Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T22:20:29.430Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Legitimation from the Top to Civil Society: Politico-Cultural Change in Eastern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Giuseppe Di Palma
Giuseppe Di Palma
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access

Abstract

Communism has collapsed in Eastern Europe because the regimes, no ionger justified by their Soviet hegemon, lost confidence in their “mandate from heaven.” Domestically and internationally discredited, East European regimes had traditionally shielded themselves behind a principle of legitimation from the top that saw communism as the global fulfillment of a universal theory of history. Once the theory became utterly indefensible, a crippling legitimacy vacuum ensued. Reacting against that theory, East European dissent, and a civil society of sorts, survived under communism not just as an underground political adversary but as a visible cultural and existential counterimage of communism. This fact must be given proper weight when assessing the capacity of civil society to rebound in postcommunist Eastern Europe.

Type
Liberalization and Democratization in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
Information
World Politics , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , October 1991 , pp. 49 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Pye, , “Political Science and the Crisis of Authoritarianism,” American Political Science Review 84 (March 1990), 3–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 5.

2 Pye himself points out in his address (fn. 1) that all crises of authoritarianism are marked by a clash between the Western culture of modernization and national political cultures. Who will win “(and hence the outcome of any particular crisis of authoritarianism) will depend on the character of the [national] political culture” (p. 12). On why the demonstration effects of modernization are unlikely to produce convergence, see Bendix, Reinhard, Force, Fate and Freedom (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1984), 108Google Scholar–22.

3 Deutsch, Karl, The Nerves of Government (New York:Free Press, 1966), 111Google Scholar.

4 Veljco Vujacic, “The Dual Revolution of Citizenship and Nationhood in Eastern Europe” (Unpublished manuscript, Berkeley, May 1990).

5 This is so not despite but precisely because of the fact that for once the revolutions “proclaim no world-historical innovations. The truths which they seek to vindicate are distinctly old-fashioned, as are their aspirations.” Cited in Martin Krygier, “Marxism and the Rule of Law: Reflections after the Collapse of Communism” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, May-June 1990, no place indicated), 4.

6 For a more extensive treatment of the comparison, see Giuseppe Di Palma, “Democratic Transitions: Puzzles and Surprises from West to East” (Paper prepared for the Conference of Europeanists, Washington, D.C., March 1990).

7 Przeworski, “The ‘East’ Becomes the ‘South'? The ‘Autumn of the People’ and the Future of Eastern Europe,” PS 24 (March 1991), 20–24, at 21.

8 Kirkpatrick, , “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary, November 1979, pp. 34–46Google Scholar.

9 Huntington, , “Will More Countries Become Democratic?” Political Science Quarterly (Summer 1984), 193–218CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 217.

10 Linz, , “Epilogue,” in Hermet, Guy, ed., Totalitarismes (Paris:Economica, 1984Google Scholar), 244; translation provided by Giuseppe Di Palma. Jacques Rupnik documented in the same volume how even as the concept of totalitarianism was being banned from Western Sovietology in the 1970s and 1980s, scholars in East-Central Europe were dissecting the new mechanisms of communist domination and bracing themselves for a protracted resistance. The new chinks that these scholars detected in the communist armor seemed to promise nothing more than a difficult and prolonged cohabitation between regimes obdurately seeking justification for their suffocating domination and civil societies obstinately surfacing to breathe. See Rup-nik, “Le totalitarisme vue de l'Est,” in Hermet, 43–71; his treatment of the topic appears in English in Rupnik, , The Other Europe: The Rise and Fall of Communism in East-Central (New York:Schocken, 1989Google Scholar), chap. 9.

11 Pye (fn. 1), 7.

12 Lowenthal, Richard, “Beyond Totalitarianism,” in Howe, Irving, ed., 1984 Revisited (New York:Harper and Row, 1983), 209Google Scholar–67; Tucker, Robert C., The Marxian Revolutionary Idea (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1970Google Scholar).

13 Black, Cyril A., The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History York:Harper and Row, 1966Google Scholar).

14 About the clash between the culture of modernization and communist political culture, Pye (fn. 1) writes: This clash has produced a particularly acute crisis of faith in the Marxist-Leninist systems precisely because their ideology long informed the faithful that there could be no such contradiction for them. They were promised that through their identification with “scientific Marxism” they had been given a political identity that was universalistic and at the forefront of human progress, (p. 11)

15 Janos, , Politics and Paradigms: Changing Theories of Change in Social Science (Stanford, Calif.:Stanford University Press, 1986), 106Google Scholar–19; idem, “Social Science, Communism, and the Dynamics of Political Change,” in this issue of World Politics.

