Democratic Revolutions: Asia and Eastern Europe (Routledge Research in Comparative Politics, 5)

Democratic Revolutions

“People power” in the Philippines, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the toppling of the Miloševi¼ regime in Serbia are examples of how important democratic revolutions have become in the modern world, yet these have neither been added to the revolutionary canon nor adequately incorporated into the literature on democratic transitions. In theorizing peaceful popular uprisings against dictatorships and comparing them across Asia and Eastern Europe, Democratic Revolutions revives a much-neglected concept. Despite enormous differences between Asia and Eastern Europe, there are striking similarities between the non-violent, spontaneous, urban-based and crossclass mass movements that overthrew unyielding rulers and led to the establishment of democracy in the two regions. The book explores the kind of non-democratic regimes that are particularly vulnerable to democratic revolutions. It examines why and how democrats rebel and what the results of democratic revolutions have been. Questions posed in this book include:

• • • •

Why communist rulers shot in China but not in Eastern Europe; Why stolen elections led to the overthrow of Miloševi¼ in Serbia; Why there have been so many women leading democratic revolutions in Asia; Why democratic revolutions have been able to overcome a supposed “clash of civilizations.”

This book attempts to democratize theories of revolution and revolutionize democratic transitions. Cases and comparisons are drawn from fifteen democratic revolutions over the last two decades and the book includes in-depth studies of East Germany, China, Serbia and the Philippines. Mark R. Thompson is Professor of Political Science at the University of ErlangenNuremberg, Germany. He is also the author of The Anti-Marcos Struggle (1995).

Routledge Research in Comparative Politics

1

Democracy and Post-Communism Political change in the post-communist world Graeme Gill

2

Sub-State Nationalism A comparative analysis of institutional design Edited by Helena Catt and Michael Murphy

3

Reward for High Public Office Asian and Pacific Rim states Edited by Christopher Hood and B. Guy Peters

4

Social Democracy and Labour Market Policy Developments in Britain and Germany Knut Roder

5

Democratic Revolutions Asia and Eastern Europe Mark R. Thompson

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Europeanisation and the Transformation of States Edited by Bengt Jacobsson, Per Lagreid and Ove K. Pedersen

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Democratization A comparative analysis of 170 countries Tatu Vanhanen

Democratic Revolutions Asia and Eastern Europe

Mark R. Thompson

First published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2004 Mark R. Thompson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Thompson, Mark, R. Democratic revolutions : Asia and Eastern Europe / by Mark R. Thompson. – 1st ed. p. cm. “Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada.” Includes biographical references and index. 1. Democracy–Asia. 2. Asia–Politics and government –1945– 3. Democracy–Europe, Eastern–Case studies. 4. Europe, Eastern– Politics and government–1989–Case studies. I. Title. JQ36.T46 2003 321.8’095–dc21 2003010835 ISBN 0-203-50628-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-34574-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–30415–6 (cloth)

Thinking Class

v

Contents

Preface and acknowledgments

vi

Introduction

1

1 The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

18

2 Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia

35

3 The East German “Wende” as a democratic revolution

51

4 To shoot or not to shoot: China and Eastern Europe

65

5 Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia

84

WITH PHILIPP KUNTZ

6 Democratic revolutions and the “clash of Samuel Huntingtons”

98

Conclusion

109

Notes Bibliography Index

126 157 174

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Preface and acknowledgments

Preface and acknowledgments

I moved to West Germany in autumn 1989 after several years of field work in the Philippines. I unsettled colleagues by claiming that the popular revolt then beginning against communist rule in East Germany and the “people power” protests that toppled the Marcos regime in the Philippines three years earlier were basically alike. My (often dumbfounded) listeners objected that differences of history, culture, geography and economics disqualified such comparison. I argued, rather doggedly, that it was precisely this divergence that made the similarity between these uprisings so striking, as a “most different cases” methodological standpoint suggests. In both countries, mass mobilization, which was non-violent, spontaneous, urban-based and cross-class in character, created a revolutionary situation that led to democratic transition after the collapse of the non-democratic regime. In this book I argue that popular uprisings which bring down unyielding dictatorships and result in democratization can be understood as democratic revolutions. If only social scientific conceptualization were so simple! In the introduction, I consider three theoretical perspectives critical of this position. For theorists of revolution, such popular democratic revolts bring “too little” change to be considered revolutionary. Mere regime change is invidiously compared with the great transformations “real” revolutions bring. I argue that this underestimates both what becomes different under democracy and how much stays the same when new tyrants promise social change. Democracy substantially increases personal freedom even if social inequality is not reduced. Utopian promises of rapid social transformation, on the other hand, cover up not just often unimaginable cruelty in the name of high ideals but also the striking continuities with the tyrannical ancien régime. There is also little room for revolutionary transitions in the democratization literature, which is dominated by theories of “pacted transitions” (with Spain after Franco as the paradigmatic case). Regime soft-liners negotiate with opposition moderates to bring about a peaceful transition. Within this theoretical tradition, authoritarian regimes are viewed as relatively invulnerable to revolutionary overthrow. But even if they are brought down by popular uprisings, it is feared such revolts will bring about “too much” change, as mass mobilization is thought to lead inevitably to radicalization, in which revolutionaries substitute one form

Preface and acknowledgments

vii

of non-democratic rule for the other. But what is to be done when dictators refuse to negotiate a democratic a transfer of power? For democrats, a revolution becomes necessary when “standpatter” regimes refuse to yield power and possible when they become so ideologically hollowed out that they collapse before they can shoot. (The “to shoot or not to shoot” question is considered in Chapter 4.) I have identified two regime types that are both unlikely to negotiate with the democratic opposition, but are vulnerable to peaceful revolts. These roughly correspond to the cases I examine in Asia and Eastern Europe. Alongside the Marcos regime in the Philippines analyzed in Chapter 1, there have been several other “sultanistic” regimes in Asia. Romania and Serbia are cases in Eastern Europe. “Post-totalitarian” regimes, which retain the form but not the substance of totalitarianism, were found in East Germany, the subject of Chapter 3, and most other state socialist regimes in Eastern Europe. China is an example of such a regime in Asia. The conclusion brings together the reasons why and how democrats rebel. In particular, stress is put on stolen elections (examined in Chapter 5) that can provide the final spark that ignites a revolution. Also the importance of moral leadership of democratic revolutions is emphasized, with women leaders in Asia (Chapter 2) or the “anti-political” dissidents of Eastern Europe being the chief examples. But even if it is accepted that there have been democratic revolutions in the past, civilization clashers insist that it is “too late,” as the post-cold period is dominated by cultural counter-revolution. In Chapter 6, I argue closer examination reveals a “clash of Samuel Huntingtons” as this prominent political scientist has offered competing theories of democratic revolutions and civilizational clash. I show how attempts to legitimize authoritarianism with claims of cultural difference have been challenged by democratic revolutionaries (and where they were suffered defeat, this was neither inevitable nor is it indefinite). This comparative project has been well over a decade in the making. Earlier versions of several chapters have been published previously: “Whatever Happened to Democratic Revolutions?” Democratization, vol. 7, no. 4 (Winter 2000), pp. 1–20; “Female Leadership of Democratic Transitions in Asia,” Pacific Affairs, vol. 75, no. 4 (Winter 2002–3), pp. 535–55; and “To Shoot or not to Shoot: PostTotalitarianism in China and Eastern Europe,” Comparative Politics, vol. 31, no. 1 (October 2001), pp. 63–83. I would like to thank these publishers for permission to use these materials in this book. Several chapters were originally presented as talks. My inaugural lecture at the Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in 1999 provided me with my first opportunity to present my ideas about democratic revolutions. At the invitation of Alfred McCoy, I delivered an earlier version of Chapter 1 on the Philippines to the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of WisconsinMadison in February 2001. I presented my work on female leaders of democratic revolutions in Asia in a talk to the Collegium Alexandrinum in February 2001 (which was later broadcast on Bavarian TV!). The Center for Southeast Asian Studies invited me to present a later version while a visiting fellow at Berkeley in 2001–2. I wrote a paper on the civic movement opposition for a conference in Berlin at the kind invitation of Howard Williams, Colin Wight and Norbert Kapferer

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that was later published in an edited volume (“A Hostile People but a Loyal Opposition: National Identity and Anti-Fascism in the GDR,” in H. Williams, C. Wight, and N. Kapfer (eds) Political Thought and German Reunification: A New German Ideology, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 1–27). I first tried to apply the concept of democratic revolutions to the East German “Wende” in a paper published in German by the journal Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (“Die Wende als demokratische Revolution,” B 45, 5 November 1999, pp. 15–23). Some of the ideas for Chapter 6 were presented in a conference in 2001 at the Atlantische Akademie Rheinland-Pfalz at the invitation of Werner Kremp and Berthold Mayer, the results of which were later published in German (“Der Kampf der Samuel Huntingtons,” in W. Kremp and B. Meyer (eds) Religion und Zivilreligion im Atlantischen Bündnis, Trier: WVT, 2001, pp. 174–86). I am grateful for these invitations to present and publish papers as well as to the participants in the discussions for their comments. I taught at several German universities from 1989 to 1995 and have been teaching at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg since 1997. I am grateful to my colleagues and students at all of these institutions of higher education who provided not only valuable criticisms but also with much needed friendship and support. At the Westfälische-Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Paul Kevenhörster and Dietrich Thränhardt helped me find my academic footing and provided intellectual and financial assistance for my research. My student assistant colleagues were great discussion partners and a lot of fun to be around. Among them, Bernhard Santel and Susanne Sagrowske have become good friends. I joined Rolf Becker, Thomas Kolbeck, and Ekkart Zimmermann in an academic adventure that led us all to transfer from the Bundeswehr Universität in Munich to the Technische Universität Dresden in 1993. When Thomas Saalfeld joined us later that year, the most academically intense period of my career began. In weekly discussion seminars, we presented our own work, or criticized that of the others, in challenging (and ego bruising) sessions from which I profited tremendously. But our academic jousting did not stand in the way of close camaraderie. It was in Dresden that I first dared hatch my long planned plot to write about the “Wende” in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). As neither an “Ossi” (East German) nor a “Wessi” (West German) but rather a self-proclaimed “wilder Wessi” (someone from the Wild West), I took up this topic with a gusto possible only of someone who underestimated not only the sensitivity it involved then but also the vast literature that had grown up around it. I was inspired by my students who included a former oppositionist forbidden from studying during GDR times, several Ausreisewillige (those who wished to emigrate from East Germany), and two other fellow foreigners. I was fortunate to have several long conversations with Daniel Friedheim, then doing research in Dresden and Leipzig as a graduate student at Yale finishing up his path-breaking dissertation on GDR elites and the collapse of the regime (“Democratic Transition through Regime Collapse: East Germany in 1989,” Yale Ph.D., December 1997). Achim Siegel, then at the Hannah Arendt Center for Totalitarism Research in Dresden, encouraged me to write about post-totalitarianism, which he later published in an edited volume. Detlev Pollack,

Preface and acknowledgments ix with whom I have had the pleasure to collaborate on a recent project on Eastern European communism, has shared some of his immense knowledge of this field with me. I have learned as well from Andrew Port’s innovative work on the working class in East Germany. In Erlangen, Sefik Alp Bahadir, Petra Bendel, Reinhard Doerries, Jürgen Gebhardt, Daniel Gossel, Jürgen Kähler, Michael Krennerich, Hermann Kreutzmann, Martin Nonhoff, Heiner Pehle, and Roland Sturm have shown interest in and have been supportive of my work. Hartmut Behr, Mathias Hildebrandt, Pierre Jadin, Fritz von Krosigk, Osker Kurer, and Gert Schmidt have been friends and collaborators on several projects. My students in Erlangen have been patiently listening to ideas about democratic revolutions and regime types in seminars and lectures over the past five years. Several talented graduate students, Tobias Bührle, Matthias Damm, Peter Gelius, Kerstin Kirbach, Philipp Kuntz, and Markus Stamm, have been developing some of these concepts in their masters and doctoral theses. Chapter 5, “Stolen elections and Serbia’s ‘October revolution’ ” has been written in collaboration with Philipp Kuntz. Holger Dreiseitl, Peter Gelius and Anne Uhlich helped me with the bibliography. Philipp Kuntz commented on the introduction and the conclusion. Peter Gelius read through the entire manuscript. I would also like to thank my overworked but enthusiastic student assistants, Holger Dreiseitl, Peter Gelius, Christoph Hubner and Stephan Saebel. I spent two wonderful years in Glasgow from 1995–7 where Richard Crook, Brian Girvin, Sarah Oates, Steve Revell and David Stansfield were both colleagues and good friends. As then head of department, Stephen L. White made sure that I had plenty of time for research while, as Britain’s leading authority on Soviet and post-Soviet politics, encouraging me in my first tentative studies of communist regimes. Andy Biggart, Stephen Herbert and John Hilley provided excellent conversational companionship, particularly on Friday afternoons at the pub. In spring 1999, Mike Lessnoff provided me with the opportunity to return to Glasgow to present a paper on democratic revolutions, leading to a “lively discussion” which proved enlightening, for me anyway. Recently, I have been working closely with Steven Saxonberg, of Dalarna College in Falun, Sweden, and Juan J. Lopez, of the University of Illinois in Chicago, USA on a comparative study of transitions and non-transitions from communism in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America. I have learned much from both of them about communist regimes and popular protest in comparative perspective. While in Europe, I have been grateful that my friends in Asian studies, and particularly the Philippine politics circuit, have kept in close touch and helped keep me motivated. With much sentimentality, I would like to thank my Filipino studies buddies Jojo Abinales, Kit Collier, Petra Ernst, Manfred Fuchs, Eva-Lotta Hedman, Paul Hutchcroft, Masataka Kimura, Alex Magno, Francis Magno, James Putzel, Rosanne Rutten, Wigan Salazar, John Sidel, Victor Sumsky and Olle Törnquist for their encouragement while keeping me up to date with their creative work. Bobby Tiglao and his late wife Raquel were very kind to me over the years.

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Ben Kerkvliet and Jim Rush have been supportive from afar. I was happy to renew contact with Anders Uhlin at Stockholm University whose work has taught me much about Indonesia. I still remember my discussions with Douglas Elwood about non-violence in “people power” in the Philippines many years ago. I have enjoyed fruitful collaboration with Jürgen Rüland and Gunter Schubert on several projects about democratization in Asia and elsewhere. I am grateful to professors Bernhard Dahm, Hans-Dieter Evers and Vincent Houben for inviting me to give talks at their universities and help integrate me into the Asian studies scene in Germany. I have recently begun a fruitful collaboration with Dr Claudia Derichs from the University of Duisburg on Asian female leadership. Houchang Chehabi, a close intellectual companion over the years, has both supported and inspired much of the work presented here. Richard Snyder’s and Yossi Shain’s work has also been inspirational. I keep re-reading Jim Scott’s work, a former academic adviser and very nice fellow. My Doktorvater, Juan Linz, remains a strong influence on my thinking and is a dear friend. My father and his wife Jane as well as my brother David and his partner Luis have been very supportive and loving from afar. Ursula and Nikolai Römermann have kept my spirits up at shorter range. This book is dedicated to my wonderful daughters, Clara and Milena.

Introduction 1

Introduction

Why, just over a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is there no more talk of democratic revolutions? As euphoric eyewitness accounts indicate, the hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who filled the streets of Manila in 1986 and Prague in 1989, or Jakarta in 1998 and Belgrade in 2000, to topple dictators through popular protests, thought themselves part of democratic revolutions.1 Yet academics have been more skeptical. With few exceptions, peaceful uprisings from “people power” in the Philippines to the “velvet revolution” in Czechoslovakia have not been added to the academic canon of revolutions.2 Democratic revolutions at the beginning of the millennium can be understood as: spontaneous popular uprisings – peaceful, urban-based, and cross-class in composition – which topple unyielding dictators and begin a transition process which leads to the consolidation of democracy. To avoid misunderstanding, it must be emphasized that the ideal typical character of this concept means that no single “democratic revolution” discussed here matches it perfectly. There is a continuum between democratic and social revolutions, as well as between democratic revolutions and negotiated transitions to democracy, as discussed below. To be perfectly pedantic, one should speak of “democratic revolutionary tendencies.” But when these tendencies are strong enough – most importantly when a peaceful mass uprising initiates a transition to democracy – it is less clumsy to speak of democratic revolutions.3 With these criteria in mind, the following listing of 15 democratic revolutions in the last quarter century that closely approximate this ideal type can be drawn up (see Table 0.1). Several of these revolutionary movements were defeated as democrats were repressed or outmaneuvered by non-democratic regimes – in Burma, China, Iran, and Malaysia – an important point discussed below. The failure of civilian governments in Pakistan to consolidate democracy made the country susceptible to a military coup, which occurred in October 1999. Democracy is endangered in Nepal after the assassination of most of the royal family and a recent state of emergency to deal with a growing Maoist insurgency in the countryside. Yet there are several successful democratic revolutions in which popular uprisings have led to democratic transition and consolidation, five in Asia (in Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand) and four in Eastern Europe (in the territory of former Czechoslovakia and ex-East Germany as well as in Romania and Serbia).

2

Introduction

Table 0.1 Democratic revolutions 1986–2002 in Asia and Eastern Europe Country

Year Character of revolution

Philippines

1986 “People power” topples Marcos after stolen elections. Constitutional referendum and free elections. Democratic consolidation survives “people power II” overthrow of President Estrada in 2001.

South Korea

1987 Student-led mass protests force military regime to compromise with opposition. Free elections (in which a military reformer and two former oppositionists win presidency in successive elections) leads to democratic consolidation.

Pakistan*

1988 Peaceful mass demonstrations; elections after Zia’s mysterious death in plain crash; failed democratic consolidation and military coup in October 1999.

(Burma)

1988 Peaceful mass protests brutally suppressed by military junta. 1990 free elections won by opposition but ignored by regime.

(China)

1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations bloodily suppressed.

East Germany 1989 Mass emigration and a popular uprising topples communist hardliners, leading to democratization and German unification. Czechoslovakia 1989 “Velvet revolution” leads to re-democratization. Consolidation despite “velvet divorce” of Czech Republic and Slovakia. Romania

1989 Peaceful protesters shot by Securitate but Ceau_escu still toppled and executed. Gradual democratic consolidation after Iliescu defeated in 1996 presidential elections.

Nepal*

1990 The Jana Andolan uprising leads to re-democratization. Consolidation threatened by political instability, including the massacre of the royal family and a Maoist insurgency.

Bangladesh

1991 Mass protests topple Ershad regime. Despite intense political conflict between the countries’ “two ladies,” third transfer of power occurs peacefully after elections in 2001.

Thailand

1992 Student-led uprising against military dictatorship. Free and fair elections. Democratic consolidation despite 1997 financial crisis.

Indonesia

1998 Student-led reformasi protest movement topples Suharto. Free and fair elections. Despite impeachment of President Wahid and ethnic unrest, constitutional reforms strengthen democracy.

(Malaysia)

1998 Arrest of ex-deputy prime minister Anwar leads to reformasi protests. Mahathir wins manipulated elections in late 1999.

Serbia

2000 Massive protest after stolen election leads to overthrow of Miloševi¼ regime in “October revolution.” Gradual consolidation of democracy despite assassination of Prime Minister Ðin}i¼

(Iran)

2002 Renewed student demonstrations after leading oppositionist sentenced to death. Earlier protests in 1999 ended by police crackdown.

Notes Underlined countries = strong “demonstration effect” on other democratic revolutions ( ) = democratic revolutionary uprisings repressed by non-democratic regimes * = democratic transition but no consolidation and, in some cases, a breakdown of democracy.

Introduction 3 A strong “demonstration effect” was evident in the Philippines, which inspired pro-democracy activists in Bangladesh, Burma, China, Indonesia, Pakistan and South Korea, as will be discussed in Chapter 1. The East German revolution was the first East European democratization that came about through the overthrow of a hard-line communist regime and galvanized a similar uprising in Czechoslovakia.4 The fall of Ceau,escu in Romania created a “snowball” effect that set off the democratic Jana Andolan uprising against the authoritarian Panchayat system in Nepal (in part because the Romanian dictator had visited Kathmandu in 1987).5 The toppling of Suharto emboldened oppositionists in Malaysia, who took up the term “reformasi” (reform) which had been coined during the Indonesian uprising.6 With so many anti-dictatorship uprisings with democratic aims, in which protests in one country encourage similar occurrences elsewhere, it is surprising that R.R. Palmer’s phrase proclaiming an “age of the democratic revolution” has not been revived.7 Whatever happened to democratic revolutions? There are three sources of skepticism. Some scholars believe that these events only appeared to be revolutions. They were not “really” revolutionary because they did not lead to significant social transformation but to mere political change. Moreover, they were non-violent, spontaneous, city-based, and cross-class uprisings rather than violent, well-organized rural affairs claiming to improve the plight of the lower classes, as many theorists assume revolutions must be. Second, many “transitologists” who stress the importance of negotiated transitions to democracy have assumed revolutions cannot be democratic. They have stressed elite-initiated negotiation over societal-led mobilization. Moreover, popular uprisings are likely to disturb the elite compromise between regime reformers and opposition moderates. It seems doubtful that peaceful protesters can actually overthrow powerful non-democratic regimes. Only substantial armed force is likely to bring down a technologically sophisticated modern dictatorship. But even should a largely non-violent revolution occur (such as in Iran against the Shah), political polarization is assumed the probable outcome, with radicals gradually gaining the upper hand and establishing another form of non-democratic rule. A third reason for rejecting the concept of democratic revolutions is that it is outdated. It is argued that since the end of the Cold War we have entered an age of civilizational conflict. Democratic revolutions inevitably fail in non-Western countries because of their anti-democratic cultural values. The 1999–2002 student demonstrations in Iran or the reformasi protests in Malaysia 1998–9 would be more often viewed as repressed democratic revolutions if these countries were not so often portrayed as being guided by anti-democratic “Islamic fundamentalism” or “Asian values,” respectively. These criticisms can be summarized as follows: either democratic revolutions bring “too little” transformation to be considered revolutionary or they bring “too much” change, thereby endangering democratization. Even if there have been such events in the past, it is now “too late” as there is an anti-Western counterrevolution in progress. Before examining these critiques, one additional source of skepticism needs to be addressed. Is such a discussion not uninterestingly nominalist? Does not a

4

Introduction

revolution by any other name still topple the ancien régime? Does democracy, called something else, not involve at least free elections and civil liberties? Viewed abstractly, what things are termed is arbitrary. In the real world of political struggle over normative-laden concepts, however, “revolution” and “democracy” are heavyweights, if not reigning champions. For an event to be called “revolutionary” is a measure of its political significance. To term a regime form democratic is to pay it the highest compliment available in the vocabulary of modern political theory. Thus, to deny the revolutionary label to the revolts of Asia and Eastern Europe is to diminish their importance, suggesting that they were not as far reaching, as deeply transformational, as others that have been given this name. To withhold the term democracy is to deny them the seal of moral approval. To stick to the term democratic revolution is to argue both for the significance of these events and the normative welcome-ness of the outcomes they bring.

“Too little”: social not democratic revolutions The first doubts about democratic revolutions are often expressed by the revolutionaries themselves. Bärbel Bohley, celebrated by the Western media as the “mother” of the East German revolution, voiced skepticism early on about whether the uprising in the former GDR could really be considered revolutionary.8 She and other members of the dissident citizens’ movement were disillusioned that the opening of the Wall in November 1989 destroyed hopes for a “third way” between capitalism and socialism and led to German unification.9 In the first (and last) free elections in East Germany held in March 1990, the Bündnis 90, the largest party that emerged from the citizens’ movement, received less than 3 per cent of the vote. In South Korea, students led the protests that forced the military regime to hold fair elections in 1987. But they were gradually marginalized by these and subsequent polls as well as through the general climate of democratization, particularly with the emergence of an independent trade union movement in which student militants had little influence.10 Similarly, student protesters in Indonesia who had almost single-handedly toppled Suharto in May 1998 played only a minor role in the June 1999 elections.11 Non-democratic revolutionaries claim a successful uprising shows “the people” support them and elections are unnecessary. But democrats, by definition, must submit themselves to the voters’ verdict. It is not surprising that disappointed revolutionaries often spoke of “failed” or even “betrayed” revolutions after losing at the polls. Contemporary research on revolution has been dominated by what Theda Skocpol calls “social revolutions.” She defines them as “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures … accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below.”12 This echoes Marx’s concept of revolution.13 Studies of the development of the concept of revolution show that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, revolutions were understood primarily as the overthrow of a political regime (based on the example of the “Glorious Revolution” in England). A new perspective developed during the late

Introduction 5 eighteenth century, which became dominant in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was that revolutions involved “total” and “radical” societal transformation, starting in particular countries but bound to affect mankind as a whole.14 Jack A. Goldstone describes this change. In this new view, made popular in attempts to understand the French Revolution of 1789, writers argued that society was bound to progress toward more fair and productive forms of social organization, and that revolutions were necessary to destroy the institutions and individuals who maintained, and benefited from, an outmoded and unfair social order. Revolutions … marked permanent, favorable transformations of entire societies.15 Hannah Arendt criticized the preoccupation in the literature on revolution since Marx with the “social question” during the French revolution despite its tragic consequences. This has too often led the political progress made during the American revolution to be overlooked.16 R.R. Palmer stressed the commonalties of the original democratic aims of the American and French revolutions which diffused throughout “Atlantic civilization.” He argued that Marx and his followers misinterpreted the French revolution by overemphasizing the role of the Jacobins. He suggested instead that that the last four decades of the eighteenth century were the “Age of the Democratic Revolution.”17 Palmer argued that in the first half of the twentieth century, revolutions outside the West were not democratic.18 But with the beginning of the “third wave” of democracy in the mid-1970s, democratization began spreading rapidly in Southern Europe, Latin America, and other parts of the developing world. Mass mobilization played an important role in democratic transitions in Portugal, Greece and Argentina, though military regimes still initiated transitions through coups and/or extrication. But Philippine “people power” appeared to mark a new age of democratic revolutions, as a series of popular uprisings in Asia that overthrew dictatorships and led to transitions to democracy indicated. Popular uprisings against communist rule in China, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Romania even brought democratic revolutions to self-proclaimed bastions of social revolution. But since democratic revolutions did not bring “progressive” social transformation, they have not been considered revolutionary enough by most theorists of revolution. A recent comparative study of revolutions, which classifies Iran and Nicaragua in 1979 as revolutions, assigns the Philippines in 1986 to the lesser category of “popular mobilizations.”19 Instead of leading to radical societal change, a democratic revolution may leave intact an economic oligarchy that blocks major socio-economic reforms. As will be discussed in Chapter 1, the failure of land reform and elite continuity in the Philippines after Marcos was toppled led one critic to claim that the country’s political system was no more than a revival of the dominance of the landed class, or “cacique democracy.”20 Even where extensive social transformation has taken place, such as in Eastern Europe, it is seldom acknowledged as revolutionary. Robert Dix argues that they “fall short” of the classic social revolutions of Russia or China.21 Jürgen Habermas

6

Introduction

argues that, with their “rectifying revolution,” Eastern Europeans merely caught up with what West Europeans had long enjoyed. Rather than viewing them as independent revolutions that brought about political change and social transformation, they are seen as a restoration of Western liberal capitalism.22 Capitalism and democracy, after all, can hardly be considered revolutionary in their own right! It is also widely assumed that revolutions are violent events. In fact, the terms “civil violence” and revolution have been used synonymously.23 A social revolutionary movement fighting deeply ingrained oppression often feels justified in taking up arms to achieve fundamental change. Recent studies of revolution have also been influenced by Mao’s call to surround the cities from the countryside. Throughout the so-called “Third World,” self-proclaimed revolutionaries have dreamed of capturing the cities with a peasant army. Tragically, such revolutions have occasionally succeeded, with urban areas being emptied out by the rural warriors, as in the case of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The “killing fields” began in the name of an agrarian utopia.24 Yet social revolutions – as Skocpol and her students have recognized but others have overlooked – are only one type of revolution. She distinguishes them from political revolutions that transform state but not social structures. Not that it is unjustified to exclude mere changes of government from definitions of revolution (through the ballot or the bullet, elections or coups).25 But the transition from one regime type to another constitutes a fundamental political change. Regimes are more basic than governments. The latter involve the particular persons in power, the former the structure of power relations. When a regime change occurs through the “masses” overthrowing their rulers, a political revolution has taken place. When the outcome of this revolutionary struggle is the establishment of a democracy, a democratic revolution has occurred. But has it really? “Mere” regime change is often invidiously compared with the great transformations “real” revolutions supposedly create. Yet social revolutions often lead to the replacement of one form of non-democratic rule with another. There is a line of tyranny that can be drawn between Mao and the old emperor system of China, as well as between Stalin and the Russian Tsars.26 Also, the social changes these new tyrants brought about were in a sense superficial: collective agriculture was as exploitative as the old landlords were and the “surplus” value of labor was regained from the capitalist class only to go to a privileged bureaucratic elite. This is not to claim that democratic revolutions lead to a political promised land. The sense of unity, of being the people (East German demonstrators proclaimed: “Wir sind das Volk”) during the protests, is replaced by the election of political representatives after dictatorship is toppled. This change from the “direct” democracy of the streets to an indirect democratic system is often a source of disillusionment. Leaders of democratic revolutions have sometimes complained bitterly about the unrealistic hopes put in their leadership. Václav Havel has said many Czechs mistook his rapid transformation from dissident leader to president after the velvet revolution for a fairy tale.27

Introduction 7 But the claim that little has really changed after a democratic system has been installed underestimates what has become different. (This difference is often most clearly grasped by former political prisoners and others who have suffered most directly under dictatorship.) The restoration thesis, well rehearsed in the post-war Federal Republic of Germany, for example, rests on the discrepancy between ideals and reality, particularly painful to intellectuals.28 It is not just that democracy cannot be equated with the good society and is often very flawed in practice. It is also that democracy knows no absolute truths, as the great Weimar jurist Hans Kelsen pointed out, but only tentative conclusions based on critical reflection that can be revised if shown false.29 This “relativism of worldviews” (weltanschaulicher Relativismus) often seems to pale before the simpler, more certain “truths” of totalitarianism. Not inspired by utopian goals, democratic revolutions are generally peaceful. (When bloodshed occurs – as in Burma, China, and Romania – it is initiated by a repressive regime.) Democratic revolutionaries have been inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr, not by Lenin or Mao. Gandhi’s satyagraha strategy, the non-violent struggle against British colonialism in India, and the civil rights movement in the US of the 1950s and 1960s, in which King played a prominent part, proved that civil disobedience can be effectively harnessed by mass movements.30 A democratic revolutionary movement attempts, in the spirit of Gandhi, to achieve ethical superiority through non-violence over repressive rulers. International experts consulted with activists in the Philippines about nonviolent opposition techniques after the Aquino assassination in 1983.31 Leaders of Philippine “people power” have, in turn, been asked by oppositionists in several countries, including Mexico, for advice.32 In the case of East Germany, the writings of a West Berlin peace researcher were smuggled into the country and had a profound impact of the thinking of the opposition, particularly in Church circles.33 The work of Gene Sharp, a leading expert of non-violence, and consultation with one of his disciples, shaped the development of a civil disobedience strategy of the Serbian opposition and especially the student-led dissident group Otpor.34 Democratic revolutionaries have been mostly city slickers. Even in predominantly rural societies such as Bangladesh and Burma, uprisings against dictatorial rule in the name of a democratic cause have occurred in the big cities, and often only in the capital city. Cities are the most public of places. Population is dense, the press (including foreign journalists) is present, the speed of communication fast. Paul Routledge argues that in the April 1990 revolution in Nepal, the choice of Kathmandu and Patan as sites of struggle owes much to the particulars of location (capital, locus of power, communications) and locale (concentration of population, movement HQ …). The movement’s contestation of urban space developed from and utilized the intimate sense of place and community of the residents of Kathmandu and Patan (backstreets, chowks, location of barricades, rooftop communications etc.).35

8

Introduction

In urban areas, demonstrations can take place more easily, and spontaneously, particularly if protest repertoires have developed around certain public places. For example, Leipzigers knew there was a prayer meeting and then peace march at the Nikolaikirche starting at five o’clock p.m. every Monday, which meant one could demonstrate without it even interfering with working hours!36 One study has referred to this aspect of the East German uprising as “spontaneous communication,” in which information about protests is spread through common knowledge and ritualized protests.37 Observers have often remarked how the middle class was over-represented in such popular urban revolts. Research on the Bangkok-based uprising against military rule in Thailand of 1992, for example, suggests that many of the peaceful demonstrators came from the middle and the upper classes.38 The 1996–7 Belgrade protesters have been analyzed according to their socio-demographic characteristics, too. The survey revealed that the well educated, middle-class stratum was heavily represented, while industrial workers were strikingly underrepresented.39 It is not necessary to prove that these wealthier classes were dominant in these and other demonstrations, however. In the Thai case, the working class was also well represented in the 1992 street protests.40 During the October 2000 protests that overthrew the Miloševi¼ regime, workers were more strongly represented than in earlier demonstrations, most famously in the coal miners’ strike at Kolubara. Rather, it is sufficient to show that participants were drawn across class lines. “People power” is not a class-based movement of have-nots against the haves, but rich and poor alike demonstrating against a tyrannical regime. As cross-class, non-violent, urban-based uprisings that lead to political but not necessarily societal transformation, democratic revolutions do not “fit” into real existing theories of social revolution. Rational-choice-based theories also find little room for democratic revolutions. Mancur Olson’s claim that public goods are not an explanation for individual actions in large groups poses a major problem for explaining popular uprisings generally.41 Widespread popular grievances are no guarantee of mass mobilization. The temptation to “free ride” during an anti-dictatorship struggle is great: the risks to individuals who demonstrate are usually very high (imprisonment, injury, and even death) while the rewards are generalized (a successful revolt brings democracy, a “public good” available to all, not just those who protested). That democratic revolutions are largely spontaneous makes them particularly incomprehensible for this branch of social science theory. A tight organization run by political entrepreneurs who can offer “selective incentives” (particularistic rewards and punishments) seems the only way to explain a revolution within rational choice theory.42 But extensive organization is only an invitation to crack down as democratic revolutions take place in urban areas where the tyrant’s armed forces are concentrated. Only loosely organized, unanticipated peaceful protest can circumvent these disadvantages. This problem of spontaneity has led the rational choice analyst Gordon Tullock to claim that “true revolutions (uprisings from outside the government apparatus) are extremely rare and perhaps nonexistent.”43

Introduction 9 Mark Lichbach’s more sophisticated rational choice analysis focuses on the “rebel’s dilemma.” Because of the predominance of private interests and free riding in collective action, “protests lack protesters, rebellions lack rebels, and revolutions lack revolutionaries.”44 Active dissidents are never more than a tiny minority of any given population. But his solutions of “Market,” “Contract,” and “Hierarchy” remain within the realm of Olson’s “selective incentives and disincentives.” Lichbach’s argument about “community,” which focuses on overcoming selfinterest and learning “other-regardingness,” is a first step toward a solution, but does not distinguish such communal solidarity sufficiently from the instrumental reasoning of costs and benefits.45 Following Max Weber, what is instrumentally rational (zweckrational) should be distinguished from value-rational (wertrational) social action.46 Value rationality lies behind “people power,” explaining why democrats rebel and not free ride. Popular uprisings are, to use the phrase of Aristide R. Zolberg, “moments of madness.”47 They are a time of extreme outrage and collective hopes, not of particular interests and personal calculations. Millions take to the streets, not for individual gain, but as a reaction to a series of events that bring at least the urban population to a moral boiling point. Because the situation is extraordinary – viewed as a struggle between good and evil – people are willing to engage in high levels of risk-taking in pursuit of “public goods.” This is far from Olson’s insight into the day-to-day calculations in which individual interests usually take precedent over collective concerns. This “moral dimension” must be treated as a distinct explanation of popular uprisings.48 An additional source of doubt about democratic revolutions as spontaneous popular uprisings is raised by conspiracy theories. In Czechoslovakia, the secret police faked the death of a student demonstrator, which led to the claim that the KGB was behind the uprising in order to discredit the hard-line Czechoslovak leadership and bring Prague-spring communist reformists back to power. Though a parliamentary commission investigating these events found no evidence for such a conspiracy, this view has persisted.49 Similarly, in the Philippines, left-wing critics of events suspected the US was behind “people power” through its support of military rebels, a claim that was much oversimplified. The limited covert support the US provided to the dissidents in the armed forces should not lead a more important factor to be overlooked. The rebels were saved from annihilation by the loyalists of the Marcos regime by the popular uprising.50 In Serbia, there has been discussion of the role of the European Union and other foreign powers in the making of the “October revolution,” as well as of contacts between opposition leaders and the military.51 Here too, however, such contacts and outside help only became relevant after mass protest had begun. Perhaps no democratic revolution has been more controversial than the Romanian, with the role of the anti-Ceau_escu communist elite in the revolution being a source of particular suspicion.52 But while the role of Iliescu and other regime conspirators was significant (a point given much emphasis later in this book), their plot could only be put into action after protests spread from Timisoara to Bucharest. When applied to democratic revolutions, such views imply that the people did not bring down a dictator; sinister forces did. There are undoubtedly reasons to

10

Introduction

cast doubt on official accounts, particularly in Romania where the current leadership has an interest in a certain view of events. But this should not lead the importance of mass demonstrations and spontaneous organization during democratic revolutions to be overlooked. Evidence of some internal planning and even limited foreign intervention does not prove these revolutions to be “fake.” Popular uprisings are the driving force in democratic revolutions. Elite calculations, regime defections and foreign interference become relevant only once “people power” has begun.

