, for instance, a perception of lower corruption was linked to a decrease in the intention to emigrate equivalent to earning 400$ more per month. Another point concerned the complexity of measuring the business environment and the benefits of firm-level surveys asking firms directly about their own actual experience of regular enforcement. For example, in countries such as Poland, Latvia and Romania the actual experience of business regulation measured via the EBRD’s Business Environment Enterprise Performance Survey, is far worse than one would expect from the World Bank’s well known Doing Business rating.
From the perspective of Swedish firms, trade between Sweden and the region has remained rather flat in the past years, as the complexity and risks of these markets especially discourage SMEs. Business Sweden explained that Swedish firms considering an expansion in these markets are concerned with issues of exchange rate stability, and the institutional-driven presence of unfair competition and of excessive bureaucracy. Moreover, inadequate infrastructure and the presence of bribery and corruption make everyday business operations risky and costly. It was generally emphasized that countries have to create a safe investment environment by reducing corruption, establishing a clear and well enacted regulatory environment, having dependable courts and strengthening domestic resource mobilization. Swedish aid can play a part, but there is a need to develop new ways of delivering aid to make it more effective.
An interesting example is Belarus, that has seen more economic and political stability than most neighbours, but at the same time a lack of both economic and political reforms towards market economy and democracy. Gradually the preference towards private ownership, as opposed to public, has increased in recent years and the country has seen a rising share of the private sector, even without specific privatization reforms. Nonetheless, international businesses are still reluctant to invest due to high taxes, a lack of access to finance as well as to a qualified workforce, but most importantly due to the weak legal system. An exception has been China, and Belarus has looked at the One Belt One Road Initiative as a promising bridge to the EU. Scandals connected with the two main Chinese-invested projects have damped the enthusiasm recently, though.
The economic and political risks of extensively relying on badly diversified energy sources, as is the case with natural gas imports from Russia in many transition states were also discussed. It was shown how some countries such as Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania have improved their energy security by either benefitting from reverse-flow technology and the EU’s bargaining power or building their own LNG terminals to diversify supply sources. However, either of these, as well as other energy security improving solutions are likely to come with an economic cost, though, that not all countries in the region can afford.
A Government Perspective
The main focus of this section was the Swedish government’s new inspiring foreign policy initiative, “Drive for Democracy”. Drawing from a definition of democracy by Kerstin Hesselgren, an early Swedish female parliamentarian, democracy enables countries to realize and utilize the forces of the individual and draw them into a life-giving, value-creating society. It was emphasized that the values of democracy are objectives by themselves (e.g. freedom of expression, respect for human rights) but also that democracy has important positive effects in other areas of human welfare. The Swedish government views democracy as the best foundation for a sustainable society, equality of opportunity and absence of gender or racial bias.
The “Drive for Democracy” specifically identifies Eastern Europe as one of the main frontiers between democracy and autocracy, and the Swedish government promotes human rights and stability through various bilateral programmes through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Sida, and multilateral initiatives within the EU, such as the Eastern Partnership. It was also emphasized that democracy is a continuous process that can always be improved, as indeed experienced by Sweden. Political rights were granted to women only in 1919 followed by convicts and prisoners in 1933 and to the Roma people only in 1950. Political and democratic rights are thus never once and for all given, and it is crucial that the dividends from democracy are carried forward to the younger generation.
Conclusion
In sum, the day illustrated clearly how democracy engages all segments of society, from the business sector to civil society, and the potential for but also challenges involved for democratic deepening in Eastern Europe. To get more information about the presentations during the day, please visit our website.
Participants at the Conference
- PER OLSSON FRIDH, State Secretary, Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
- ALEXANDER PLEKHANOV, Director for Transition Impact and Global Economics at EBRD.
- TORBJÖRN BECKER, Director, SITE.
- CHLOÉ LE COQ, Associate Professor, SITE and Professor of Economics, University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas.
- THOMAS DE WAAL, Senior Fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
- NATALIIA SHAPOVAL, Vice President for Policy Research at Kyiv School of Economics.
- ILONA SOLOGUB, Scientific Editor at VoxUkraine and Director for Policy Research at Kyiv School of Economics.
- KETEVAN VASHAKIDZE, President at Europe Foundation, Georgia.
- MARIA BISTER, Senior Policy Specialist, Sida.
- HENRIK NORBERG, Deputy Director, Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
- YLVA BERG, CEO and President, Business Sweden.
- LARS ANELL, Ambassador and formerly Volvo’s Senior Vice President.
- ERIK BERGLÖF, Professor in Practice and Director of the Institute of Global Affairs, London School of Economics and Political Science.
- KATERYNA BORNUKOVA, Academic Director, BEROC, Minsk.
- ANDREI KOLESNIKOV, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Moscow Center.
Liberal Democracy in Transition – The First 30 Years
This year marks 30 years since the first post-communist election in Poland and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Key events that started a dramatic transition process from totalitarian regimes towards liberal democracy in many countries. This brief presents stylized facts from this process together with some thoughts on how to get this process back on a positive track. In general, the transition countries that joined the EU are still far ahead of the other transition countries in terms of democratic development.
The recent decline in democratic indicators in some EU countries should be taken seriously as they involve reducing freedom of expression and removing constraints on the executive, but should also be discussed in light of the significant progress transition countries entering the EU have shown during the first 30 years of transition. The brief shows that changes in a democracy can happen fast and most often happen around elections, so getting voters engaged in the democratic process is crucially important. This requires politicians that engage the electorate and have an interest in preserving democratic institutions. An important question in the region is what the EU can do to promote this, given its overloaded political agenda. Perhaps it is time for a Greta for democracy to wake up the young and shake up the old.
This brief provides an overview of political developments in transition countries since the first post-communist elections in Poland and the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago. It focuses on establishing stylized facts based on quantitative indices of democracy for a large set of transition countries rather than providing in-depth studies of a small number of countries. The aim of the brief is thus to find common patterns across countries that can inform today’s policy discussion on democracy in the region and inspire future studies of the forces driving democracy in individual transition countries.
The first issue to address is what data to use to establish stylized facts of democratic development in the region. By now, there are several interesting indicators that describe various aspects of democratic development, which are produced by different organizations, academic institutions and private data providers. In this brief, three commonly used and well-respected data providers will be compared in the initial section before we zoom in on more specific factors that make up one of these indices.
The big picture
The three indicators that we look at first are: political rights produced by Freedom House; polity 2 produced by the Polity IV project; and the liberal democracy index produced by the V-Dem project. Figures 1-3 show the unweighted average of these indicators for two groups of countries. The EU10 are the transition countries that became EU members in 2004 and 2007 and include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The second group, FSU12, are the 12 countries that came out of the Soviet Union minus the three Baltic countries in the EU10 group, so the FSU12 group consists of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
Figure 1. Freedom House
Source: Freedom House and author’s calculations
Note: Scale inverted, 1 is best and 7 worst score
Figure 2. Polity IV project
Source: Polity IV project and author’s calculations
Note: Scale from -10 (fully autocratic) to 10 (fully democratic)
Figure 3. V-Dem
Source: V-Dem project and author’s calculations
Note: Scale from 0 to 1 where higher is more democratic
All three indicators convey the message that the democratic transformation in the EU10 group was very rapid in the early years of transition and the indicators have remained at high levels since the mid-90s only to show some decline in the most recent years for two of the three indicators. The FSU12 set of countries have made much less progress in terms of democratic development and remain far behind the EU10 countries in this regard. Overall, there is little evidence at the aggregate level that the democratic gap between the EU10 and FSU12 groups is closing. While the average EU10 country is more or less a full-fledged democracy, the average FSU12 country is at the lower end of the spectrum for all three democracy measures.
