Object-Oriented Technology. ECOOP 2006 Workshop Reader ECOOP 2006 Wo
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JOHN HIGLEY AND JAN PAKULSKI
Most elites and mass publics in the postcommunist countries of Central and Eastern Europe came to take democratic elections for granted during the I990s. Reasonably fair and free elections produced one or more government alternations in the Baltic republics, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia. In these important respects, the countries were on the road to democratic consolidation, and three of them - the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland - nearly completed their journeys. Even in the region's more strife-torn countries - Albania, Belarus, Croatia, Macedonia, Russia, Ukraine, and what remained of Yugoslavia - elections reshuffled parliaments and local governments in ways that limited what dominant parties and leaders could get away with, although no clear government alternation occurred electorally. It was obvious, however, that gaps of varying sizes between formal electoral competitions and informal political practices existed. The deficiencies that Guillermo O'Donnell has criticized in Latin American democracies - clientelism and patronage, blurred functional autonomies and boundaries, violations of horizontal accountability, manipulations of the media and judiciary, harassment of opposition elites, personal vendettas, persecutions of minorities - characterized postcommunist politics during the 1990s '. These deficiencies were part and parcel of the power games that elites were playing after state socialism's demise. Although formal democratic institutions and procedures were adopted, elite power games marred the quality of democratic politics. Our premise is that the internal workings, commitments and actions of elites constitute basic distinctions among political systems. The extent to which elites trust and cooperate with each other is crucial for constitutional and other institutional arrangements, for political stability or instability, and for democratic or authoritarian political practices. In particular, we regard elite "unity in diversity" as the sine qua non of a robust democratic polity. This involves a common elite commitment to democratic institutional designs and mechanisms. It also involves a restrained elite partisanship and a reciprocal recognition by elites that they are together legitimate power-wielders. These elements of "unity in diversity" constitute an informal set of conduct-guiding orientations amounting to an elite ethos. A main question is the extent to which elite power games prevented this ethos from emerging in Central and Eastern Europe after state socialism's collapse. 109
M. Dobry (ed.), Democratic and Capitalist Transitions in Eastern Europe © Kluwer Academic Publishers 2000
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JOHN HIGLEY AND JAN PAKULSKI
Elite Unity, Differentiation, and Circulation We begin with a model in which combinations of elite unity, differentiation and circulation are linked to political regimes. The model's first component is a typology of national elite unity and differentiation. We conceive of elite unity (and disunity)
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