“Too much”: revolutions cannot be democratic Major studies of democratization have stressed the importance of negotiations between reformist elites in the authoritarian regime and moderate leaders of the democratic opposition.53 The Spanish transition after Franco’s death is the paradigmatic example of such a “pacted” transition.54 For a democratic transition to begin, there must be a split within the regime, in which “soft-liners” gain the upper hand.55 They then initiate a transition to democracy with moderates in the opposition who, in turn, must outmaneuver radicals. For democratization to take place, a consensus must emerge between these regime and opposition elites. But a split within the non-democratic regime is not necessarily a precondition for a democratic transition. In East Germany, hard-liners remained dominant. This did not prevent the regime from collapsing under the weight of a mass uprising, however. Despite a division among the reformists and orthodox communist rulers in China in 1989, the regime survived popular protest, as discussed in Chapter 4. The dominant elite-centered approach has also been criticized for neglecting the role of civil society.56 This is an important modification of the democratization literature. Yet it still retains a certain proximity to elite-centered studies of democratic transition, as it emphasizes organized groups with leadership structures. But democratic revolutions have sometimes occurred where civil society was relatively weak. In East Germany, for example, there was much less organized opposition than in Poland. Yet revolution occurred in the former not the latter communist country in Eastern Europe.57 Communist reformers negotiated with civil society leaders in Poland. In East Germany, the regime harassed small civic movement groups that were not long able to speak for the revolutionary protests that they had not initiated. It has been argued above that democratic revolutions are largely spontaneous uprisings through rapid mass mobilization. The systematic spread of civil society is not a precondition of such an uprising. Civil society is often hindered in its development by a hard-line dictatorship. Also, there may not be a well-defined opposition elite capable of representing society as a whole. As will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3 on East Germany, organized opposition there consisted of marginalized groups that were countercultural and “revisionistist” in orientation. Mass mobilization, not a well-developed civil society, is decisive in democratic revolutions. Other students of democratization have acknowledged the importance of large demonstrations in some democratic transitions. Popular uprisings against dictator-

Introduction

11

ships have even been classified as a distinct path to democracy.58 More often, though, there has been skepticism about their importance in democratic transitions. It has been argued, for example, that popular protest “is a path toward government change rather than a path toward full democratization … one is tempted to argue that societal-led upheavals by themselves are virtually incapable of leading to redemocratization …”59 It is suggested that it is more likely that, under pressure from mass mobilization, the authoritarian regime will reconstitute itself or that a military junta will take over in order to extricate itself from power.60 Two other transitologists have classified transitions involving non-violent mass mobilization as a “reform” (as opposed to a “pacted”) path. But while they use this classification to distinguish the Czechoslovak from the Hungarian case, reform falls short of a “revolutionary” path, which they assume must be violent and involves no compromises with the existing regime.61 A later study goes further by terming the Czechoslovak transition “reform through rupture.”62 But this still views democratic transition under conditions of a popular uprising within the prism of strategic interaction between elites and counter-elites within the regime and opposition, rather than seeing it as a revolutionary situation in which mass mobilization is decisive. It was not elite struggle, but the “people” protesting spontaneously and non-violently in the streets, that led to regime collapse in Czechoslovakia and in other democratic revolutions. No real existing case of democratic revolution completely fits the ideal type of a purely societal-led transition. After a popular uprising begins, a faction of the military (in Indonesia, the Philippines or Thailand for example) or even part of the ruling party (Ion Iliescu in Romania or Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie in Indonesia) may intervene, hastening regime collapse. A compromise through round-table talks may also be reached, as discussed below. But without revolutionary protest, no interventions or talks would occur. These are reactions to a revolutionary situation, often only after the hard-line regime has collapsed. Is it not meaningful to accord this aspect priority when classifying transition paths? A societal-led transition path should be distinguished from an eliteinitiated one.63 But the concern about popular uprisings in the democratization literature runs deeper. It is feared that mass mobilization may endanger such transitions through transaction. As Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter argue in their foundational work, popular mobilization may prove to be uncontrollable, thereby threatening the careful process of negotiation. The result is likely to be either bloody repression by regime hard-liners or a violent victory by revolutionary radicals. Neither is likely to produce a democratic outcome. The argument is that if mass mobilization “menaces” the regime even bland regime actors will conclude that the costs of toleration are greater than those of repression … Should the mobilization of regime opponents seem to go “too far” … then authoritarian rule may again be judged to be indispensable, if unfortunate … [W]here the vía revolucionaria is taken … the prospects for political democracy are drastically reduced …[A] “transfer

12

Introduction of power,” in which incumbents hand over control of the state to some faction of their supporters, or a “surrender of power,” where they negotiate the transition with some of their nonmaximalist opponents seems more propitious for the installation and consolidation of democracy than an “overthrow of power” by implacable antagonists.64

But what is to be done if hard-liners dominate the non-democratic regime, ruling out negotiation with opposition moderates? It is often argued that modern forms of dictatorship are too strong to be overthrown. Theories of totalitarianism and authoritarianism can be invoked to back up the claim that popular revolution is unlikely because of the sophisticated weaponry available to, and the information monopoly created by, modern non-democratic regimes. Under totalitarian rule, organized, collective opposition is virtually impossible. Brave acts of individual resistance remain “islands of separateness” in such tightly controlled societies.65 O’Donnell and Schmitter suggest that in most authoritarian regimes “the armed forces are reasonably professionalized and have clear coercive supremacy within their territorial dominions.”66 As a dissident, Václav Havel recognized the vulnerability of the apparently stable communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe (and his generalization proved applicable in the revolutionary year of 1989 to Chinese communism as well). Perhaps the greatest theorist of democratic revolutions, he termed these regimes “post-totalitarian” because while they maintained a Marxist-Leninist structure on the outside (communist ideology, the leading role of the party, the rejection of all forms of opposition, etc.), they had lost their inner beliefs.67 Ideology was only used as a general justification, as an “all-embracing excuse” in Havel’s words, for continued communist rule. The regime attempted to keep up pretences to such an extent that it became “a world of appearances trying to pass for reality.” While claiming the old doctrinal clothes of totalitarianism, posttotalitarian regimes were in fact ideologically naked. This made the dissidents’ honesty particularly dangerous; after all, they proclaimed the truth about the “emperor’s new clothes.” Post-totalitarianism was primarily an Eastern European and Soviet phenomenon (but in Asia it still exists in China and Vietnam). By contrast, “sultanistic” rule – Weber’s term for extreme patrimonialism – applies primarily to the Asian cases considered here (but also to Romania and Serbia in Eastern Europe.) 68 Sultanistic regimes, like “frozen” post-totalitarian ones, are dominated by hard-liners who stand pat in the face of growing political protest. While a long tradition of resistance to reform lies behind the refusal of “frozen” communist regimes to negotiate a transition from communism, the personal interests of the ruler, his family and friends largely explain the unyielding character of sultanistic regimes. Unlike an authoritarian military regime that can return to the barracks after relinquishing power (preferably after having secured guarantees against prosecution for human rights abuses), sultanistic rulers have no legitimate interest that can be salvaged outside power and face imprisonment, exile, or, in the case of Ceau_escu or Somoza,

Introduction

13

execution or assassination once out of office. Sultanistic regimes find little support in the upper classes and are loathed in the middle and lower classes. The reason is the regime’s seemingly uncontrollable corruption because of its inability to distinguish private gain from public goods. Such family-run political businesses lack or soon lose all ideological justification. This mixture of vulnerability to a cross-alliance and unwillingness to negotiate with the opposition makes such regimes susceptible to revolution. Havel’s distinction between “living within a lie” and “living within the truth” becomes relevant at this point. Both post-totalitarian and sultanistic regimes are susceptible to sharp declines in popular legitimacy. But it does not follow that this lack of belief in the rulers’ right to rule leads to their immediate overthrow. On the contrary, such a regime can survive as long as enough people pretend to support it. Havel’s brilliant story of the greengrocer who puts a communist party poster in his shop despite his lack of conviction is illustrative of life within a lie. He does so as part of a survival strategy, in which he does certain things, such as putting up posters, in which he does not believe, just in order to get along. But one day, Havel tells us, the greengrocer may “snap” and stop “putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself” with the authorities.69 He will pay a high price for living within the truth, which will keep most people from becoming open dissidents. But when circumstances prove favorable (as they did in Eastern Europe shortly after Gorbachev’s rise to power in the Soviet Union or in Asia after the diffusion of the Philippine “people power” model), society may turn en masse against the regime and there will even be defections from powerholders lacking “any authentic inner conviction.” The regime, hollowed out from within, is toppled by a populace finally no longer willing to “live within a lie.” This demonstrates “the power of the powerless,” another of Havel’s famous phrases. It also reveals the powerlessness of the powerful. But even if vulnerable tyrants can be toppled by popular revolution, what prevents a new form of tyranny of being established in their place? Is antidemocratic radicalization inevitable after the revolutionary overthrow of a dictator? Much of the literature written about revolutions reaches that conclusion. For example, the American “natural history” of revolution school sets forth of sequential model with stages of radicalization.70 Modeled on the course of the French revolution, these authors argue that moderate reformers are replaced by radicals, who are supported by the mass mobilization of the “popular classes” in the cities and the peasantry in the countryside. When attempts by the radicals to impose a new social order meets opposition from the moderates, the Reign of Terror begins. Violence is thus a component part of the revolutionary process, including the later onset of the Thermidorian reaction. More recently, the French model of revolutionary radicalization has been applied to the Iranian and Nicaraguan revolutions. One influential article argues that a revolutionary transition is inevitably violent and faces the danger of radicalization. Thus, the authors placed the bloody Sandinista revolt in Nicaragua in the revolutionary category but not the “velvet revolution” in Czechoslovakia.71

14

Introduction

Few authors have examined the conditions under which revolutions do not lead to radicalization. One scholar who has, Richard Snyder, points to the degree of the ruler’s penetration of society and the strength of societal groups.72 Snyder suggests that both a radical opposition challenge and a potential military coup can be overcome, leading to a direct transfer of power after a popular uprising to moderate civilians.73 The issue of radicalization will be considered further in Chapter 1 when considering why the anti-Marcos struggle in the Philippines did not lead to a social revolution, although the communists were long the strongest opposition group. In most of Eastern Europe, there was no real “radical” threat to democratization. The exceptions are Serbia, where nationalists out-maneuvered democrats for a decade (discussed in Chapter 5), and possibly Romania, where a strong nationalist movement also had anti-democratic tendencies.74 But in Poland, for example, the leaders of the grass roots Solidarno[¼ unions who led wildcat strikes in 1988 can be termed “radical,” but only strategically, not substantively. The strikers wanted to change the regime, not replace it with another form of non-democratic rule. The same is true of workers in Czechoslovakia. Thus, a revolution could place there with little fear of radicalization. Yet, with few exceptions, the “velvet revolution” in the (SSR and the GDR’s “wir sind das Volk” (we are the people) revolt, have not been used as evidence that there is an revolutionary alternative to pacts in democratic transitions. Instead, an important recent book on democratization has spoken of a “regime collapse” transition path.75 This is not inaccurate, but one-sided. It stresses the regime’s breakdown instead of the mass mobilization that caused it.76 The existence of round-table talks in almost all Eastern European transitions can also be misleading if it is taken to suggest that negotiation remained the predominant mode of transition even where mass uprisings occurred.77 But in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, round-table talks occurred only after regime hard-liners had stepped down in the face of massive demonstrations. Round-table talks took place in revolutionary situations in which the people on the streets and their leaders dictated the nature and pace of negotiations. Focus on round tables can result in the popular revolution going on around them being overlooked.

“Too late”: cultural counterrevolution Talk of democratic revolutions after “9/11,” the war in Afghanistan and the US invasion of Iraq appears outdated, to put it mildly. These events were predated by a number of pessimistic political accounts proclaiming the “New World Disorder” or “Jihad versus McWorld.”78 But the most influential reading of these worrying developments is Samuel P. Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis. The debate that it had prompted upon its publication in 1993 (as an article) and 1996 (as a book) was ebbing until the World Trade Center attacks appeared to prove the continuing relevance of this thesis.79 Ironically, Huntington was earlier one of the few transitologists who acknowledged that popular uprisings could lead to the overthrow of unyielding dictator-

Introduction

15

ships.80 He spoke of peaceful mass uprisings that led to regime “replacements” in East Germany, the Philippines and Romania, which are cases discussed in this book as democratic revolutions.81 But as a prophet of civilizational clash, he insists upon interpreting the failure of several democratic revolutionary movements as the inevitable result of cultural conflict. Chapter 6 explores how Huntington’s earlier democratic universalism clashes with his recent turn to cultural particularism. But democratic revolutions have not ceased since the supposed increase in civilizational conflict at the end of the Cold War. Generally, there is little evidence of a “reverse wave” of blocked or lost democratic gains since 1989.82 Specifically, democratic revolutions were crucial for continuing the regional democratization of Eastern Europe in 1989 and extending the wave in Islamic Asia. Serbia was the “missing link” of Eastern European democratization until the “October revolution” of 2000, when Slobodan Miloševi¼, who proclaimed Serbian nationalism against Croats, Muslims and a Western conspiracy, was overthrown by a peaceful, popular uprising. The toppling of dictatorships in Bangladesh (1990) and Indonesia (1998) through mass protests began a post cold-war democratization process in two of the most populous predominantly Muslim countries in the world. Interestingly, Huntington, the democratic universalist, had earlier refuted the inevitability of cultural clash. It is surprising, when his later cultural particularism is considered, that he did not problematize the cultural appropriateness of democratic legitimacy. Except in Africa, which the “third wave” had only begun to reach at the time he was writing his book on democratization (1991), Huntington assumed democracy would be the preferred alternative to authoritarianism throughout the world. He argued that regional-based democratic diffusion would further spread democracy, suggesting that democratic rule was considered a universally appropriate “model.” He also argued that – regardless of cultural context – economic modernization made democratic transitions more probable. Finally, drawing on the historical transformation of the views of the Catholic Church hierarchy towards democracy, he suggested Confucianism would not be an obstacle to further democratization. Yet Huntington, as the prophet of civilization clash, interprets the failure of democratic revolutions in China, Iran and Malaysia as demonstrating that Asian “Sinic” and Islamic civilizations are hostile environments for transitions to democracy. But democratic victories in Orthdox Serbia and Muslim Indonesia provide counterevidence. Moreover, like the failed democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe before 1989, defeat in initial battles does not mean the war for democracy has been lost.

The chapters ahead The strength of dogmas should not be underestimated. Still, in the spirit of rebellion, it can be asked why revolutions have to be well organized, violent, and ruralbased with a lower-class constituency. Why should spontaneous, non-violent, urban and cross-class uprisings not also be included in the revolutionary canon? Why

16

Introduction

are political revolutions not accorded the same standing as social revolutions? Why must democratization be negotiated by regime elites? Can democratic transition not also be prompted by a mass uprising? Why should revolutions inevitably lead to radicalization and not a democratic outcome? These are not just issues of theoretical concern. Evidence from 15 cases over the last two and a half decades will be offered in this book, suggesting that democratic revolutions have been crucial to the continuation of the “third wave” of democratization despite supposed civilizational conflict. The chapters that follow are case and comparative studies of these democratic revolutions in Asia and Eastern Europe. They focus on non-democratic regimes that are vulnerable to democratic revolutions, explore the conditions under which such popular uprisings can occur, and examine the character of such protests when they actually break out. Cases and comparisons are selected from these two regions despite obvious differences of geography, culture and history between Asia and Eastern Europe. A universalist approach is taken here, in which the search for generalizations ranges across cases separated in cultural context, space and time. Theda Skopol and Margaret Somers have termed such a method “parallel demonstrations of theory.”83 While ideographic studies are important (and case studies of the Philippines, East Germany and Serbia are offered in this book), they do not preclude a nomothetic perspective based on interregional comparison.84 Crucial similarities can be found despite profound differences (which makes what is similar all the more interesting). The first two chapters examine opposition movements against sultanistic regimes in Asia. Chapter 1 is about the first contemporary democratic revolution in Asia.85 While its origins are often forgotten, the term “people power” arose during the anti-Marcos struggle in the Philippines that toppled his regime in 1986. It became a model for contemporary democratic revolutions. The chapter explores why the democratic opposition was able to overthrow the highly personalistic Marcos regime while out-maneuvering their communist and military rivals to seize and maintain power. It also examines whether this popular uprising led to the restoration of cacique democracy. Chapter 2 examines the neglected phenomenon of women who led popular uprisings against personalistic rulers in six South and Southeast Asian countries. It shows how women, considered nonpolitical in patriarchal societies, symbolized the moral superiority of the opposition against corrupt, often sultanistic, dictatorships. The next two chapters explore democratic revolutions against post-totalitarian regimes. The democratic revolution in East Germany is of particular significance as it was the most important event in the collapse of European communism. The building of the Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War division between Eastern and Western Europe. Its fall led to German reunification and marked the end of the European partition. But the revolutionary character of the uprising has been obscured by misconceptions about who the real revolutionaries were and what the revolution was about. It must also be clarified why East Germans rebelled, as well as why they had to rebel.

Introduction

17

The revolutionary year of 1989 began with the repression of peaceful protest in China (Chapter 4). This slaughter of the innocents led East Germans protesters, for example, to worry that their government, which had praised the Tiananmen crackdown, would apply the “chinesische Lösung” (Chinese solution) to crush mass demonstrations in the GDR, too. Understanding why the Chinese regime shot but the hard-line East German and Czechoslovakian regimes collapsed when popular protest arose raises one of the most important puzzles of democratic revolutions: “to shoot or not to shoot?” At the end of this chapter an additional query is considered. Why, when mass demonstrations took place against the highly personalistic Ceau_escu regime in Romania, did the regime shoot but collapse nonetheless? The final two chapters concern democratic revolutions in the context of supposed civilizational conflict. Chapter 5 analyzes the most recent democratic revolution and the last Eastern European transition, in Serbia in 2000. Miloševi¼ had long used nationalism, war, and anti-Western rhetoric to legitimize his rule. Repeated efforts to overthrow Miloševi¼ had been thwarted by the opposition’s divisions, his clever tactics, and nationalist appeals. But he was defeated in the presidential election held in the fall of 2000 by Vojislav Koštunica, who not only embodied a non-partisan leadership in Serbia that united a fractious opposition, but also combined democratic convictions with strong nationalist credentials. Miloševi¼, whose regime had become increasingly sultanistic, attempted to steal the elections in order to cling to power. The chapter explores how stolen elections then became a “triggering mechanism” that finally enabled the opposition to overthrow a dictatorship that had long instrumentalized supposed civilizational difference. Chapter 6 explores Huntington’s cultural despair, confronting it with his earlier democratic hopes. The chapter then explores recent “revolutions lost” which seem to confirm Huntington’s pessimistic analysis that democratic revolts are doomed to failure outside the West: in China, Iran and Malaysia. Yet democratic revolutions have overthrown “civilization clashers” in Indonesia and Serbia. One day dissidents may convince millions to “live within the truth” who will again take to the streets to bring about democratic revolutions in Bejing, Kuala Lumpur or Tehran. In the conclusion, theories of revolution and the literature on democratization are reconsidered. It is argued that the former must be “democratized,” the latter “revolutionized.” The origins, character and outcome of democratic revolutions raise questions about prevailing views of revolution and democratization. Popular uprisings become “necessary” only when sultanistic or post-totalitarian rulers refuse to compromise. After considering why democrats rebel, it will be examined how they do so. This book does not attempt to romanticize the outcome of democratic revolutions. Countries undergoing democratic revolutions often experience widespread popular disillusionment and troubled transitions while needed social change is often limited. However imperfect the result, it does not undercut the revolutionary nature of democratic regime change itself.

18

1

The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

World attention has long since shifted away from the peaceful overthrow of Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Philippines in February 1986. Filipino “people power” had a demonstration effect on other popular uprisings in Asia, particularly in Burma, China, Pakistan and South Korea in the late 1980s as well as in Indonesia in 1998.1 The non-violent 1989 democratic revolutions of Eastern Europe (and a year later in Nepal) were sometimes referred to as “people power.” But few of the actors or observers appeared to be aware that the origin of the phrase was the peaceful revolt in the Philippines.2 The Philippines soon returned to its status as a minor “Third World” country of which the Western world, to paraphrase Chamberlain, “knows nothing.” Yet while “people power” has been largely forgotten as an event, it survives as a name-giving concept. “People power” has come to symbolize a peaceful, spontaneous popular revolt that topples an unbending dictatorship. Thus, two recent general studies of non-violent uprisings have used “people power” in their titles.3 But several puzzles about the nature of Philippine “people power” remain. If these are solved, its significance as an alternative model of democratic transition will be enhanced. Putting “people power” back together is not just of historical interest; it is of theoretical importance as well. Given the emphasis on pacted transitions in the democratization literature, it is striking that Marcos of the Philippines consistently refused to negotiate with his moderate political opponents. Marcos was an unyielding dictator who had to be brought down because he would not step down. The first puzzle, then, is why “people power” was necessary in the first place. Yet it long seemed that Marcos would be defeated by armed opposition, not peaceful protest. This conforms to the expectations of a growing literature suggesting that highly personalistic, or “sultanistic” regimes are particularly vulnerable to violent, radical revolutions. The personal aims of the ruling clique, not class or institutional interests pursued by a “bureaucratic-authoritarian” elite, form the basis of such regimes. Legitimacy evaporates as extreme personalism alienates rich and poor, civilian and military, alike. With efforts to displace the regime peacefully usually unsuccessful, armed insurrections may arise or a coup may be planned. The two major social revolutions of the 1970s, in Nicaragua and Iran, were both against highly personalistic regimes. Castro’s defeat of Batista in 1959

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was in many ways similar to these revolutions. Coups are also common against such regimes, as the military overthrow of Duvalier in Haiti shows. The late Marcos regime faced both major insurgencies (communist and Muslim secessionist) and a military conspiracy. Moderate civilian oppositionists thus confronted a double burden: they not only had to defeat Marcos peacefully before he could violently suppress them, they also had to out-maneuver both the radical communist and military rebel opposition groups to replace him in power (Muslim secessionists wanted a separate Muslim state, not national power in the Philippines). Victory by either the communists or the putschists would have led to be another form of non-democratic rule, not democratization. The second puzzle, then, is why “people power,” not a communist revolution or a military coup, brought Marcos down. Unlike a pacted democratization, in which an institutionalized hand-over of power from the authoritarian regime to the moderate opposition is the culmination of the democratic transition, “people power” only began a highly troubled transition to democracy. Armed rebellions resumed and several coup attempts occurred while the economy stagnated and social reforms were postponed, putting the Philippines` democracy high on the endangered list of new democracies.4 To paraphrase the early Huntington, in such a “praetorian” political environment, Muslims seceded, communists rebelled, and the military couped.5 In addition, the expectations raised by the defeat of Marcos and the accession to power of the Aquino government were extraordinarily high. In portraying her electoral campaign against the Marcos government as a battle of good versus evil, president Corazon C. Aquino created high hopes that her administration would not just restore democracy, but end corruption, introduce social reform, and strengthen the country’s national sovereignty. The survival of the Aquino government, despite “praetorianism” and high expectations, adds another puzzle to “people power”: why, despite a troubled transition, did it lead to democratic consolidation? Critics have claimed that “people power” did little more than restore oligarchybased “cacique democracy.” Out-of-power oligarchs resumed control of much of the economy while political clans regained their dominance in Congress. Local politics in many areas was dominated by “guns, goons, and gold,” as Filipinos refer to the electoral manipulation of formally fair elections by political bosses. This raises a final question about “people power”: how democratic was it really?

Why was “people power” necessary? Most democratic transitions are prompted by revolutionary potential. When high levels of discontent become explosive due to disappointed expectations and moral outrage in society, then a regime faces the prospect of rapid mass mobilization. But many authoritarian regimes in the “Third World” as well as “mature” posttotalitarian regimes in Poland and Hungary seized the initiative and negotiated with the opposition before a revolutionary situation emerged. These non-democratic regimes decided that the risks of holding on to power were greater than the disadvantages of democracy. This calculation derived from the collective interests

20

The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

at stake in highly institutionalized non-democratic regimes, regardless of whether they were military or civilian, communist or anti-communist in character.6 By initiating a democratic transition, such hazards could be avoided while at least some interests within the non-democratic regime were salvaged despite democratization. Ex-authoritarians often won power in free elections (and when defeated in their first try sometimes succeeded in the second, as in Lithuania and Poland). They maintained the status of key state institutions, particularly the “military as institution” in Latin America. They kept bureaucratic posts while avoiding political prosecution under democratic rule. It was considered better to negotiate and save something than to grasp on to power and perhaps lose all. But in the Philippines – as well as in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Nicaragua and Romania, among other countries – warnings to initiate a transition before it was too late were ignored because of the highly personalistic nature of these regimes. As discussed in this book’s introduction, “sultanistic” rule involves personal interests usually impossible to protect once power has been relinquished. Because they serve no class, institutional, or other major social interests, personalistic dictatorships enjoy little or no legitimacy outside a small ruling circle of family and friends. Sultanistic dictators are little concerned about the professional standing of key state institutions because they are organized on the basis of loyalty more than on competence. This patrimonialization of the state makes the orderly removal of the dictator by the military hierarchy or ruling party unlikely. Since such non-democratic “family affairs” alienate so many social groups, there is little hope the regime can win competitive elections or retain an important place in society after the transition. Once toppled from power, personalistic dictators are killed (Ceau_escu), forced into exile (where they are not always safe, as Somoza’s murder abroad shows), or brought to international justice (Miloševi¼). For a sultanistic ruler, clinging to power is often a matter of life and death or at least the question of whether he will spend his remaining days in jail. Marcos created a “conjugal dictatorship.”7 Marcos and his wife, Imelda Romualdez Marcos, along with their families and cronies, were the regime. The regime’s technocrats resigned or were forced out of office one by one, particularly when they ran afoul of Imelda Marcos. They were but high paid political cover for the arbitrary power of the dictator and his unfathomable corruption. The first lady was the second most powerful person in government (controlling, among other things, a major ministry and the governorship of Metro Manila). Other Marcos– Romualdez family members also held high state positions in government or statecontrolled corporations, which they used for personal profit. Imelda was notorious for extorting businesses, spending extravagantly, and traveling widely (particularly on international shopping expeditions). She rose from an impoverished childhood (she grew up in a garage) to become a beauty queen and the wife of the then rising Senator Marcos. Once she came to share presidential power, she took revenge upon wealthier family members of the prominent Romualdez clan as well as other members of the elite she felt had snubbed her. Her turbulent marriage with Marcos divided the regime along “his” and “her” factional lines and contributed to her increasing megalomania.8

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Despite his anti-communist rhetoric, Marcos’s real enemies were from the old oligarchy – particularly the Aquino–Cojuangco clan (Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. was his chief political enemy) and the Lopez brothers (his main economic competitors). Before Marcos, the country’s two major “parties,” really but shifting national agglomerations of the oligarchy, alternated regularly in office. They shared the spoils of public office at regular intervals. Marcos played monopoly with this old system, increasing and concentrating state resources in his, his family’s, and his “cronies’ ” hands during the martial law period. He also achieved a greater monopoly on violence than at any time since the colonial era, disarming local warlords, taking police powers away from local politicians, and keeping a tight grip on the military. Marcos seized a number of his enemies’ assets. Prominent Filipino firms and foreign investors alike had to give 10–25 per cent of their equity gratis et amore to Marcos or one of his associates in order to receive necessary government permits.9 Billions of dollars in foreign aid and loans to the Philippines ended up in private bank accounts of the Marcos family and its cronies, a major cause of the country’s debt crisis in the mid-1980s.10 Government financial institutions were looted, the country’s gold reserves mysteriously declined, and government statistics were systematically manipulated to deceive international financial institutions.11 In short, Marcos’s was family, not class-based, rule. The financial reach of this “conjugal dictatorship” was extended further through a subcontracting of corruption known in the Philippines as “crony capitalism.”12 Though production remained privately owned, Marcos allowed cronies to monopolize key commodities through special taxes, production privileges, or importexport licences. Each crony had his kingdom: Herminio Disini was the tobacco king, Rodolfo Cuenco the cargo king, Roberto Silverio the auto parts king, Antonio Floriendo the banana king, Jose Campos the drug king, Roberto Benedicto the sugar king, and Eduardo Cojuangco the coconut king. Marcos was known simply as the king.13 The personalistic character of his regime helps explain why Marcos consistently refused to negotiate with the opposition or give them a fair chance at the ballot box. A quintessential “lawyer politician” in the Philippines’ legalistic political tradition, Marcos went to great pains to maintain constitutional and democratic appearances.14 But he, not the “constitution,” was the law of the land. Elections were manipulated.15 Benigno S. Aquino, the leading opponent of Marcos, was assassinated upon his return from exile to the Philippines in August 1983 by agents of the regime. Aquino had pledged to seek a negotiated settlement with Marcos. But Aquino was seen instead as a dangerous personal rival, particularly by Imelda Marcos and army chief of staff, Fabian Ver, who had assumed informal power while Marcos underwent a life-threatening kidney operation. Subsequent offers of dialogue by the opposition leaders, including by Aquino’s wife, Corazon, were also rejected by Marcos, although the Catholic Church and the US government urged him to talk with his opponents. Marcos clung to power despite grave illness, economic crisis, the emergence of a major protest movement, and growing international isolation, out of fear that he would be killed or tried, and his wealth confiscated, if he left office.16

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The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

Armed forces chief of staff Ver was not a military professional but a “political” general whose fortunes were tied to Marcos’s (Ver had once served as his chauffeur). This made a move by the military hierarchy against Marcos – such as occurred in Greece after the Cyprus disaster or in Argentina following the Malvinas/Falklands war defeat – highly unlikely even after the Aquino assassination had destroyed the regime’s credibility at home and abroad. The ruling KBL (Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, New Society Movement) party was little more than a patronage network of Marcos loyalists, with no power independent of the president’s will. Personalism precluded a transition initiated from within authoritarian structures. In short, “people power” was necessary because Marcos, given the family-based, “sultanistic” character of his regime, had no incentive to relinquish power.