The average indicators in Figures 1-3 obviously hide some interesting developments in individual countries and in the following analysis, we will take a closer look at the liberal democracy index at the country level. We will then investigate what sub-indices contribute to changes in the aggregate index in the countries that have experienced significant declines in their liberal democracy scores.
For the first part of the analysis, it is useful to break down the democratic development in two phases. The first phase is from the onset of transition (1989, 1991 or 1993 depending on the specific country) to the time of the global financial crisis in 2009 and the second phase is from 2009 to 2018 (the last data point).
Figure 4. Liberal democracy, the first phase
Source: V-Dem project and author’s calculations
Figures 4 and 5 compare how the liberal democracy indicator changes from the first year of the period (measured on the horizontal axis) to the last year of the period (on the vertical axis). The smaller blue dots are the individual countries that make up the EU10 group while the red dots are the FSU12 countries. The 45-degree line indicates when there is no change between start and end years, while observations that lie below (above) the line indicate a deterioration (improvement) of the liberal democracy index in a specific country.
In the first phase of transition (Figure 4), all of the EU10 countries increased their liberal democracy scores and the average increase for the group was almost 0.5, going from 0.26 to 0.74. This was a result of many of the countries in the group making significant improvements without any countries deteriorating. The FSU12 group had a very different development with the average not changing at all since the few countries that improved (Georgia and Ukraine) were counterbalanced by a significant decline in Belarus and a more modest decline in Armenia.
Figure 5. Liberal democracy, the second phase
Source: V-Dem project and author’s calculations
The very rapid improvement in the liberal democracy index in the EU10 countries in the first phase of transition came to a halt and also reversed in several countries in the second phase of transition. Of course, as they had improved so much in the first period, there was less room for further positive developments, but the rapid decline in some of the countries was still negative news. However, it does point towards that reform momentum was very strong in the EU accession process, but once a country had entered the union, the pressure for liberal democratic reforms has faded.
Overall, the EU10 average fell by 0.1 from 2009 to 2018. This was a result of declining scores in several countries. The particularly large declines in this period have been seen in Hungary (-0.28), Poland (-0.27), Bulgaria (-0.14), the Czech Republic (-0.14), and Romania (-0.12). Again, the average FSU12 score did not change much, although Ukraine (-0.2) put its early success in reverse and lost as much in this period as it had gained earlier.
Country developments
Since much of the current discussion centers on how democracy is being under attack, the figures name the countries that have seen significant declines in the liberal democracy score in the first or second phase of transition. Figures 6 and 7 show the time-series of the liberal democracy index in the countries with significant drops at some stage of the transition process.
Figure 6. FSU12 decliners
Source: V-Dem project and author’s calculations
In many countries, the drop comes suddenly and sharply, with the first and most prominent example being Belarus. There, it only took three years to go from one of the highest ranked FSU12 countries to fall to one of the lowest liberal democracy scores. In Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Armenia, the process was also very rapid and significant changes happened in 2-3 years.
Figure 7. EU10 decliners
Source: V-Dem project and author’s calculations
In the Czech Republic and Hungary, the period of decline was much longer and in the case of Hungary, the drop was the most significant in the EU10 group. Ukraine stands out as more of an exception with a roller-coaster development in its liberal democracy score that first took it up the list and then back down to where it started. For those familiar with politics in these countries, it is easy to identify the elections and change in government that have occurred at the times the index has started to fall in all of these countries. In other words, the democratic declines have not started with coups but followed election outcomes where in most cases the incumbent leaders have been replaced by a new person or party.
How democracy came under attack
We will now take a closer look at what has been behind the instances of decline in the aggregate index by investigating how the sub-indices have developed in these countries. The sub-indices that build up the liberal democracy index are: freedom of expression and alternative sources of information; freedom of association; share of population with suffrage; clean elections; elected officials; equality before the law and individual liberty; judicial constraints on the executive; and legislative constraints on the executive (the structure is a bit more complex with mid-level indices, see V-Dem 2019a).
Table 1 shows how these indicators have changed in the time period the liberal democracy indicator has fallen significantly (with shorter versions of the longer names listed above but in the same order). The heat map of decline indicated by the different colours is constructed such that positive changes are marked with green, smaller declines are without colour, declines greater that 0.1 but smaller than 0.2 are in yellow and larger declines in red. Note that the liberal democracy index is not an average of the sub-indices but based on a more sophisticated aggregation technique (see V-Dem 2019b). Therefore, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria can have a greater fall in top-level liberal democracy index that what is indicated by the sub-indices.
Table 1. Changes in liberal democracy indicators at times of democratic decline
Source: V-Dem project and author’s calculations
For the countries with the largest changes in the liberal democracy index, it is clear that both freedom of expression and alternative sources of information have come under attack together with reduced judicial and legislative constraints on the executive. Among the EU10 countries, Hungary and Poland stand out in terms of reducing freedom of expression, while Romania has seen most of the decline coming from reducing constraints on the executive. Not surprisingly, Belarus stands out in terms of the overall decline in liberal democracy coming from reducing both freedom of expression and constraints on the executive in the most significant way.
On a more general level, the attack on democracy does differ between the countries, but in the cases where serious declines can be seen, the attack has been particularly focused on information aspects and constraints on the executive. At the same time, all countries let all people vote (suffrage always at 1) and let the one with the most votes get the job (elected officials).
Policy conclusions
This brief has provided some stylized facts on the first 30 years of liberal democracy in transition and some details on how democracy has come under attack in individual countries. It leaves open many questions that require further studies and some of these are indeed ongoing in this project and will be presented in future briefs and policy papers here.
Some observations have already been made here that can inform policy discussions on liberal democratic developments in the region. The first is that changes can happen very rapidly, both in terms of improvements but also in terms of dismantling important democratic institutions, including those that provide constraints on the executive or media that provides unbiased coverage before and after elections. What is also noteworthy is that these changes have almost always happened after an election where a new person or party has come to power, so the democratic system is used to introduce less democracy in this sense.
It is also interesting that in all of the countries, the most easily observed indicators of democracy such as suffrage and having the chief executive or legislature being appointed by elections are given the highest possible scores. In other words, even the most autocratic regime wants to look like a democracy; but as the old saying goes, “it is not who votes that is important, it is who counts”.
The regime changes at election times that have led to declining liberal democracy scores have also in many cases come as a result of the incumbents not doing a great job or voters not turning up to vote. It was enough for Lukashenko in Belarus to promise to deal with corruption and rampant inflation that was a result of the old guard’s mismanagement to turn Belarus into an autocracy. In Hungary, the change of regime came after the Socialist leader was caught on tape saying he had been lying to voters. While in Romania, only 39% voted in the 2016 election. And in Bulgaria, around half of the voters stayed at home in the presidential election the same year.
In sum, both incompetent and corrupt past leaders and disengaged or disillusioned voters are part of the decline in a liberal democracy that we have seen in recent years. It is clearly time for policy makers that are interested in preserving liberal democracy in the region and elsewhere to think hard about how democracy can be saved from illiberal democrats. Part of the answer clearly will have to do with how voters can be engaged in the democratic process and take part in elections. It also involves defending free independent media and the thinkers and doers that contribute to the liberal democracy that we cherish. The question is if the young generation will find a Greta for democracy that can kick-start a new transition to liberal democracy in the region and around the world.
For those readers that want to participate more actively in this discussion and have a chance to be in Stockholm on November 12, SITE is organizing a conference on this theme which is open to the public. For more information on the conference, please visit SITE’s website (see here).