16 Stalin's purges, Mao's cultural revolution, but also Khrushchev's ill-fated efforts to cajole the party into more “heroic” performance can be seen as ways in which revolutionary leaders fought against routinization and for commitment to exceptional goals.

17 Jowitt, Kenneth, “Soviet Neotraditionalism: The Political Corruption of a Leninist Regime,” Soviet Studies 35 (July 1983), 275CrossRefGoogle Scholar–97; Walder, Andrew, Communist Neo-traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1986Google Scholar).

18 Marcus, Maria, “Overt and Covert Modes of Legitimation in East European Societies,” in Rigby, T. H. and Feher, Ferenc, eds., Political Legitimation in Communist States (New York:St Martin's Press, 1982), 82–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benda, Vaclav, “Parallel Polis or an Independent Society in Central and Eastern Europe: An Inquiry,” Social Research 55 (Spring-Summer 1988), 214Google Scholar–22.

19 Mayntz, Renate, “Legitimacy and the Directive Capacity of the Political System,” in Lindberg, Leo N. et al., eds., Stress and Contradiction in Modem Capitalism (Lexington, Mass.:Lexington Books, 1975), 261Google Scholar–74.

20 Weber's tripartite typology of normative claims to rule does not address the issue of who—the people or the rulers-confirms the claim. We thus tend to overlook this very basic distinction.

21 Marcus (fn. 18), 82.

22 Of course, some nondemocratic regimes can still live without either virtue or support.

23 Di Palma (fn. 6), 8.

24 Janos (fn. 15, 1986), 100–102.

25 Krygier (fn. 5).

26 T. H. Rigby, “Introduction: Political Legitimacy, Weber, and Communist Mono-orga-nisational Systems,” in Rigby and Fehér (fn. 18), 14.

27 Deutsch (fn. 3), 111.

21 Mihajlov, Letter to the Editor, Commentary, February 1986, p. 4.

29 Brecht retorted in an unpublished dirge that the Communist Party might just as well dissolve the people and elect itself a new one; cited in Garton Ash, Timothy, “East Germany: The Solution,” New York Review of Books, April 26, 1990, p. 14Google Scholar.

30 Rigby (fn. 26), 15.

31 Vujacic (fn. 4).

32 The “patriotic war” against Nazism was also an antidote. Interestingly, however, the use of the war to legitimize Stalinist rule introduced new elements of legitimation from the bottom.

33 Rosenberg, Hans, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy (Cambridge:Harvard Univer-Bty Press, 1958Google Scholar).

34 Di Palma (fn. 6), 9.

35 Khrushchev reasserted continuity by treating Stalin's crimes as products of the cult of personality. The leadership and cadres that replaced Khrushchev reasserted it by trying to erase the memories of those crimes and soft-pedaling de-Stalinization. According to Agnes Heller, this was necessary to give the Party a new self-legitimation by virtue of its continuity with tradition. See Heller, “Phases of Legitimation in Soviet-type Societies,” in Rigby and Feher (fn. 18), 57–58.

36 Simecka, Milan, Le retablissement de Vordre (Paris:Maspero, 1979Google Scholar).

37 Aleksander Smolar, “Le monde sovietique: transformation ou decadence?” in Hermet (fn. 10), 162–65.

38 Jowitt, Kenneth, “Gorbachev: Bolshevik or Menshevik?” in White, Stephen et al., eds., Developments in Soviet Politics (Durham, N.C.:Duke University Press, 1990Google Scholar).

39 Krygier (fn. 5).

40 By comparison, the issue of self-identity and therefore the trauma of defection are not as strongly felt among authoritarian regimes in the West. The difference has consequences for the way communist and Western dictatorships deal with their crises. See Palma, Di, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1990Google Scholar), chaps. 8, 9.

41 Jowitt (fn. 17).

42 Valerie Bunce, “The Transition from State Socialism to Liberal Democracy” (Unpublished manuscript, Northwestern University, October 1988).

43 Ferenc Fehér, “Paternalism as a Mode of Legitimation in Soviet-type Societies,” in Rigby and Feher (fn. 18), 64–81.

44 In connection with this exchange, as well as to clarify the concept of civil society, Grze-gorz Ekiert introduces a useful distinction between “domestic” and “political” society. Domestic society “represents the domain of purposeful action restricted to the private sphere and organized in terms of material needs and self-interests.” (See Ekiert, “Democratization Processes in East Central Europe: A Theoretical Reconsideration,” British Journal ofPolitical Science 21 [July 1991], 285–314, at 300.) It is the domain that is offered protection under communist normalization. Political society refers to a critical and politically relevant public sphere. It is the domain to be sacrificed in the exchange. But the distinction is heuristic. I will argue later on that, despite regime expectations, the survival of domestic society may have beneficial implications for civil society proper (political society, if you wish).