Why did “people power” defeat Marcos? Marcos’s family-based rule created a broad-based opposition: the poor did not fight the rich, broad segments of society fought together against the regime. As recent theories of revolution suggest, working-class or peasant struggle against a regime dominated by the industrial bourgeoisie or rural landlords is far less likely to lead to a successful revolution than cross-class coalitions against highly personalistic rule.17 Sultanistic rulers alienate the upper and lower classes alike, as well as elements within the military. Under martial law, the Philippine communist party grew from a band of student romantics to the largest communist insurgency in Southeast Asia.18 The loss of electoral patronage contributed to rising social tensions in the countryside. Corruption and land grabbing by regional warlords and Marcos cronies, as well as human rights abuses, fueled further discontent. The communists capitalized on this situation, and their recruiting proved particularly successful in coconut- and sugar-growing regions where crony monopolies kept wages low.19 Instead of defeat at the hands of a professional military, such as in Brazil, the Philippine communist rebellion prospered under martial law and a Muslim rebellion continued despite a peace accord. With elite military battalions concentrated in Manila to protect Marcos and the armed forces increasingly de-professionalized, the communists’ rural-based insurgency grew from only several hundred troops before martial law to 8,000 soldiers by 1980, reaching an estimated 20,000 by 1983. At the same time, a major Muslim secessionist rebellion, which led to civil war in the southern Philippines in the early 1970s, was not defeated despite a peace accord signed in the mid-1970s.20 This secessionist challenge diverted substantial military resources at a time when the communist insurgency was growing. Alienated by fraudulent elections in 1978 and 1980, opposition politicians took the first step toward joining the communists in a boycott of the 1981 presidential polls.21 The boycott, led by the communist front group, the “National Democratic Front” (NDF), seemed to set the stage to further closer cooperation with disaffected elites.22 Arbitrary repression, particularly when it targeted elites, such as the Aquino assassination, along with soaring levels of corruption and economic crisis, led many members of the Philippine oligarchy seriously to consider backing a

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communist-led revolt against Marcos. Developments in the Philippines seemed to run parallel to the recent Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, where moderate politicians had joined radicals in overthrowing the Somoza regime through guerrilla force. If there was to be a communist-led revolution anywhere in Asia in the 1980s, the Philippines seemed the most likely place for it. Highly personalistic regimes are also endangered by military coups.23 The corruption of the military hierarchy and its blind loyalty to the dictator angers lower-ranking officers who have retained loyalties to the “military as institution.” Given the unpopularity of the regime, dissidents in the armed forces may encourage or take advantage of an incipient opposition insurrection to seize authority for themselves. In Haiti, a popular rebellion supported by the Catholic Church against Duvalier was preempted by a faction of the military, which took power for itself. A coup strategy in the Philippines was led by defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile. As a marginalized former member of the inner circle waiting for his chance to take revenge on Marcos, Enrile was the Ion Iliescu of the Philippines. Like Iliescu, the down-but-not-out Romanian communist who led the conspiracy that toppled Ceau_escu, Enrile was in but not of the family affair known as the Marcos regime. Enrile had powerful enemies, particularly Imelda Marcos and General Ver. An enthusiastic conspirator, Enrile mobilized discontented officers (“fourth classmen”) who later formed the group Reform the Armed Forces Movement of the Philippines (RAM).24 Although the group was a vehicle for Enrile’s political ambitions, it was able to win the sympathy of many junior and some senior officers because of several symptoms of sultanism: delayed promotions owing to so-called extendee generals loyal to Marcos, excessive personal enrichment by top officers, and the growing communist insurgency. A coup to install a military junta was another likely scenario in the anti-Marcos struggle. The non-communist, civilian opposition thus faced a dual task. Marcos not only had to be defeated but the opposition moderates also had to make sure that they – and not the communists or the military rebels – took power when he fell. The key to the moderates’ success can termed the “reformist strategy.” This is the demand for good government and democracy with the corresponding denunciation of corruption and tyranny. However naïvely idealistic it may seem, it has a long and surprisingly successful history in Philippine politics, which is supposedly dominated by clientelism.25 But clientelism only applies to “normal” politics in the Philippines. In times of political crisis it may be offset by “moral appeals” against “evil” politicians. If patron–client ties were the only basis of Filipino politics, then the Marcos dictatorship, which achieved an unprecedented centralization of patronage and coercive resources, could never have been toppled. In the 1986 presidential election, Marcos probably outspent the opposition by up to 100 to one, reportedly pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into his campaign compared to Corazon C. Aquino’s estimated six million.26 The opposition faced state terror organized by General Ver with 264 people reported killed and another 227 injured.27 While Marcos’s campaign relied on clientelism and terror as well as phony ballot-counting, the opposition drew on the anger his long sultanistic rule had

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The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

generated, and the outrage caused by the Aquino assassination and the economic crisis that followed it. The opposition’s self-proclaimed political uprightness had its roots in ilustrado idealism, the enlightened Filipino elite in the late Spanish era, as typified by the universal genius and national hero Jose Rizal.28 It can also be traced back to the Americans’ priggish moralism when the Philippines was a US colony from 1899 to 1945. American colonial officials brought the progressive rhetoric of the machine reformist movement in America with them.29 In addition, there were folk Catholic notions of pity and empathy for the political underdog.30 Also there were general Malay notions of fairness (recently on display in the reaction to Anwar Ibrahim’s arrest and trial in Malaysia, for example).31 The precedent of Ramon Magsaysay’s reformist campaign against the corrupt Quirino administration in the 1953 presidential elections was also of great significance (the crowds during “people power” sang “Mambo Magsaysay”).32 During Marcos’s legal presidency, the opposition Liberal party had developed the slogan: “Tangapin ang pera, ilagay sa bulsa, pero LP pa rin an balota.” (“Take the money, put it in your pocket, but vote for the opposition anyway.”) Reformist claims are essentially moralistic and conservative. Corruption and tyranny are the work of evil people.33 Deeper social injustice is ignored and optimism about the possibilities about good government grounded in naïve notions of sudden ethical transformation. But this does not make such reformist appeals any less powerful, as the Philippine experience demonstrates. The non-communist, civilian opposition launched a full scale “moral crusade” against Marcos after the assassination of Benigno S. Aquino, Jr (“Ninoy”) in August 1983. Previously lacking an independent mass base, opposition politicians were suddenly joined by what became known as the “middle forces” in massive demonstrations. These were middle- and upper-class Manileños who looked to big business (the so called Makati crowd) and the Catholic Church (in which Cardinal Sin played a leading role) in their moralistic anti-dictatorship stance. Two aspects of this “moral crusade” deserve special emphasis: the leadership of Corazon C. Aquino and opposition participation in elections. As will be discussed in the next chapter, wives and daughters of opposition martyrs led opposition movements in several countries in Asia. Like them, “Cory” was perceived as a moral leader against an immoral dictatorship. As Mina Roces has argued, Filipinas’ “frequent involvement in exposés and crusades against graft and corruption” is related to “women’s traditional gendered roles as moral guardians.”34 Aquino answered Marcos’s machismo with “marianismo.” Often called the “Filipina Mary,” she was received by reverant crowds with religious awe. Aquino’s campaign so aroused the nation that Marcos had to crudely steal the election. The huge crowds that came out to hear her during the election campaign then went onto the streets to topple the Marcos regime after the manipulated balloting. Moderate opposition participation in rigged polls in the Philippines was crucial in mobilizing support against the Marcos dictatorship.35 This is confirmed by the recent revolution in Serbia (as will be discussed in Chapter 5) where, after years of fruitless struggle, the anti-Miloševi¼ forces united around a candidate noted

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for his moral integrity. They participated in elections which, when they were stolen, led to moral outrage, mass mobilization, and the dictator’s fall. Similarly, in the Philippines months of conflict within the opposition ended when Corazon C. Aquino was chosen to be the opposition’s presidential candidate in the February 1986 presidential elections. Like the 2000 “October revolution” in Serbia (termed “people power” in the international media), the Philippine opposition set up an electoral monitoring body (the supposedly neutral National Movement for Free Elections, or NAMFREL), to document the inevitable fraud. The organization and activities of NAMFREL show concretely how the opposition’s “moral appeals” were spread. Relying largely on the support of the Catholic Church hierarchy, students from Catholic universities and colleges, and business backers in Manila and the provinces, NAMFREL used existing elite social networks to form a nationwide organization capable of identifying vote fraud and producing a vote count independent of the government’s electoral commission, the COMELEC.36 NAMFREL estimated that Corazon Aquino had in fact won the election by a margin of 52 per cent to 48 per cent. against Marcos, despite Marcos being delared the official winner. 37 This was crucial in her claim that Marcos had stolen the election and that therefore his overthrow was justified. By participating in elections (which the communists boycotted), the Aquino-led opposition gained control of the movement against Marcos, out-maneuvering both the communists and the military rebels. Opposition willingness to participate in elections held by a personalistic dictatorship was a distinctive aspect of the Philippine case compared to the Cuban, Iranian and Nicaraguan, in which anti-regime groups consistently boycotted the polls. The Philippines’s relatively long democratic tradition since independence in 1946 until the declaration of martial law in 1972 and nearly half a century of “colonial democracy” under American rule compares with the limited or lack of democratic experience in Cuba, Iran and Nicaragua.38 In the pre-martial law independence period, politicians had continued to participate in elections despite extensive abuses during the presidential elections of 1949 and 1969. But as mentioned above, fraud in the first two elections held under the martial law dictatorship was so extensive that the opposition boycotted the 1981 presidential polls. Moderates seemed to be swapping the ballot for the bullet as some of their leaders began negotiating a revolutionary coalition with the communists. Two key factors led to a change in heart by the moderate opposition.39 The first was the hard-line stance of the communists. Horacio Morales, the cosmopolitan leader of the NDF, had won the confidence of leading opposition politicians, particularly Jose Diokno in earlier “united front” organizing efforts. But after Morales’s capture in 1982 by the Philippine military, he was replaced by NDF hard-liners who alienated elite politician allies, leading them to break away one by one from cooperation with the communists.40 In addition, there were growing concerns (in part based on the experience of Nicaragua) that a communist-led revolution would marginalize the moderates. Second, the US began signaling support for an opposition electoral strategy in an attempt to avoid another “Iran” or “Nicaragua.” The huge anti-Marcos demonstrations after the Aquino

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The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

assassination shocked US President Ronald Reagan, who was a personal friend of the Marcoses and whose administration had been highly supportive of Marcos’ dictatorship.41 The protests led Reagan to cancel a planned visit to the Philippines. The State Department condemned the murder, and US intelligence soon knew that high-ranking members of the Marcos regime had killed Aquino. While Reagan himself and the defense department did less to distance themselves from Marcos – the latter focused on the maintenance of two of America’s largest foreign military installations based in the Philippines – there was also increasing concern throughout the US government about the growing communist insurgency in the archipelago. Responding to US pressure, Marcos made a few (though largely cosmetic) electoral reforms before the 1984 legislative elections. The US kept up demands for reform. They also encouraged moderate politicians to distance themselves from the communists and participate in future polls. Moderate oppositionists responded favorably to this encouragement, particularly as they had performed better than expected in the 1984 elections despite continued government fraud. A consensus emerged among moderates to participate in future polls. Marcos responded to continuing US pressure with a proposal to hold presidential polls earlier than in mid-1987, when they were officially scheduled. On November 3, 1985 Marcos declared “snap” presidential elections for February 7, 1986 on American television, showing clearly to which audience the announcement was directed. While moderates had been moving away from an alliance with the communists for several years, it might be argued that the other non-democratic alternative to the Marcos regime, a military junta, was only avoided by chance. The coup plot planned by Enrile and RAM (and apparently backed by deputy armed forces chief of staff, Fidel V. Ramos) was discovered by General Ver. 42 But even had the coup (timed to utilize popular outrage over the stolen presidential election) succeeded, Enrile would have had a difficult time consolidating power because of Aquino’s control of the streets. The instability of Haitian military rule after the fall of Duvalier, in which civilian opposition only gradually came to be united around Aristide after the coup, suggests that an Enrile-led government would have also faced great turmoil. As it was, Enrile, Ramos, and their RAM followers had to flee for protection after the coup plot was discovered. Enrile and Ramos held an impromptu press conference from Camp Aquinaldo in the early evening of Feburary 22, 1986. They appealed for people to fill the main highway, known as EDSA, that ran in front of the camp, to stop a looming government attack. But the streets remained empty for several hours, as these military men had long been closely associated with Marcos. Only when Cardinal Sin and Agapito Aquino (Cory Aquino’s brother-inlaw) broadcast their support on an opposition radio station later that evening did large numbers of people begin to gather in front of the rebel-held camp. The crowd, estimated to have been between one and two million people at peak periods during the four days of “people power,” blocked soldiers sent by Marcos from attacking while women and children handed out flowers to government tank commanders to calm frayed nerves. Having been forced on the defensive by the discovery of their plot, the rebels found their very survival rested

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on the millions of civilians in the streets. Even when, on the third day of the revolt, February 24, defections within the military allowed Enrile and Ramos to take the military offensive against Marcos and Ver, the plan to create a junta could not be revived. While the military rebel offensive against Marcos in the last two days of “people power” was crucial in toppling him, the military dissidents remained dependent on the crowd’s good will.43 Seeing where the allegiance of the masses lay, Enrile had little choice but to endorse the new Philippine leader. Both the communist party, through its front organization, the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (New Nationalist Alliance, BAYAN), and loosely organized social democratic activists also envisioned a period of political protest following the election.44 When the “people power” revolt began, the communists tried to “take over” the crowd around the presidential palace while social democratic activists smuggled weapons into the peaceful crowds.45 But BAYAN soon found it was not leading the crowd to revolution as it had hoped, but following the pro-Aquino masses on Manila’s streets. The social democrats, whose guns were meant to retaliate if government troops fired on the crowd, found their weapons superfluous as the overthrow of Marcos was almost entirely peaceful.46 Since no shooting was necessary, the role of these armed activists went virtually unnoticed. “People power” was the culmination of a mass movement that had been building since Ninoy Aquino’s assassination. With so many “dress rehearsals,” the crowd played its part in removing Marcos peacefully extraordinarily well with its tight discipline, improvised organization, and avoidance of unnecessary provocation.47 The crowds that mobbed “Cory’s” electoral campaign for president came out again in outrage over the stolen elections. They brought Marcos down and enabled her to out-maneuver both communist guerrillas and military rebels to take power.

Why did “people power” lead to democratic consolidation? In negotiated transitions to democracy, elections for the presidency or for parliament are the last stage of a process preceded by new constitutional arrangements and other political agreements between reformers in the authoritarian regime and moderates in the opposition. While there is sometimes a falling out among former allies within the opposition after the end of authoritarianism, the rules of the game are clear, and the winners at the polls have the undisputed right to lead the new democratic system. A negotiated transition allows considerable institutional continuity between the old authoritarian and the new democratic order. In the Philippines, Aquino’s inauguration of the last day of “people power” on February 25, 1986 was only the beginning of a democratic transition. Aquino claimed a mixture of electoral and revolutionary legitimacy, based on her victory in the elections and the “people power” uprising, which enforced the results of the stolen election. Aquino cancelled the Marcos constitution, abolished parliament, and replaced local officials. Her regime had to build up new democratic institutions from scratch, which contributed to political polarization. Marcos “loyalists” tried to bring back the ex-dictator, Islamic secessionists resumed their demands for an independent state, and communist revolutionaries re-launched their guerrilla

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The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

struggle for state power. But the most serious challenge faced by the Aquino government came from the military rebels. Enrile was not the head of a junta as he had hoped, but back at his own job as defense minister. Aquino fired Enrile after he and RAM supported coup attempts in 1986. Enrile and his “boys” in the military remained dangerous, however, with the risk increasing after he was joined by Aquino’s vice president, Salvador H. Laurel, who was disillusioned that Aquino had not allowed him to rule while she merely reigned. Facing nine coup attempts, the most of any “third wave” transition, Aquino was almost toppled in the bloody August 1987 and December 1989 putsch efforts. These two coup attempts caused not only political chaos but severe economic harm as well, as the Philippines missed a major wave of Japanese capital investment due to fears of instability.48 Similar to Portugal after the coup against Caetano, conservatives in the military and radicals in the communist party preyed on each other’s extremist tactics in order to undermine the electorally-oriented center.49 Marcos’s sultanistic rule had worsened problems of social injustice: landlessness had grown while workers’ real wages had declined. Seizing on these issues, radical peasant groups launched land seizures that angered local landlords and military commanders. A militant march by the radical KMP peasant organization on the presidential palace to press for agrarian reform in January 1987 led to a massacre as trigger-happy government troops opened fire.50 The labor union closest to the communists, the KMU or May First Movement, organized a series of strikes under the liberal labor laws proclaimed by Aquino. Several RAM leaders were involved in the killing of KMU leader Rolando Olalia in November 1986.51 RAM even used the massive left demonstration protesting at Olalia’s killing as the fitting moment to back a Marcos “loyalist” coup attempt that could be portrayed as an effort to save the country from communism. RAM later used a national strike called by the KMU to launch its August 1987 coup attempt. The radical left, in turn, refused to take sides during this military uprising, which it dismissed as a contest between reactionaries. Aquino, in her own words, “took up the sword” to meet these challenges.52 Military coup attempts were defeated and counter-insurgency against the communist rebels intensified (with a corresponding increase in human rights violations). At the same time, she used state patronage and backroom politicking to win much-needed traditional support for her vulnerable regime. But the key to democratic consolidation was the return to competitive elections. Through such electoral politics, the Aquino government peeled away one layer of opposition after another. Marcos loyalists, former Laurel backers, and even eventually Enrile and the military rebels, contested and often won high-ranking elective positions. Old political bosses returned to power, often as members of the new party founded by Aquino’s brother. At the same time, elections demonstrated Aquino’s high level of popularity. She won overwhelming support on the referendum held on a new constitution in February 1986, and her candidates dominated the May 1987 legislative and 1988 local elections. Social reform, in particular land reform, was shelved to placate oligarchs, who fought to save their haciendas. A rebellious military was concerned about initial government negotiations with communists during which such social reforms were

The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

29

discussed. The 1991 coup against Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide showed the danger of trying to undertake too much reform in the midst of political instability following a democratic revolution. Aquino’s electoral popularity would probably not have been enough to save her government if she had been opposed by a united military backed by the economic oligarchy. Her government needed enough allies among soldiers, businessmen, and landlords to fend off repeated power grabs by military rebels and a communist insurgency. She endorsed a new counter-insurgency strategy after ceasefire talks had broken down with the communists in early 1987. At the same time the military budget was increased and the former military conspirator, Fidel V. Ramos, became the second most important figure in her administration, first as new defense secretary. She later endorsed his successful campaign to succeed her as president. The dramatic decline in the number of fighters in the armed wing of the communist party, the New People’s Army (NPA) – by the mid-1990s it was down by half – is not only attributable to the Aquino government’s stepped-up military counter-insurgency efforts. The government’s democratic legitimacy allowed the regime to strike harder at the guerillas without fearing growing protest at home or abroad, although human rights violations committed by the army rose significantly.53 At the same time, the restoration of democracy with competitive elections undercut peasant and urban poor support for the communists. Alfred McCoy has argued that, in hindsight, the communists’ gains were more the “product of a short-term protest against a particular regime [Marcos’s]” than the product of structural factors in Philippine society.54 The communists’ own miscalculations also contributed significantly to their decline.55 After the disastrous decision to boycott the 1986 presidential elections, the party broke up into several hostile factions.56 Moderates in the debate argued for the adoption of legal methods of struggle under the new democratic order, and many prominent former communists were appointed to government posts and competed in elections. Remaining hardliners were scorned by their former middle-class supporters in the cities and were isolated even from much of their mass base among the urban poor and in the rural areas. They appeared increasingly desperate in a political order in which elections were the “only game in town.” The Muslim secessionist movement also declined during the Aquino and Ramos years. A number of the leaders of the dominant secessionist group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), won elected local offices in elections held in 1988, 1992 and 1995. In 1996, the MNLF leader Nur Misauri officially renounced armed struggle to become the governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (but after a later political defeat, he again briefly resumed armed struggle before being forced to flee the country). Although several secessionist groups continue to advocate secession and received outside support in doing so, including from Al Qaeda (including the notorious kidnapping gang Abu Sayyaf) they are much less threatening than they were during early martial law under Marcos when a full scale civil war raged.57 (Recent US intervention in this conflict has less to do with a mortal threat to the Philippine state, such as guerrillas pose in Colombia, than the fact that no where else in Southeast Asia has the US received permission

30

The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

from governments to intervene in local conflicts against Al Qaeda-financed fighters.) Several Muslim “secessionist” leaders have eagerly, and often successfully, competed in local elections. Philippine democracy was consolidated after the newly established democratic rules of the game finally took hold. “People power” began a troubled but ultimately successful transition once enough disloyal oppositionists had been disarmed and electorally co-opted.

How democratic was “people power”? The post-“people power” period is often seen as a restoration of the status quo ante.58 With the toppling of Marcos as the big boss, the little bosses – plantation owners (“caciques”), business monopolists, local strongmen, and warlords – returned to local power.59 Central power was weakened as police powers were given back to local mayors. Pyramiding clientelist networks connected these provincial bailiwicks to the national level. Several leading pre-martial oligarchs, whose property had been confiscated by the Marcos dictatorship, recovered their wealth and influence under the Aquino administration, with the Lopez family being the best known example.60 At the local level and the national branch of local politics, namely the House of Representatives, old family clans held a virtual monopoly on elected office.61 Some of these provincial congressional districts became “authoritarian enclaves” where political bosses monopolized local politics and manipulated election results.62 “Vigilante” anti-communist groups emerged as flashpoints in the fight against communist rebels, though vigilantism was often hard to distinguish from the “private armies” of prominent politicians. Severe human rights abuses marked the earlier years of the Aquino administration in areas in which the military carried out a reinvigorated “counter-insurgency” drive, often abetted by vigilante violence against suspected communists who in fact were often innocent civilians.63 Filipino politics was no longer dictatorial, but democracy was limited by the restoration of oligarchical power. Yet it can be argued that oligarchs tried but failed to restore “cacique democracy,” to use Benedict Anderson’s famous phrase.64 While many from the old elite recovered their influence at the local level, they sometimes faced successful electoral challenges from middle-class reformers, leftist activists, and national rivals, as occurred, for example, in North Cotabato.65 Moreover, the old pattern of primarily dual factionalism at the local level was increasingly replaced by multifactionalism. This contributed to, and was reflective of, the growing fluidity of national political “parties.” It was no longer that politicians were simply switching parties as occurred in the pre-martial period, but that national parties themselves were rapidly being created and discarded while multi-partyism replaced the premartial law two-party system due to new electoral laws and the weakening of clientelist ties.66 With the declining importance of the agricultural-based economy, new sources of campaign funding had to be sought. These derived mostly from “gray market” sources such as gambling (particularly the Chinese-style lottery jueteng), adding to the risks of being exposed as corrupt for trying to raise money for elections.67

The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

31

The local to national clientelistic networks of pre-martial law days collapsed like so many pyramid schemes in national elections held after Marcos’s fall. It is striking that none of the candidates considered to have had the best political machines won either the 1992 or 1998 presidential elections. In 1992 Ramon Mitra’s ruling party network based on his control of the House under Aquino did him little good as a presidential candidate. Nor did the money and connections Eduardo Cojuangco had left over as the leading crony of the Marcos era, as his candidacy also floundered. Instead, Fidel V. Ramos, running on a reformist platform, won the presidential election that year. The weakly organized and poorly funded anti-corruption crusader Miriam Defensor Santiago ran a close second (though her reputation as incorruptible was later tarnished). Even Imelda Marcos – who had melodramatically brought back her husband’s corpse from Hawaiian exile – fared better in the presidential polls than the vice president, Salvador Laurel. Laurel’s well-established clientelist network could not compensate for his lack of personal appeal to the voters.68 But more than anything else it was Joseph Ejercito Estrada’s overwhelming victory in the 1998 presidential elections that showed just how weak “cacique democracy” had become. He was a black sheep of the Philippine elite – lacking “proper” educational qualifications, speaking only broken English, and not possessing the proper upper class habitus (having multiple mistresses was one thing, but housing them in vulgar villas with white sand swimming pools was quite another).69 But Estrada won over the “masa” (masses) with his appeal as an ex-action star. He had often played the part of the downtrodden hero fighting for his rights against corrupt elites in his films. Estrada effortlessly transferred his image as a fighter for the poor in his movies to the political stage. Only one of a good half dozen prominent actors in high political positions in the Philippines, Estrada used basic populist appeals to win mass support.70 His nickname, “Erap,” the 1960s slang inversion of “pare” (friend), was his campaign slogan as he claimed to befriend the friendless poor. Many shared his obsession with “suwerte.” Luck, not technocratic plans for development, were the heart of his political message. Estrada’s compulsive gambling habits, so offensive to the Manila elite, appealed to the poor who played jueteng (an estimated 20 per cent of the population betted regularly in this Chinese-style lottery) in the hope of striking it rich.71 In addition, Estrada was one of the country’s most outspoken nationalists, working to undermine the old link between the Philippine oligarchy and the US. As a Senator, Estrada had been an important leader of the anti-bases movement that eventually led to Congress’s rejection of an agreement to allow the US troops to stay on at two key military installations in the Philippines.72 His political conviction on this issue was underscored by a film appearance. He played the leading role in the movie “Sa Kuko ng Agila” (“In the Claws of the Eagle”), which was critical of the exploitation of Filipinos in and around US bases in the country. All the clientelist networks, bosses’ bailiwicks, and the oligarchs’ wealth were not enough to stop the Estrada juggernaut in the 1998 presidential elections. Under growing pressure after 20-odd financial scandals in his first two years as president,

32

The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

Estrada even threatened to lead a class war against the country’s financial elite in Makati, Metro Manila.73 With Estrada making noises about silencing hostile press organs in a Putin-like fashion, a new wave of middle force mobilization began. The decisive event that led to Estrada’s downfall was his involvement in the jueteng lottery. Estrada tried to centralize this “business” by legalizing a similar kind of lottery. This led to a falling out among thieves. Governor Luis “Chavit” Singson, who stood to lose his take in the lottery and who was nearly assassinated when he resisted the change, went to the media and Congress to report Estrada’s misdeeds. This led to a dramatic impeachment process in the American-style Philippines House of Representatives and an impeachment trial in the Senate. The latter collapsed after pro-Estrada senators blocked the opening of bank accounts expected to link Estrada to the scandal.74 Philippine politics has long been plagued by corruption scandals. But as the historian Alfred McCoy has argued, national politicians who dirty their hands in illegal gambling have often been brought down by a crusading press, the Catholic Church, and their political enemies.75 There are unwritten rules about the limits of corruption. Marcos broke them with his massive plundering of the state, Estrada with his personal intervention in gambling operations. Although millions of largely poor Filipinos regularly play jueteng that promises them the equivalent of a month’s pay for a small wager, middle- and upper-class Filipinos do not want their politicians directly involved in such unseemly matters. The Church and the press provide the moral outrage needed to turn what appears to many Filipinos to be a minor sin into a major scandal. The events of “people power II” in January 2001 brought together the old coalition of the anti-Marcos moral crusade, led by the Catholic Church hierarchy (with Cardinal Sin again playing a leading role), business leaders (the so called “Makati crowd”), and an opposition press (with the owner of the anti-Marcos paper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, in the forefront). Students, who organized themselves by exchanging text messages on their mobile phones, gave the movement an Ersatz mass base as the majority of the poor, as polls showed, continued to back “Erap.”76 Moderate left-wing intellectuals, many of whom had been attracted by Estrada’s pro-poor rhetoric, were deeply disillusioned by his administration’s corruption scandals and renewed cronyism, although some social reforms were implemented during his brief administration. Almost all of these progressive leaders now returned to the fold of the reformist movement, which they had also supported in 1986. All that was missing was a moral leader for a renewed reformist crusade. Interestingly, a woman was again chosen to lead the movement: Estrada’s estranged vice president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. As had been the case with Aquino, her gender underlined the supposedly non-political character of the second “people power” movement. Constitutional procedures had to be trampled on in order to “save democracy.” Winning over the military leadership, the civilian coup leaders threatened to attack Estrada should he not yield. The country’s late twentieth-century revolutionary tradition (as opposed to that dating from late nineteenth century when the first anti-colonial revolution in Asia took place in the Philippines) was invoked to

The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

33

overthrow a democratically elected president. Estrada was forced to resign and faces trial on corruption charges. After Marcos had destroyed Philippine democracy, post-“people power” leaders could not put the old pre-martial law system back together again. Instead of restoring “cacique democracy,” they created a new system of alternating populist challenges and reformist crusades. Without doubt, many oligarchs had reasserted their local control, although their grip on power was looser than in the past with some being removed in successful electoral challenges. But at the national level, populist politicians like Estrada appealed directly to the masses. His growing powers and corruption as president inspired a new round of middle-class mobilization again termed “people power.” Reformists claimed a higher legitimacy based on the revolutionary tradition of overthrowing “bad” leaders, which they claimed justified their overriding constitutional niceties. Estrada’s supporters used a similar justification to justify their own attempted counter-coup (which they, of course, termed “people power III”) in a failed effort to overthrow Estrada’s successor Macapagal-Arroyo in May 2001. Philippine democracy survives, but the electoral “rules of the game” were suspended as opposition leaders mobilized the masses to seize power directly. This is due to great expectations created by the popular uprising against a dictatorship which have been disappointed by the realities of Philippine democracy. In the Philippines, electoral legitimacy continues to compete with “revolutionary” legitimacy, a legacy of the original “people power” movement.

Conclusion “People power” was necessary if Philippine democracy was to be restored because Marcos was a sultanistic ruler with no interests that could be protected out of power. He had to be brought down because he would never step down. If the Spanish case has come to symbolize an elite-initiated transition, the Philippines is a relatively pure case of a societal-driven one. When the regime refuses to negotiate and other forms of violent overthrow arise, moderate oppositionists may find “people power” their only chance to bring about a democratic transition. Sometimes armed revolutionaries win the struggle to defeat the dictatorship – as in Cuba, Iran and Nicaragua – leaving moderates marginalized. In other cases, military dissidents seize control, as in Haiti, replacing (before the recent return to civilian rule there) personalistic with military rule. The key to the success of opposition moderates over communist insurgents and military rebels in the Philippines was a “moral crusade” against the Marcos regime. It began after the Aquino assassination and gathered momentum during the presidential election in 1986. Though set off by a failed military coup, the millions who made up “people power” were determined to make Aquino president after her election victory had been stolen. Philippine “people power” demonstrates that there is in fact a non-violent, but insurrectionary, path to democracy. Yet the instability of the Aquino government shows how difficult a transition after a personalistic dictatorship overthrown in a democratic revolution can be.

34

The puzzles of Philippine “people power”

Instead of institutional continuity, a revolutionary situation creates an institutional vacuum. The fall of the dictator represents only the beginning of the transition process: in the Philippines, disloyal opposition persisted among politicians, the military, communist insurgents, and Muslim secessionists. Competitive elections were crucial in persuading these groups to accept the new democratic “rules of the game.” Even after democratic consolidation was achieved, it remained evident that the Philippine political system had not returned to “normal” by pre-martial law standards. Although “cacique democracy” was restored in many localities with old-style politicians regaining power through elections, at the national level traditional political machines lost out against reformist campaign strategies. Joseph Estrada’s populism and corruption led to a new round of middle-class-based reformism. When so-called “people power II” toppled Estrada, democracy was “saved” only at the expense of democratic procedures. The Philippine example shows that democratic revolutions can lead to a long period of instability. While negotiated transitions are highly institutionalized, the Philippine “people power” demonstrates how democratic revolutions create high expectations that are easily disappointed and a political vacuum that can lead to renewed mass mobilization. Yet democracy has survived in the Philippines and “people power” remains a model of democratic revolution against an unyielding dictatorship.

Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia 35

2

Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia

It is striking how often women have led successful popular uprisings against dictatorships in Asia over the last decade and a half. Aside from Corazon C. Aquino in the Philippines, whose rise to power after bringing down Marcos in 1986 was considered in the previous chapter, other female leaders are Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan in 1988, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina Wajed in Bangladesh in 1990, and Megawati Sukarnoputri in Indonesia in 1998. They all inspired and organized mass protests against autocratic, often sultanistic, regimes. These female leaders then guided precarious transitions to democracy. Aquino was Philippine president from 1986 to 1992. Bhutto served twice as prime minister in the post-Zia era in Pakistan. Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina have alternated as prime minister since the end of military rule in Bangladesh. Megawati, who was initially elected vice president, succeeded to the Indonesian presidency after the dismissal of Abdurrahman Wahid from office by the upper house on corruption charges in July 2001. Moreover, women currently lead two democratic movements involved in ongoing struggles against authoritarianism. In Burma (which the military dictatorship has renamed Myanmar), Aung San Suu Kyi remains the country’s most important oppositionist despite the massacre of protesters in 1988, the junta’s refusal to recognize her party’s overwhelming victory in the May 1990 elections, and her long house arrest. In Malaysia, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail leads a new opposition party and was a major figure in the opposition 1998–9 reformasi movement that attempted to unseat the long-reigning prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad. The role of women in “engendering” democratic transitions through active participation in social movements has long been recognized.1 But female leaders of democratic transitions have been extremely rare. They face sexist barriers in moving from grass roots dissent to leadership positions in opposition parties.2 This is particularly true of negotiated transitions, in which opposition and regime elites agree on a pact in which women have often been excluded. This helps explain why, with the possible exception of Indira Gandhi, no “pacted” transition to democracy has been led by a woman, either from the regime or opposition side. But if we focus on democratic revolutions, the importance of female leaders is evident. Given the absence of such leaders in negotiated transitions, it appears

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Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia

paradoxical that women should be “over-represented” as leaders of democratic revolutions in Asia. Women led four of six successful democratic revolutions in Asia (Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines). Only the popular uprisings against dictatorships in South Korea 1987 and Nepal 1990 did not have female leadership.3 In addition, two of the three repressed democratic revolutionary movements (in Burma and Malaysia) are also led by women. Only in China in 1989 was there no clear female leadership of defeated protests.4 It is even more puzzling when the general rarity of female leaders is considered. While female leadership existed before the modern age – Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth I, Maria Theresa, Catherine the Great, and Queen Victoria are well known examples – it has been unusual in the twentieth century. Only 23 women had held their country’s top political office by the end of 1992.5 While the number of female leaders has increased recently (there are currently nine women presidents or prime ministers), it grew from a small base.6 In his comparative study of leadership, Jean Blondel pointed to the “remarkable … fact that practically no women emerge at the top.”7

Patriarchy and female leadership The rareness of female leaders has been explained by traditional stereotypes about women’s unpolitical role in the family.8 Linda Richter has analyzed the effects of patriarchy on the chances of women becoming political leaders: The ideology of patriarchy has had a decisive impact on the fate of women in most cultures around the globe … Male dominance has been legitimated in law and custom. Politics or the public life of the polity has been presumed to be a natural sphere for men while for women, to the extent they had a space or turf to call their own, the “natural” sphere was presumed to be private. Different cultures or religions might base this division of roles on the “dirtiness or roughness of politics,” “the toughness needed,” or conversely the nobility of public service, the need of people (male) with a sense of “the big picture” as opposed to people (females) whose horizons and loyalties were “limited” to the family and clan. Thus the private family role forced on most women formed part of the basis for making them “ineligible” for political roles.9 The Asian countries in which women led democratic revolutions are clearly patriarchal. In Bangladesh, poverty and purdah, the veiling and segregation of women, combine to reinforce “not only the view that society is dichotomized into public and private spaces but also the stereotyped gender roles that assign women to the seclusion of the domestic sphere.”10 Although women played prominent roles in the Burmese nationalist struggle, military rule after 1962 drastically reduced female participation in politics in what was a “basically patriarchal society.” 11 In Indonesia, the New Order regime attempted “to impose a homogenizing view of female [subordinate] roles on the diversity of gender relations actually found throughout the archipelago.”12

Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia 37 In Malaysia, despite recent efforts to improve women’s status, discrimination against women continues in the enforcement of laws against domestic violence, in access to education, and, for Muslim women, on the issues of child access, polygamy and rape.13 Traditional patriarchy in Pakistan was buttressed under the rule of General Ziaul Haq who (inspired by a wave of Islamic “fundamentalism”) introduced laws in supposed accordance with shari’a that concentrated on social issues generally, and female behavior in particular. In the Philippines, women have long been politically prominent as ministers/cabinet members, senators, congresspersons, members of the Batasang Pambansa (Marcos’s parliament), governors, etc. But Filipina feminists remain highly critical of the status of women there.14 In Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan, conservative Muslim leaders attempted to block the rise of female leaders, arguing female leadership violated Islamic principles. The (gendered) cards seemed heavily stacked against female leadership in Asia. But patriarchy did not block women from heading anti-dictatorship struggles. Rather, gender stereotyping proved to be of political advantage. As women, they were perceived as weak, making them appear less threatening to ambitious opposition rivals. They were the “mothers” or “sisters” of a suffering nation. They promised to cleanse the soiled public realm with private, familial virtue. Their apparent non-partisanship, self-sacrifice and even inexperience emphasized the moral character of the struggle against dictatorship. As for supposedly femaleunfriendly Islam, aside from the “special case” of Afghanistan and the microstate of Brunei, all other predominantly Muslim countries in South and Southeast Asia have had a prominent female leader, either as head of state or as opposition leader. Some female leaders have even invoked their Muslim beliefs as a source of legitimation (Bhutto, for example, reminded her audiences that it was a woman who bore the prophet). Patriarchical traditions have helped, not hindered female leaders of democratic revolutions in Asia.

Political dynasties and female leaders Of course, these leaders were not ordinary women. They were all members of prominent political dynasties. This phenomenon has been well covered in the popular press but has found little academic interest from a comparative perspective.15 There are other female leaders in Asia who, elected in democratic systems, share this dynastic background, usually as the successors to murdered or disgraced male leaders. The first major woman leader in Asia was Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Banadaranaike of Sri Lanka, who succeeded her assassinated husband as prime minister by winning the 1960 elections. Her daughter Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, whose husband was also assassinated, became prime minister and then president in 1994 (with her mother again becoming prime minister under her presidency).16 The most famous woman leader in Asia was undoubtedly Indira Gandhi of India, who became prime minister shortly after the death of her father Nehru, the country’s first prime minister.17 The wife of her assassinated son Rajiv, Sonia Gandhi, is head of the Congress Party and a likely

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Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia

future prime minister, though she is an Italian by birth. The current president of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, is the daughter of a former president. Like Corazon C. Aquino, she came to power as the leader of a popular protest movement. But “people power II” in January 2001 was directed against a recently elected president accused of corruption, not a long-term autocrat whose familybased dictatorship was overthrown by the original “people power” movement in 1986.18 In Japan, former foreign minister Tanaka Makiko is the daughter of former prime minister Tanaka Kakuei, who resigned in disgrace in 1974 after a corruption scandal. Park Geun-hye, a politician of growing importance in South Korea, is the daughter of assassinated dictator Park Chung Hee. Three other prominent female leaders in Asia are not from political dynasties, however: Annette Lu, vice president of Taiwan, is a former human rights activist and dissident; in Hong Kong, Anson Chan, a long serving civil servant, was the former chief secretary for administration, the second highest governmental position; and in Japan, the current foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, is also a long time civil servant. This chapter cannot answer the broader question of “why Asia?” when considering the prominence of dynastic female leadership in the region, although some hypotheses can be offered. Culture seems to have only limited explanatory power given Asia’s enormous cultural diversity.19 But the literature on clientelism may provide some clues.20 Clientelist structures, though by no means confined to Asian societies, appear to be particularly prominent there, even in advanced industrial countries such as Japan. Dynastic succession is a “natural” outgrowth of such family-based political networks. In addition, the saddening pervasiveness of political assassination (particularly in Bangladesh, India, the Philippines and Sri Lanka) raises the issue of familial succession more often than would be the case with normal life expectancies. In a larger project (with Claudia Derichs), I am examining more general explanations that include female leaders of democracies in Asia. Women appear better able to offer a “soft sell” of their murdered or disgraced husbands or fathers in election campaigns, playing to growing nostalgia for earlier, “better times.” Another explanation is that, as women, they symbolize a popular desire for reform of the male dominated status quo. Their gender also enables them more easily to dispel fears that their dynastic origins might undercut this reformist orientation.

What lies ahead The focus in this chapter is on anti-dictatorship struggles in order to analyze the role female leadership played in recent Asian democratic revolutions. The starting point for their leadership was the “martyrdom” of their fathers or husbands, who were assassinated, executed, or imprisoned by a non-democratic regime or their political opponents. Female leaders examined here are all the daughters, widows, or wives of male martyrs (see Table 2.1). As the next section shows, martyrdom freed politicians from ambivalent political pasts, elevating them into powerful symbols of opposition struggle. Although their successors were sought within the family, it still has to be explained why female

Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia 39 Table 2.1 Female leaders of democratic revolutions in Asia Country

Female leader

Male martyr

Relation

Bangladesh

Begum Khaleda Zia

Ziaur Rahman (assassinated)

widow

Sheikh Hasina Wajed

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (assassinated)

daughter

Burma

Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San (assassinated)

daughter

Indonesia

Megawati Sukarnoputri

Sukarno (deposed by Suharto; died under house arrest)

daughter

Malaysia

Wan Azizah Wan Ismail

Anwar Ibrahim (imprisoned)

wife

Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (executed)

daughter

Philippines

Corazon C. Aquino

Benigno S. Aquino, Jr (assassinated)

widow

family members were chosen. They continued their father’s or husband’s cause against personalistic, often sultanistic, dictatorships. Their sex allowed them to appear non-partisan despite their dynastic origins. Their lack of political experience was contrasted positively with the dictatorship’s practiced machiavellianism. They were moral leaders who mobilized society against a corrupt regime. Yet female leaders, celebrated for bringing a dictator down, often faced their own political downfall shortly thereafter. The general problems of democratic transition after a revolutionary situation were aggravated by chauvinistic attitudes toward female leaders. Their controversial campaigns to win justice for their martyred fathers or husbands also contributed to the difficulties of democratic consolidation. Finally, it will be suggested that female leaders caused greatest disappointment when the moral leadership they promised degenerated into the pursuit of dynastic interest.

Martyrdom and mobilization The assassination of Benigno S. Aquino, Jr on August 21, 1983 at the Manila International Airport (since renamed after him) demonstrates how martyrdom can suddenly trigger opposition mass mobilization. Earlier efforts by the democratic opposition to organize protests had backfired or proved ephemeral. Within hours of Aquino’s death, however, massive street demonstrations began, culminating in a funeral procession in Manila which took 11 hours and was attended by an estimated two million people.21 Huge weekly demonstrations followed for the next two and a half years until “people power” toppled Ferdinand E. Marcos in

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Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia

February 1986. The firing and subsequent arrest of deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia by prime minister Mahathir in September 1998 also sparked widespread protest. It marked the end of long-standing ethnic Malay depoliticization, with seven out of ten Malays reporting anger at the way Anwar was sacked.22 Even where martyrdom did not lead to immediate mobilization, it often became the rallying cry for later opposition protests. In Pakistan, the imprisonment and then execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by the military regime of General Ziaul Haq on April 4, 1979 became one of the chief issues with which the anti-Zia opposition could rally support.23 In Bangladesh, the murder of their party leader and the country’s first prime minister/president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in a coup in 1975 remained a key issue raised by the Awami League during anti-government demonstrations against a military dictatorship throughout the 1980s. Even though Aung San, Burma’s independence leader, had been assassinated by a political opponent 41 years earlier, his memory still inspired thousands of protesters who carried his portrait during the 1988 protests.24 Josef Silverstein reports “his name is the most revered in the nation.”25 Martyrdom enabled male politicians to transcend ambivalent pasts. Some came from large landlord families (Aquino and Bhutto). All had led personalistic political parties or factions within parties, often with a cult of personality (such as “Bhuttoism” in Pakistan).26 Several had collaborated with the Japanese during World War II (Aung San and Sukarno; Aquino’s father was vice president of the puppet Japanese regime in the Philippines). Their political opponents had charged them with corruption. Some were even accused of ordering the assassination of their political enemies (Aquino, Bhutto, and Ziaur Rahman) or other “egregious” crimes (Anwar Ibrahim was convicted of sodomy by a Malaysian court in August 2000 after having earlier been convicted on corruption charges). The governments they headed had often performed poorly, both economically and politically (Bhutto, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and Sukarno). Anwar was deputy prime minister during the period in which Malaysia had one of the fastest growing economies in the world. But his enemies attempted to make him the scapegoat when the Asian economic crisis hit the country in late 1997.27 A revealing quote from a Filipina reporter after viewing Aquino’s embalmed body illustrates how martyrdom can transform a fallible politician into a powerful moral symbol. Viewing his body in a casket, she recalled that she had previously thought that because Aquino was a politician, he may not have had the interests of the Filipino at heart; that he may not have loved his country and our people. I looked at his ashen face, the bullet wound, and the blood all over his shirt. No, Ninoy [Aquino’s nickname], I said to myself. I have no more doubts. You loved your country and your people. God be with you, always, wherever you may be.28 Aquino was, in short, a “willing martyr,” whose noble motives were now beyond doubt. 29 Similarly, Anwar’s dismissal from government and subsequent arrest

Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia 41 transformed him from a leading member of the political establishment treated with suspicion by conservative Muslim and liberal oppositionists alike, to a leader of the anti-Mahathir forces.30 Like in the Philippines, this support for Anwar and loathing for the regime were expressed within a specific cultural context, where political norms could best be articulated. Khoo Boo Teik writes that after Anwar’s sacking there was an unprecedented groundswell of Malay anger at the prime minister personally and the political system in general. This Malay dissent has drawn on three different sources – Islamic ethics which forbid fitnah (slander) and tomah (fabricated accusations), universalistic notions of justice and human rights, and critically, an age-old Malay idea of a social contract between the ruler and the ruled … Precisely because of these varied discourses – with their corresponding attachment to Islamic, universalistic and Malay values – the sympathy for Anwar and the dissent against Mahathir has found such broad support among different sections of the Malay populace – ranging from the Islamic opposition party and Islamic organisations, to the urban, Western educated, younger middle-class Malaysians, and rural, older and presumably more traditional Malays. It is the ability of these dissident discourses to turn to Malay and Islamic values – “Asian values,” if you will – that has prevented Mahathir and his supporters from dismissing the dissent as being “Western inspired.”31 After their arrest, assassination, or execution, Anwar, Aquino, Aung San, Bhutto, Mujib, Sukarno and Zia became secular saints for their supporters, their jail cells or graves ritual pilgrimage sites. To speak ill of them was considered heresy. The martyrdom of male politicians in these Asian countries became the chief moral resource with which the opposition could mobilize support against dictatorship.

Why female dynastic succession? Despite the mass mobilization caused by martyrdom, the death or imprisonment of an opposition leader posed grave dangers to his family’s political interests. Highly personalistic parties/factions once held together by the martyred leader’s charisma and authority faced damaging internal splits during subsequent power struggles. Moreover, there were fears that other parties or factions might aspire to opposition leadership, taking advantage of protests for their own ends. A successor was sought from within the martyr’s family to preserve unity and restore the group’s strength. A male heir was often approached first. In Indonesia, efforts were made by the PDI (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia), the direct successor to Sukarno’s old Indonesian Nationalist Party, PNI, to recruit Sukarno’s oldest son Guntur, who bears a striking resemblance to the first Indonesian president. They hoped he would help the party profit from the increasing idealization of Sukarno, particularly by the young, as his purported virtues contrasted sharply with the Suharto regime’s venality. In the Philippines, left-leaning “cause oriented”

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groups turned to Benigno’s brother, Agapito (“Butz”) Aquino for leadership. After protests against military rule in Burma in 1988 “many people … privately expressed hope that Aung San’s son, Aung San Oo, who now lived in the United States, would return and lead the struggle.”32 Why, then, were female kin chosen as successors instead? In part, leadership was thrust upon them because males were unable, unwilling or unsuited to assume leadership of the family-based faction. In the case of the assassinated first president of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, his wife, sons, and most other family had also been killed in the coup.33 Sheikh Hasina was one of two daughters to survive as she had been abroad at the time. At the time of his excecution, Bhutto’s sons were living in exile with little hope of returning to the country as the Zia government had accused them of terrorism.34 There was a gendered division of labor within the Bhutto family: while the sons undertook violent resistance to Zia, Bhutto’s daughter and wife led peaceful protests. In Indonesia, Guntur turned down the offer to enter politics as a symbol of his father Sukarno. He apparently feared regime retaliation against his business interests.35 He also had ambivalent feelings towards his famous father.36 In Burma, Aung San Oo showed no interest in politics, having long lived in San Diego, California and having become a US citizen.37 Benigno Aquino’s brother, “Butz,” was ideologically unacceptable to the mainstream opposition because of his left-wing politics. Women were not chosen to lead simply for want of male relatives, however. They seemed less threatening to other would-be faction leaders, making it easier for potential rivals to unite behind them. Although assuming the dynastic mantle, it was thought that women would leave real control to male party leaders. Arriving in London exile in 1984, Benazir Bhutto was chosen as the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader by the party “uncles” because “they assumed she would serve primarily as a symbol.”38 In the Philippines, a divided opposition ultimately united on Cory Aquino as its presidential candidate. Her chief rival, Salvador Laurel, believed that if they won office she would leave most political decision making to him. In Malaysia, Wan Azizah’s gender and political inexperience seemed to be the key qualifications making her acceptable to a squabbling opposition alliance split along religious and ethnic lines. Female relations of martyred male politicians were best able to unite political factions because their leadership was seen as largely symbolic. But there was also growing realization that besides avoiding internal infighting, female leadership also offered great advantages in the anti-dictatorship struggle. Sensing their ability to mobilize supporters, male political leaders of both major opposition parties in Bangladesh co-opted the previously apolitical Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia into leadership positions.39 Aung San Suu Kyi was an “accidental tourist politician” who was visiting her terminally ill mother in 1988 when thousands of protesters begged her to speak to one of their demonstrations, turning her into the movement’s undisputed leader overnight.40 In the Philippines, a petition was launched by middle-class activists who saw Cory Aquino as the only viable leader of the opposition in a successful effort to convince her to run against Marcos for president. It was signed by over a million Filipinos.

Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia 43 Still, we must ask why women were considered for leadership succession at all, given the highly patriarchal character of these societies. The high social standing of these women as spouses or daughters of prominent politicians was crucial in overcoming sex discrimination. Kinship trumped gender. In the case of Bangladesh, Najma Chowdhury has suggested that “the emergence of Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia in political leadership roles represents a paradox in a patriarchal culture that is best explained by their kinship linkages to male authority.”41 Moreover, the exceptional political situation created by martyrdom made it more tolerable to break with traditional female roles. As Benazir Bhutto wrote about her anti-Zia campaigns: “There was no resistance to me … as a woman, even in these areas where the tribal women were fiercely guarded. The suffering in the country, the suffering of my family, of all of us, had risen above the barrier of gender.”42

Continuing “his” cause As Bhutto’s comment demonstrates, kinship ties to the male martyr not only helped overcome traditional barriers to political leadership; they also linked female leaders to their husbands’ or fathers’ martyrdom. In Pakistan, for example, Bhutto claimed her father, shortly before his execution, had asked her to take up his “mission.”43 By standing in for her jailed husband, Wan Azizah became the “political icon” of the anti-Mahathir opposition.44 The widows, wives, and daughters of male martyrs were widely perceived not as mere politicians, but as advocates of “his” cause. They achieved the remarkable feat of appearing non-partisan despite their dynastic origins. As women, they brought private, familial virtues into the public sphere. They transferred family roles and religious symbolism to the national political level. In Pakistan, Bhutto portrayed herself as the nation’s “caring sister of her oppressed people” when she spoke to huge crowds during anti-Zia demonstrations and campaign stops.45 In Indonesia, Megawati was compared to “mother earth” by her supporters.46 Female leaders did not become politicians by personal choice but out of political necessity after the martyrdom of their father/husband. This was taken by an admiring public to be a further demonstration of their sincerity. Aquino, Khaleda Zia, Megawati, and Sheikh Hasina had all been homemakers before becoming political leaders.47 Aung San Suu Kyi had been a mother and part-time student.48 In fact, with the exception of Bhutto, all were reluctant leaders who had to be persuaded to enter the political ring through pleas by party leaders and the demands of public opinion. Dictators tried to no avail to use gender as an argument against their female opponents. In Malaysia, prime minister Mahathir accused Wan Azizah of seeking voters’ sympathy by crying before campaign crowds and taking her daughter with her. Yet generally Mahathir and his supporters “responded gingerly” to Wan Azizah, “wary of triggering new protests.”49 Marcos desperately attacked Aquino, saying a woman’s place was in the bedroom, a claim his wife Imelda Marcos (rather hypocritically) affirmed.50 But Aquino’s saintly bearing put

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Marcos on the defensive. He complained she made him appear a “combination of Darth Vader, Machiavelli, Nero, Stalin, Pol Pot, and maybe even Satan himself.”51 In Pakistan, General Ziaul Huq attempted to instrumentalize Bhutto’s unmarried status against her, going so far as to put her under surveillance in order to try to ensnare her with a man. When she agreed to an arranged marriage, Zia called local elections to correspond with her marriage date, hoping she would be a less effective campaigner as a bride to be. Zia supporters then criticized Bhutto for not having children. But immediately upon the announcement of her first pregnancy, Zia set national polls to correspond with the baby’s birth. This led a reporter to comment that it was “the first election to be timed for gynaecological considerations.”52 Bhutto had lied about the due date, however, giving birth a month before the polls and then plunging back into the campaign! The most serious charge leveled at these female leaders was their lack of political experience. Yet even this deficit could be transformed into a plus. As Aquino put it in her campaign speeches: “I concede I cannot match Mr. Marcos when it comes to experience. I admit that I have no experience in cheating, stealing, lying, or assassinating political opponents.”53 She emphasized instead her “honesty, sincerity, and religious faith.”54 In Indonesia, it was surprising to many Western observers that during the June 1999 election campaign, Megawati was “praised for her silence” while Amien Rais, one of her male presidential rivals, a Muslim leader and political scientist, was “lambasted for his loquaciousness.” Voters seemed to prefer a “leap of faith to the kind of comprehensive platform Amien’s National Mandate Party offers.”55 Like Aquino, Megawati espoused only vague policies that were of little concern to most voters anyway who admired her honesty, being a “freedom fighter,” and having been “stepped on” for 32 years by the Suharto dictatorship.56 As vice president from 1999 to 2001, “she did not shine. In public she was mostly silent … But compared to the verbal grenades, vindictive maneuvers, and divisive interventions of Mr. Wahid, Mrs. Megawati’s reticence has the potential to become healing relief.”57 As women, these leaders were not expected to engage in violent struggle against dictatorship. In the Philippines, Salvador Laurel was seen as the oppositionist with the most “guns, goons, and gold,” the unholy trinity of the country’s electoral politics. But in the midst of the anti-Marcos struggle, being perceived as a powerful and wily opposition politician was not beneficial. Not only was Laurel “all too much like the guy we’re trying to get rid of,” but he was also proposing to confront Marcos in a manner he was sure to lose as the opposition was badly “outgunned, outgooned, and ‘outgolded.’”58 As a woman, Aquino was not expected to confront Marcos in such a direct manner. By leading a non-violent opposition struggle, female leaders could help disarm the dictatorship. Such anti-dictatorship struggles were not run-of-the-mill political campaigns, but quasi-religious battles of good versus evil. The corrupt character of the dictatorial regime made them highly susceptible to such moralistic attacks. Marcos’s sultanism was discussed in Chapter 1. Aquino’s nationwide election rallies in late 1985 and early 1986 – which drew hundreds of thousands, sometimes

Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia 45 millions, of people throughout the archipelago with huge crowds often waiting for hours in pouring rain just to catch a glimpse of her when she arrived, usually far behind schedule – had a strong religious character. She was the “spiritual center” of the anti-Marcos protest.59 Aquino was widely referred to as the “Filipina Mary” in an overwhelmingly Catholic country that had just completed a Marian celebration commemorating the two thousandth birthday of the virgin Mary. An opposition newspaper wrote of the widespread hope that the miracle of the virgin birth of Jesus would soon be repeated in a political miracle of freeing the Philippines from the corrupt Marcos regime. The other female leaders of democratic revolutions also led moral struggles against corrupt dictatorships. Ne Win’s rule in Burma had become increasingly personalistic if not sultanistic by the late 1980s. The growing prominence of his family members in politics and the increasingly arbitrary character of his decisions (abolishing, for example, without apparent reason, the country’s currency in 1987) contributed to growing alienation with the regime.60 From the moment Aung San Suu Kyi “stepped into the political arena, she has been at the center of Burma’s political struggle” by speaking for millions who hoped for the end of Ne Win’s reign.61 She also symbolized the continuity to her father Aung San, the moral martyr, who was contrasted with the corruption of his former comrade Ne Win in the independence struggle. In Bangladesh, the integrity of both the country’s independence leader (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) and its second major ruler (General Ziaur Rahman) were contrasted with the corrupt Ershad dictatorship. This dual moral comparison was tailored to the Bangladeshi female leaders’ respective supporters: Sheikh Hasina criticized the regime with the example of her father, Sheikh Mujibur; Khaleda Zia with her father, Ziaur Rahman. In the polarized environment of Bangladeshi politics, the supporters of Sheikh Mujibur were at odds with those of Ziaur Rahman (as the latter was accused of conspiring to kill the former). Thus, these separate attacks on a common enemy allowed the opposition to create a united front against dictatorship (but only a temporary one, as the conflict between these two female leaders in the post-dictatorship period, discussed below, demonstrates). In Indonesia, Megawati’s initial popularity derived from her being the daughter of Sukarno. Although Sukarno left an ambivalent record in office, as the country’s independence leader he was held up as a model of idealism and honesty compared to the cynicism and corruption of the increasingly patrimonial Suharto regime.62 Indonesian youth in particular idealized Sukarno. Her supporters noted that Megawati grew up only with relatively modest means although her father had been in power for decades. Even the more institutionalized Mahathir regime in Malaysia had began to show signs of personalization, with accusations of corruption and nepotism being two of the main charges leveled by the reformasi movement against him.63 As the wife of the martyr Anwar, Wan Azizah could easily symbolize this moral critique of the Malaysian regime. The foreign press provided very favorable coverage of female leaders’ nonviolent protests and election campaigns. This raised the cost of repression by, and undermined external support for, dictatorships. The most positive foreign coverage

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has undoubtedly been reserved for Aung San Suu Kyi, which contributed to her winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Her survival under one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships can be attributed in large part to the attention she received from the international media, the film industry (Beyond Rangoon), and on the internet.64 This is crucial for coordinating exile activities abroad as well as informing activists within Burma, many of whom listen covertly to short wave broadcasts and watch videocassettes smuggled into the country.65

Male chauvinism and troubled transitions While transitions after democratic revolutions have generally been difficult (as will be discussed in the conclusion), those led by women have been particularly so. Euphoric victories against hated dictatorships in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines were followed by troubled transitions to democracy. In Pakistan, the country’s fragile, unconsolidated democracy was toppled in October 1999 by a military coup after corruption scandals, economic crisis, and a lost military adventure in Kashmir destroyed the credibility of civilian rule. With intense political infighting hindering economic growth, democratic consolidation has not been achieved in Bangladesh, although it has been over ten years since the transition began. Wracked by the Asian financial crisis, internal ethnic conflict, parliamentary backbiting, and terrorism, Indonesia’s recent democratization has been unusually rocky. Among these new Asian democracies only the Philippines’ has been consolidated. Yet for years it was on the “most endangered list” of newly democratized countries due to a stagnating economy, growing social inequality, numerous coup attempts, a communist insurgency, and Muslim secessionist struggle.66 In addition, the democratic rules of the game were broken to remove the freely elected president Joseph Estrada, whom his opponents accused of massive corruption. His overthrow in January 2001 was celebrated by the urban elite in the Philippines for “saving democracy,” but raised serious questions about their commitment to democratic procedures. One factor that further hindered the institutionalization of new Asian democratic regimes with female leadership was male chauvinism. As shown above, the largely traditional status of women in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines had helped female leaders during the anti-dictatorship struggle. After taking power, however, being a woman suddenly became a distinct handicap. Despite male politicians’ (often hypocritical) praise for these women’s role in the revolutions, they called for them to restrict themselves to symbolic political functions once in power. Many male rivals (and sometimes even the female leaders’ husbands67) could not come to terms with a new government led by a woman. Female leaders were denounced as weak, incapable of dealing with the hard realities of politics. Political intrigues, including coup attempts, were common against these representatives of the “weaker sex.” As discussed below, even female family members of the female leader sometimes rejected their right to rule! To topple a dictator was one thing, to run a country another, which the ideology of patriarchy claimed was a man’s job.

Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia 47 Upon her inauguration as president in February 1986, Aquino faced two deeply antagonistic male rivals in her own cabinet. Her defense minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, had hoped to head a junta after a military coup against Marcos. Instead, he found himself back in his old cabinet position following the failure of the putsch that prompted the “people power” revolt. Worse, he now had to work under a woman leader who he and his Reform the Armed Forces Movement (“RAM boys”) allies in the military claimed was “soft” on communism. Aquino’s vice president, Salvador Laurel, who was also appointed minister of foreign affairs, had demanded Aquino make “him a virtual head of state” that would have reduced her “to a mere figurehead” in exchange for his withdrawing as a candidate from the presidential election and instead being her running mate.68 Both Enrile and Laurel demanded new presidential elections immediately. When she refused, Enrile and the “RAM boys” supported a coup attempt by so-called Marcos loyalists in July 1986, only four months after Aquino had taken office. Enrile and Laurel were behind another putsch effort in November 1986 that was revealingly dubbed “God Save the Queen.” They claimed only to want to return Aquino to her “proper” symbolic role, while seizing power for themselves. Enrile and Laurel justified their disloyalty to her government and their repeated threats to overthrow it with the often-heard charge that Aquino was a weak leader. Aquino acknowledged the seriousness of this accusation, telling an audience of businesspersons in 1987: “The question you all want to ask is: can she hack it? Isn’t she weak?”69 Megawati Sukarnoputri was the victim of openly gender-motivated attacks in Indonesia. After emerging as the most popular oppositionist from the anti-Suharto movement, conservative Muslim politicians tried to undercut her presidential campaign, claiming Islam forbids the election of a woman leader. Although her party received a plurality in the June 1999 parliamentary polls, she lost a narrow vote for the presidency in the People’s Consultative Assembly. Her reluctance to cut political deals was one reason for her defeat.70 But she was clearly hampered in her efforts to win votes from a coalition of Muslim parties that united against her candidacy on the basis of her gender. Ironically, after Megawati succeeded to the presidency upon the removal of Wahid by the legislature through impeachment proceedings, she struck a bargain with a conservative Muslim leader who had earlier argued that women are not fit for high office. The new vice president, Hazmah Haz, who leads the country’s third largest party, the Muslim-based United Development Party, moderated his views, saying a woman president was preferable to an incompetent and corrupt man. In Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto’s opponents also argued a woman cannot be prime minister under Islamic law in an effort to stop her from assuming the prime ministership after the PPP won a plurality in the November 1988 election. Because of doubt whether a female could become the national leader under shari’a, a religious pronouncement (fatwa) had to be issued that it was not the prime minister who was head of state, but the president (who was male).71 The unkindest cut of all came from Bhutto’s own mother, however. Leading up to elections that would return her to power as prime minister for a second time, Nusrat Bhutto insisted Benazir yield party leadership to her brother Mir Murtaza, who had returned from

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16 years in exile in November 1993. Benazir accused her mother of “acting out of ancestral maternal favoritism for a son over a daughter.” She added, recounting her leading role in the anti-Zia struggle: “Through all this, I hoped the day would never come when I would have to battle male prejudice in my own family. It was a cruel stab in my heart when my mother declared that the male should inherit.”72 The death of Benazir’s brother at the hands of Pakistani police under mysterious circumstances contributed to her second fall from power in November 1996.73 It is revealing of the familial character of Pakistani politics that when Murtaza was killed, his widow took over her husband’s faction of the PPP and stood for parliament against Benazir.74 A more subtle reaction to patriarchal prejudice occurred in Bangladesh. Prime minister Sheikh Hasina was so concerned about her image as a woman leader in morally conservative Bangladesh that she refused to be addressed as “madam” (which she felt had dubious connotations). She insisted instead on being addressed as “sir.” While she had been leader of the opposition to prime minister Khaleda Zia from 1991 to 1996, however, she had proclaimed: “we will boot the madam out of power!”75

Revenge or justice? Understandably, female leaders made strenuous efforts to seek “justice” for their martyred husbands or fathers. But their opponents accused them of conducting a campaign of political revenge against their enemies. The battle between proponents of justice and critics of revenge poisoned the political atmosphere, driving each side to political extremes. The dilemma these Asian female leaders faced was a specific form of the problem confronted in all transitions where human rights abuses by the non-democratic regimes have been severe.76 But close kinship ties to the most prominent victims of the dictatorship made female leaders susceptible to the charge of seeking not justice but revenge. The campaign for justice has been carried furthest in Bangladesh. It is the chief reason why the “personal suspicion and bitterness between the party leaders Sheikh Hasina and the BNP’s [Bangladesh Nationalist Party] Khaleda Zia has famously dominated Bangladeshi politics since the end of General Ershad’s military rule in 1990.”77 These two female leaders had briefly worked together in opposition to defeat the Ershad regime. After his fall, however, they again fell out, becoming bitter rivals in the February 1991 elections in which Khaleda Zia’s BNP won a plurality and after which she became prime minister. Sheikh Hasina was everything other than a loyal oppositionist. She accused General Ziaur Rahman, Khaleda Zia’s murdered husband, of complicity in her father’s (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s) assassination. In opposition, she continued her “obsessive pursuit of her father’s killers” who were protected by the “indemnity ordinance” of 1975.78 In March 1994 she led her party, the Awami League, into a boycott of parliament. She initiated a series of hartals (general strikes) which crippled the country for the next two years. After Awami League supporters successfully disrupted elections held in February 1996, Khaleda Zia was forced to resign, paving the way for a caretaker

Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia 49 government and new polls held in June 1996 in which the Awami League was victorious. As prime minister, Sheikh Hasina was accused of being devoted only to the revival of the memory of her father. It was his photo and not hers that adorned every government office. The indemnity ordinance was repealed and prosecutions of those accused of killing Mujib began. Khaleda Zia, meanwhile, led her party in boycotting parliament on several occasions and called a number of general strikes. Her victory in the October 2001 elections and return as prime minister seems likely to be but another stage in this cycle of escalation and conflict. There have often been rumors of a military coup and at least one failed coup attempt since the transition began.79 Feuding by the “two ladies” has proved the gravest obstacle to democratic consolidation in Bangladesh.