References
- Freedom house data downloaded on Oct 4, 2019, from https://freedomhouse.org/content/freedom-world-data-and-resources
- Freedom house methodological note available at https://freedomhouse.org/report/methodology-freedom-world-2018
- Polity IV project data downloaded on Oct 4, 2019, from http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html
- Polity IV project manual available at http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/p4manualv2018.pdf
- V-Dem project data downloaded on Sept 24, 2019, from https://www.v-dem.net/en/data/data-version-9/
- Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, M. Steven Fish, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Lührmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Steven Wilson, Agnes Cornell, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Nina Ilchenko, Joshua Krusell, Laura Maxwell, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Josefine Pernes, Johannes von Römer, Natalia Stepanova, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2019a. “V-Dem [Country-Year/Country-Date] Dataset v9”, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem)
- Pemstein, Daniel, Kyle L. Marquardt, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Juraj Medzihorsky, Joshua Krusell, Farhad Miri, and Johannes von Römer. 2019b. “The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data”, V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 4th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.
Local Self-Governance in the Republic of Belarus
Author: Aleh Mazol, BEROC.
This policy brief summarizes the results of our research on the development of local self-governance in the Republic of Belarus. The aim of this study was to analyze the existing system of local self-governance in the Republic of Belarus and to suggest directions for its improvement. The results show that the development of local self-governance should be directed to the reduction of concentration of the administrative-territorial division, real empowerment of local Councils of Deputies, improvement of the mechanism of alignment and balancing of local budgets, as well as the development of a financial base of local financial management and intergovernmental relations.
Evaluating the Political Man on Horseback – Coups and Economic Development
In a new paper (Meyersson, 2015) I examine the development effects of military coups. Coups overthrowing democratically elected leaders imply a very different kind of event than those overthrowing autocratic leaders, and these differences relate to the implementation of authoritarian institutions following a coup in a democracy. Although coups taking place in already autocratic countries show imprecise and sometimes positive effects on economic growth, in democracies their effects are distinctly detrimental to growth. Moreover, when coups overthrow democratic leaders, they fail to promote economic reforms, stop the occurrence of economic crises and political instability, as well as have substantial negative effects across a number of standard growth-related outcomes including health, education, and investment.
Do military coups matter for economic development? After all, successful coups – i.e. where the military or state elites have unseated an incumbent leader – have occurred 232 times in 94 states since 1950 (see Figure 1). Moreover, around a quarter of these overthrew democratically elected governments (Powell and Thyne, 2012). The prevalence of military coups has not been lost on researchers, yet despite an abundance of research aiming to explain the occurrence of coups (see for example Acemoglu and Robinson, 2001; Collier and Hoeffler, 2006 & 2007; Leon, 2014; Svolik, 2012) much less research has focused on its economic effects (two exceptions are the papers on covert US operations during the Cold War by Dube, Kaplan, and Naidu, 2011 and Berger, Easterly, Nunn, and Satyanath, 2013). Olsen (1963), for example, claimed that coups “often bring no changes in policy.” Londregan and Poole (1990), in their panel-data analysis, find no effects of coups on income.
By now, there is mostly a consensus that significant military influence in politics is detrimental for democracy (Dahl, 1971; Huntington, 1965; Linz and Stepan, 1996). Nonetheless, military coups overthrowing democratically elected governments are often met with ambiguity. Western governments have a long history of tacit support for military coups overthrowing democratic governments, be it left-leaning governments in Latin America or Islamist governments in the Middle East and North Africa (Schmitz 2006). Commentators expressing support for coups often do so invoking extreme outcomes to represent the counterfactual to the military coup; if Pinochet had not overthrown President Allende, the latter would have created a Castro-style regime in Chile; if the Algerian army hadn’t annulled the elections in 1992, the Islamist FIS would have turned Algeria into an Islamist dictatorship in the Maghreb, and so on (Los Angeles Times 2006, Open Democracy 2013). Similarly, the fault for the coup and preceding problems fall invariably upon the ousted leader, with the coup constituting an unfortunate, but necessary, means to rid the country of an incompetent, if not dangerous, leader (Foreign Policy, 2013).
Other commentators have pointed out the risks of allowing a military to intervene and dictate post-coup institutions to their advantage; a “Faustian” bargain likely to bring regime stability but no solution to the real underlying problems behind the conflict in the first place. Yet others lament the human rights abuses following coups, and the inherent ineptitude of military leaders in running the economy (NYT, 2013; New Republic, 2013; Washington Post, 2013).
Figure 1. Successful and Failed Coup Attempts by Country and Year
Notes: The graph shows successful (solid circles) and failed coup attempts (hollow circles) by country and year, and aggregated by country (right graph) as well as by year (top graph). A circle in blue means the political regime was classified by Cheibub et al 2010 as a democracy in the year before the attempt and a red circle means they classified the regime as an autocracy.
Military coups tend to be endogenous events, and establishing a causal relation between coups and development is therefore a challenge. The unobservable likelihood of a coup – often referred to as coup risk (Collier and Hoeffler, 2006 & 2007; Londregan and Poole, 1990; Belkin and Schofer, 2003) – may be driven by many factors also affecting a country’s development potential, such as weak institutions, the military’s political power, social conflict, and economic crises etc.
In order to address this problem, I employ several empirical strategies including comparing successful versus failed coup attempts, matching methods, as well as panel data techniques, using a dataset of coup attempts during the post-World War II era. These methods facilitate, in different ways, comparisons of development consequences of coups in situations with arguably more similar degrees of coup risk.
Of significant importance is distinguishing coups when they occur in clearly autocratic settings from those where they overthrow democratically elected governments. I show that a military coup overthrowing a regime in a country like Chad may have very different consequences than a military leader overthrowing a democratically elected president in a country like Chile. In the former, a coup appears to constitute the manner in which autocracies change leaders. In the latter, coups typically imply deeper institutional changes with long-run development consequences.
I find that, conditional on a coup-attempt taking place, the effect of coup success depends on the pre-intervention level of democratic institutions. In countries that were more democratic, a successful coup lowered growth in income per capita by as much as 1-1.3 percent per year over a decade. In more autocratic countries, I find smaller and more imprecisely estimated positive effects. This effect is robust to splitting the sample by alternative institutional measures, as well as to a range of controls relating to factors such as leader characteristics, wars, coup history, and natural resources. As Figure 2 illustrates, the economic effect of coups tend to worsen over time. Extending the analysis to matching and panel-data methods reveal these results to be highly robust.
Figure 2. Relationship between a Successful Coup and Growth in GDP per capita
Notes: The three graphs represent the coefficient on a successful coups on growth in GDP per capita (PPP) between year t-1 and t+s with s given by the x-axis for all regimes(left), autocracies (middle), and democracies (right). Controls include period t-1 values of log GDP per capita, annual growth, log population, PolityIV index, annual change in the PolityIV index military expenditures as a share of GDP, annual change in military exp/GDP, military personnel as a share of population, years since the last coup, total number of previous coups, social unrest, leader tenure, as well as continent and year dummies respectively. See Meyersson (2015) for details.
A commonly held view is that coups overthrowing democratically elected leaders often provide an opportunity for engaging in unpopular but much needed economic reforms. Not only do I show that coups fail at this, but also that they tend to reverse important economic reforms, especially in the financial sector, while also leading to increased indebtedness and an overall deteriorating net external financial position, and an increased propensity to suffer severe economic crises. A documented reduction in social spending suggests a shift in economic priorities away from the masses to the benefit of political and economic elites.
Whereas coups occur mostly in dire situations, their prescriptions, as shown, rarely constitute adequate remedies to the underlying problems, as the institutional changes brought by these events show clear detrimental development consequences. Any short-lived benefit of regime stability a coup brings, comes at a steep economic, political, and human cost in the longer run.
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References
- Acemoglu, Daron and James A. Robinson, “A Theory of Political Transitions,” The American Economic Review, Vol. 91, No. 4 (Sep., 2001), pp. 938-963
- Berger, Daniel, William Easterly, Nathan Nunn, and Shanker Satyanath. 2013. ”Commercial Imperialism? Political Influence and Trade during the Cold War.” American Economic Review, 103(2): 863-96.