45 Poggi, Gianfranco, The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Stanford, Calif.:Stanford University Press, 1990), 168Google Scholar–69.

46 See a more extensive treatment in Di Palma (fn. 6), 17–19.

47 Vujacic (fn. 4), 24–25.

41 Many of these analysts are discussed in Vujacic (fn. 4); I am much indebted to his in-lights in this section. On political discourse, cognitive monopoly, logocracy, and similar expressions of communist appropriation of the area within which public opinion normally operates, see several of the contributions in Hermet (fn. 10), as well as those in the double issue of Social Research 55 (Spring-Summer 1988).

49 If economic independence were necessary, civil society would be possible in most Western dictatorships but impossible in communist states. On normatively driven Marxist equivocations concerning the early modern capitalist origins of civil society, see Alvin W. Gould-ner, The Two Marxisms (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 355–63. Andrew Arato suggests three potential agencies for the constitution of civil society: the capitalist logic of industrialization, the etatist logic of modernization, and a public sphere from below. He examines the third possibility in connection with Poland. See Arato, “Civil Society against the State: Poland 1980–81,” Telos 47 (Spring 1981), 23–47.

50 Zinoviev, , Le communisme comme rialiti (Paris:l'Age d'homme, 1981Google Scholar); idem, Homo so-vieticus (Paris:Julliard, 1983Google Scholar).

51 Bobbio, , “Democrazia c governo invisibile,” Rivista italiana di scienza politico 10 (August 1980), 181–203Google Scholar.

52 Kolakowski, “Totalitarianism and the Virtue of the Lie,” in Howe (fn. 12), 122–35.

53 Staniszkis, , Poland's Self-Limiting Revolution (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1984Google Scholar).

54 Feher (fn. 43), 76.

55 Di Palma (fn. 6), 26. That select nomenklatura! had exclusive access to a better and more plentiful market negated communist egalitarianism where it ultimately matters most: on life chances. See Magagna, Victor, “Consumers of Privilege: A Political Analysis of Class, Con sumption and Socialism,” Polity 21 (Spring-Summer 1989), 30–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Hankiss, , “The ‘Second’ Society: Is There an Alternative Social Model Emerging it Contemporary Hungary?” Social Research 55 (Spring-Summer 1988), 13–42Google Scholar. See also idem East European Alternatives: Are There Any? (Budapest:Institute of Social Sciences, 1988Google Scholar); anc idem, “In Search of a Paradigm,” Daedalus 119 (Winter 1990), 183–214Google Scholar.

57 Benda (fn. 18) speaks of a parallel polis. Theoretically, parallel courses, in Benda's per spective, can eventually meet.

58 Di Palma (fn. 6), 15–17.

59 In some cases, as in Poland, preciously few intellectuals and professionals survived the Nazi occupation. See Kovacs, M. M. and Orkeny, A., “Promoted Cadres and Professionals in Post-War Hungary,” in Andorka, R. and Bertalan, L., eds., Economy and Society in Hungary (Budapest:Hungarian Sociological Association, 1986), 139Google Scholar–53; A. Gella., Development of Class Structure in Eastern Europe: Poland and Her Southern Neighbors (Albany:State University of New York Press, 1989), 167–202Google Scholar. Both are cited in Ekiert (fn. 44), fn. 55.

60 Marody, “Antinomies of Collective Subconsciousness,” Social Research 55 (Spring—Summer 1988), 97–110.

61 Kolarska-Bobinska, “Social Interests, Egalitarian Attitudes, and the Change of Economic Order,” Social Research 55 (Spring-Summer 1988), 111–38.

62 Sampson, “The Informal Sector in Eastern Europe,” Telos 66 (Winter 1985–86), 44–66, at 50. For an experiential account of survival through the second market, see Martin Krygier, “Poland: Life in an Abnormal Country,” National Interest 18 (Winter 1989–90), 55–64.

63 Kazimierz Vojcicki, “The Reconstruction of Society,” Telos 47 (Spring 1981), 98–104, at 102–3. See also fn. 44. The ability to forge a private and alternative microcosm was greater in Eastern Europe, where communism had been imposed from the outside. Still, this is not to say that in the Soviet Union there were no motives for articulating resentment and no groups to articulate it. Speaking of day-to-day reality in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, Kenneth Jowitt writes that “for those members of Soviet society who were more educated, urban, skilled, but above all more individuated, articulate, and ethical this reality was embarrassing, alienating, and offensive; the source of increasing resentment, anger, and potentially of political rage.” See Jowitt (fn. 17), 276.