High expectations and dynastic realities It is apparent that female leaders of democratic revolutions in Asia faced inflated expectations. This phenomenon is typical of democratic revolutions, as will be discussed in the conclusion of this book. But where women had led anti-dictatorship struggles, popular disappointment was magnified by the accusation that they were no different from their male rivals. Rather than ruling in the interest of the nation, they were said to be interested primarily in benefits for their family. Great expectations were disappointed by dynastic politics. Both governments led by Benazir Bhutto (1988–90 and 1993–6) suffered from a dramatic decline in popular support as accusations of corruption mounted. Such charges figured prominently in justifying the presidential decree removing her first government after only 20 months in office. Her second term as prime minister beginning in 1993 was not judged more favorably. Critics “lashed out” at Bhutto’s husband, Asif Zardari, calling him the “protocol prime minister, the real ruler of Pakistan,” in order to “bait” Benazir.80 As Nancy Fix Anderson has written: “The sins of a husband tarnish a wife, who is still commonly seen in his shadow, even if she be prime minister …”81 Zardari, who earlier had been an “unpolitical businessman” but now enjoyed contacts to the highest government circles, was accused of plundering the state as his as if it were his private domain. Public outcry reached a crescendo when Bhutto appointed her husband – long known as “Mr. Ten Percent” for the commissions he reportedly charged those doing business with the state – investment minister early in 1996. Bhutto was again removed from power by the country’s president, Farooq Leghari, in November 1996, although he was a close former ally in the PPP. Bhutto’s husband was re-arrested and she herself was charged with an assortment of corruption offenses. In Indonesia too, Megawati is facing “disquieting charges” of nepotism against her husband Taufiq Kiemas and other members of her family that already began during her vice-presidency.82 In the Philippines, one of the Aquino government’s first acts was the creation of the “Commission on Good Government,” which was charged with recovering the billions of dollars Marcos, his family and cronies accumulated in the Philippines

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and often sent abroad to foreign bank accounts. But within a few months, critics were claiming that it was “the watchdog which had to be watched.”83 A series of scandals created the impression that the goal of this governmental agency was less the recovery of the “stolen Marcos billions” than making deals with the former dictator and his associates. Aquino’s brother, Jose “Peping” Cojuangco was involved in a series of business acquisitions during her presidency, which were criticized for apparent conflict of interest. Other members of the Aquino– Cojuangco clan were accused of using their connections in the Aquino government to enrich themselves. Although “Cory” herself was not thought to be corrupt, it was widely believed that she did not have her own family under control.

Conclusion Widows, wives or daughters of a political martyr were chosen to continue “his” cause. As women, they could symbolize his suffering while appearing non-partisan. Dynastic ties were obscured by moral appeals from the “mother” or “daughter” of the nation. They thus provided a sharp moral contrast to civilian sultanistic or personalistic military dictatorships they opposed. Viewed through traditional gender stereotypes, female leaders were not considered as threatening to potential rivals, making it easier to unite the opposition. Belonging to the “weaker sex” and stressing non-violence, they possessed what Václav Havel has called “the power of the powerless.”84 Dictators’ ungentlemanly attacks on their female opponents only made them appear heartless. Female leaders received not only enthusiastic support in their own countries, but were also celebrated by the foreign press, despite their lack of policy specifics. Women could lead victorious democratic revolutions because they occupied the moral high ground. Ironically, the same qualities that enabled women to lead successful antidictatorship struggles in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines also contributed to the difficulties of consolidating democracy in these countries. Women should reign, not rule, claimed male rivals, who often tried to topple their regime. Efforts to gain “justice” for male martyrs by their widows and daughters also impeded democratic consolidation as opponents accused them of using high political office to wreak familial revenge. But the greatest loss of legitimacy resulted from corruption allegations against female leaders who had promised principled rule. Once praised for leading a moral cause against tyranny, they were accused (not always unfairly) of governing in the interest of their family dynasty.

The East German “Wende” as a democratic revolution 51

3

The East German “Wende” as a democratic revolution

It is revealing that the East German democratic revolution of 1989 is now commonly referred to in German as “die Wende” (the turning point). Ironically, the phrase was coined by Egon Krenz – the short-term successor to the hard-line ruler Erich Honecker – in his inaugural speech in October 1989.1 This phrase had been used earlier in West Germany by then newly elected Chancellor Helmut Kohl to describe the changes his government promised to bring about. Krenz’s choice of the word thus reflected his limited reformist aims as the new leader of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Until the fall of the Wall on November 9, the East German popular uprising was still widely referred to as the “peaceful revolution” or, somewhat ironically, as the “November revolution.”2 Yet in the aftermath of the opening of the borders, and with the resulting rush towards unification, Krenz’s tepid term dominated the popular discourse even as his government was overwhelmed by the revolutionary course of events.3 The rush to reunification angered many German intellectuals, eastern and western alike. The writer Günter Grass – later to become a Nobel Prize winner – openly disapproved of German unification.4 Although his position was extreme, it reflected widespread unease in the intellectual circles with a popular movement that combined national with democratic aims. A more common complaint was that unification took place via “annexation” (which polemically recalled the German “Anschluß” with Austria in 1936). Rather than writing a new constitution and creating a new state, East Germany joined with the Federal Republic under the rules of the Grundgesetz (Basic Law) and thus adopted the prevailing political, social, and economic structures of West Germany. Leading East German writers Christa Wolf and Stefan Heym had urged the “masses” not to throw away the ideals and accomplishments of socialism in the GDR in favor of Western consumer goods, an argument also often heard in West Germany as well. This led to charges of hypocrisy because these writers had enjoyed a relatively prosperous life under a “false socialism.”5 It also appeared unlikely that Western intellectuals would sacrifice their “creature comforts” for such a socialist cause.6 In addition, this anti-consumerist view (symbolized by East Germans’ post-Wall obsession with bananas which had been rare in GDR days) also overlooked the overtly political aims of the revolution: opinion polls showed East Germans desired political freedom as much as economic prosperity.7

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Most poignantly, many of the best known “revolutionaries” in the former GDR began questioning whether they had really led a revolution at all. Leaders of the Bürgerbewegung (civic movement) spoke instead of a “failed” revolution that had been “hijacked” by crowds demanding unification, thus having “deflected” or even “aborted” the original aims of democratic socialism within a reformed GDR.8 The call for German reunification, which dominated the political agenda after the Wall’s fall (the so called “Wende in der Wende”), spelled the end of the civic movement leaders’ hopes for a “third way” between state socialism and liberal capitalism. This supposed change in the aims of the demonstrators led several civic movement leaders to criticize the fall of the Wall itself. For example, Bärbel Bohley, the co-founder of the Neues Forum (New Forum), publicly criticized the Krenz regime’s ineptness in “prematurely” opening the Wall.9 Friedrich Schorlemmer, from the opposition group Democracy Now, insisted “the Wall should stay for a while.”10 The official statement of the New Forum shared the fear that the “masses,” if not provided with an anti-fascist, socialist alternative, might abandon the GDR and become “rent slaves” in West Germany.11 The Vereinigte Linke (United Left), another opposition group, was quite explicit: “We favor a controlled opening of the Wall, but are against tearing it down.”12 This explains why civic movement leaders saw the East German uprising as merely a “Wende” – although the revolt that brought down the Wall led to unification and involved enormous economic, social, and political change. For the movement’s leaders, the East German rebellion was less than a revolution because it did not lead to the realization of their socialist reformist ideals. They shared a view similar to that prevalent in academic theories of revolution, discussed in the introduction. Civic movement activists claimed that a popular uprising that strives for parliamentary democracy (civic movement activists advocated “Basisdemokratie,” or “grass roots democracy”) and capitalism is innately conservative and thus cannot be considered “revolutionary.” Real revolutions are socialist, not capitalist, introducing some form of “direct,” not parliamentary, democracy. But the term “Wende” was preferred not just by the German intellectual left and the East German civic movement, who saw the uprising in the GDR as failing to live up to its original aims. It also found acceptance among conservative West German politicians who feared a revolution would be uncontrollable. This corresponds closely to the anxiety implicit in much of the democratization literature that revolutions inevitably lead to radicalization, thus undermining a transition to democracy (a view also considered in the introductory chapter). Writing shortly after the East German uprising, a leading Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician, Wolfgang Schäuble, argued along these lines: Revolutions, as history shows, accelerate, becoming more powerful and bringing down everything with them like an avalanche. The German revolution was, viewed this way, not a real revolution. And that was a good thing – in the interest of unification.13

The East German “Wende” as a democratic revolution 53 Schäuble argues that the West German government saved the “Wende” from becoming a revolution by diverting it onto a path of diplomatic negotiation and away from further mass mobilization. The parallels to the Spanish-style “pacting” tradition of democratization here are striking. There is no doubt that beginning with Helmut Kohl’s famous ten point plan for unification in November 1989 through to the negotiation of the terms of unity with the Soviet Union and the Western allies in mid-1990 (the so called “two plus four” plan), the West German government led the way to German unification. Schäuble acknowledges the importance of popular protest in weakening the East German regime to the point of collapse. But he suggests the consequences of this regime breakdown in the GDR could have been catastrophic had the West German government not intervened so effectively, shifting decision making from the streets to diplomatic channels. East Germans brought about a “Wende” which then allowed West Germany’s leaders to reunify the country. But had there been a “real” revolution, warns Schäuble, “unification would not have been achieved.”14 In order to judge whether the “Wende” was really a revolution, it must be asked who the real revolutionaries were. Although critical of the regime, most civic movement leaders remained committed to the ideology of anti-fascism, which tied them to the GDR as a state. Most cultural elites never opposed the regime, practicing at most “semi-opposition.” Even the civic movement only criticized the regime within the constraints of anti-fascist discourse (revealingly, civic movement leaders rejected the label “opposition”). Thus, there was no leader of the East German civic movement who enjoyed widespread popularity because of anti-communist dissidence and a pro-unification stance (the “why no Havel?” question). While civic movement leaders were loyal to East Germany, average East Germans favored both regime-change and unification with West Germany. Applying Alfred Hirschman’s theory of “exit, voice, and loyalty,” it will be suggested that “exit” drove “voice”: would-be emigrants started the protests, mass emigration ignited further demonstrations, and demands for unification were the culmination of the revolution. But it must still be explained why East Germans rebelled in the first place. Most East Germans were hostile to the GDR regime that they compared unfavorably with the Federal Republic, both politically and economically. Dissatisfaction alone, however, does not explain the timing of the revolution. Although Gorbachev’s reforms raised hopes for a transformation within East Germany, the Sozialistische Einheitspartei (SED) regime thwarted these heightened expectations. East Germans had to rebel if change was to take place. The East German revolution combined a democratic transition with national unification. West German politicians helped achieve these goals. But it was the rebellious East Germans who had set them from the start.

Who were the real revolutionaries? Despite the undisputed courage of civic movement leaders, it is questionable how revolutionary they really were. While they opposed the abuses of the state socialist

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regime, they were not anti-communist nor were they opposed to the existence of the GDR as a separate German state. In East European comparative perspective they remained revisionists, rather than becoming dissidents. The crushing of the Prague Spring by Soviet tanks in 1968 had convinced many leading East European oppositionists – including Adam Michnik, Václav Havel, and Gyorgi Konrad – that communism was unreformable. This view contrasts with that of the longtime East German civic movement leader Robert Havemann, who argued after the failure of 1968 in Czechoslovakia that the experiment of reform communism should be tried until it finally succeeded.15 Far from discrediting revisionism as it had done in Czechoslovakia, the Prague Spring became the model for opposition activity in the GDR.16 Turning away from the socialism–capitalism dichotomy, Havel and other East European dissidents saw a battle between totalitarianism and democracy. East German oppositionists called for giving socialism a “human face,” but remained skeptical about capitalism and parliamentary democracy. How can this lack of dissidence in the GDR civic movement be explained? Although they criticized the failings of an unbending dictatorship, the civic movement leaders shared the regime’s commitment to anti-fascism. Anti-fascism tied the SED and its civic movement opponents closer together in their defense of the continued existence of East Germany than it did the civic leaders to the rebellious population they claimed to represent during the 1989 revolution. To understand the civic movement’s political views, the character of official anti-fascism in the GDR must be briefly explored. In no other East bloc country did anti-fascism play such an important role in legitimating communist rule as in East Germany. Whereas most Eastern Europeans were haunted by the legacy of collaboration with fascism, Germans had to face the horrible reality that they lived in the “land of the perpetrators” (“Das Land der Täter”). The thesis that fascism was the inevitable result of the capitalist economic system helped lift the burden of German guilt by generalizing the blame for the Nazi past. While the Federal Republic was portrayed as a proto-fascist, capitalist state which felt no compunction about sheltering ex-Nazis, the GDR leadership felt it could safely enlist all who were loyal to the state in the anti-fascist project of socialism. Jürgen Danyel has described this “symbiosis of anti-fascist legitimation and integrative policy” as a “Schlußstrich-Mentalität” in which a line is drawn at the end of the Nazi period allowing all those willing to follow the “guidance” of the communist party a chance to participate in a socialist future.17 More general theories of the rise of Nazism were rejected as a “bourgeois” myth. Instead, the SED advocated a two-track view of Germany’s past in which “progressives” continually fought reactionaries, until the former finally triumphed with the creation of the GDR.18 This policy of absolution was taken so far as to make those East Germans who had shown loyalty to the new socialist state – good anti-fascists they – into victims, not perpetrators of the Nazi period. This view was codified by Stalin in October 1949 when he congratulated East Germans on the founding of their new state with a reminder that it was the German and Soviet peoples who had ‘suffered the most’ in the Second World War!19 East German civic movement leaders have rightly insisted on a distinction

The East German “Wende” as a democratic revolution 55 between the prescribed (verordneter) anti-fascism of the SED to justify its hold on power and an anti-fascism that is “not manipulated and instrumentalized.”20 In their samizdat publications, for example, civic movement leaders criticized the theory and practice of official anti-fascism.21 But their critique had less to do with the substance of anti-fascism – particularly the belief that fascism and capitalism are closely connected – than with the arbitrary and Machiavellian manner with which the SED applied it. It is not that this criticism of the regime was insincere – it took considerable courage to confront the communist powerholders on such a sensitive issue. However heretical the civic movement’s anti-fascism, it still placed certain limits on dissent. Christian Joppke argues that the GDR’s “myth of the good beginning … proved indestructible.” He suggests that the civic movement’s commitment to the “utopia” of anti-fascism was due to the fact that they considered it “the more adequate response to the German catastrophe.”22 This can be illustrated by the views of Robert Havemann, the GDR’s leading civic movement leader in the 1960s and 1970s. Until his death in 1982, Havemann claimed the GDR was the “better German state” because of its anti-fascist origins. Although GDR leader Erich Honecker had put him under house arrest and mistreated him in devious ways that have recently been revealed in a public trial, Havemann continued to consider him a “comrade of the anti-fascist resistance movement” as he and Honecker had sat together in a Nazi prison.23 Commitment to anti-fascism tied the cultural elite of the GDR so closely to the regime that even major literary figures forbidden to publish in the GDR offered only “in-house” criticism, which is typical of what Juan J. Linz has termed “semiopposition.”24 This meant that major artists were “missing” from the opposition. The case of Stefan Heym is one of the most interesting, as he went further than most other major artistic figures in criticizing the regime in the 1970s and 1980s, yet never denounced it openly nor left the country. His novel Schwarzenberg, published in West Germany in 1984, is an anti-fascist fantasy about a village in Germany near the Czechoslovak border that is, unintentionally, left briefly unoccupied by the Soviets and the Americans.25 During this short respite, a “genuine” anti-fascist government takes power in the area. As one of Heym’s characters says at the end of the novel, the dream of anti-fascism will survive no matter how unpleasant reality becomes. Why did anti-fascism prove so powerful among the intellegentsia but relatively powerless among the “ordinary” East Germans? 26 Cultural elites and citizen movement activists believed the GDR’s anti-fascist credentials precluded a strong sense of German national identity which also encompassed capitalist West Germany. The average East German, on the other hand, continued to identify with West Germany, not noticing, or at least not being bothered by, the way in which this contradicted the official anti-fascist faith. Claus Offe suggests that while “common” people in the GDR had an instinctive understanding of the national character of their revolt against the SED leadership, the East German civic movement refused to think in national terms.27 As Wolfgang Rüddenklau, one of the most thoughtful civic movement activists, has observed, the “national question”

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was “taboo” for the citizens’ movement in East Germany because of the Nazi past.28 Average East Germans may also have been less willing to forgive the blatant instrumentalization of official anti-fascism by the GDR-leadership than were intellectuals who continued to cling to a lofty ideal despite the messy reality.29 For most East Germans, then, national identity trumped official anti-fascism. For civic movement leaders, it was the other way around.

Why no Havel in the GDR? Heym, along with Christa Wolf, Heiner Müller, Volker Braun, Jurek Becker, Stefan Hermlin and other leading literary and intellectual figures sharply criticized the expulsion of the critical singer and close Havemann friend Wolf Biermann from the GDR in 1976. Yet none of these literary figures followed up on this initiative with bolder opposition measures. No East German Havel stepped forward. Without major figures from the intelligentsia in its ranks, the GDR opposition of the 1970s and 1980s was more a counter-cultural movement than a counterelite. The small size of the opposition distinguished the GDR from Poland, and to a lesser extent Hungary, but not from Czechoslovakia. In the last country, hardline rule after the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 had reduced the opposition to a size comparable to East Germany’s. The Ministry of State Security (Stasi) estimated that there were 2,500 people in the GDR involved in opposition activities as of June 1989, with 60 belonging to the “hard core” (“harter Kern”). 30 The Czechoslovak secret service placed the number of active oppositionists in Czechoslovakia as late as 1989 at only 500 people, with a leadership of about 60 individuals.31 (The figure is somewhat higher if we consider the 1,883 people who had signed the “Charter 77” opposition human rights appeal.32) But the Czechoslovak opposition enjoyed the support of some of the best-known figures in society – both former reform communists and intellectuals/artists. The East German opposition, by contrast, consisted of little-known artists (such as Bärbel Bohley), pastors and church-goers (hardly representative in a largely atheistic society), and other outsiders. John Torpey argues that these “marginal intellectuals [of the opposition] in the GDR cultivated an isolated and, to most of their compatriots, quixotic existence.”33 Even more important than its elite cultural base, the Havel-led opposition spoke for the large majority of Czechoslovaks too scared to speak up. When the revolution broke out, Havel led a popular dissident movement aiming to remove the communist regime from power as quickly as possible.

“Exit” drives “voice” Who the real revolutionaries in East Germany were becomes evident when considering Albert Hirschman’s application of his theory of “exit, voice, and loyalty” to the uprising.34 Hirschman defines “exit” and “voice” as two contrasting responses of consumers or members of organizations to what they sense as deterioration in the quality of the goods they buy or the services

The East German “Wende” as a democratic revolution 57 and benefits they receive. Exit is the act of simply leaving generally because a better good or service or benefit is believed to be provided by another firm or organization … Voice is the act of complaining or of organizing to complain or to protest.35 Hirschman contends that emigration from the GDR to the Federal Republic initially undermined opposition protest – “exit as an antagonist of voice” as he phrases it.36 Particularly after the Wall was built in 1961, the ruling SED was able to “behead” opposition groups by exiling troublesome leaders to West Germany. But when the East German leadership lost control of “exit” as Hungary began removing its border controls in mid-1989, emigration threatened the regime’s survival. The civic movement leaders were then able to launch demonstrations (“voice”) to demand political reforms in East Germany. Hirschman argues “exit” and “voice” had become “confederates.” This formulation is not strong enough, however. “Exit” drove “voice.” Civic movement leaders, Hirschman’s “voice,” had scored points with revelations of SED manipulation of the May 1989 elections, but they were still unable to mobilize large crowds for planned demonstrations in June. Only after the flight of tens of thousands of East Germans in the summer months did anti-fascist regime critics move to form a civic movement coalition organization, the New Forum.37 Demonstrations did not begin in Berlin, where most civic movement members were based, but in Dresden and Leipzig, where groups of organized Ausreisewillige (those who want to leave) were strongest. In Dresden, where negotiations with the authorities for non-violent protest were first successfully conducted, “voice” was a direct reaction to the “battle for the train station” in the city during the night of 3–4 October 1989. Thousands of would-be “exiters” who had gathered at the station hoping to board the special trains full of East German refugees passing through from Prague clashed with policemen. In September and October in Leipzig it was actually “exit” groups who first held demonstrations. In Hirschman’s terminology, these would-be “exiters” also used “voice.” Hirschman’s analysis overlooks this point, assuming “exit” is an individual and “voice” a collective activity. But in their effort to leave the country, would-be emigrants formed “opposition” groups demanding the right of free passage.38 The demands of the Ausreisewillige (“We want out!”) in demonstrations after the Monday Peace Prayers were answered by cries of “We’re staying here!” by civic movement leaders calling for reforms in the GDR. Reports in the West German media of two antagonistic groups missed the point that the “Bleiber” (stayers) were reacting to an initiative taken by the Ausreisewillige.39

The consequences of opposition loyalty This illustrates Hirschman’s argument about the consequences of “loyalty” (to the East German state): civic movement “voice” attempted to save a deteriorating organization (the GDR) from complete collapse. Although outspoken, the antiregime activists maintained what oppositionist Wolfgang Rüddenklau has called

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a “misplaced (verfehlte) loyalty” to the East German state about which “at best a few Stasi officers may have giggled.”40 Due to their commitment to reforming East German communism, most oppositionists rejected co-operation with groups who wanted to abandon it. The anti-regime but pro-GDR groups went so far as to cancel demonstrations when the “wrong” kind of activists (i.e. would-be emigrants) attended. This conflict reached its peak when a leading civic movement group refused to co-operate with would-be emigrants in a January 1988 protest.41 By opposing emigration, the opposition was siding, however unwillingly, with a regime whose authority was based on the imprisonment of an entire society. Once the mass exodus from the GDR began in fall of 1989, leading GDR artists Christa Wolf and Stefan Heym called a major rally on November 4 1989 and then began a campaign for reforms, termed “For Our Country,” to save the GDR.42 They stressed the importance of preserving East Germany as an anti-fascist, socialist alternative to the Federal Republic. They were joined in their efforts by several Berlin-based civic movement leaders as well as self-proclaimed reformers in the SED and affiliated bloc parties. Concentrated in Berlin, critical but pro-GDR artists, oppositionists, and SED reformers were trying to catch up with a dynamic begun by mass emigration and centered in the state of Saxony, where “exit” groups and “exit” chances were concentrated. From the very start, the civic movement lagged behind the dynamics of the revolution. Not only did large anti-regime demonstrations only take place after mass emigration had begun, but the millions of East Germans who took to the streets soon demanded a collective “exit” into the Federal Republic through unification. The slogan chanted at rallies changed from “We are the people!” to “We are one people!” showing that civic movement leaders’ calls for regime reform were being overwhelmed by the demonstrators’ hope for German unification. Civic movement leaders – now finally supported by the cultural elite and SED reformers – rejected this popular demand with initiatives to preserve the GDR. A look at the opinions of “exiters” already revealed the overwhelming support for unification. John Torpey reports: “a resounding 83.9 per cent of all emigrants from the GDR hoped for the accession of East German to the Federal Republic, as provided for in Article 23 of the Basic Law (the Federal Republic’s constitution): here was a clear harbinger of things to come.”43 This attitude was similar to that of the majority of Leipzigers who, as a survey by Karl-Dieter Opp and his collaborators showed, favored unification even before the events of autumn 1989.44 The “real” East German revolutionaries rejected a reformed GDR and demonstrated for unification. (Interestingly, many civic movement leaders later came to accept this position after they rejected the ideology of anti-fascism and turned their efforts to publicizing the injustices of the GDR regime.45) The real revolutionaries were exiters, wouldbe exiters, and those who demanded reunification.

Non-violence in Leipzig and Dresden The most significant contribution of the civic movement to the East German revolution should not be overlooked, however: the decisive October 9, 1989 protest

The East German “Wende” as a democratic revolution 59 in Leipzig. Up to that point, the regime had used force against protesters and seemed prepared to suppress (bloodily if necessary, as discussed in the next chapter) the rally planned on that day in Saxony’s largest city. One of the few remaining puzzles about the East German revolution is why this demonstration was peaceful.46 Claims by Egon Krenz that he countermanded orders for soldiers to shoot have been contradicted by all other major participants.47 The explanation of this nonviolent outcome involves the following factors: a) the precedent of the breakthrough of peaceful dialogue between demonstrators and local party officials in Dresden the day before; b) the size, discipline, and non-violent tactics of the estimated 70,000 Leipzig demonstrators; c) a group of three artists and intellectuals, most prominently the conductor Kurt Masur, and three lower-level party officials who together drafted a statement calling for peaceful dialogue in Leipzig; and d) indecision in the East Berlin Politburo with whom the hard-line Leipzig party leaders consulted on the evening of October 9. Instead of mass detentions and the possible use of live ammunition against protestors as planned and publicly threatened by the regime, only ten demonstrators were detained and a few demonstrators and policemen suffered minor injuries on that Schicksalstag (fateful day) in Leipzig.48 Daniel Friedheim argues that the general decline in elite legitimacy and, in particular, its sharp drop in Saxony and at lower levels of the SED, contributed to the peaceful breakthrough in Dresden and Leipzig.49 But there is no doubt that leading civic movement members, too, played a major role in setting a tone conducive to avoiding conflict with the police.50 Their commitment to active nonviolence and their repeated efforts to seek dialogue with regime officials contributed to the peaceful character of the demonstrations in Saxony. Most importantly, it was protest leaders and Protestant Church officials who devised strategies that, in cooperation with lower-level party officials, defused a confrontation with the regime at the last minute in Dresden and Leipzig.51 Without the involvement of key civic movement leaders, a bloody outcome in Saxony, which might have endangered the course of the entire East German democratic revolution, would have been much more likely. Typical of democratic revolutions, East Germans rebelled peacefully.

Why East Germans rebelled Clarifying who the revolutionaries were and why the revolution was peaceful begs the question of why East Germans rebelled at all.52 Satisfied citizens seldom rebel. Dissatisfaction is not due simply to objective deprivation, however. It arises in the context of comparison. The GDR performed better than other Eastern European countries economically.53 Yet most East Germans compared their situation to that of West Germans in the Federal Republic. Even more important than West Germany’s financial strength was its political liberty. The lack of freedom of speech and other political liberties was the chief reason East German refugees gave for leaving the GDR for the Federal Republic.54 In what has been called a “nightly emigration,” most East Germans watched West German television, which

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was much more popular than local programs.55 It has been suggested in a comparative study that among Eastern Europeans, East Germans were most dissatisfied with their regime.56 The SED had been terrified of its own people since the uprising of June 17, 1953.57 Strong popular identification with West Germany weakened the SED’s economic policies (not least through massive emigration) and made political consolidation difficult. The regime only survived by “walling in” its population. Thus, despite being relatively wealthy and stable compared to its Eastern Europe neighbors, the GDR faced an invidious comparison with the richer and freer Federal Republic. The vast majority of the people not only disliked the regime but also disapproved of East Germany as a state. In the best study of popular discontent in the GDR, Karl-Dieter Opp, Peter Voss and Christiane Gern go to great lengths to measure this popular hostility to the regime.58 They distinguish between social, economic, and political dissatisfaction.59 Social dissatisfaction – about inequality, pre-school nurseries, and educational opportunities – was relatively low. (This suggests that German unity and its discontents have much to do with the abrupt transformation of the social system of the former GDR.) Economic dissatisfaction, by contrast, was widespread and rose throughout 1989. Measured in terms of goods available in shops, dissatisfaction was 4.3 on a scale of 1 (very satisfied) to 5 (very dissatisfied). The key to understanding this high level of dissatisfaction was that most East Germans compared themselves to West Germans. While Opp and his co-authors found most GDR citizens felt their economic situation to be better than elsewhere in Eastern Europe, their survey showed that two-thirds of East Germans compared their economic situation with that of the Federal Republic of Germany.60 Political dissatisfaction reached the same high levels as economic dissatisfaction. This was measured in terms of the quality of the environment (where dissatisfaction was highest), attitudes toward the SED, opportunities for free speech, surveillance by the secret police (“popularly” known as the Stasi), and the fairness of the court system. Less than half of those surveyed claimed that they had ever identified themselves strongly with the political system of the GDR. The majority said they felt a stronger identification with West Germany.61 Although East Germans were clearly dissatisfied with the SED regime, a key challenge in explaining why they rebelled is to account for the timing of the revolution. If East Germans were so unhappy (assuming that this unhappiness did not suddenly arise in 1989), why did they not act earlier? Without doubt, revolutionary potential in East Germany increased with Gorbachev’s liberalization in the Soviet Union and democratization in Poland and Hungary. Opp and his co-authors show that reforms in the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries as well as the exodus of hundreds of thousands of East Germans through suddenly porous socialist borders were the key reasons for a sudden – and widespread – sense of revolutionary efficacy.62 The “Gorbachev factor” made the East German revolution possible.63 But Gorbachev did not intend to set off a revolt and later tried to save the GDR from collapsing because of it.64 However, great expectations of change among East Germans were disappointed by the

The East German “Wende” as a democratic revolution 61 hard-line stance of the East German SED regime. These disappointed expectations and the emigration of tens of thousands of East Germans beginning in summer 1989 explain the timing of the revolt. Without this rebellion, the beginnings of a regional wave of democratization in Eastern Europe would have literally run up against the Wall erected by hard-liners in the SED. Another difficulty of explanation is clarifying why, once the revolutionary moment has arrived, East Germans rebelled instead of “free riding.” Opp and his co-authors argue that “protest norms” and the “communitarian principle” were crucial to overcoming the temptation of leaving the risks of revolting to others.65 While this is a persuasive explanation, it does not fit within their framework. The “moral dimension” cannot supplement instrumental reasoning in rational choice theory without considerable conceptual stretching.

Why East Germans had to rebel In Poland and Hungary, reformist regimes did not stop with the political liberalization that had already taken place in the Soviet Union. They went further by undertaking a transition to democracy through negotiations with the opposition. The GDR’s leaders, by contrast, did not liberalize, much less democratize. In Poland and Hungary, reform efforts could be legitimated through national appeals. These nationally legitimized communist regimes claimed to be doing the most they could for their populations given their countries’ forcible integration in the Soviet bloc. By contrast, the East German regime stuck to hard-line rule despite reforms in other Eastern European countries. The GDR was a “frozen” post-totalitarian regime, while post-totalitarianism matured in Poland and Hungary (a point discussed in more detail in the next chapter).66 Post-totalitarianism is a regime type that follows after the end of totalitarianism. It is neither totalitarian nor authoritarian.67 It is still shaped in its form by totalitarianism (particularly in terms of an elaborate ideology, Marxist– Leninism) which distinguishes it from authoritarianism. But it no longer has as the substance of totalitarianism in terms of ideology (which is increasingly hollowed out in terms of influence), leadership (that becomes collective), pluralism (as small opposition circles are formed), and terror (which declines after the end of Stalinism).68 Steven Saxonberg speaks in this context of “pragmatic acceptance” of communist rule rather than legitimacy.69 Poland and Hungary had “positive” pragmatic acceptance based on their willingness to undertake as many reforms as the Soviets allowed. Gorbachev’s rise to power led them to turn from liberalization to democratization to maintain their acceptance as reformers among their own population. In the GDR and Czechoslovakia, by contrast, hard-line regimes had kept popular expectations of reforms low with their strict adherence to orthodoxy. But Gorbachev’s reforms created great expectations for change among ordinary East Germans who were bitterly disappointed by continued hard-line policies, as secret polls conducted by the regime documented.70 Yet as another survey showed, ideological change in the Soviet Union also undermined the SED’s internal party legitimation.71

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East Germany’s “stateness” problem meant that efforts to undertake economic reforms or political liberalization raised the issue of the Wall. Any such changes risked raising the issue of the population’s imprisonment to keep them from fleeing for West Germany. This made the regime particularly vulnerable when Gorbachev raised hopes for reform from outside the GDR. The GDR failed in what theorists of the “developing” world have called “nation building.” The SED began (and ended) as an organization traumatized both by Soviet attempts to “trade off” the GDR for concessions from the Federal Republic (the so-called Stalin note of 1952) and then popular calls for unification in the course of the 1953 revolt. Along with demands for lowering work norms, demonstrators in the nation-wide June 1953 protests also called for democratization and national unification.72 The East German regime’s greatest successes – political consolidation, economic growth, and diplomatic recognition – came after the “national question” appeared to have been closed off by the Wall in the 1960s. However, the large crowds and spontaneous ovations West German Chancellor Willy Brandt received on his visit to East Germany in 1970, despite efforts by the SED regime to keep him away from the general population, showed the persistence of such identification with West Germany even after the building of the Wall. West Germany’s Ostpolitik – which raised the danger of increased contacts and identification with West Germany – led to a full-blown attempt to create a separate GDR identity. (One of the most absurd aspects of this policy was a ban on singing the GDR national anthem – it was to be listened to wordlessly because the text made mention of German unification.) A policy of Abgrenzung (delimitation) from the Federal Republic was practiced, which included a massive expansion of the Stasi. The first official act by the GDR leadership rejecting Gorbachev-style reforms in the late 1980s was the banning the German-language version of the Soviet magazine Sputnik after an article appeared which claimed that there was no GDR identity, “only a German one”!73 The failure of economic reform (the “New Economic System”) in the 1960s was due to many factors including fear of raising worker norms after the 1953 uprising, resistance by SED bureaucrats to new, unfamiliar procedures, and Walter Ulbricht’s impatience to catch up economically with the West Germany as soon as possible.74 The attempt to introduce a real pricing system and give enterprises more autonomy, begun in the early 1960s, had been stopped by the middle of that decade. The chief economic reformer committed suicide in 1965, while one of Ulbricht’s most important allies, Anton Ackermann, wrote to the SED leader in 1968 arguing against the assumptions of the (failed) reforms. He suggested that such reform efforts were not only fruitless, but also dangerous, because they raised the comparison with West Germany which would not be favorable to East Germany.75 Shortly before the collapse of the GDR, Otto Reinhold, the Rector of the Central Committee’s Academy of Sciences and one of the country’s chief ideologists, warned that East Germany was “conceivable only as an anti-fascist, as a socialist alternative to the Federal Republic.” He predicted that reforms would undercut this reason of state and lead to the GDR’s absorption in the

The East German “Wende” as a democratic revolution 63 Federal Republic.76 In short, the SED believed the only possible GDR was a hard-line, “anti-fascist” one. Reform communism with an emphasis on national identity as practiced by Gomu$ka in Poland or Kadar in Hungary was impossible in the GDR. In the GDR, the state’s self-preservation did not correspond with the national interest as it was interpreted by most East Germans. Ulrich Beck has formulated this difference in the following way: “Poland minus communism is Poland: but the German Democratic Republic minus communism is – the Federal Republic.”77 In order for a democratic transition, and for German unification, to take place, a revolution was necessary. East Germans had to rebel both to overthrow a hard-line regime and to abolish an unloved state.