- Belkin, Aaron, and Evan Schofer, 2003,“Toward a Structural Understanding of Coup Risk”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 47 No. 5, October 2003 594-620
- Cheibub, Jos ́e Antonio, Jennifer Gandhi, and James Raymond Vreeland, 2010, “Democracy and dictatorship revisited,” Public Choice (2010) 143: 67-101.
- Collier, Paul and Anke Hoeffler, 2006, “Grand Extortion: Coup Risk and the Military as a Protection Racket,” working paper
- Collier, Paul and Anke Hoeffler, 2007, “Military Spending and the Risks of Coups d’ ́etat,” working paper.
- Dahl, Robert A., Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, Yale University Press 1971.
- Dube, Arindrajit, Ethan Kaplan, and Suresh Naidu, “Coups, Corporations, and Classified Infor- mation”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2011 (Vol. 126, Issue 3)
- Foreign Policy, “Blame Morsy,” Michael Hanna, July 10 2013,
- Huntington, Samuel P., 1965, “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics, 386- 429
- Leon, Gabriel, 2014, “Loyalty for Sale? Military Spending and Coups d’Etat,” Public Choice 159, 363-383
- Linz, Juan, and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, Johns Hopkins University 1996
- Los Angeles Times, “Iraq needs a Pinochet”, Jonah Goldberg, December 14, 2006
- Londregan, John B and Kenneth T. Poole, “The Coup Trap, and the Seizure of Executive Power,” World Politics, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Jan., 1990), pp. 151-183
- Meyersson, Erik, 2015, Political Man on Horseback – Military Coups and Development, working paper, http://erikmeyersson.com/research/
- Olsen, Mancur, “Rapid Growth as a Destabilizing Force,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Dec., 1963), pp. 529-552
- Open Democracy, February 11 2013, https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/hicham-yezza/how-to-be-different-together-algerian-lessons-for-tunisian-crisis.
- Powell, Jonathan M, and Clayton L Thyne, 2012, “Global instances of coups from 1950 to 2010: A new dataset,” Journal of Peace Research 48(2) 249-259
- Schmitz, David F. “The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships”, Cambridge University Press 2006
- Svolik, Milan W., The Politics of Authoritarian Rule, Cambridge University Press 2012.
- The New Republic, “Egypt Officially Declares What Is and Isn’t Important”, Nathan J. Brown, July 9 2013, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113792/egypt-president-adli-mansour-makes-constitutional-declaration.
- The New York Times, “A Faustian Pact: Generals as Democrats”, Steven A. Cook, July 5, 2013
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
The Arab Spring Logic of the Ukrainian Revolution
Motivated by the unusual patterns and dynamics of the Arab Spring, we construct a model explaining the vulnerability of the newly established incumbent to popular unrest. Using this model for the case of similar protests in Ukraine, we find that the current combination of availability of information, military capacity of the incumbent and his radicalization, together with the opportunity costs of participation in a protest, are likely to result in the formation of new government that is also vulnerable to popular protests. The persistence of the protests after the formation of a temporal government in Ukraine supports this hypothesis. Additionally, as the policy position of Viktor Yanukovych was relatively mild, his potential successor might be more radical. Exponential growth of social media users, reduction of military capacity, relatively high unemployment and the possible radicalization of the Ukrainian President might put the country into an “instability zone” with recurrent protests.
On the night of 21 November 2013 spontaneous protests erupted in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, after the Ukrainian government suspended preparations for signing an Association Agreement and a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union in favor of agreements with Russia. The movement concentrated on Independence Square (Maidan Naseljenosti) soon took on the name “Euromaidan”. Soon the protest spread to other cities in the country. The initial agenda of closer relations with the EU was soon encompassed in the wider protest against Viktor Yanukovych, elected President in 2010. He fled the country on February 21 under the pressure of popular protests, exacerbating the leadership crisis. Temporary leadership was taken up by the Speaker of the Supreme Rada – Oleksander Turchinov, while new elections were scheduled to take place on May 25.
Despite the successful removal of Victor Yanukovich from power and a promise of new elections in May, the protests on Maidan did not cease. The major factor of uncertainty comes from the very nature of the protests. For many months, it ran without organizers or formal leadership so that the future course of action remains unclear. It is hard to comply with the demands of Maidan, as no clear set of demands are formulated. Though five figures of Maidan: Tymoshenko, Klitschko, Tyagnybok, Yatsenuk and Yarosh remain the most visible, none of them has sufficient support of Maidan. Whichever course prevails – resumed Eurointegration or an alliance with Russia (which became a less likely option)– the number of people who oppose the new course is likely to be enough to fill a new Maidan.
The swift happenings in Maidan are highly reminiscent of the events of the Arab Spring at its crux: it also was a leaderless protest, coordinated mainly with social media, and encompasses people of vastly different socio-economic, political and demographic characteristics.
Using social media technologies, Euromaidan has created an interactive map of logistics (http://maydanneeds.com/) that provides detailed information on and locations of where to eat, makeshift hospitals, information booths, and the barricades. Clicking on the icons of the map, one discovers not only the locations of the facilities but also their needs, which enables coordination of protesters’ efforts to contribute to the common cause. However, just as in case of Tahrir Square or the Tunisian unrest, the common cause is poorly defined: aside from dissatisfaction with Viktor Yanukovych, the protesters exhibited very different preferences for the future course of action, and the three most prominent figures of the protest – Klitschko, Tyagnybok and Yatsenuk – were shunned as they spoke about the common agenda.
The aftermath of the Arab Spring remains unclear for both protesters and the world. The Syrian social unrest has resulted in ongoing violent conflict, while Libyan society still experiences serious problems with the formation of a new government after the murder of Kaddafi and the end of civil war. Tunisia and Egypt were able to choose new Presidents and form new governments. The latter were themselves dismissed soon after they came to power: the first elected post-Mubarak government collapsed in mid-2013 after a year of almost uninterrupted protests. These two cases are especially interesting as constitutional exits of leaders who were in autocratic office for less than one year were generally caused by coups and not protests between 1945 and 2002 (Svolik, 2009).
Nevertheless, we can apply the knowledge acquired there to the new Ukrainian protest we observed on Maidan and try to predict its development by the means of stylized models suggested in Dagaev, Lamberova, Sobolev and Sonin (2013).
Our approach relies on four simple parameters that drive the dynamics of the protests. First, we consider the costs of collective action – the opportunity costs of spending time on Maidan. The second parameter is the military capacity of the incumbent that can be devoted to the suspension of the protest. The higher it is, the more numerous should the protest be to succeed. The third parameter we use is the degree of the radicalization of the incumbent (the difference between his position and the preferred policy of the majority of the population). Finally, we use an information availability parameter (how many people are aware of the place and time of the occurrence of the protest).
With the electric telegraph, a communication tool of the 19th century, information availability was low and many of those who would have been glad to pay the costs of collective actions to replace the incumbent stay at home as they are not aware of the protest taking place. With Facebook and Twitter, the availability of information is much higher. According to our findings, the crucial role in dynamics of contemporary mass actions is played by the ratio of military capacity to the information availability rather than their values per se.
Our framework assumes that each citizen’s decision of whether to participate in the protest or not is based on the difference between her position and the preferred policy of the incumbent. According to this decision, all citizens can be classified into two groups – those who participate in a protest against the incumbent, and those who do not. We define a person, who has the median position among the protesters, as the expected new incumbent. So if the elections were held among the protesters, he would receive the widest support. If the number of citizens participating in the protest is sufficient to overcome the military capacity of the current incumbent, the protest becomes successful, and the expected new incumbent of the protest becomes the new incumbent. The combination of military capacity, opportunity costs and costs of coordination determine the size of the stability zone – a segment of policy space where the incumbent is not vulnerable to mass protest.
