Trajectories of Regime Transformation and Types of Stateness in Post-communist Countries

Perspectives on European Politics and Society. 2013. Vol. 14. No. 4. P. 431–459.

Melville A. Y., Stukal D., Mironyuk M.

 

In this paper, we address the issue of what types of factors are crucial for regime transformation in post-communist countries. First, we test the relative importance of structural and actor-oriented factors using a specially constructed index of democracy. Cross-country regression analysis reveals that policy-related variables have higher statistical explanatory power: presidentialism vs. parliamentarism; opposition coming to power in the first founding elections; foreign policy orientation towards the West and state capture as the most significant variables. These findings are further corroborated and expanded by qualitative analysis.

Then we look at types of the post-communist stateness as another possible explanation of differences in regime transformation results. We propose a vector measure of stateness which is based on both statistical data and expert evaluations. This measure allows developing a typology of stateness in post-communist countries which is used to assess the relationship between regime and stateness dynamics. We find that post-communist states fulfilling well a broader range of social functions are more successful in the democratic development.

Keywords: stateness, regime transformations, democratization, post-communist countries

Publication based on the results of: An Analysis of the Factors behind the Development and Decline of Stateness in Socialist and Post-Socialist Countries of Europe and Asia from the Second Half of the 20th Century to the beginning of the 21st Century, through the Use of QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis) (2011)