Conclusion The “Wende” should be understood as a revolution because its aims and outcome were revolutionary. The “real” revolutionaries were not civic movement leaders demanding a better GDR. Rather, they were the majority of East Germans who wanted democracy and unification, which they tried to achieve either through emigration (“exit”), or protest (“voice”), or both. The major achievement of the civic movement was their role in keeping the revolution peaceful. East Germans rebelled because they were dissatisfied, a dissatisfaction intensified by invidious comparisons with West Germany, both economic and political. The timing of the revolt is explained by the rejection by the SED leadership of Gorbachev’s reforms that had raised popular expectations. Although made possible by Gorbachev’s liberalization, the Soviet leadership did not support the rebellion and initially tried to save the GDR as a reform-communist state and slow German reunification. The East German revolution was necessary if the East-Europeanwide democratization wave of 1989 was continue in the face of the resistance of hard-liners in East Germany and later in Czechoslovakia and Romania. Far from needing to “contain” a revolution threatened by radicalization, the West German government helped achieve revolutionary East Germans’ goals: democratization and unification. The East German democratic revolution did not lead immediately to the promised land of democracy and prosperity. Like democratic revolutions elsewhere, disillusionment followed a brief period of popular mobilization, as decisions were no longer made directly on the streets of East Germany but in the German Bundestag in Bonn (and later Berlin). The claim about “Unmut im Osten” (unhappiness in the East) is based on the fact that popular expectations, always high after a democratic revolution, were particularly great for Eastern Germans as they expected to achieve the living standards of West Germany, with which they had so long compared themselves, quickly. By the mid-1990s, three-quarters of East Germans were reporting marked economic improvement. But they remained critical of their condition compared to western Germany. It helped little that, in comparison to other East Europeans, East Germans were in a privileged position through unification with a wealthy western country.78

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Politically, eastern Germans quickly adopted remarkably similarly positive values toward parliamentary democracy as western Germans.79 If the voters for the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) are excluded, political culture in this regard is almost identical. (The critical evaluation of the Federal Republic by PDS voters may in part be explained by their party’s lack of a real chance to achieve national political power, unlike former communists elsewhere in Eastern Europe.) Even though the euphoria of the East German revolution has subsided, its achievement – the peaceful and democratic unification of Germany – should not be underestimated.

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To shoot or not to shoot China and Eastern Europe

Democratic revolutionary movements in China, Czechoslovakia, and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) started similarly: as non-violent, mass-based protests against hard-line regimes. Yet less than a decade and a half later the massacre at Tiananmen Square in China and the triumphant revolutions in Eastern Europe appear to have little left in common. The subsequent direction of these countries could hardly have been more different. After ordering the army to shoot peaceful protesters, China’s communist rulers executed or imprisoned thousands of democratic activists, while forcing others underground or into exile. In Czechoslovakia and East Germany, the order to fire at unarmed demonstrators never came, and the communist regimes collapsed. Neither country exists anymore, but their territorial remnants have democratized.1 The Eastern European democratizations are often seen as “one single snowball,” as Adam Przeworski has phrased it.2 Differences between negotiated transitions in Poland and Hungary and revolutionary situations in East Germany and Czechoslovakia have been minimized, and the possibility of bloody repression in the latter two countries at the time has been largely ignored. Democracy in Eastern Europe is instead viewed as the inevitable result of the political avalanche Gorbachev’s liberalization policies unleashed in the Soviet bloc.3 Because Deng was not a political liberalizer like Gorbachev, the suppression of the Chinese democracy movement is seen as equally predetermined in a non-democratic direction. No Gorbachev, no democracy. Yet China did not have the only hard-line communist leadership: Czechoslovakia’s and East Germany’s were equally unyielding despite Gorbachev’s hints that they should undertake reform. It is easy to forget how widespread the fear was that the East German and Czechoslovakian protesters would suffer the same fate as the Chinese student demonstrators. Such Angst was deliberately cultivated by the GDR regime, which had nothing but praise for the Chinese government’s defeat of “counterrevolution.”4 Erich Honecker sent nearly a messenger a month to China while other Politburo members echoed the message at home. Opposition leaders and ordinary demonstrators took these threats seriously.5 On October 9, 1989, the Schicksalstag (fateful day) in Leipzig, where tens of thousands were preparing to peacefully demonstrate against the regime, Honecker welcomed Chinese Deputy Premier Yao Yilin to East Berlin and lauded the crushing of protests in Tiananmen Square.

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Another East German Politburo member warned two Protestant Church officials that Beijing was far away from Berlin “only geographically.” In Leipzig itself, in addition to the regular police, the workers’ militia and the secret police (Stasi), 28 companies of mobile police with 80 conscripts each were mobilized. This last group, minus the purged recruits who were considered politically unreliable, was briefed by political officers. “Comrades, from today on it’s class war … Today it will be decided, either them or us. So be class watchful. If sticks aren’t good enough, use firearms. [If children are in the crowd, then] too bad for them. We have pistols, and we don’t have them for nothing.”6 Extra blood plasma was allocated to Leipzig hospitals, and this information was spread to demonstrators with generous allusions to the Tiananmen Square massacre. Similarly, in Czechoslovakia several members of the Central Committee in the Milos Jakes regime “toyed with the idea of a ‘Chinese solution’ … [Using] armed force was seriously contemplated in the first week” of the protests beginning November 17, 1989.7 Protesters were understandably worried about being shot, particularly after the brutal dispersion of the November 17 student demonstration. Why events in Berlin or Prague did not end like those in Beijing remains one of the most important puzzles of the revolutionary year 1989. Yet the number of would-be puzzle-solvers is small. Cultural differences are often considered too great to make such a comparison fruitful. Non-democratic leaders in Singapore, Malaysia, and China propagated a cultural relativist position that western democracy is inappropriate in Asian countries.8 Similarly, a prominent US scholar points to a “clash of civilizations” (discussed in Chapter 6). The successful democratization of the former GDR and the earlier success of West German democracy have laid to rest arguments about “Red Prussians” in East Berlin and “Chancellor democracy” in Bonn, not to mention the inherently authoritarian character of Germans in general.9 Despite Taiwan’s democratization, similar stereotypes about the intrinsic authoritarianism of Chinese culture have yet to be abandoned.10 Such culturalist arguments, with their essentialization of culture and “orientalist” perspective (or “reverse” orientalism), are consciously ignored here.11 Scholars who have considered why the Chinese shot and Eastern Europeans did not have offered four answers: party legitimacy, societal modernization, leadership behavior, and opposition strategies. Although each explanation makes an important contribution, they all neglect the common regime type in China and Eastern Europe in 1989 and variations among subtypes. These regimes were posttotalitarian, but there was an important difference between China’s early and East Germany’s and Czechoslovakia’s later and “frozen” forms. In addition, the Romanian case, in which the regime shot but still collapsed, will be briefly considered at the end of the chapter.

Party legitimacy Gerald Segal and John Phipps ask what motivates communist armies to defend their parties against popular protests.12 They argue that the military in countries that experienced an internal revolutionary struggle remains loyal to the communist party

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because the indigenous army fought its way to power in the first place. Such fighting helps enhance the sense of nationalism surrounding the armed forces and the revolution. The armed forces also fight if it is clear that external powers with controlling influence are very keen that they do so … The East Europeans, perhaps because they were installed in power by the Soviet Union, lost confidence in their right to rule [after Gorbachev’s reforms]. It was undoubtedly true that the depth of the crisis of legitimacy in Eastern Europe was far deeper than in the Chinese case. It should be clear … that a vital part of the decisionmaking process concerned the attitude of the Soviet Union. In China there was no outside arbiter, but in Eastern Europe the opinion of the Soviet Union was crucial … In 1989, the rulers in Moscow were reformers embarrassed by their reconstructed allies in Eastern Europe. It is inconceivable that the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989 could have taken place without Soviet approval, or at least benevolent neutrality.13 Segal and Phipps are concerned with elite legitimacy. Different from mass legitimacy emphasized by Max Weber in his analysis of the forms of domination, elite legitimacy concerns the loyalty of the regime staff.14 T.H. Rigby and Ferenc Fehér have argued that, “[e]ven where … [mass] legitimacy plays little or no part in the relationship between rulers and subjects, the mode of legitimation retains its significance as the basis for the relationship of authority between rulers and the administrative staff.”15 Maria Marcus has termed this internal legitimation of communist regimes despite the lack of mass support “legitimation from the top.”16 Following this argument, Giuseppe di Palma has suggested that while a selfproclaimed “‘virtuous regime’ can live without popular support … it can hardly live when it no longer believes in its own virtue.”17 Daniel Friedheim, in his study of East German security elites, provides data in support of the contention that externally-dependent regimes lost internal legitimation after Gorbachev’s rise to power. His survey of members of “secret crisis teams” – party leaders, civilian state officials, and security agency officers – reveals an abrupt erosion of previously near-universal support within the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) for the party’s goals after the rejection of Gorbachev’s reformist course.18 Friedheim suggests that a “unified, ossified leadership” in East Germany using “pervasive repression” and facing “unorganized opposition” long enjoyed a facade of stability. But when “hegemonic signals” from Moscow changed, Saxony security elites equivocated and undertook unauthorized dialogue with the opposition. This initially peripheral “internal regime rebellion” quickly spread to top party levels and East Berlin, leading to general collapse.19 Many SED officials no longer believed in their party’s legitimacy while the loyalty of their military apparatus became doubtful. Though lacking such systematic data, Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan make a similar argument about Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovak leaders were nervous and confused after Gorbachev’s rise to power, particularly as Gorbachev was demanding that the 1968 intervention, the raison d’être of Czechoslovak hard-liners, be denounced. Increasingly doubting their own right to rule, they quickly lost control

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over and the loyalty of the security apparatus when demonstrations and strikes began in mid-November 1989.20 With its “home-grown” legitimacy, by contrast, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was able to survive crisis in 1989 because it retained the belief in its own “virtue,” and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) remained loyal and obeyed orders to shoot.21 Unlike in the Soviet satellites of East Germany and Czechoslovakia, the geo-strategically and ideologically independent Chinese party elite retained its “legitimation from the top.” In a crisis situation, a self-confident party retained power that grew out of the barrels of the PLA’s guns. Yet Segal’s and Phipps’s home-grown hypothesis seems less persuasive now than when it was published in 1990. Such indigenous legitimacy was not sufficient to save Gorbachev’s rule in the Soviet Union in 1991. His regime did not collapse in the face of a civilian revolutionary challenge, but rather after a failed coup attempt within its own ranks.22 The situation was thus different from both Eastern Europe and China in 1989. But the communist parties in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and East Germany all suffered a severe decline in elite legitimacy. In the Soviet Union in August 1991, the standing of the party had declined so far that a large part of the security apparatus disobeyed Gorbachev, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and military head. While external dependency may well make a communist regime more prone to collapse during crisis, the independence and national pride a party derives from its revolutionary past is no guarantee of military loyalty, as the experience of the Soviet Union shows. It is necessary to understand better the general causes of declining party legitimacy in communist regimes, in indigenous and externally-dependent ones alike.

Societal modernization Modernization theory claims that the more modern societies of Eastern Europe had stronger civil societies that demanded democracy more effectively than was possible in “backward” China. Minxin Pei is the most influential exponent of this position.23 The explicit proposition here is that the likelihood and form of societal takeover may be significantly influenced by a country’s social mobilizational profile, which includes, primarily, level of education, urbanization, and structure of the labor force. When a given country’s social mobilization profile corresponds closely to that of societies on the eve of the inauguration of democratic regimes (high rates of urbanization and literacy), a democratic breakthrough is more likely. When a country’s social mobilization profile shows no significant deviation from that of societies during the early stages of development, a democratic breakthrough may be less likely.24 Yet a particular regime type can create conditions that favor political mobilization or impose constraints that compel demobilization. Such regime influence can be independent of the level of modernization in society. Social mobilization must be

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distinguished from the ability to mobilize politically. For example, it can be argued that there is less independent political activity in Singapore, which has one of the world’s highest per capita incomes, than in Malawi, which has one of the lowest.25 Although Mao’s totalitarian regime confronted a relatively backward society, other totalitarian regimes, particularly Nazi Germany, were quite modern, yet still banned independent political mobilization. The level of socio-economic modernization under certain regime types tells little about potential political mobilization. Pei attempts to circumvent this problem by arguing that the degree of societal modernization becomes relevant only once an “initial opening” by a reformist leadership is undertaken.26 He uses this phrase to encompass both the chiefly economic reforms that began in 1979 in China and the primarily political reforms launched by Gorbachev in 1986 in the Soviet Union. But there were important differences in the character of civil societies of immediate post-Mao China and the Soviet Union at the time Gorbachev took power. In fact, Deng’s China was more like the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death than just before glasnost more than 30 years later. The Soviet regime under Brezhnev, like the Czechoslovakian and the East German regimes up to the end of 1989, was hard-line. But a “parallel culture” of dissent had nonetheless been firmly established. Persecution of oppositionists continued, but organized opposition, unthinkable before Stalin’s death, existed. In other words, the possibility for political mobilization had just begun in China in the late 1970s while it had existed for over three decades in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union when Gorbachev came to power. It is particularly important to focus on urban areas, where popular protests in China and Eastern Europe were based in 1989. In China, the relative size of the industrial workforce was small compared to the peasantry; polls show that peasants were less democratic than the workers.27 Mark Selden argues that one key to explaining the suppression of the Tiananmen Square movement was urban isolation. Despite four decades of rapid industrialization, “China’s cities remain isolated if dynamic islands of power and privilege within a predominantly agrarian nation.”28 Only about 20 per cent of China’s population was urban, compared with nearly 80 per cent in Czechoslovakia and East Germany.29 Still, while surrounded by the countryside, China’s workers were numerous. According to Chinese national statistics, there were 105 million workers in 1988, 70 per cent of the non-agricultural labor force (there were only two million students).30 Moreover, as shown in the introduction, the global experience of recent democratic revolutions suggests that even in overwhelmingly rural societies successful popular uprisings can be city-based, or even confined to the capital city (e.g. Manila in 1986, Kathmandu in 1990, Dhaka in 1991). However, although a successful urban-based uprising was conceivable in China, it is essential to consider variations in communist regimes to show how far Chinese society could be mobilized, compared to Eastern Europe in 1989.

Leadership behavior Chinese communists’ resort to violent repression is also explained by Deng Xiaoping’s decisive leadership, compared to the paralysis of the East German and

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Czechoslovakian leaders. A split in the Chinese Politburo between reformers and hard-liners explains communist party vacillation between harsh condemnation and conciliatory statements from April to mid-May, by which time the number of daily demonstrators on Tiananmen Square was over 100,000.31 Protesters were able to stop soldiers from enforcing martial law after it was declared on May 19. At this point, Deng stepped in to put an end to the internal disarray, rallied the old guard, and purged reformists in the party while insuring military obedience. As Marc Blecher argues: Deng Xiaoping now took decisive action. Having shrewdly retained the position of Chair of the Party Military Affairs Commission, he was able to call an emergency meeting of the regional military commanders in the central city of Wuhan, far from the madding crowd in Beijing. Zhao Ziyang [the chief CCP reformer] was sacked as Party General Secretary on 24 May … With Zhao out of the way and the infuriated hard-line leadership fully in charge, the military crackdown got under way on the night of 3–4 June. The death toll could never be ascertained, but the best estimates are around a thousand.32 However straightforward this argument may appear in the Chinese context (it is implicitly strengthened by the popular image of Deng as a wily operator), it encounters difficulties when viewed comparatively. This is not to say that Deng’s leadership was not important. Had he not so successfully rallied the party and troops, the crackdown might not have occurred, or at least not so soon, or perhaps might not have been successful. But no such unifying leadership qualities were necessary in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Honecker and Jakes enjoyed united parties, yet leadership in these Eastern European countries was politically paralyzed by the mass protests that broke out in 1989. While the “infuriated hard-line leadership” in China moved decisively to suppress the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, a surely equally disconcerted East German and Czechoslovak leadership engaged in what Steven Saxonberg describes as procrastination, bolstering (continuing policies that were not working), and then shifting responsibility.33 Unless we subscribe to the “great man” view of history, leadership qualities alone cannot explain why Eastern Europeans leaders fiddled while Deng ordered his troops to fire. Comparison with the Eastern European cases suggests that even a leader of Deng’s caliber might not have been able to save the day for the hard-liners under more difficult circumstances. It is necessary to specify the conditions under which decisions are made.

Opposition strategies It has often been claimed that the Chinese student movement made a number of errors that contributed to its defeat. In Eastern Europe, by contrast, the opposition is said to have skillfully guided the revolution down a peaceful path that ended in democratic transition. Tang Tsou argues that an increasingly radicalized student leadership in China missed the chance to accept a tacit compromise offered by the

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reformist general secretary of the communist party, Zhao Ziyang.34 Zhao clearly distanced himself in a speech before the students from the hard party line, which was expressed in an April 26 People’s Daily editorial condemning the student demonstrations. But student leaders continued to escalate the demonstrations instead of evacuating Tiananmen Square as Zhao had requested. Student leaders who showed signs of moderation were removed by more radical students. “It was the radical students as a group who determined not only the fate of the student movement but also the fate of reformers like Zhao …”35 Tsou analyses the impact of the crucial hunger strike begun on May 13 as follows: That expressive act gave the student movement a focal point that brought about an unprecedented outpouring of sympathy from the citizens of Beijing, young and old, rich and poor, highly educated and semi-literate. It pushed the student movement to a new height. In terms of tactics it was a great success, but in terms of strategy it was a serious mistake, for it meant that, instead of de-escalating the conflict with the government after Zhao had taken serious political risks to offer what must be considered to have been significant concessions, the students escalated it to a new level … [The student movement became] arrogant … as it marched determinedly toward failure.36 As with Deng’s leadership, however true these criticisms of student leaders’ behavior ring in the Chinese context (and many an ex-student leader has added his or her own mea culpa), they do not hold up well comparatively. In both East Germany and Czechoslovakia, organized opposition was small, and its non-violent strategy was similar to that of the students in China. In his analysis of the students’ non-violent strategy, Timothy Brook argues that these protests long drew a “magic circle” around the protesters that made a military crackdown difficult in China.37 It should not be forgotten that the first attempt to clear Tiananmen Square was stopped by demonstrators who blocked tanks and persuaded individual soldiers and commanders to withdraw. All the ink spilled over the blood shed at Tiananmen should not lead us to overlook the fact that the students’ strategy initially seemed effective. A very similar strategy succeeded in Eastern Europe. Tsou assumes Zhao’s discussions with student leaders reveal the possibility of compromise with the Chinese regime. Another view is that the conservative old guard was merely looking for the easiest way to end the protests.38 This would explain why they tolerated Zhao’s to attempt to get the students to clear Tiananmen Square peacefully but purged him after he failed. The leadership’s pragmatic attitude should not be mistaken for a genuine commitment to negotiation with the opposition. The old guard never wavered from its hard-line stance. It can be argued that the chief weakness of the Chinese students’ strategy was not that it was too radical but too moderate. The Chinese student leaders made only vague demands for democracy and called for reformed socialism that did not directly challenge the regime.39 This was different from the anti-communism espoused by most Eastern European dissidents, including the Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia which called for liberal democracy and a market economy.40 (But

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the Chinese students’ demands were not that dissimilar from the “revisonism” of the civic movement in East Germany, discussed in the previous chapter.) Rasma Karklins and Roger Petersen suggest that the student protesters “accepted the regime’s right to rule and focused on the need to fight corruption and introduce some political reforms.”41 Andrew Nathan has argued that the students acted as “remonstrators rather than opponents.”42 The students did not actively seek worker support that would have challenged the regime’s claim to exercise power in the name of the proletariat. Although a large number of workers did join the protests anyway, Karklins and Peterson argue that a more liberal-democratic-oriented opposition would have made more efforts to mobilize them. This might have led the size of the Tiananmen protests to reach a “tipping point” that would have caused regime collapse. 43 Instead, the numbers of demonstrators dwindled continuously after the declaration of martial law. This raises the question why the Chinese students were “revisionists” and not Eastern European-style “dissidents.”

Comparing the explanations The strengths and weaknesses of each explanation have already been commented upon. Comparing them along structural or actor-centered dimensions reveals a further problem. As structural or macro-level explanations, party legitimacy and societal modernization are “too far” from the events of 1989. They attempt a causal explanation through the elucidation of party and societal strength, respectively. But by focusing on temporally distant processes (the revolutionary or nonrevolutionary origins of the party’s rise to power) or phenomena only indirectly related to the political activity (social mobilization), they are unable to complete the causal chain to leadership behavior or opposition strategies, respectively, during the 1989 crisis. This missing link is also evident on the actor or micro level. Explanations based on leadership behavior and opposition strategies are “too near” to their subject. They analyze how hard-liners behaved and oppositionists strategized but do not explain why certain behavior or strategies succeeded or failed (see Table 4.1). Richard Snyder and James Mahoney argue that this missing variable between the macro and micro level is to be found in regime institutions; that is, regime types.44 It will be demonstrated below that the post-totalitarian regime type can strengthen the explanations individually and help link structural to actor-based ones. Anthony Giddens reminds us that structures both constrain and enable action.45 By differentiating between subtypes of post-totalitarianism, the constraining and enabling impact party legitimacy has on leadership decisiveness can be more easily grasped. Similarly, the way civil society’s ability to mobilize affects the opposition can be more accurately assessed. Despite this emphasis on structures, a significant degree of “freedom” remains at the actor-end of the causal chain. Decisive leadership becomes more or less likely, not inevitable or impossible. The chances of opposition success are improved or hampered by mobilization chances, not predetermined by them, as their own choice of strategy remains a significant part of an overall explanation.

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Table 4.1 Explanatory strengths and weaknesses

Structural (macro)

Actor (micro)

State

Society

Party legitimacy

Societal modernization

Strength: Distinguishes “home-grown” elite legitimacy in China from external dependency in Eastern Europe

Strength: Shows variations in levels of social mobilization

Weakness: Cannot explain general loss of elite support over time even by a “home-grown” party, e.g. Gorbachev’s Soviet Union

Weakness: Cannot explain political “mobilizability” through social mobilization alone

Leadership behavior

Opposition strategies

Strength: Contrasts decisive Chinese with paralyzed Eastern European leadership

Strength: Contrasts “revisionism” of Chinese students with Eastern European “dissidence”

Weakness: Cannot explain why

Weakness: Cannot explain why

Totalitarianism and “post-totalitarianism” The question “to shoot or not to shoot” is uninteresting under totalitarian rule. Dissenters are shot or at least locked away before any degree of organized opposition can be achieved. A central premise of totalitarianism theory is that these regimes’ coercive capacities are so great that political change from within is impossible. In their classic analysis of totalitarianism, Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that to be a dissenter in a totalitarian dictatorship “is an intolerable offense to the grandeur of the totalitarian enterprise and [the dissenter] must be liquidated because, according to the ideology, [the dissenter] has no place in the world the totalitarian is bent upon building.”46 They add: “In a totalitarian society opposition is prevented from developing by the organization of totalitarian terror.”47 Totalitarianism in its “purest” form eliminates all organized opposition. No regime has been fully totalitarian and opposition has never been fully crushed. Nonetheless, totalitarianism such as under Stalin’s rule in the Soviet Union or Mao’s in China has gone further than any other regime type in repressing its opponents.48 Only under “post-totalitarian” communism is organized dissent thinkable and the question whether it will be repressed or not worth posing. The end of the worst excesses in the Soviet bloc (arbitrary executions and the Gulag) made the consequences of dissent more calculable and less catastrophic. Hannah Arendt was one of the first observers to recognize this change in the Soviet Union after Stalin. What Arendt shows is that dissent was conceivable after Stalinism even if it was still dangerous.49

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The writings of Václav Havel offer the most eloquent analysis of the possibility of opposition under “post-totalitarian” communist regimes (a term Havel used).50 Havel dissected the dangers of dissent but also showed the limits of terror. Demotion at work, the loss of holidays, discrimination (particularly in higher education) against one’s children are not sanctions that can be lightly dismissed, but they are far short of concentration camps and executions. As discussed in the introduction, under post-totalitarianism, obedience to the regime was no longer commanded through ideological belief but rather through the small advantages to be gained by getting along with the powers that be. Havel’s famous description of the greengrocer who puts up a communist poster in his shop captures this outer conformity without inner conviction.51 Juan J. Linz has developed the most systematic concept of post-totalitarianism and, in collaboration with Alfred Stepan, recently elaborated it as a distinct regime type.52 They define post-totalitarianism along four dimensions: leadership, pluralism, ideology, and mobilization. The chief feature of post-totalitarianism is its collective leadership; it is both the most obvious difference from totalitarianism and the chief reason why this new regime form came into existence. Totalitarian leadership, justified by an elaborate ideological mission and unconstrained by law, is usually charismatic. But it is dangerous for those the ruler grows suspicious of, particularly for high-ranking cadres. Fearing a “permanent purge,” postStalinists in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as well as the CCP after Mao established a more bureaucratic form of collective leadership, with sharp limits on the powers of the top leader and corresponding safety guarantees for his subordinates.53 While totalitarianism attempted to abolish all plural elements in society, post-totalitarianism is characterized by limited political pluralism (termed “institutional pluralism” by one scholar of the Soviet Union54). Post-totalitarianism, as Havel showed, is highly ideological only on the surface. While the official ideological canon still exists, actual belief in it declines. Regime mobilization of society, too, is only a shadow of its former totalitarian self. It becomes ritualized and unenthusiastic. Party leaders and the “masses” go through the motions at marches, rallies and meetings without the strong commitments of old. The attempt to politicize the private sphere is abandoned. The Hungarian leader János Kádár’s slogan in the 1960s – “those who are not against us are with us” – sums up the official acceptance of such political passivity. Havel shows how the average person – again his greengrocer – might one day choose to give up “living within a lie” in order to “live within the truth” instead.55 When the circumstances prove favorable (as they did after Gorbachev’s rise to power in the Soviet Union), mass rebellion may break out against the regime and there will little resistance from powerholders lacking “any authentic conviction.”56 An explanatory problem remains, however. If totalitarianism seemed “too strong” (such regimes will always shoot), post-totalitarianism appears “too weak” (they will never fire at demonstrators). If Havel is right about the ideological hollowness of these regimes, then they should collapse once society finally rises up in protest. Since the regime did not collapse in China, it is necessary to distinguish between regime subtypes.

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Subtypes of post-totalitarianism Linz and Stepan delineate the subtypes of “early” and “frozen” post-totalitarianism. The Soviet Union after Stalin and China after Mao are examples of “early,” while Czechoslovakia and East Germany are cases of “frozen,” post-totalitarianism.57 The third subtype, “mature” post-totalitarianism, is relevant in understanding late reform communism in Hungary, Poland and Gorbachev’s Soviet Union. Unlike their reformist, mature counterparts who recognized or even negotiated with organized opposition, both early and frozen post-totalitarian regimes did consider repressing popular protest violently. The question is whether these hard-line regimes would collapse before they shot. “Early” post-totalitarianism is classified according to its timing. Its closeness to totalitarianism is its crucial characteristic. Civil society has been flattened by the totalitarian period. Many totalitarian controls remain, although they are now used more sparingly. Some dissent is unofficially tolerated, especially when it contributes to de-Stalinization or de-Maoization. Yet there are limits to such tolerance. Although there was no major organized protest in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev, the crushing of the 1956 reform government in Hungary showed the leadership’s willingness to use force against “counterrevolutionaries.” Frozen post-totalitarianism is defined by its political temperature.58 The political climate grows colder after heated experimentation is abandoned. Past reforms, primarily economic but also flirtations with political liberalization, have long been discarded and party reformers have been purged. This was most obvious in Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion that turned the Prague Spring into the long winter known as “normalization.” It was also apparent in East Germany where pro-reformist cadre had been silenced or, in the case of the leading architect of the New Economic Policy of the 1960s, had committed suicide.59 Khrushchev’s popularity, which derived largely from his post-Stalinist reforms, was replaced by the deep freeze of the Brezhnev era.