The model allows us to predict the dynamics of the protests that is generated by different combinations of the parameters. For illustrative purposes, the availability of information about the protest is proxied by data on Facebook penetration and military capacity is described by the number of military personnel per capita in 2009 collected by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (Hackett, 2010). The incumbent policy position is proxied by the Legitimacy Index from Polity IV, where a higher index corresponds to lower legitimacy of the incumbent and his regime. Finally, the costs of participation in a protest are proxied by the employment rate. A recent study by Campante and Chor stresses unemployment as important determinants of opportunity costs of taking to the streets during Arab Spring (Campante & Chor, 2012). As unemployed individuals have fewer options of how to spend their time, one should expect that a substantial number of unemployed people corresponds to a relative ease of sparking unrest.
Using these parameters, we can explain success or failure of the protest, and predict some proprieties of its aftermath.
For example, high military capacity, opportunity costs and costs of coordination generate a broad stability zone, so that even a radical incumbent would not face a threat of revolution. The decline of any of three parameters can narrow the zone of stability and make the autocrat vulnerable to mass protest. As the incumbent is highly radical, a significant part of the population takes to the streets. As a result, the new incumbent’s position is sufficiently close to the one of the median voter and is, thus, inside the stability zone. An example of such a scenario is the overturn of Slobodan Milosevic after the fall of communism, when there were eight failed and one successful attempts to form a wide coalition of opposition parties (Spoerri, 2008). The process of finding a common ground started in 1990 with the emergence of the coalition of six parties, the Associated Opposition of Serbia, which broke shortly after a series of power struggles, policy disagreements, and personality clashes. It was only ten years later that the protest which facilitated Milosevic’s downfall took place, as the leader of the united opposition, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, was able to ensure the non-involvement of the crucial military unit on behalf of Milosevic (Bujosevic & Radanovic, 2003).
In contrast, the events of the Arab Spring had different political dynamics. Low military capacity and high unemployment of Egypt and Tunisia determined a narrow stability zone ex ante. The absence of protests of these long-lived regimes can be explained by the relatively moderate position of the incumbent. In 2010, the Egyptian and Tunisian regimes had scores of 5 and 4 (out of 12) of Political Legitimacy from Polity IV, respectively. However the emergence of social media that enabled the users to coordinate their actions easily narrowed the relatively small stability zone. As the incumbent was less radical, fewer citizens benefit from its replacement and take to the streets. Thus, the new incumbent is defined by protesters, her policy position is more radical and now is out of the stability zone. The new incumbent immediately faces the new social unrest.
Table 1 presents the stylized results of our study. Locating the combination of parameters of the country in the table allows us to make the prediction about the dynamics of the protest. There are several possible courses of events: the protest can be weak and die out soon, with the incumbent staying in place; it can be significant, but yet not large enough to overthrow the incumbent; it can lead to the replacement of the incumbent, followed by the period of stability; and, finally, it can result in the replacement of the incumbent, but not cessation of the protest.
Table 1. Protest Outcome as a Function of Parameters
What do our findings tell us about Ukraine? The previously used proxy for the information index there is not a good choice, as the majority of users prefer the Russian version of Facebook – Vkontakte – as the major social network of the country. Thus, we rely on the Vkontakte penetration data (as of 2013, 18.5 million of people in Ukraine were using the network, constituting 40.6% of the population, see report of Ukranian IT-news agency AIN.UA: http://ain.ua/2013/11/28/503853).
The military parameter, that reduces the likelihood of successful protest, is low, compared to the countries of Arab Spring and constitutes 2.8 active military per 1000 people (see the Ukrainian law “Armed Forces of Ukraine for 2013”, http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/zweb2/webproc34?id=&pf3511=49126&pf35401=283834), which is half of the one in Egypt at the beginning of the protests. The unemployment parameter fell to 8.6 during the incumbency of Victor Yanukovych, which corresponds to the pre-protest unemployment in Egypt in 2010.
The legitimacy measure presents a difficulty for comparison with the Arab Spring cases, as the Legitimacy Index has not yet been updated. However, the harsh actions of Victor Yanukovych during the 2013-2014 protests (including the suppression of the protest and the passage of laws denying freedom of assembly and freedom of expression, as well as the refusal to repeal his earlier changes of the constitution towards more presidential form of government) suggest that his legitimacy level fell by approximately 50% (and was about 20% right before he was ousted from power), which is corroborated by polls (“Ukraine’s future in peril under President Yanukovych”, The Washington Post, 2 December, 2013). Thus, the conservative estimate is that his legitimacy index shifted from 3 to 4 or 5, as shown on Figure 1.
For the purpose of comparison, we plot the Arab Spring countries and Ukraine in the space of our variables in Figure 1. The X-axis shows the incumbent’s departure from the median population-preferred policy (proxied by the Legitimacy Index from Polity IV). We use the value of the index in the year prior to the start of unrest, and the index value in 2010 for countries with no protests (Morocco, Oman, Djibouti). The Y-axis corresponds to the employment level. The size of the bubble corresponds to the ratio of military capacity and Facebook (or Vkontakte) penetration (data from the Arab Spring Social Media Report).
The shading of the bubble reflects the type that country belongs to: striped (no significant protest), light gray (continuing protest), and dark grey (multiple protests). Syria is excluded from the classification and is marked white, because of the civil war and international intervention.
Figure 1. Legitimacy index (X-axis), Employment (Y-axis), Military capacity / Social media penetration (size of the bubble) in Arab Spring countries and Ukraine
Figure 1 illustrates that countries appear in tight clusters in line with our theoretical predictions. The countries with continuing protests that did not lead to the downfall of the incumbent are divided into two groups. The first group (Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, and Bahrain) has relatively a moderate incumbent policy position and extremely high level of development of new media. The reasons why these countries are not «striped» is high military capacity of the government that could be employed against protesters, combined with high opportunity costs of protesting (low unemployment rates).
The second group of countries (Syria, Algeria, Iraq, Yemen, and Mauritania) has more radical incumbents and higher unemployment rates (so the incentives to protests are higher there), but is poor in terms of IT development. The ratio of military capacity and Facebook (Vkontakte) penetration is high, which is reflected by the size of bubbles that are much larger than in the first groups. That is why in a country with a small military capacity (such as Yemen), the protests did not lead to the incumbent’s replacement.
Two Arab Spring countries belong to the “multiple protests” group. Both Egypt and Tunisia had relatively mild incumbents in the pre-protest era, with Tunisia’s Bashar al-Assad being the milder of the two. Both countries had relatively high unemployment rates and wide Facebook coverage, both factors alleviating the problem of organizing a collective action. Despite the fact that before the start of the protests Facebook coverage in Egypt had close to average values among the countries of Arab Spring, they grew at exponential rates and Egypt attained leading positions in the region in usage of new media several months later. Moreover, low rates of military capacity made protest activity less risky in both Tunisia and Egypt. The remaining differences in Facebook coverage and employment rates in Egypt and Tunisia account for the different structure of recurrent protests, predicted by our model.
Comparison of the Arab Spring countries data with the Ukrainian case shows that high military capacity, new media penetration and unemployment generate even more narrow stability zones than one observes in the cases of Egypt and Tunisia. The reason why the incumbent was not vulnerable to mass protests can be explained by the political legitimacy of Yanukovych as the winner of relatively free elections in 2010.
But if the Arab Spring protests were triggered by rapid growth of new (cheap) communication technologies, the successful protest against Yanukovych can be explained by his radicalization. The radicalization took the form of parliamentary acts that put significant constraints on political rights and civil liberties and violent suppression of dissident actions.
Employing the proposed approach and contrasting the Ukrainian case with the countries of the Arab Spring allows us to draw several conclusions.