61 Hirschman, Albert O., Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1970Google Scholar).

65 Guillermo O'Donnell, “On the Fruitful Convergence of Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty and Shifting Involvements: Reflections from the Recent Argentinean Experience,” in Foxley, Alejandro et al., eds., Development, Democracy and the Art of Trespassing: Essays Honor of Albert O. Hirschman (Notre Dame, Ind.:Notre Dame University Press, 1986), 249Google Scholar–68.

66 Ibid., 261.

67 For an extensive treatment linking samizdat with the issue of civil society, see Skilling, H. Gordon, Samizdat and an Independent Society in Central and Eastern Europe (Columbus:Ohio University Press, 1989CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

68 For an extensive and insightful treatment of the latent functions of autonomous groups in Eastern Europe at both the micro- and macrolevel, see Christine Sadowski, “Autonomous Groups as Agents of Change in Communist and Post-communist Eastern Europe” (Unpublished manuscript, Stanford, Calif., July 1990).

69 Poggi, Gianfranco, The Development of the Modern State (Stanford, Calif.:Stanford University Press, 1978), 77–85Google Scholar.

70 A longer treatment of the arguments in this section is found in Di Palma (fn. 6).

71 In the words of Kolakowski (fn. 52):

In the functionaries’ minds the borderline between what is “correct” and what is “true,” as we normally understand this, seems really to have become blurred; by repeating the same absurdities time and again, they began to believe or half-believe in them themselves. The massive and profound corruption of the language eventually produced people who were incapable of perceiving their own mendacity, (p. 129)

72 Vujacic (fn. 4).

73 Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter treat extensively the significance of the resurrection of civil society in recent Western transitions. See O'Donnell, and Schmitter, , Transitions front Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986Google Scholar). The vast literature on civil society in Eastern Europe under communism adds new evidence to the point of survival. But Linz's extensive work had already consistently stressed the fact that dictatorships are rarely of one piece in their treatment of civil society.

74 Di Palma (fn. 6).

75 O'Donnell (fn. 65).

76 Hirschman (fn. 64).

77 Jowitt (fn. 38).

78 Jowitt (fn. 17).

79 Similarities with the French Revolution hold up much less well, however. The rejection ofcorps intermSdiaires, the religion of general will, the creed of revolutionary rationality, other aspects of the French revolutionary discourse amounted to the denial of the autonomous public sphere that had been emerging before the Revolution. In this, Jacobinism anticipated communism's cognitive monopoly. But revolutionary France and the Eastern Europe of recent months existed in radically different international environments. The Jacobins denied an autonomous public sphere, in part because revolutionary France lived in a continuous Kate of war in order to protect itself from the great powers of Europe. East European transitions are occurring in a more hospitable setting, one able to accommodate a postcommunist intellectual mobilization committed to civil society.

80 More extensive treatments are in the original version of this essay, prepared for the conference “La rifondazione dei partiti politici nell'Europa orientale,” Società italianadif scienza politica, Ferrara, Italy, October 1990; and in Palma, Di, “Why Democracy Can Work in Eastern Europe,” Journal of Democracy 2 (Winter 1991), 21–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Hirschman, , “Good News Is Not Bad News,” New York Review of Booty, October 11, 1990, p. 20Google Scholar.

82 Hirschman, , “The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding,” World Polities 22 (April 1970), 329CrossRefGoogle Scholar–43, at 339.

83 Ibid., 337–38, emphasis added.

84 Roper, Trevor, “The Lost Moments of History,” New York Review of Books, October 27, 1988Google Scholar.

85 See fn. 79. For an extensive treatment of these and similar points about the culture of postcommunism, see Goldfarb, Jeffrey C., Beyond Glasnost: The Post-Totalitarian Mind (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1989Google Scholar), chaps. 4–7.

86 For an analysis of why prevailing theories of social movements and social mobilization left us unprepared for the wave of protest mobilization in Eastern Europe, see Sidney Tar-row, “‘Aiming at a Moving Target': Social Science and the Recent Rebellions in Eastern Europe,” PS 24 (March 1991), 12–20. Tarrow suggests that cycles of protest produce a “master theme” that links the emerging social movements. “It will be interesting to see,” he writes, “whether the new movements now forming in Eastern Europe build on extensions of the themes of 1989 or-as some have feared-return to ‘primordial’ sentiments” (p. 15).