What the subtypes add to the explanations Party legitimacy The subtypes of post-totalitarianism explain why the indigenous revolutionary legitimacy of the CCP survived in early post-totalitarian China but not in frozen and mature periods of the CPSU under and after Brezhnev. Deng and others in the Chinese old guard who launched post-totalitarianism after Mao’s death were revolutionary leaders. By contrast, Brezhnev, who froze the Soviet Union’s posttotalitarian politics, was a fourth generation leader of the Soviet Union, following Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev.60As in China, the hierarchy of the Soviet bloc communist parties had become increasingly geriatric, but revolutionary glory did not compensate for age. The “gang of elders” in China, as they were disrespectfully termed by younger party members, had fought and defeated the forces of “imperialism” and “reaction” in 1949.61 These revolutionary credentials insured the old guard’s dominance during the Tiananmen crisis. Gorbachev, by contrast,

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faced a “double defection” in 1990–1 of reformers and conservatives alike.62 Lacking a comparable revolutionary network to rally the party at a time of crisis, the CPSU fragmented into warring camps, culminating in the August 1991 coup attempt that included the minister of defense and the head of the KGB. In China, such betrayal was unthinkable as “the CCP and PLA hierarchies, especially at the higher echelons of leadership, remained inextricably intertwined.”63 Although both had “home-grown” communist regimes, erosion of party legitimacy in China under early post-totalitarianism had only begun, while in the Soviet Union it was well advanced.64 Lacking indigenous legitimacy as dependents of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe suffered the most extreme ideological decay. Havel described this situation in Czechoslovakia, where cynicism and hypocrisy in both the population and the regime severely weakened ideology. But the self-justification of these hard-line European regimes eroded further when they rejected Gorbachev’s reformist course. The loss of the remaining orientation provided by the ideological motherland was devastating to party members’ belief in their own legitimacy. In East Germany, a survey of security elites revealed that only about half found Marxist-Leninist ideology was still credible by 1989.65 Although there was no clash between conservatives and reformers as in China and Gorbachev’s USSR, unity did not bring strength to hard-line communist parties in Czechoslovakia and East Germany. An additional source of party legitimacy in early post-totalitarianism is the halting of the worst excesses of totalitarianism for high-ranking cadres (Stalin’s purges or the Cultural Revolution). Rehabilitated cadres (including, of course, Deng) are particularly enthusiastic about the new order.66 The party’s collective security is assured because the hammer of totalitarian purges is no longer swung. Such security-based elite legitimation gradually declines as party members begin to take their safety for granted under later forms of post-totalitarianism. Instead, collective communist leadership becomes increasingly bureaucratized, giving the regime a technocratic veneer that is sometimes mistaken for a reformist stance.67 Early post-totalitarians also enjoy elite performance legitimacy through rapid economic growth that follows the abolition of the most irrational aspects of totalitarian planning and campaigning. Both Khrushchev and Deng focused on the economy, which had suffered under the excessive, ideologically driven policies of totalitarianism. Early post-totalitarian rulers in China enjoyed the fruits of easy economic reforms that could be undertaken merely by the lifting of rigid controls on farmers and no longer exploiting them to subsidize the cities.68 Economic growth reached “miracle” levels from 1979 to 1989.69 Although the party leadership split over economic reforms in the mid-1980s – conservatives merely wanted a more efficient planned economy while reformers argued in favor of further growth of the private sector – all factions were committed to repairing the damage caused by the Cultural Revolution. This strengthened party morale even as inflation and growing inequality contributed to popular discontent, particularly in urban areas.70 Yet as Paul Krugman pointed out in a prescient article written just before the recent Asian financial crisis, high growth rates

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were also once registered in the Soviet bloc as well, only for it later to be discovered that they rested shaky, low productivity foundations.71 Long-term economic decline in Eastern Europe sapped regime self-confidence.72 Societal modernization Upon Deng’s ascent to power, Chinese society was both socio-economically backward and politically demobilized. Mao’s state-driven industrialization strategy had failed, society was atomized, and public discourse was monopolized.73 All social groups had been profoundly transformed (although workers more than peasants).74 After years of intense ideological campaigns and state terror, an autonomous civil society had to be built from scratch. The Democracy Wall movement of 1978–9 was the first major organized opposition in China since the 1950s.75 Contacts with the outside world through travel, business deals, educational exchanges, and a more liberal (though still censored) media were just beginning, although this initial opening shocked intellectuals and students by revealing China’s backwardness and lack of societal autonomy.76 In addition, many of the old mechanisms of social control remained intact: posttotalitarian leaders still enjoyed much of the power of the old totalitarian state apparatus, even if they used it more judiciously. Crucially, after the declaration of martial law on May 19, 1989, many workers were locked up in their enterprises during the protests, while others feared the loss of their jobs, which were linked to social benefits including housing.77 In frozen post-totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe, by contrast, society was more socio-economically modernized, and the ability to mobilize politically had increased. Through Radio Free Europe in Czechoslovakia and West German television in East Germany, as well as contacts with foreigners and limited travel opportunities, substantial information about the outside world was available. Most Czechoslovakians and East Germans, like Havel’s greengrocer, were not politically active, but saw very clearly that they were “living within a lie.” Despite the increased repression that often followed the abandonment of early post-totalitarian reform efforts, a number of autonomous societal groups had become established. The 35year time span since Stalinism gave societal groups time to organize support, develop traditions and rituals, and find “niches” in which they were relatively protected.78 In response, the size of the secret police, with their network of informers, reached grotesque proportions. They kept dissident social groups under constant surveillance but could not crush them, nor could they later stop them leading a societal revolt against the regime.79 As discussed in the last chapter, the loosely organized “civic movement” in the GDR was made up largely of intellectuals and artists who found support in the Protestant Church. Since the 1953 worker-led rebellion, the regime had bent over backwards to woo the working class by easing workplace constraints. Nevertheless, the Stasi chief, Erich Mielke, reported that the crucial Leipzig demonstrations in October 1989 enjoyed strong labor support and that workers were increasingly criticizing the regime at their workplace. 80

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Despite the increased repression that accompanied normalization in Czechoslovakia after 1968, a youth counterculture developed alongside groups of dissident intellectuals, conservative Catholic critics, and purged reform communists. Charter 77 created a loose opposition alliance out of these groups that used the Helsinki human rights process to strengthen its international contacts and raise the costs of domestic regime repression.81 Such pressure from abroad helped limit open crackdowns on the opposition. In the fall of 1989, protests were led by students who enjoyed strong labor support.82 Leadership behavior Early post-totalitarianism helps us understand both why Deng faced a more divided politburo than his hard-line counterparts in Eastern Europe and why he still saved the regime in China while East European communism collapsed. In China after Mao, young reformers brought in to reform a moribund economy sat uneasily aside old orthodox communists who merely wanted to return to pre-Cultural Revolution economic planning. Such a divided leadership is typical of early post-totalitarianism, as the split between Khrushchev with his reformist allies and his conservative opponents indicates. In frozen post-totalitarianism in Eastern Europe, the failure of earlier reform efforts led to the purge of reformers, creating a united politburo by default. Although not facing internal divisions, frozen post-totalitarian leadership was hollowed out in Havel’s sense. Neither rulers nor ruled believed in the official ideology. In China, by contrast, the orthodox old guard and the military hierarchy could be rallied because they were from the same interpenetrated generational cohort in which ideology still played an important role, they valued political stability and personal safety, and they acknowledged improved economic conditions since Mao even if opposed to further “capitalist” reforms. Deng could invoke the still fresh fears of disorder caused by the Cultural Revolution while underplaying his own divergent, economic reformist aims. Opposition strategies The subtypes of post-totalitarianism help us to understand better why the Chinese student protesters were “revisionists” while Eastern European oppositionists were more likely to be dissidents. The closer the opposition is to the totalitarian past, the more likely it is to cling to socialism rather than turn to anti-communism. The Prague Spring was “revisionist” in its aims – the culmination of two decades in which critical Eastern European intellectuals had tried to rescue socialism from Stalinism by giving it a “human face.” But the “frozen” regime that followed in Czechoslovakia destroyed any hopes of a “third way” between capitalist democracy and communist socialism, turning revisionists into dissidents. Due to the ideological strength of anti-fascism in East Germany, the civic movement there remained revisionist, as discussed in Chapter 3. But they exercised little control over most ordinary East Germans who wanted to bring down the regime and bring

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about unification. Christian Joppke argues that in the German context this amounted to anti-communist dissidence.83 In China, by contrast, many influential opposition leaders were former Red Guards disillusioned with their experience during the Cultural Revolution but still influenced by many of its ideas. It is revealing that during the Tiananmen Square protests, beside from the symbol of the Goddess of Democracy, representations of Mao expressed discontent with the impact of the Communist Party’s economic policies.84 The dream of a better state socialism persisted in 1989 China. As revisionists, the Chinese student opposition did not actively try to form a Solidarno[¼-like coalition of workers and students, the CCP’s greatest nightmare.85 Student demonstrations instead took an elitist stance of calling for the return to socialist ideals and were reluctant to rally workers against the self-proclaimed party of the proletariat.

Linking the explanations The subtypes of post-totalitarianism help link macro- with micro-level explanations. The degree of party legitimacy influences the likelihood of decisive leadership. As one of the “long march” leaders with excellent military connections who had dramatically eased internal party terror through “socialist legality” and had produced high rates of economic growth, Deng enjoyed high standing within the intertwined party–army hierarchies in early post-totalitarian China. Without such support, all his maneuverings to rally the old guard and the armed forces would have been in vain. In the frozen post-totalitarianism of Czechoslovakia and the GDR in 1989, by contrast, the loss of external support after Gorbachev’s rise to power undermined party legitimacy already weakened by ideological decay and economic decline. The leadership had little self-confidence and moral authority to command the obedience of the army and other security elites, which were reluctant to use force against the demonstrators.86 In Czechoslovakia and East Germany there were few effective regime constraints to opposition “bandwagoning” once it became clear that the Soviet Union would no longer intervene to stop political change in Eastern Europe. Workers were crucial in the exponential growth of the initially student-led protests in Czechoslovakia. The opposition actively sought worker support thanks to their anti-communist dissidence in which the proletarian claims of the party were no longer taboo. (The Civic Forum even enlisted famous actors and actresses to help them win the support of factory workers.87) As a percentage of the workforce, urban labor was smaller in China than in Eastern Europe. Moreover, the ability to mobilize workers was more constrained by early post-totalitarian China than by the frozen regimes of Eastern Europe. Yet the students did not maximize the possibilities available to them. Had they built up an alliance with the workers in the early weeks of the protests, labor organizations might have been created that could have been better able to resist the crackdown on labor groups after the declaration of martial law in mid-May. Student leaders wished to stand alone to

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demand reforms from the communist regime instead of trying to bring about the end of communism at the head of a broad urban coalition.

To shoot but still collapse Before concluding this discussion, an additional query calls for consideration. Do regimes that shoot necessarily survive? The case of Romania in 1989 raises this issue because the Ceau_escu regime shot but was still overthrown by a popular uprising. As with the “to shoot or not” question, it is helpful to distinguish regime types. Linz and Stepan identify a form of communism that combines totalitarianism with sultanism (the latter term has been discussed in the introduction and Chapter 1 in greater detail). The leadership of a “totalitarian-cum-sultanistic” regime distinguishes this subtype from ideal typical totalitarianism. The Ceau_escu regime in Romania had strong dynastic tendencies: his wife, Elena, was the second most powerful person in the state, his four brothers held leading positions in the regime, and his son, Nicu, was being groomed as his successor.88 There is similar dynasticism in Cuba under Castro given the leading role of Castro’s brother Raul as defense minister and possible successor as well as speculation about the political future of Castro’s son Fidelito. Dynasticism is most apparent in North Korea, of course, where Kim Jong Il did succeed his father, Kim Il Sung, upon the latter’s death in 1994, and many other family members hold prominent positions in the ruling circle.89 The “personalization” of ideology is most extreme under totalitarianism-cumsultanism. Ceau_escu, who developed his own doctrines of Marxist-Leninism in over 160 ghost-written books, received more space in the Romanian philosophical dictionary than did the entries for Marx, Engels, and Lenin combined.90 Kim Il Sung’s “ideology” is little more than “a ten point principle of monolithic leadership” that involves but ten different ways of glorifying the “Great Leader.”91 Known as juche (self-reliance) or more accurately as “Kimilsungism,” it has replaced MarxistLeninism, the last references to which were removed from the North Korean constitution in 1992.92 In Cuba, Hans Magnus Ensensberger argues that anyone “inquiring of its ideology is invariably referred to Fidel’s speeches, whose contradictions are notorious; anyone who actually refers to them does well to take recourse to the most recent of them; for, to repeat what Fidel said a few years ago can have the most unpleasant consequences.”93 Initially, such “sultanistic” tendencies do not weaken totalitarianism or posttotalitarianism and may even strengthen it. With the death of Gheorghe GheorghiuDej in 1965, Romania became post-totalitarian, with collective leadership based on security concerns, limited political liberalism, and ideological decay. Yet through an appeal to nationalism, Ceau_escu was able to out-maneuver his potential rivals and become undisputed leader with a personality cult inspired in part by Kim Il Sung, whom he had visited in North Korea in 1971.94 Ceau_escu undertook what Mark Almond has aptly termed “anti-Soviet Stalinism” which won praise from Romanian intellectuals and foreign leaders alike while strengthening the regime vis-à-vis society.95 Opposition was dealt with brutally (leaders of a 1977 strike

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were executed, a form of terror long since abandoned in most of East Europe). The result was that Romania had the smallest number of independent civil society groups in 1989 anywhere in Eastern Europe except for similarly personalistic Albania.96 The result in Romania can be termed “sultanistic” post-totalitarianism. Why could the Ceau_escu regime be overthrown despite its attempt to violently suppress protest? Personalism corrodes totalitarianism. In Romania, family-based rule alienated a section of the communist party led by Ion Iliescu. Typical of the cycles of punishment and rehabilitation in the ruling circle under sultanism that one also finds in Cuba and North Korea, Iliescu was never fully purged, remaining on the margins of the Ceau_escu regime. There he waited for an opportune moment to strike against the Conducator. In addition, Ceau_escu’s familism undermined proclaimed nationalism (the parallels here to the Miloševi¼ regime, discussed in the next chapter, are striking). If nationalism is understood as putting the general good of the nation over all other goals, then the extravagant behavior of a familybased clique is hardly a plausible basis for nationalist appeals. This helps explain the extreme hatred toward Ceau_escu at the end of his rule. The result was a peculiar kind of post-totalitarianism: a glorified leader and extreme repression but dissent within the regime and societal hatred of the dictator. Although the precise nature of events that led to Ceau_escu’s overthrow remains uncertain, it is clear that Iliescu and his followers seized the opportunity provided by popular protests, winning support in the armed forces for their opposition to the dictatorship. While most of the military abandoned the dictator, at least part of the Securitate (really Ceau_escu’s praetorian guard) remained loyal to him, obeying his orders to shoot demonstrators. Given the balance of fire power this intra-regime rivalry created, popular protest could triumph in Romania. The regime shot after the societal uprising began, but military support for the Iliescu faction led to the fall of the dictator nonetheless. This in turn may provide insight on the future of political transition in Cuba and North Korea. Given the absence of soft-liners and ideological decay, Juan J. Lopez predicts that a transition in Cuba is likely to occur only through a popular uprising.97 While the military is unlikely to fight the people during an uprising, Castro has a large personal security corps to guard against coups and would likely defend his regime during a revolutionary situation. Similarly, in North Korea, the loyalty of top military and party officials, ensured through extravagant privileges, leaves “mid-level factory managers, young officers and engineers, and the intelligentsia” to support a popular uprising.98 Such a division between the dictators’ inner core and the outer margins of the regime in Cuba and North Korea – eerily reminiscent of the situation in Romania in 1989 – makes bloodshed likely but does not rule out a successful transition.

Conclusion In early post-totalitarian China, the CCP still enjoyed considerable internal legitimacy through the revolutionary credentials and ideological conviction of the old guard, the increased personal safety of its members, and rapid economic growth.

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The CCP faced a socio-economically backward society whose totalitarian legacy and still existent state controls (particularly in the workplace) limited the ability to mobilize it politically. These constraints on society made it more difficult for the student-led opposition to reach a tipping point in which a massive student– worker alliance would have doomed the regime. But although they demonstrated peacefully, the student activists did not do all they could to recruit the workers, in large part because of their revisionism. They demanded the reform of socialism, not the abolition of communism. Strong party legitimacy and military loyalty made it possible for Deng to unite the divided party leadership by purging the reformers and to act decisively to crush the protests. The regime pulled together during crisis. It shot. In East Germany’s and Czechoslovakia’s frozen post-totalitarianism, the loss of Soviet support further weakened party legitimacy already eroded by ideological decay and economic decline. Society, though seemingly passive, was actually both highly modernized socio-economically and capable of being mobilized politically. When the Gorbachev doctrine and the democratic transitions in Poland and Hungary provided the political opportunity, small opposition groups demanding the end of communism were able to win social support, including crucially that of workers, until a tipping point was reached and overwhelmed the regime. Lacking legitimacy and doubtful of the loyalty of their own security apparatuses, hard-line party leaderships in these two Eastern European countries became paralyzed as peaceful revolutions broke out and these regimes collapsed (see Figure 4.1). In Romania, the Ceau_escu regime shot but still collapsed because of its sultanistic post-totalitarian character. Its dynastic character undermined ideological legitimacy and created hostility within parts of the leadership. After the popular uprising began, the down-but-not-out Iliescu faction rebelled internally against the regime. The army abandoned the dictator and fought his praetorian guard, the Securitate, who fired at demonstrators. This balance of military power allowed the popular uprising to succeed despite bloodshed. The crushing of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989 is the most recent of a failed series of democratic revolutions under communism: 1953 in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, 1956 in Hungary and Poland, 1968 in Czechoslovakia, and 1970, 1976 and 1980–1 in Poland. After all these revolutions lost, democracy was finally regained in 1989 in Eastern Europe. Whether China’s future will be so rosy is uncertain. But by repressing protest, the Chinese regime has lost its ideological legitimacy, as the brute force behind the regime’s hold on power has become evident. Based on “pragmatic acceptance,” the regime is increasingly dependent on good economic performance to survive. Should the economy falter, regime collapse could follow.

Leadership behavior

"Early": Strong party legitimacy versus weak civil society

"Early": Decisive leadership represses revisionist opposition

"Frozen": Paralyzed leadership collapses in face of dissidence "Frozen": Low mobilization constraints ease "bandwagoning" by dissidents

Party legitimacy

"Early": High mobilization constraints obstruct revisionist opposition reaching "tipping point"

"Frozen": Post-revolutionary leadership generation and/or loss of support after economic decline and ideological decay make paralysis likely

"Early": Revolutionary legitimacy (if regime "home-grown"), collective security, and economic growth make decisive leadership possible

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Societal modernization

"Frozen": Weak party legitimacy versus stronger civil society

Opposition strategy

Figure 4.1 Linking the explanations: “early” and “frozen” subtypes of post-totalitarianism

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Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia

Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia (with Philipp Kuntz)

Serbia’s international image until the mid-1990s was of a country beset by nationalist passions. It was excluded from studies of democratization because it was seen as “special case of unresolved ethnic and national conflict.”1 The Serbian government bore a large part of the responsibility for the unleashing of the Yugoslav civil wars and for the atrocities committed against members of other ethnic groups. Led by a Machiavellian nationalist, Slobodan Miloševi¼, many Serbs shared the belief that they were engaged in a life or death struggle against Muslim fanaticism (in Bosnia) and Croatian aggression (supported by the great powers of the Western Christian world). It was not surprising that when Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations appeared in 1996, Serbia was one of his chief examples of the growing importance of civilizational conflict, belying his earlier optimism about the global spread of democracy (this “clash of Samuel Huntingtons” is discussed in the next chapter).2 By the second half of the 1990s, it became apparent that this view of Serbian politics was one sided. Although there had been periodic protests against Miloševi¼’s authoritarian rule since early in the decade, it was only the mass demonstrations of 1996–7 against the stolen communal elections that brought the strength of the “other Serbia” to world attention. Rulers who instrumentalize cultural difference in order to secure their hold on power are vulnerable to peaceful opposition protests, as the Chinese, Indonesian, Iranian, and Malaysian cases also illustrate (see Chapter 6). Democracy was not rejected as “Western” by the opposition in any of these countries, but embraced as the opposition goal. Dictators’ self-proclaimed culturalist legitimation did not prevent the rise of democratic revolutionary movements. But as of fall 2000, the democratic opposition in Serbia had still failed to topple Miloševi¼ despite years of protest. In fact, the opposition seemed as far as ever from bringing his regime down, as declining participation in protests against the regime indicated. This was similar to the situation in the Philippines in late 1985 when, after two years of continuous demonstrations, protest began subsiding. Yet in both countries, the increasingly “sultanistic” character of the regimes, in which the interests of family and friends of the rulers were placed above the “national interest,” had eroded their nationalist legitimacy. Arbitrary repression, including assassinations of political opponents (most notably Aquino in the Philippines) or

Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia 85 the closure of opposition media (particularly in Serbia) sparked outrage. Mounting security threats (through lost wars in Serbia and a growing communist insurgency in the Philippines) along with economic crisis brought the political temperature to the boiling point. But a spark for a revolutionary uprising was missing. In both cases, the precipitating event for revolution was stolen elections. As discussed below, theoretical accounts of revolution have not put much emphasis on such “triggers.” Stolen elections have been particularly neglected in this regard. They both create rising expectations of political change through hopes of fair balloting and cause outrage when the result is sabotaged by a regime determined to cling to power. In addition, stolen elections create or strengthen moral leaders. Though apparently rather bland personalities, Vojislav Koštunica, like Corazon C. Aquino in the Philippines, symbolized a popular desire to get rid of unscrupulous politicians. In the crisis situation of the anti-dictatorship struggle their “unheroic mien” was transformed into a “heroic mold.”3 They possessed “moral capital,” standing for ethical principles greater than themselves, which was pitted against autocratic regimes’ more mundane political resources.4 Both Koštunica and Aquino were able to unite fractious opposition forces around their avowedly non-partisan campaigns. They both spearheaded the peaceful overthrow of hated dictators after stolen elections. In what follows it will be clarified what is meant by stolen elections and a model will be offered linking them to democratic revolutions. Then, after considering the character of Miloševi¼’s regime, the cycle of opposition protests and the overthrow of the dictatorship after stolen elections in Serbia will be analyzed. Finally, a comparative perspective is offered. Not only will a “most similar case,” the Philippines in 1986, be examined, but also a “most different” one, Burma in 1990, in which stolen elections did not trigger a democratic revolution. Understanding the situations in which stolen elections fail to spark off a revolt helps us to better understand the conditions under which they do.

Stolen elections and democratic revolutions Stolen elections in autocratic systems create conditions favorable for the outbreak of democratic revolutions. They are understood here as polls in which the regime hinders an opposition victory at the ballot box through blatant manipulation of the vote count or by annulling the electoral result itself. The basis for stolen elections are “stunning” elections, in which the regime is surprised by the defeat it suffers at the hands of opposition candidates.5 In elections held in Nicaragua in 1990, the Sandinistas, stunned by their defeat by opposition forces, briefly considered manipulating or annulling the results before finally acknowledging defeat.6 In the 1997 presidential polls the Iranian conservatives gave in to the equally surprising victory of reformist candidate Mohammad Khatami. At the same time they continued to exercise power by holding onto reserve domains.7 Zimbabwe in February 2000 experienced a political earthquake when President Robert Mugabe lost a constitutional referendum he had believed to be a formality. He likewise admitted defeat, but as a consequence stepped up intimidation against

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his opponents to be better prepared for the parliamentary elections later that year.8 But what if a regime refuses outright to accept the results of the balloting? In this case, the stunning election turns into a stolen one. The concept of stolen elections can be distinguished from the older term “semicompetitive elections,” which has been defined as opposition parties being permitted to compete in elections but “denied any chance of victory by the special advantages bestowed on the official party and/or by the various ways in which the other parties are hampered.”9 Through tampering with the electoral process in semi-competitive elections, the regime wins because it out-polls the opposition. In stolen elections the regime has to manipulate the counting or annul the results because the opposition has received more votes. In a normative sense, all forms of electoral manipulation involve stealing votes. But it is useful to restrict the term “stolen elections” to polls in which, despite unfair advantages enjoyed by the regime, the opposition still wins. This forces a surprised autocratic regime bent on staying in power to rig the vote count or annul the results altogether. What links such stolen elections to democratic revolutions? The short answer is that they can transform revolutionary potential into a revolutionary situation. In the analysis of revolutions, events that turn revolutionary ferment into actual revolutions are termed “triggering events” or “accelerators.”10 But while Michael Kimmel, in a standard account of revolutions, acknowledges triggers as an indispensable prerequisite, he implies that it should be our primary task to search for the “structural roots” of revolutions.11 Edgar Kiser and Margaret Levi go even further by applauding the structuralist perspective for being aware “that the events most immediately preceding the actual revolutionary situation are ‘trigger’ events rather than causes.”12 Yet, as the study of stolen elections below will demonstrate, triggers have a causal logic of their own. Among triggering events, emphasis has been put on a regime’s military defeat, a mutiny in the armed forces, or other forms of elite dissension.13 Stolen elections have been neglected in this regard. Yet as the Serbian and Philippine cases show, through stolen elections popular discontent can be brought to revolutionary explosion. Stolen elections are “triggers” both in society and within the regime. In society, stolen elections contribute to mass mobilization by increasing expectations that the opposition will win at the ballot box and then causing popular outrage when voters are robbed of the expected victory. They document exactly how widespread dissatisfaction with the regime has become (as it has lost the election, often with an overwhelming majority). Elections also serve to increase the organizational capabilities of the opposition. On the regime side, stolen elections test the loyalty of the regime staff. They can cause splits between those who are willing to ignore the voters’ will in order to stay in power and those who favor accepting the opposition victory or calculate that the opposition is likely to take power anyway. This produces elite divisions, weakening the regime at a time of mass mobilization. This makes regime collapse in the face of societal protest likely. It is worth briefly developing each of these points. Elections increase expectations that the regime can be changed peacefully through the ballot box. However naïve it may appear to outsiders, it is striking how enthusiastically voters

Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia 87 have participated in such elections although there has appeared little chance that the regime would accept defeat. Outrage when the election is stolen is correspondingly great. The disappointment of great expectations leads to widespread anger. Stolen elections provide a focus for generalized discontent against the regime. This better allows the opposition to mobilize the population than in a situation in which popular dissatisfaction is diffuse. Even if the regime had little popular legitimacy before the election, the actual stealing of the result creates a clear moral front between the people’s will and an evil regime bent on thwarting it. The last remnants of regime legitimacy are ripped away. Millions of citizens feel personally affected because it is their own votes that have been stolen. It is likely that the sense of moral obligation necessary to overcome the “free rider” problems of rebellion from a rational choice perspective (discussed in the introduction) will be strong. There is another way in which stolen elections contribute to societal mobilization. Anger at the regime may be widespread, but it may also be hidden from view. Under non-democratic conditions, coping strategies are common in the population. One “lives within a lie,” in Havel’s terms, in order to get by in day-today life.14 Or, in rational choice terms, one engages in preference falsification, acting as if one is loyal to the regime when in fact one is not.15 When the opposition wins an election, individuals in society learn they are not alone in their dislike of the regime. Their private preferences become public. When the results are stolen this in turn creates an “imagined community” of robbed voters. This communication effect shows that further collective action, begun with the election results, is likely to receive broad-based support within society. At the same time, the powerholders’ nimbus of invincibility has been shattered, sending yet another signal that an opportunity for toppling them has emerged. This image of vulnerability may be fostered by the post-electoral behavior of a stunned elite struggling to cope with its unexpected defeat. A final point pertaining to societal mobilization is the opposition’s organizational capabilities. The selection of an opposition candidate for president or prime minister often contributes to opposition unity, as was the case in Serbia and the Philippines. Campaigning for votes for this person creates strong ties between him/her and the voters, particularly through personal campaign appearances, given that opposition presence in the media is often severely limited. Door-to-door canvassing efforts by volunteers and a push to “get out the vote” on election day further contribute to opposition organizational capabilities. Perhaps most importantly, the opposition often tries to create a network of independent election observers to come up with a vote count independent of the government’s. Not only is this crucial in showing that the elections have in fact been stolen, but it also creates a network of activists that can be mobilized for further collective action after the balloting. While stolen elections can lead to extensive popular mobilization, they are likely to lead to splits within the regime itself. Even when its legitimacy is low, a regime can hold onto power by retaining the loyalty of key civilian officials and military elites. But a stolen election is likely to undercut this loyal behavior

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sufficiently to severely weaken the regime. Why is this the case? One reason is that the unjust character of the regime has become so obvious. Members of the elite, having long cooperated within a pseudo-democratic framework, become disgusted by the blatant disregard of the people’s will. There is another factor likely to fuel dissension among the elite in the wake of stolen elections: the perception that the regime’s power relative to that of its opponents has diminished. This gives rise to opportunistic calculations as elements of the regime begin to consider whether it might not be better to switch over to the opposition side before it is too late. Apart from those who have not until now thought about leaving the ruling circle, there may be a faction of long-standing dissenters. For them, the opportunity to attempt an open rebellion has finally emerged. At this point they can count on a large part of the population to support them. At the same time, however, the outcome of the ballot will limit potential putschists’ options. It is difficult to replace the current leadership in order to install another dictatorship since a new center of power has surfaced, which is backed by an unambiguous popular mandate. If a regime split actually occurs, this can be taken as yet another sign of regime weakness, which in turn will spur the willingness of citizens to engage in acts of protest. The probability for a revolutionary outcome increases as well, if the end of elite cohesion affects the security apparatus. Adding these consequences of regime division to the preceding arguments about the impact of stolen elections on societal mobilization, the following model can be offered. Figure 5.1 suggests that stolen elections increase organizational capacities (through campaigning and poll watch activities) that can serve as a mobilizational network. Outrage and the sense that the moment of decision has arrived increases people’s willingness to participate in protests through this network for mobilization against the regime. Popular mobilization helps create a split in the regime due to genuine shame at the regime’s stealing of the popular vote but also because of the opportunistic calculations about the advantages of defecting to the opposition. This regime split spurs further popular protest, thus contributing to a revolution situation. But it also undermines the regime’s ability to repress mass mobilization, thereby leading to a revolutionary outcome. regime split due to shame and opportunistic calculations

stolen election

outrage and perception of opportunity enhance citizens’ willingness to participate in antiregime protests

organizational capacities developed for campaigning and poll watching provide opposition with a network for mobilization

Figure 5.1 Stolen elections and revolutionary outcomes

revolutionary situation

revolutionary outcome

Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia 89

The Serbian case: the genesis and survival of the Miloševi¼ regime As is well known, Slobodan Miloševi¼ adopted a nationalist legitimation strategy in order to save communist rule in Yugoslavia and secure his personal power. His “epiphanal moment” came during a speech before demonstrating Serbs in April 1987 in Kosovo, who complained of mounting oppression by the ethnic Albanian population.16 In short, he recognized the immense political potential of nationalist populism and put himself at the forefront of the “Greater Serbian” movement. This was combined with an “anti-bureaucratic revolution,” supposedly aimed at the neglect of Serbian interests in the central government. But it was in fact designed to increase Miloševi¼’s personal control of the state apparatus through extensive old-style purges undertaken in the name of the “people’s anger” expressed in mass demonstrations organized by the regime. When necessary, stubborn functionaries who refused to yield to Miloševi¼’s intimidation were removed by military or police action. He also used the protests to strip the republic of Montenegro as well as the provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina of their autonomy in order to prevent the creation of alternative power centers.17 Yet Miloševi¼’s popularity had already began to slide in the early 1990s. The regime was unable to improve the economic situation, which soon began deteriorating. It also resisted the democratization wave that had just swept down the rest of Eastern Europe, including in Slovenia within Yugoslavia. Pressure to hold fair elections in Serbia and other Yugoslavian republics grew. Yet in Serbia, newly created “democratic institutions” remained under heavy state control through a strongly presidentialist constitution, manipulation of electoral and party laws, and the dates set for elections. Through a newly created Socialist Party of Serbian (SPS), a fusion of former communist organizations, Miloševi¼ was able to dominate the new multi-party political landscape. In the 1990 parliamentary elections the SPS won nearly 80 per cent of the seats while Miloševi¼ was elected president with 65 per cent of the vote. It is controversial whether these results were manipulated. But, at the very least, Miloševi¼’s control of the state media contributed to his victory.18 Miloševi¼’s rule became increasingly sultanistic.19 The center of power consisted of Miloševi¼, his wife, and his oldest brother. The circle of Miloševi¼’s family and friends acted like a mafia group in the economy. Especially his son, Marko, and daughter, Marija, were notorious for using their family connections to enrich themselves. Hans Joachin Hoppe speaks of the family’s “parasitic lifestyle.”20 Leading government posts and patronage in this “personalistic authoritarian model of rule” were given to those loyal to Miloševi¼ and his wife, thus ensuring a high degree of control over Serbia’s political and economic elite.21 While this brought short-term stability, growing popular fury at the ruler and his clique eroded Miloševi¼’s nationalist credentials. How could he claim to be fighting for the Serbian cause while as leader when he was plundering the Serbian nation? While sultanism had contributed the consolidation of the regime, in the longer term it eroded its political base, making it increasingly vulnerable to popular protest.

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Notwithstanding these tendencies, Serbia never descended into full-blown sultanism. Most significantly, formally democratic institutions persisted and continued to shape political life until the very end of Miloševi¼’s reign. Serbia’s strongman avoided the appearance of outright despotism, considering himself capable of playing the “game of semi-authoritarianism.”22 In fact, this strategy worked for quite a long time. Miloševi¼ proved to be a skilful tactician, cleverly using the resources at his disposal in order to manipulate the political process. In addition, he could rely on a notoriously splintered opposition rarely seen as a trustworthy alternative in the eyes of the electorate. Elections in particular bestowed a kind of procedural legitimacy on him (despite their substantive flaws) and periodically demonstrated the weakness of his opponents. Pseudo-democratic elements were an essential element of the regime. It is difficult to imagine that an unrestrained Serbian dictatorship enduring for over ten years in a European “neighborhood” of well-established or nascent democracies. But while “electoral autocracies” have their advantages, their “structural ambiguity” creates a degree of uncertainty for the power holders.23 It is easy to make mistakes in a system in which it is not clear where the line between procedural democratic and substantive authoritarian characteristics of the regime should be drawn. The regime risks appearing dictatorial when it acts openly authoritarian but is endangered if democratic procedures are taken too far. Stolen elections bring together both of these “evils” for the regime: they put its power at risk because democratic procedures have been taken seriously but also reveal the regime to be dictatorial when the results are manipulated or ignored.

The cycle of opposition protests Miloševi¼’s increasingly sultanistic rule was the chief reason for popular protests, but the series of wars he waged in the 1990s put the opposition on the defensive as Serbs rallied around the national cause. This helps explain the cyclical nature of opposition protests in Serbia. During peaceful intervals, protests emerged. In times of war, opposition demobilization set in. V. P. Gagnon has argued that the silencing of challengers was precisely what the leadership intended when (often covertly) stirring up ethnic hostilities. He suggests that every time opposition activity increased substantially, the regime stepped up its instrumentalization of ethnic conflict in order to secure its hold on power.24 Yet each period of protest demonstrated increasing oppositional mobilizational capacity. The penultimate and final stages of the cycle were set off by stolen elections. The first protests of early 1991 were led by the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), Vuk Draškovi¼. On March 9, tens of thousands joined him to demonstrate for the liberalization of the media that Miloševi¼ and his minions had monopolized. Army tanks were used to suppress the demonstrations, and Draškovi¼ and several other oppositionists were arrested. This led to further popular mobilization, with demands that Draškovi¼ and his fellow oppositionists be released. Miloševi¼ appeared to relent when he freed Draškovi¼ while the interior minister and director of state television resigned. Miloševi¼ also promised an

Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia 91 investigation of the harsh repression of the protests. But these concessions, like those he was to make later, turned out to be a trick. The media remained under his control and protests continued to be repressed. The war in Croatia protected Miloševi¼ from major opposition criticism for the next year, though there were isolated protests by draftees and their families. When U.N. troops moved into the Serb-occupied Croatian territory, major opposition demonstrations resumed. In May 1992 a broad coalition named DEPOS (Democratic Movement of Serbia) was formed with the goal of forcing Miloševi¼ to resign. Protests took place through the summer of that year, but ebbed as the Bosnian war (which began in April 1992) intensified. As was the case during protests a year earlier, students activists involved in the demonstrations were suspicious of, and thus kept their distance from, opposition politicians, weakening opposition unity.25 In addition, Miloševi¼’s politician opponents remained divided among themselves, disagreeing for example whether he was guilty of causing the war or merely of conducting it inefficiently.26 Miloševi¼ appointed the emigré millionaire Milan Pani¼ as prime minister of the newly founded Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in July 1992.27 Pani¼ satisfied demands by students and opposition politicians, while reducing international pressure on Serbia through the appearance of pluralism.28 But Pani¼ soon became disillusioned with Miloševi¼’s arbitrary, personalistic rule and changed sides. He became the chief opposition candidate against Miloševi¼ in the December 1992 Serbian presidential polls. Yet by cleverly mobilizing anti-US sentiments against Pani¼, who had lived for many years in America, and through electoral manipulation, Miloševi¼ easily won the voting, with 53 per cent of the vote to Pani¼’s 32 per cent.29 As fighting in Bosnia captured world attention and also dominated domestic politics in Serbia, Miloševi¼ enjoyed another respite from protest. But less than a year after the signing of the Dayton peace accords, the largest wave of demonstrations yet against Miloševi¼ began in the winter of 1996–7. These protests were particularly remarkable because they occurred at a time which apathy seemed to prevail in Serbian politics. The population was exhausted by years of interYugoslavian conflict while Miloševi¼’s image had become overpowering.30 The protests began after the Miloševi¼ regime annulled opposition victories in Belgrade and other major cities in the second round of the communal elections, held on November 17. The demonstrations, in Belgrade and other major cities (even those in which opposition candidates did not win the voting) were led by the Zajedno (Together) opposition alliance. They lasted 88 days (parallel protests by students went on for 120 days), despite the cold winter months and the dangers of falling victim to police violence. More than 100,000 demonstrators were present at many of these rallies; in the orthodox Christmas and New Year’s an estimated half a million or more citizens participated.31 The atmosphere was often carnival like, with the opposition finding ever more creative ways to express their outrage at the regime during the peaceful protests.32 What accounts for this powerful mass mobilization, which emerged so unexpectedly? The cancellation of the Zajedno’s victories provided a perfect focus

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for orchestrating the widespread dissatisfaction. Compared to the 1992 protests, the opposition was now able to point to a grievance which many citizens had experienced in a very personal manner, namely a nullified vote count.33 Rising expectations were dashed when the authorities refused to accept the opposition’s victories.34 Cheated voters were outraged, providing the emotional energy for sustaining the movement over several weeks. The concept of a “moral shock” captures this sentiment well.35 The impressive staying power of the protests is also explained by their “deeply moral” nature. 36 In the words of Mladen Lazi¼, the fraud “gave the citizens who voted against the party in power irrefutable proof that they had been right. This was no longer merely a question of a violation of their will but a savage attack on their honor.”37 Such deeply sensed grievances went well beyond the group of genuine Zajedno supporters. They even reached within the ranks of those who long been loyal followers of Slobodan Miloševi¼.38 But the Serbian autocrat was able to undercut opposition protests by giving in to opposition demands, as he had successfully done in the past. The regime could accept Zajedno’s local victories without endangering its hold on power (as would be the case during the 2000 national elections). In addition, the always fragile anti-Miloševi¼ coalition broke up soon after its victories in local government were officially acknowledged. The collaboration of the Draškovi¼’s SPO with the regime forces in Belgrade at the expense of its former opposition allies shows just how far-reaching this disintegration was. The consequences of the opposition’s selfdestructive behavior for the prospects of a democratic Serbia were devastating. A sense of hopelessness and apathy spread over the country, which prevailed for the next three years.