Firstly, the current combination of availability of information, military capacity of the incumbent and his radicalization, together with the opportunity costs of staying on Maidan, are likely to result in successful and recurrent protest. The persistence of the protests after the formation of a temporal government supports this hypothesis.
Secondly, it is worthwhile to note that as the policy position of Viktor Yanukovych was relatively mild, his potential successor might be more radical.
Thirdly, the exponential growth of social media, the reduction of military capacity and relatively high unemployment puts Ukraine into an “instability zone”. This implies that the 2004 scenario of the Orange Revolution is unlikely to repeat. The protest of 2004 resulted in a general election, and the elected president Viktor Yushchenko served his term without interruption. The protests of 2013 are more likely to result in a rapid change of incumbents and a period of instability.
One factor can strengthen the possible incumbent’s vulnerability. The external pressure of the Russian government reduces costs of collective resistance to the new Ukrainian authorities among pro-Russian citizens, while the promise of Western countries to support fast EU integration can incentivize politicians to accelerate reforms opposed by significant parts of the population.
References
- Bujosevic, D., & Radanovic, I. (2003). The fall of Milosevic: the October 5th revolution. Palgrave Macmillan.
- Campante, F. R., & Chor, D. (2012). Why was the Arab world poised for revolution? Schooling, economic opportunities, and the Arab Spring. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 167–187.
- Dagaev, D., Lamberova, N., Sobolev, A., & Sonin, K. (2013). Technological Foundations of Political Instability. Centre for Economic Policy Research Working Paper Series
- Hackett, J. (2010). The Military Balance 2010: The Annual Assessment of Global Military Capabilities and Defense E conomics. London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies.
- Spoerri, M. (2008). Uniting the opposition in the run – up to electoral revolution – Lessons from Serbia 1990 – 2000. Totalitarismus Und Demokratie, 5(2005), 67–85.
- Svolik, M. (2009). Power sharing and leadership dynamics in authoritarian regimes. American Journal of Political Science, 53(2), 477–494
Macroeconomic Performance and Preferences for Democracy
This policy brief summarizes the results of our research on factors influencing preferences for democracy in transition countries. The aim of this work was to detect which macroeconomic and individual factors impact the choice of supporting democracy. The results showed that the performance of the country, described by level of GDP, unemployment, level of corruption and economic growth, has a serious impact on an individual’s perception of democracy. At the same time, individual factors like education and age also influence people’s choice of support of democratic authorities.
Individual perception of democracy is a question that attracts the attention of policymakers. The macroeconomic instability that has been observed worldwide lately is likely to impact individual attitude toward democratic values and political institutions. The recent economic crisis brought a deterioration of the economic situation around the world and provided new challenges to cope with. It is likely that macroeconomic indicators have an impact on how a person perceives democracy. Literature studying similar questions has shown that GDP growth, unemployment and inflation all affect personal attitude to democratic institutions (Clarke et. al., 1994; Barro, 1999; Papaioannou and Siourounis, 2008). As for individual characteristics, the level of education is revealed by the literature as a very important factor in the context of the individual’s propensity of democracy approval.
The literature on the determinants of political support and attitudes to democracy was mostly focusing on exploring stable world economies with long-formed and steady-functioning democracies. We tried to look at a similar question in the context of transition economies, where democratic institutions are still under development.
We intend to estimate individuals’ propensity to favor democratic values. The specification of our econometric model was based on the literature addressing the same topic. The estimation procedure used probit econometric techniques, which allows for the calculation of the propensities of interest while taking into account the influence of both macroeconomic factors and individual characteristics. The paper used two sources of data: macroeconomic information was collected from the World Development Indicators of the World Bank, and individual-level cross-sectional data was obtained from Life in Transition Survey (LITS) 2010, which initially covered 38864 individuals from 35 countries. However, as the paper focuses on countries in transition, the final set only included individuals from 30 countries, most from Eastern Europe, Baltics and CIS, and excluded representatives of Western Europe. This data allowed for substantial data variation in the context of economic development vs. perception of democratic values (Graph 1).
Figure 1. Support of Democracy and GDP Per Capita
Source: WDI and LITS 2010
Inclusion of different macroeconomic variables together with individual factors allowed for an evaluation of their importance and level of impact on the perception of democratic values (Table 1). The results show that GDP per capita has a positive and significant effect on individuals’ perception of democratic values, which is in line with the literature claiming that standard of living in countries with not so high level of GDP is positively correlated with satisfaction with their life and the political system (Easterlin, 1995; Clark et al., 2008; Stevenson and Wolfers, 2008). Inflation rates are not significant and do not influence individuals’ attitude to democracy. On the other hand, economic growth is strictly positive and significant, and an increase of the economic growth rate raises propensity of democratic support by around 1.6 percentage points. The possible explanation here is that the growth rate of GDP works as a proxy of expectations for improvements of the standard of living in the future.
Table 1. Influence of Macroeconomic and Individual Factors on Perception of Democracy
Unemployment works as an indicator of a country‘s economic performance and has an expected negative sign in terms of individuals’ satisfaction with life and political institutions, which is also in line with the results in the literature (Di Tella et al., 2001; Wagner and Schneider, 2006). Impact of unemployment was tested using a cross product of unemployment and the Freedom House Index (this latter indicator shows the level of political and civil rights from 1 (most free) to 7 (least free)). The sign on this cross product is positive, which captures their mutual positive impact on the support for democracy. Thus, the higher the unemployment in a country with a low level of democratization is, the larger the probability of democratic support by individuals in these countries is. The indicator for the level of corruption in a country was also taken into account, via the Corruption Perception Index. This index ranks countries on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (effectively, corruption-free). The results show that the less corrupt a country is, the higher the propensity that an individual in that country will support democracy is. In fact, one additional point in the index increases the propensity of support by almost 4 percentage points. Military expenditures negatively affect the support of democratic values, and so does the existence of oil in the country. Here, military expenditures may be seen as a proxy for a less democratic regime, so that the leaders there have higher incentives to rule using suppressive measures with a support of military force in the country (Mulligan, Gil and Sala-i-Martin, 2004).
As for the individual factors, both secondary and higher education appear to be very important factors with a positive impact on the satisfaction with democracy. This finding follows the literature (Barro, 1999; Przeworski et al., 2000; Glaeser et al., 2004). In our results, people with secondary or higher education degree showed 10 and 18 percentage points higher propensity of support, respectively. Age also seem to matter: positive perception of democracy is specific to those aged 18-54, compared to the older generation, which goes in line with the explanation that senior citizens are more conservative than younger citizens. We also observe a negative significant coefficient on female gender, which may, perhaps, be related to women being more conservative than men.
Subjective relative income measure (answer to the question “to which income quintile do you think you belong to?”) has a positive impact on the support for democracy. Surprisingly, individuals from middle-income group have a more positive attitude than those who regard themselves as rich. Employment status is positively correlated with the support for democracy. Moreover, self-employment and employment in the public sector have a larger effect on the propensity of positive attitude to democratic values than employment in the private sector.
Divorced and widowed people expressed less support for democracy than single individuals, which might signal some dissatisfaction that impacts on personal attitude. Urban residency is positively correlated with the support of democracy. The same relationship is present for the risk tolerance of an individual. Finally, inclusion of a subjective measure of life satisfaction brought some changes to the general picture. It appeared that those who are satisfied with life strongly support the democratic values and such mentality raises the propensity of support by 7 percentage points. Moreover, inclusion of this variable makes the effect of being rich insignificant.
To sum up, the results showed that economic performance of the country described by various macroeconomic indicators has a serious impact on individual’s perception of democracy and, most probably, of other forms of government. At the same time individual factors also influence people’s satisfaction with the authorities. Thus, individual support of a political system is based on the results of performance of both the individual and the country.
References
- Barro R. 1999. “Determinants of Democracy.”Journal of Political Economy 107, #S6.
