An examination of the political transformations of Poland, Romania, and Belarus after the fall of the Soviet Union
Date
2019
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
When communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and in the former Soviet Union collapsed, the general expectation was that the countries in the region would move in the direction of democratization. Almost thirty years later, it is clear that the establishment of democratic forms of government in the CEE states and the former Soviet Union is far from ubiquitous. Some countries did democratize and even managed to consolidate those democracies; others built semi-democratic regimes, while still others went full circle and consolidated their authoritarianism. This dissertation is a comparative case study of post-communist development in Poland, Romania, and Belarus along the dimension of civil society. It employs Ronald Inglehart’s theory of modernization and post-modernization to analyze the connection between economic development and democracy, and to determine whether civil society was a prerequisite for successful democratization, or whether it could emerge over time due to other factors. It also explores the idea of whether strong national consciousness (or the absence of it) could be another possible explanatory factor of the countries’ divergent post-communist trajectories. The analysis confirms that economic development alone is not a sufficient condition for a successful transition from authoritarianism to democracy. It also finds that the presence of a vibrant civil society is not always a requisite condition for the initiation of a democratic transition. Civil society is, however, required for the consolidation and sustainability of democracy. Finally, the findings suggest that the strength of nationhood, ethnic or civic, might have exerted a significant impact on the trajectory of the countries’ post-communist development.