- Clark A. and Oswald A.J. 1994.“Unhappiness and Unemployment.”EconomicJournal104.
- Clark A., FrijtersP. and Shields M. 2008. “Relative Income,Happiness and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles.” Journal of Economic Literature46,# 1.
- DiTellaR., MacCulloch R.J., Oswald A.J. 2001. “Preferences over inflation and unemployment: Evidence from surveys of happiness.”American Economic Review91.
- Easterlin R. 1995. “Will Raising the Incomes of All Increase the Happiness of All?”Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization27, # 1.
- Glaeser E., La PortaR., Lopez-de-SilanesF. and ShleiferA. 2004.“Do Institutions Cause Growth?” Journal of Economic Growth.9, #3.
- Mulligan C.B., Gil R. and Sala-i-Martin X. 2004. “Do Democracies HaveDifferent Public Policies than Nondemocracies?” Journal of Economic Perspectives18, #1.
- Papaioannou, E. and Siourounis G. 2008.“Economic and Social Factors Drivingthe Third Wave of Democratization.” Journal of Comparative Economics36, #3.
- Prezworski A., Alvarez M., Cheibub J. and LimongiF. 1996. “WhatMakes Democracy Endure?” Journal of Democracy 7, #1.
- Stevenson, B. and Wolfers, J. 2008. “Economic Growth and SubjectiveWell-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1.
- Wagner A.F. andSchneider F. 2006. “Satisfaction with Democracy and the Environment in Western Europe: A Panel Analysis.” IZA Discussion Papers 1929, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Political Islam and Women’s Rights – Evidence from Turkey
In this policy brief, I discuss how state-of-the-art econometric techniques can be used to shed light on the causal effects of Islamic rule on women’s rights. A central empirical challenge is that the identity of a politician is endogenous to voter characteristics, which in the case of Islamic political participation is particularly important due to the prevalence of banning such parties in many Muslim countries. Using a research design called Regression Discontinuity, I show that despite a negative association between Islamic rule and female participation in education in Turkey, the causal effect of an Islamic party on women’s rights is positive. In the case of Turkey, this represents the Islamic political movement’s advantage over secular alternatives in overcoming barriers to female participation in voluntary education institutions among the poor and pious.
Political Instability in Fragile Democracies: Political Cycles Kyrgyz Style
Democratization is rarely a straight and predictable process. Freedom House data from the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) and the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) since 1991 reveals two distinct patterns. In one set of countries, democratization took root quite quickly and the transformation of political institutions seems quite deep and sustainable. In the other countries, the road to democratization, if ever started, has been much more partial and full of reversals. Among the CIS countries, none is regarded as free by Freedom House in 2012, four are regarded as partly free (Armenia, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova and Ukraine), while the remaining seven countries (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) are regarded as non-free. There has also been volatility over time within countries. Russia and Belarus have seen their score steadily deteriorating, while countries on the Balkan and south-east Europe have seen gradual improvements. With the lack of consolidated democratic institutions has also typically followed much political instability. Frequent changes in power, civil unrest, popular revolutions and military conflicts have pervaded countries like Ukraine, Georgia, and the Kyrgyz Republic. In other nations, repressive leaders have put a lid on visible instability, but at the cost of political rights and a fair judiciary system. In both cases, the economy has suffered as instability has deterred investors looking for a predictable environment guided by transparent rules of the game implemented equally for all. Corruption has flourished and political connections and nepotism has determined the opportunities for economic success.
Whither Legal Turkey?
With the ascent to power of the AKP and its political victory against the secular elite and as the country is about to draft its first civilian constitution, the party’s leadership faces a daunting challenge to transform the country into a real democracy for minorities as well as majorities. The legacy of the party’s leadership will not be determined by its win against a system rigged against them, but how they transform an authoritarian and arbitrary legal system into extended rights for, amongst others, the country’s ethnic Kurds, women, and political rivals. This requires more than a new constitution and will be the real test of whether Turkey can serve as a model for the region or not.
A Sick Man No More
Turkey was once referred to as the ‘Sick Man of Europe’, plagued by financial turmoil, erratic growth, and territorial contraction. Today, it is among the twenty largest countries in the world both economically as well as population-wise, and remains one of few Muslim democracies. While Europe has been undergoing a financial crisis, Turkey has been growing at an unprecedented rate, leading the Economist to label it as ‘The China of Europe’.
Among the Arab countries, Turkey is also increasingly seen as a viable model of combining Islam and democracy, and many have lauded the government for its assertion of civilian control over state institutions. A recent triumphant tour of Egypt and Libya by Turkey’s Prime Minister blurred the distinction between official state visit and celebrity tour.
Yet Turkey’s leaders need all the political capital they can acquire, as steep challenges remain domestically. Whether Turkey can be a model for the rest of the Muslim world will be determined by whether its leadership can solve the remaining political and social injustices. Currently, these are exasperated by an outdated and authoritarian legal system and arbitrary enforcement of existing laws.
From White to Black
During the last two decades, Turkey has experienced something very rare. Historically, power emanated primarily from the country’s security establishment – the judiciary and the military – educated in the country’s elite schools and trained in a Kemalist creed where religious and non-Turkish identities had no place in the public sphere (that is, unless they were secular and Turkish). In the media, this group is often referred to as the ‘White Turks’.
The constitution set up in 1982, following a military coup two years earlier, put security and stability ahead of individual rights and cemented institutions with limited accountability to the public. The need to preserve the state’s security interests allowed for heavily regulated political participation among those deemed threatening to the state, be it Islamists, leftists, or those seeking increased Kurdish autonomy.
Weak coalition governments changed with the season, the debate captured by leaders powerful enough to hinder political rivals from affecting real policy while powerless or unwilling to do so themselves. Human rights abuses, especially in Eastern Turkey provided ample fuel for critics of Turkey’s prospects for EU membership.
Today, the ‘White Turks’ are nearly gone − a democratically elected majority government, made up largely of pious Muslims from the periphery of Turkey, is in power. The President, Abdullah Gül, is from Kayseri, the birthplace of the ‘Anatolian tigers’, a group of successful and piously Muslim entrepreneurs. The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, stems from (what was) one of the poorer neighborhoods in Istanbul, and spent time in jail for reciting what the judiciary deemed to be an inflammatory poem. Both men have wives wearing the headscarf, which for the secular elite is what a red rag is to a bull.
After a decade-long conflict between the moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the secular elite, the former seems to have come out on top. Earlier this year the top brass of Turkey’s military corps resigned en masse following unprecedented arrests of senior military officers related to allegations of plotting a military coup. A constitutional amendment passed last year now allows military personnel, including those involved in the 1980 coup, to be tried in civilian courts and has revamped the appointment procedure of parts of the judiciary. A significant portion of all Turkish officers is currently in jail for conspiring against the AKP government.
With power consolidated behind them, the AKP leadership has their work cut out. While the Turkish model is already being lauded as a role model for the Arab spring countries, within the country significant challenges and injustices remain. Deep institutional reform is required to accommodate a people more than deserving of an open and free society. Full political and economic rights need to be further extended to women, religious minorities, as well as the country’s large Kurdish population. The justice system, especially the Turkish Penal Code needs to be altered to rid it of remnants of the authoritarian system that the AKP government claims to be dismantling. A new constitution is needed in which the state serves the people and not the other way around. Finally, Turkey needs more than new laws; it needs enforcement of, and compliance with, the rule of law in what would be an institutional change not seen since the birth of the republic.
In the name of terrorism…
In a recent survey of anti-terror convictions by the Associated Press in more than 100 countries, Turkey accounted for a third of all convictions. The Turkish state has long been at odds with a large Kurdish minority seeking greater autonomy and has been engaged in a war with the Kurdistan’s Worker’s Party (PKK) since the late 1980s.
The political system is currently rigged against Kurdish political representation, largely because of an extreme rule requiring any party to win at least 10 percent of the national vote to receive any parliamentary seats at all. Kurdish candidates not banned before elections regularly are afterwards and many end up in jail.
Despite the AKP’s attempt at a Kurdish Opening, and the sizeable Kurdish representation within the party, results have come up below expectations and large-scale protests remain commonplace in the region. Due to the Turkish Penal Code allowing anti-terror laws to govern the legal cases of protesters, this creates a source of regular condemnation from human rights organizations.
For example, not only can protesters sympathetic to Kurdish rights be prosecuted for spreading propaganda for a terrorist organization (Article 7/2, Anti-Terror Law), but also many are deemed to be “committing crimes on behalf of the PKK without being a member of that organization” (Article 220/6, Turkish Penal Codes). Consequently, demonstrators for Kurdish rights can be prosecuted as if they were actually fighting the government as armed members of the PKK (Article 314/2, TPC). When added to charges from the Law on Demonstrations and Public Assemblies, this could mean sentences of up to thirty years in jail. Child protesters usually receive much shorter sentences, often between four to five years.
Laws like these have profound effects on press freedom. According to a report by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Turkey has the dubious honor of being the world leader in imprisoned journalists. The report estimated somewhere between 700 and 1,000 ongoing proceedings that could lead to imprisonment of journalists. The length of sentences are occasionally astronomical; Vedat Kurşun and Emine Demir of the Azadiya Welat newspaper were sentenced to 166 and 138 years respectively in prison, while Bayram Namaz and Ibrahim Çiçek of the Atilim newspaper each face up to 3,000 years in prison. Some journalists, such as Halit Güdenoğlu of Halit Yürüyüş magazine, currently face 150 court cases.
At the same time, after 10 years of failing to reach convictions of leading members of the notorious Turkish Hizbullah, an Islamist militant group (unrelated to its Lebanese namesake), several of its leading members were released from custody earlier this year. The organization is thought to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people during the mid-1990s during the worst years of the conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state. Evidence suggesting covert state backing for the group’s fight and tactics against the PKK has not led to any serious consequences. The suspects were released in compliance with a new law restricting the amount of time suspects can be held while waiting for the final verdict in their cases to 10 years.
As if this was not ironic enough, the ten years of detainment without trial is now being used against the secular elite; officers, academics, journalists, former police chiefs, public prosecutors, and theologians alike. In two of the most controversial legal cases in Turkish history, around 500 individuals have been detained. Prosecutors in the Ergenekon investigation accuse detainees with membership of what is described as a clandestine terrorist organization seeking to destabilize the country’s Islamist-leaning government. In the Sledgehammer investigation, high-ranking members of the military stand accused of plotting a coup in 2003. Explained by the government as instrumental to the dismantling of the so-called “deep state”, the cases are increasingly criticized for the flawed, if not fabricated, evidence put forward by the prosecutors.
As noted by many observers, the detainees seem to have nothing in common except their opposition to the AKP government, as well as a social movement referred to as the Gülen movement. The actions of the prosecution approached that of a farce when earlier this year police raided the prospective publisher of a book about the the Gülen movement, written by detained journalist Ahmed Sik, and proceeded to delete every digital copy of the manuscript. The 12th Court for Serious Crimes described the draft as an “illegal organizational document” and ruled anyone refusing to hand in a possessed copy would be accused of “aiding a criminal organization.” Weeks later, seven theologians were arrested, and computers and documents were confiscated. The sole similarity between the theologians seems to have been their questioning of Gülen’s credentials as a theologian.
The independence of the judiciary is also under pressure. In 2007, a regional public prosecutor, Ilhan Cihaner, had started investigating links between Islamist organizations and the fixing of state contracts. After refusing to drop his investigations in late 2009 after pressure from the government, Cihaner was removed from his position and on February 17 2010 he was arrested and charged with membership of Ergenekon.
The Elephant in the Room: Women’s rights
Several of Turkey’s laws are also simply not enforced. Examples of this are laws regulating women’s rights. Despite a “Law 4320 on the Protection of the Family”, women’s de facto situation remains highly vulnerable – “enforcement officers, judges, and prosecutors neglect their duties, often due to lack of expertise or will to deal with cases of violence against women and girls”.
A recent survey by Hacettepe University reported that around 42 percent of all women older than 15 in Turkey—approximately eleven million women in total—have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of a husband or partner at some point in their lives.
Women who want to report abuse are turned away, and in some cases have been murdered despite having obtained protection orders. The law requires women’s shelters in every settlement above 50,000 inhabitants yet more than a hundred are still missing.
In the 2010 Gender Gap Report from the World Economic Forum, Turkey scored a rank of 126 out of 134 countries surveyed, behind its neighbors Iran, Syria, and Egypt. There are two main components that drove this abysmal performance in gender equality. The first is labor force participation; according to World Bank female labor force participation was a meager 24 percent in 2009 (on par with Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt and below the rate found in Iran).
The second component is upper secondary education (high school), since this is where the combination of voluntary participation and the headscarf ban keeps many conservative families from sending their daughters to school. Almost a hundred years after Ataturk imposed a reform making primary education mandatory for women, gender inequality in education and labor remains one of the more serious impediments to Turkey’s future economic development.
The ban on the headscarf, especially in universities, a remnant of an increasingly archaic ideology, stands out as the unequivocal symbol of gender inequality. However, improving women’s rights and economic opportunities is about more than the headscarf – for example, making upper secondary education mandatory would be another less politically charged road ahead. But in order to further women’s participation in public institutions such as the labor force, education, and politics, political leaders need a pragmatic approach in outmaneuvering a deeper resistance to female emancipation.
Turkey needs more than a new constitution…
One of the AKP’s campaign promises of the recent June elections was the drafting of a new constitution. The political capital gained by the AKP in its fight with the military as well as its role as a model in the Muslim world, provides a unique opportunity to, for the first time, set up a civilian constitution that does away with many of the autocratic elements of the 1982 constitution.
A formal document with principals such as asserting the primacy of individual rights over the state is much needed. But without deeper reforms that seep into the justice system and the security establishment, this will simply become another superficial reform without real implications.
As long as the Turkish Penal Code and the anti-terror laws can be used in an arbitrary manner to pursue political opponents; be it Islamists, secular elites, or Kurds; constitutional reform will fail to bring about real change. Until real independence from political pressure is granted to judges and journalists alike, Turkey will not know freedom of expression. And without real change in female participation in markets and institutions, Turkey will not know gender equality. An age-old saying in Turkish goes “Happy is he who can call himself a Turk.” If only it was that easy.
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Further Reading
- Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, 2005, “Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth”, Handbook of Economic Growth, Elsevier, edition 1, Vol. 1, No. 1.
- Duflo, Esther, 2005, “Gender Equality in Development”, BREAD Policy Paper.
- Jenkins, Gareth, 2009, “Between Fact and Fantasy: Turkey’s Ergenekon Investigation”, Silk Road Paper
- Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies, ICON-Institute Public Sector GmbH, and BNB Consulting, “National Research on Domestic Violence against Women in Turkey 2008”, January 2009, http://www.ksgm.gov.tr//tdvaw/doc/Mainreport.pdf
- Human Rights Watch, “Protesting as a Terrorist Offense – The Arbitrary Use of Terrorism Laws to Prosecute and Incarcerate Demonstrators in Turkey”, Human Rights Watch Report, November 1st 2010, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2010/11/01/protesting-terrorist-offense-0
- Human Rights Watch, “He Loves You, He Beats You – Family Violence in Turkey and Access to Protection”, Human Rights Watch Report, May 4 2011, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2011/05/04/he-loves-you-he-beats-you-0
- World Economic Forum, The Gender Gap Report 2010, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GenderGap_Report_2010.pdf