The Serbian “October revolution” When the Kosovo war ended in June 1999 with Belgrade’s de-facto loss of control over Serbia’s “sacred places,” Miloševi¼’s image as a savior of Serbia was irrevocably shattered. The economic outlook was bleak as well. The regime’s own behavior revealed the tenseness of the situation. Increasingly, it resorted to blatant oppression, abandoning the more subtle modes of domination which had characterized the Miloševi¼ autocracy earlier.39 Yet for over a year the opposition waged an increasingly desperate struggle to unseat the regime. Having assembled as the Alliance for Change (SZP), the opposition again split, with Vuk Draškovi¼ once more declaring that he was going his own way.40 Under the guidance of Zoran Ðin}i¼ from the Democratic Party (DS), the SZP tried to wring concessions from the regime by organizing daily marches and rallies starting in September. But the number of demonstrators declined and the movement ultimately fizzled out in mid-December 1999. Pressured by Western countries, influenced by a change of government in neighboring Croatia, and in the aftermath of a mysterious car accident involving Vuk Draškovi¼ (widely believed to have been an assassination attempt), the opposition’s efforts to bridge their differences intensified by the turn of the year.41 In a joint declaration, issued on January 10, 2000, democratic elections

Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia 93 were demanded.42 On April 14, more than 100,000 demonstrators turned out to a long-prepared rally in central Belgrade. Leaders of the major opposition parties appeared on stage in a show of unity. Activists from Otpor (Resistance), an increasingly popular grassroots, student-led movement, urged them to cooperate. However, opposition solidarity remained fragile and the new round of protests fizzled out. When police forces raided an opposition broadcasting center in May, hopes that this move might set off enough outrage to fuel the movement proved unfounded.43 In September 1999, one journalist observing the SZP’s activities had noticed that “most protesters agree that the opposition needs a catalyst such as a repressive act by the authorities with a demonstration to gather momentum.”44 Although repressive acts abounded, they had not provided the necessary impetus to the anti-Miloševi¼ movement. A different trigger was necessary to overcome the opposition’s mobilizational difficulties. Ironically, it was Miloševi¼ himself who took the step that sealed his fate by bringing forward presidential elections to September 24, 2000 (his term as Yugoslavian president lasted until July 2001). Miloševi¼ had not acted due to pressure from his opponents; rather, he had called these early polls because they appeared so weak to him.45 Yet, like many other autocratic rulers involved in electoral politics, Miloševi¼, when making this announcement on July 27, had miscalculated. On the one hand, he overrated the support he would still be able to draw from certain segments of Serbian society. On the other hand, he underestimated the skills and passion of his opponents once he presented them with the opportunity of early presidential elections. They grabbed their chance by forming a broad electoral alliance comprising 18 parties from all parts of the political spectrum. Even though the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) had to dispense with the participation of the SPO, the formation of a broad coalition led Draškovi¼ to be stigmatized as a selfish defector. Also, the DOS could count on massive assistance from Serbian civil society. Various organizations successfully mobilized the Serbian electorate against the incumbent leadership and carefully prepared for the task of observation on election day.46 The most important step taken by the opposition was the agreement on Vojislav Koštunica, a 56-year-old constitutional lawyer and head of the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), as its presidential candidate. This choice, in which other opposition figures (most notably Zoran Ðin}i¼) deferred their own ambitions, proved to be ideal in at least two respects. Koštunica was an outspoken nationalist. He had never softened his nationalist position since he first publicly voiced it in the 1970s. More recently, he had harshly condemned the NATO bombardment as well as the International War Crimes Tribunal. Unlike other members of DOS, the presidential nominee thus left no room for accusations of being a traitor, intending a sell-out to the West. On the contrary, he was able to argue that it was Miloševi¼ who had betrayed the Serbian people since 1987. Koštunica also had an image as an honest and incorruptible politician. This was very helpful in an increasingly criminalized state like Serbia, and it was also a quality rarely found among other oppositionists.47 Faced with a determined opposition and a credible challenger, the long-term

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manipulation of the electoral playing field (such as by silencing the independent media) turned out to be insufficient for Miloševi¼ in this election. If Miloševi¼ had taken seriously numerous opinion polls indicating a clear lead for his rival, he might have cancelled the presidential contest altogether and thus averted the coming uprising.48 But in a show of increasing unworldliness, he refused to recognize how events were developing against him. When, on the evening after the polling on September 24, the opposition was able to show up with provisional, but reliable, numbers (due to its parallel tabulation activities), it became clear that the presidential challenger had defeated the incumbent in the first round. Miloševi¼ and his wife reacted with complete disbelief.49 The Federal Election Commission (SIK) was caught in visible disarray. It soon ceased the official vote count altogether and expelled all opposition members from its session. Thousands poured spontaneously onto the streets, celebrating the victory against Miloševi¼. Miloševi¼, a master tactician with a well-oiled political machinery, lacked a clear political strategy. Through SIK’s promulgation of the final results (Miloševi¼: 38.62 per cent, Koštunica: 48.96 per cent), he admitted defeat, but tried to force his opponent into a run-off, fixed for October 8. The opposition, however, rejected this offer and resorted to the tactics of civil disobedience and massive demonstrations instead. Later, the election was cancelled altogether. On September 27, an estimated 300,000 people joined the celebration of Koštunica’s triumph over Miloševi¼, in the capital. The optimistic and joyful mood of the masses did not bear any resemblance to previous rallies in 1999 or 2000. Two days later the workers at the Kolubara coal mine went on strike, thus endangering the supply of fuel for important Serbian power plants. The final act unfolded on October 5, one day after the constitutional court had annulled the results of the presidential poll altogether. About 700,000 people gathered in Belgrade. Though most of the participants remained peaceful, the atmosphere was tense. Pictures of angry crowds storming the Federal Parliament and the buildings of the hated state television gained most prominence in the worldwide transmission of the revolution. A closer look at these incidents reveals that there was a significant element of planning in the uprising.50 Compared to 1996/97, elite defection went much further in 2000 as Miloševi¼’s power itself had been put at stake. Opportunistic calls for impartial reporting suddenly emerged from within the pro-regime media.51 Before the poll, army chief of staff Nebojša Pavkovi¼ had openly sided with Miloševi¼ and ominously warned that he regarded election day on September 24 as “D-day.” 52 But after seeing how many people (and, also, how many soldiers) had rejected a continuation of rule, he publicly declared that the armed forces would take a neutral stance and respect the decision of Serbia’s voters. Negotiations of the security forces with the opposition before October 5 were driven by a similar re-definition of the situation. In order to avoid bloodshed, politicians from the opposition had made contacts even with Miloševi¼’s special units. Zoran Ðin}i¼, for example, reportedly had ties with Milorad Lukovi¼, an officer of Miloševi¼’s paramilitary police.53 This contributed to relatively smooth proceeding of the revolution, culminating in Miloševi¼’s surrender on October 6. Thus regime splits following the stolen election not only

Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia 95 created optimism among the opposition supporters, but contributed to the successful outcome of the Serbian “October revolution” as well.

Stolen elections in comparative perspective The fall of Slobodan Miloševi¼ confirms the link between a stolen election and a democratic revolution. But empirical evidence for this relationship is not restricted to the Serbian example. The fall of the Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, discussed in Chapter 1, was also precipitated by a stolen election. Though the political systems he and his Serbian counterpart had established differed significantly, there was a striking parallel: the mixture of sultanistic arbitrariness and the reliance on formally democratic institutions. Eva-Lotta Hedman has noted: In combination, the personalistic and electoral orientation of the Marcos regime rendered it particularly vulnerable to certain forms of oppositional mobilization … [I]nasmuch as this regime regularly resorted to electoral mechanisms for purposes of shoring up political legitimacy at home and, notably in 1986, abroad, Marcos’s last bid for yet another presidential mandate also presented his opponents with a critical opportunity to join forces in a nation-wide, popular campaign focused ultimately on the sanctity of the ballot.54 The Philippine case highlights two mechanisms that were weaker in Serbia in 1996–7 or 2000. The first concerns the military. Disloyal members of the Philippine armed forces played a much more active role in overthrowing the regime than in Serbia. A group of senior officers, the Reform the Armed Forces of the Philippines Movement (RAM), had been plotting the ouster of Marcos for some time. As they needed civilian backing for that endeavor, the stolen elections presented them with a promising opportunity. Indeed, when their plot was discovered and they fled to two military camps in Manila for safety, their move brought millions of people out onto the streets to peacefully defend these insurgents against advancing pro-Marcos units. But the opposition’s electoral victory did not only have an enabling effect. It simultaneously imposed important constraints. The rebels could not transfer power to themselves as they wished to. The presidential ballot had strengthened the position of Corazon C. Aquino. The masses that rallied behind her were a serious obstacle to any potential usurpation attempt by the military. The Philippine case demonstrates, second, how organizational capabilities, originally developed for campaigning and pollwatching, may facilitate the coordination of protest if victory is denied to the opposition. To prevent or, at least, to prove, electoral fraud by the regime, about half a million people had participated in the National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL). The achievements of that impressive effort were not reduced to the election process itself. According to William A. Callahan, “[i]t was the experience the people gained from working in NAMFREL that facilitated the conversion of the Snap Election to a Snap Revolution in 1986 … The many people who had been politicized and trained by NAMFREL used these skills and experience in the mass movement.”55

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The same pattern can be seen in Thailand in 1992. After Major-General Suchinda Kraprayoon and his fellow-putschists in February 1991 had successfully overthrown the civilian government, elections were held in March of the following year. The poll can be described as mostly free and fair, and it is beyond dispute that the parties affiliated with the military won a majority of the vote.56 But then Suchinda declared he would stand for the office of prime minister, breaking a promise he had made ahead of the election. Although this situation does not fit the definition of a stolen election given earlier, Suchinda’s reversal was perceived as invalidating the election results and it unleashed peaceful mass protests. Military violence against the demonstrators backfired. Under pressure from the king and several military commanders, Suchinda was forced to step down in May 1992 and an interim government was installed. Although it took place in a different electoral context, events in Thailand show that activists entrusted with the ensuring of electoral integrity can also be helpful in ensuring mobilization afterwards. Members of Poll Watch were essential in the success of the protests.57 But stolen elections do not necessarily bring about a revolutionary situation let alone a revolutionary outcome. In fact, Thailand’s immediate neighbor, Burma, exemplifies this possibility. In an attempt to regain some of the legitimacy it had lost through its bloody clampdown on demonstrators in the summer of 1988, the Burmese military regime announced that a multi-party election would be held in 1990. Although various measures were taken to disadvantage the opposition parties and their candidates during the pre-election phase, the voting itself proceeded freely.58 Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won an overwhelming victory, gaining 81 per cent of the seats in parliament. It soon became clear that the junta was not willing to hand over power and let the elected representatives assume their seats. But this decision by the military did not spark off sizeable demonstrations; protests remained sporadic and were soon suppressed.59 The Burmese stolen elections of 1990 did not lead to a democratic revolution. Yet the absence of mass protests should not be read as a straightforward falsification of the theory proposed. Rather, the Burmese case can be used to help determine under which circumstances democratic revolutions are unlikely to occur after stolen elections. The chief reasons for Burmese “deviance” are a major difference in regime type and the legacies this has produced. Though hard-line military rule led by Ne Win since 1962 in Burma had become increasingly personalized, it did not collapse under the weight of mass protests in 1988. Instead, an internal military putsch took place, formally replacing Ne Win in power (and in fact gradually stripping him and his family of political influence).60 This reconstituted military regime shot, killing tens of thousands of demonstrators. With the exception of a democratic interlude in the late 1940s and 1950s, no multi-party elections took place under military rule in Burma until 1990. (Beginning in 1974, there were socialist-style, one-party elections.61) In contrast, Serbia and the Philippines had well-established traditions of at least semicompetitive voting (and the Philippines had a long pre-martial-law democratic tradition, as discussed in Chapter 1). This may have produced different attitudes

Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia 97 towards elections, with people there viewing them as a vested right that could not be simply “taken away.” But resistance against the Burmese regime might have still emerged on a wider scale in Burma in 1990 if memories of the 1988 massacres of thousands of peaceful opposition protestors had not been so fresh.62 The threat that the military would shoot again was undoubtedly a decisive factor keeping people off the streets. While Thailand had also experienced military rule, it was much more moderate in the 1980s than in Burma.63 Though the Thai military tried to suppress demonstrations in 1992, the effort was half-hearted. In Burma, by contrast, would-be demonstrators knew from 1988 that the military was willing to kill thousands in order to suppress protests. Potential dissidents in the military had been purged in the 1988 coup, removing any hope that soft-liners might assist protesters. Facing a united military regime willing to massacre protesters, even stolen elections cannot spark off a democratic revolution.

Conclusion This chapter provided an overview of the ups and downs of the pro-democracy movement in Miloševi¼’s Serbia. The struggle for democracy in Serbia needs stressing as it has gone largely unnoticed by studies on democratization in the past decade. Of course, no account of Serbia’s domestic politics can avoid discussing nationalism and ethnic conflict in the second half of the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, ultimately it required a nationalist opposition leader to overcome Miloševi¼ who had so effectively played the nationalist card. The assassination of prime minister Zoran Ðin}i¼ in March 2003 raises questions about the stability of Serbian democracy (in the newly formed state association with Montenegro) and how its relationship with the West will develop. But despite this setback, Serbia has consolidated democracy faster and dealt with sensitive nationalist issues (such as Miloševi¼’s extradiction to the Hague and the status of Kosovo) more pragmatically than might have been reasonably expected three years ago. In the 1990s, the Serbian opposition scored its greatest successes against the regime whenever it achieved a decisive electoral victory. This relationship was not accidental, as the explication of the causal mechanisms of stolen elections as “triggering events” of popular uprisings shows. Democratic revolutions were triggered by stolen elections not just in Serbia but also in the Philippines and, in a somewhat different context, in Thailand.64 The counter example of Burma indicates that when a military regime is hard-line and united, having proved its willingness to kill demonstrators in large numbers in the recent past, then even stolen elections cannot trigger a democratic revolution. In Thailand, where military rule was more moderate and less cohesive, the regime quit power during mass demonstrations that followed broken electoral promises. In the Philippines and Serbia, increasingly sultanized civilian regimes had soft-liner factions that broke away during popular mobilization, abetting the out break and success of democratic revolutions there. In both countries, stolen elections turned revolutionary potential into revolutionary situations.

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Democratic revolutions and the “clash of Samuel Huntingtons”

Democratic revolutions and the “clash of Samuel Huntingtons”

It is revealing of the political spirit of our post-Cold-War times that Samuel P. Huntington, once the optimistic herald of world-wide democratization, has become a pessimistic prophet of a “clash of civilizations.”1 Huntington had earlier, like Alexis de Tocqueville, argued that the spread of democracy was inevitable. Now Huntington has adopted a friend–foe thesis (“the West versus the Rest”) reminiscent of the German jurist Carl Schmitt. Which Huntington should be believed? The democratic universalist or the cultural particularist? Will democracy’s wave continue to wash up on foreign shores or will it break upon civilizational conflict? Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that consistency was a concern only of the smallminded. But this “clash of Samuel Huntingtons” puts broadmindedness to the test!2 It is nonetheless worth examining Huntington’s transformation from democratic universalism to cultural particularism. It is not only of interest for what it reveals about the changing views of the most read political scientist in the world today, but also allows the strengths and weaknesses of his two positions to be better evaluated. At first glance, Huntington II, the particularist, appears the greater realist. This is even more the case since the World Trade Center attacks in which civilizational clash seemed to have become horrifying reality. The democratic universalism of Huntington I, by contrast, appears naïvely optimistic at a time when the US is accused of undertaking a renewed “crusade” against the Islamic world.3 Yet a careful comparison of his positions suggests that Huntington the universalist can often out-argue his later particularism. This latter Huntington confuses the essence of culture with the instrumentalization of civilizational difference. He seems to have forgotten that democracy has flourished across cultures. He takes cultural clashers too seriously and underestimates the continued appeal of democracy. Huntington once identified what in this book are termed democratic revolutions. Huntington speaks of “regime replacements” in which standpatter regimes are overthrown through societal mass mobilization.4 When culturalist arguments are employed to legitimize non-democratic rule, they contribute to the unyielding character of the regime. Autocratic regimes that resist political change in the name of civilizational difference can often only be overthrown by a democratic revolutionary movement. Not only have oppositionists denied that democracy is

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culturally inappropriate; they have made culturally particularist arguments in favor of democratization. In China, intellectual critics and student protestors in 1989 drew legitimacy from Confucianist traditions that demand criticism of unjust rulers.5 In Indonesia and Malaysia, Muslim oppositionists involved in reformasi protests in 1998 and 1998–9, respectively, drew on Islamic traditions to make arguments for liberal democracy while claiming that true “Asian values” were democratic, not authoritarian.6 Similarly, student protesters in Iran in 1999 and 2002 called for a democratic interpretation of the Iranian revolution and Islam.7 In Serbia, as analyzed in the previous chapter, nationalism was a crucial argument used to mobilize against the regime in the “October revolution,” with Koštunica condemning Miloševi¼ for betraying the nation through lost wars and regime corruption. Democratic revolutions can topple civilizational clashers with culturalist arguments. In what follows, Huntington’s democratic universalism and cultural particularism will be examined and then compared. Revolutions supposedly lost due to culturalist difference will be considered next. The repression of democratic movements in China, Iran and Malaysia was not the inevitable result of cultural difference. The democratic opposition triumphed in Serbia in 2000 only after several false starts, suggesting that democratic revolutions lost can be regained. Democratic revolutions have been crucial to the spread of democracy to predominantly Muslim countries, such as Indonesia in 1998, despite the supposed acceleration of civilizational clash after the end of the Cold War.

Democratic universalism Huntington’s wide ranging book The Third Wave shows why democratization takes place, how it occurs, and that it has spread throughout the world. He claims that although democracy as a regime form originated in the West, it has universal appeal. He suggests that Western countries can contribute to further democratization if they make it a political priority.8 Huntington argues that five factors have contributed to the current wave of democratization: the legitimation crisis of non-democratic rule, the regional diffusion of democracy, international pressure, economic modernization, and religious change. All of these explanations are based on the assumption of democratic universalism. (Huntington abandons this axiom in his later cultural particularism, turning these elements into reasons why democratization cannot occur.) Huntington repeats familiar arguments about the legitimation crisis of autocracies in the second half of the twentieth century. The defeat of fascism and the collapse of European communism destroyed totalitarian alternatives to democracy. Authoritarian and, in particular, military regimes, have seldom enjoyed an independent source of legitimation. They have more often claimed emergency powers to cope with a temporary crisis, implicitly promising to return to democratic rule once stability is achieved. This “negative legitimacy” inevitably erodes over time.9

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Surprisingly, given his later cultural turn, Huntington never raises the question whether legitimacy is culturally specific. Aside from Africa, which the third wave of democratization was just reaching as his book was published, Huntington argues “democracy has come to be seen as the only legitimate and viable alternative to an authoritarian regime of any type.”10 Huntington ignores particularistic claims that democracy is culturally inappropriate in non-Western societies, such as the Singaporean government’s argument that “Asian values” are hostile to “Western democracy” or conservative clerics in Iran who reject liberalism as part of “American values.” In fact, Huntington the universalist argues democracy is the only form of political legitimacy that remains.11 What Huntington terms the “snowball effect” (sometimes termed diffusion, the demonstration effect, or contagion) is a direct consequence of this democratic universalism. Snowballing can only occur when democracy appears to be an attractive political model.12 In other words, diffusion works because democracy is perceived as worth imitating within a particular civilization. Should democracy be considered culturally alien, on the other hand, democratic diffusion would not take place. The European Union and its membership states, the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, and the United States under Carter, Reagan, Clinton and the Bushes, have exerted international pressure for democratization. Common to these external actors has been their commitment to liberal-democratic (or, in Gorbachev’s case, at least liberal) values. Particularly interesting in this regard is Huntington’s discussion of the role of the West German government in promoting democracy in Portugal in the mid-1970s. Itself the product of an imposed democratization from the Western powers, the Federal government contributed mightily to the successful democratic transition of a European neighbor. Conservative intellectuals in imperial Germany had made a culturally specific argument against democracy. Western civilization was denounced (with so called “Zivilisationskritik”) in favor of autocratic German Kultur.13 One of the most notorious statements of this position was made by Thomas Mann. Writing during the First World War, he contended that democracy is “Western” and “alien to us, something translated, something ‘present only in the press’ and something that can never become German life and truth.”14 Post-war Germans joined the “West,” adopting a universalist view of democracy. Before Gorbachev’s accession to power, the Soviet Union had been dubbed “the evil empire.” But the “Gorbachev factor” played a major, if unintended role in the democratization of Eastern Europe.15 Modernization theory is a form of economic determinism that leaves little room for cultural particularism. The richer a country is, the more likely it is to become democratic. By following this argument (going so far as to specify a “zone of transition” in middle and upper-middle per capita income levels ranging between US$1,000 and US$3,000, where at the time of his writing most “third wave” democratizations had occurred), Huntington ignores the claim that economic development is likely to lead to increased ethno-cultural conflict.16 Huntington even “misses” the chance to attribute the lack of democratization in a number of relatively wealthy Middle Eastern countries to cultural differences. Instead, he argues that large oil revenues decreased these states’ dependence on taxation. He

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inverts the cry of the American colonialists “no taxation without representation” to an argument that without taxation there is little pressure for representation.17 Like most modernization theorists, Huntington sees the middle class as the chief “actor” demanding democratization. China’s efforts to industrialize without democratizing, for example, are likely to fail, Huntington claims. With the rise of the middle class and exposure to the outside world through economic liberalization, political change will be hard to avoid, he suggests.18 Confucian traditions slowed, but did stop, the process of democratization in South Korea and Taiwan: “By the 1980s … economic development had proceeded to the point where pressures for expanded political participation compelled governments in both countries to begin processes of democratization.”19 Huntington stresses that change in the “doctrine, leadership, popular involvement, and political alignment of the Roman Catholic Church globally and in many countries” was one of the chief reasons for the recent democratization wave.20 He argues that the “third wave of the 1970s and 1980s was overwhelmingly a Catholic wave.” The current wave of democracy began in Catholic Portugal and Spain in the mid-1970s (as well as Orthodox Greece) and then spread to Catholic Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s (and even to Central America in the 1990s). “People power” in the Catholic Philippines in 1986 (discussed in Chapter 1) was the first Asian democratization during this wave and several African countries with large Catholic populations have begun democratizing in the 1990s. Catholic Poland was the first and most important democratization in Eastern Europe, followed soon after by at least nominally Catholic Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Catholic political culture (particularly views within the Church hierarchy) became pro-democratic, facilitating several recent democratizations. Huntington points to the culturalist implications of this Catholic wave. Previously, in Latin America and the Iberian peninsula in particular, the Catholic Church “had been associated with the local establishment, the land-owning oligarchy, and authoritarian government.”21 By the 1960s, however, Catholicism suddenly became receptive, even conducive, to democracy. Huntington writes: [S]imilar cultural arguments have not held up in the past. At one point many scholars argued that Catholicism was an obstacle to democracy. Others, in the Weberian tradition, contended Catholic countries were unlikely to develop economically in the same manner as Protestant countries. Yet in the 1960s and 1970s Catholic counties became democratic and, on average, had higher rates of economic growth than Protestant countries.22 Not only does the example of Catholicism falsify past cultural arguments, it reveals the complexity of cultures and their ability to change. In The Third Wave, Huntington considers whether Confucianism and Islam might still be cultural obstacles to democratization, as Catholicism once was. He ends his discussion optimistically, re-emphasizing the spread of democratic universalism despite cultural differences. His discussion of the outdated character of Weber’s observations about Confucianism demonstrates his position clearly:

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Democratic revolutions and the “clash of Samuel Huntingtons” [A]t one point Weber and others argued that countries with Confucian cultures would not engage in successful economic development. By the 1980s, however a new generation of scholars saw Confucianism as a major cause of the spectacular growth of East Asian societies. In the longer run, will the thesis that Confucianism prevents democratic development be any more viable than the thesis that Confucianism prevents economic development? Arguments that particular cultures are permanent obstacles to change should be viewed with a certain skepticism.23

If we return to the course of democracy’s current “wave,” we find empirical support for this claim about the malleability of culture. The initially Catholic “wave” later took on a strong Confucian and Islamic character. The democratization of Confucian-influenced Taiwan and South Korea in 1986–7 provided clear evidence that this culture was not inherently anti-democratic, even if democracy movements were spectacularly crushed in China in 1989 (discussed in Chapter 4) and less openly in Singapore and Vietnam. Similarly, democratic revolutions took place in predominantly Islamic countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, and, temporarily, Pakistan.

Cultural particularism Huntington’s “civilizations” are, with one exception, religiously determined. The eight civilizations he specifies are really little more than a list of major religions: Western (western Christianity), Christian Orthodox, Latin American (Catholic), Hindu, Islamic, Japanese (Shintoism), Sinic (Confucianism), and African. Only the last has no clear “religious affiliation” (given Christian, Muslim, and aninimist influences in sub-Saharan Africa) and thus appears to be little more than a residual category. Although the political importance of civilizations was marginalized during the conflict between communism and capitalism, these cultural differences have become more significant than (secular) ideological ones since the end of the Cold War. It is telling that Huntington contrasts ideological and civilizational difference, thus assuming the latter are “primordial” and not ideological as well. It is in this spirit that he writes the following: The people of different civilizations have different views on the relations between God and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as differing views on the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy. These differences are the products of centuries. They will not soon disappear.24 A common enemy creates a common interest.25 The “us” of a civilization can only be defined against the “them” of others. Such a clash of civilizations must not lead to military conflict (although Huntington presents the readers with a

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number of frightening scenarios of inter-civilizational war), it can also include battles over the best form of political rule. Outside the West, efforts to spread democratization are likely to be rejected by civilization clashers: Almost all non-Western civilizations were resistant to this pressure from the West. These included Hindu, Orthodox, African, and in some measure even Latin American countries. The greatest resistance to Western democratization efforts, however, came from Islam and Asia. This resistance was rooted in broader movements of cultural assertiveness rooted in the Islamic Resurgence and the Asian Affirmation.26 When we recall Huntington’s earlier position about a “wave” of democratization, we see just how radically he has changed his views. Political legitimation is only possible if regime type corresponds to civilizational context. “Western” democracy is alien to most non-Western cultures, suggesting it is democracy, not nondemocratic rule, that lacks legitimacy in much of the world. Political diffusion is likely only to occur within a particular civilization. In the Muslim world, a “snowball effect” can be expected only for an explicitly Islamicist regime form. This explains the great influence the Iranian revolution had on other Muslim countries. “Fundamentalist” movements have arisen demanding the implementation of sharia and Islamic theocracy. In Asia, some form of “Asian democracy” (which is actually authoritarian) is the regime form most likely to diffuse throughout the region. This would explain why Chinese leaders have shown such strong interest in the authoritarian discourse of “Asian values” in Singapore.27 But even if democracy would be accepted in a non-Western civilization, its consequences would not be what Western observers would expect. Huntington argues that democratic processes have been used by Islamic, Hindu, and other fundamentalist groups to achieve illiberal goals. For example, the “stunning victory” of Islamicists in the Algerian election in 1992 shows that anti-democratic forces, much like in the Weimar Republic, will attempt to subvert democracy through democratic means.28 Huntington thus contends that [d]emocratization conflicts with Westernization, and democracy is inherently a parochializing not a cosmopolitanizing process. Politicians in non-Western societies do not win elections by demonstrating how Western they are. Electoral competition instead stimulates them to fashion what they believe will be the most popular appeals, and those are usually ethnic, nationalist, and religious in character.29 Instead of emphasizing the importance of international pressure, Huntington now stresses the significance of “core states,” which have the greatest influence on other members of a civilization. In the “Sinic” and “Orthodox” civilizations, political leaders of core states (China and Russia) are either opposed to democratization or skeptical of its worth. In the Islamic world, there is no core state but a number of influential countries with non-democratic regimes. International efforts

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to improve human rights are rejected as “Western.”30 Such attempts to impose alien civil liberties may even backfire, increasing the resolve of non-Western states to resist such external intervention.31 Given these difficulties, Western countries are increasingly putting economic interests before civil liberties concerns, as the massive flow of foreign investment in China illustrates. For the culturalist Huntington, modernization no longer leads to democratization, but to civilizational pride and religious fundamentalism. Modernization has been turned into an argument against democratization: As the pace of modernization increases … the rate of Westernization declines and indigenous culture goes through a revival … [M]odernization promotes de-Westernization and the resurgence of indigenous culture in two ways. At the social level, modernization enhances the economic, military and political power of the society as a whole and encourages the people of that society to have confidence in their culture and become culturally assertive. At the individual level, modernization generates feelings of alienation and anomie as traditional bonds and social relations are broken and leads to crises of identity to which religion provides the answer. Even as non-Western states modernize, democratization becomes less, not more, likely. Democratization is not only “Western” but, outside the West, economically “backward.”

Evaluation Both Huntingtons are prone to exaggerate their positions. Democratic legitimation is probably stronger than ever before, but there remain non-democratic alternatives, particularly in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific. The rapid regional diffusion of democracy in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa is evident. At the same time, the growth of “fundamentalist” movements in almost all predominantly Muslim countries is striking, as is the spread of the developmentalist dictatorship model in the Asia-Pacific. Regional “neighborhoods” have a very different feel if they are dominated by an association of democratic states (for example, Latin America and the Organization of American States, OAS, in the last decade) or by a primarily authoritarian club (as illustrated by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, and China). International pressure for democratization, welcomed in South and Central America, has recently reversed a number of military coups (including one against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in April 2002 briefly backed by the US before relenting to this regional pressure). ASEAN, by contrast, recently expanded its membership to include Burma, despite protests in Europe and the US against the Burmese regime’s systematic violation of human rights.32 There are, as Barrington Moore reminds us, different “paths to the modern world,” democratic and non-democratic.33 Neither Westernization nor “nonWesternization” is the inevitable outcomes of economic growth and social change.

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Both democratization or non-democratic rule can be the result of modernization. Modernization does not guarantee a transition to democracy. Cultures are not static but fluid, subject to multiple interpretations and inherently controversial. Before civilizations can clash, they must define themselves. These definitions are subject to changing stances on democracy, as happened with Catholicism in Southern Europe and Latin America as well as with Confucianism in South Korea and Taiwan. The last point is the most important. Culture is subject to political instrumentalization, by both democrats and autocrats. For example, the reformasi (reform) movement in Malaysia has invoked both Asian traditions and an Islamic identity against the Mahathir regime that claims to uphold “Asian values” (discussed below). Chapter 5 considered how both the autocrat Miloševi¼ and his democratic challenger Koštunica presented themselves as Serbian nationalists in the 2000 presidential elections. Huntington the democratic universalist ignored such cultural arguments altogether. Culturalist views are indeed widespread, but they can be employed by those in favor of as well as those opposed to democracy. Huntington comes close to this position when he considers the tragic case of Algeria. But not just “fundamentalists” resort to democratic means to gain power; so do many moderates. In the Islamic world and the Asia-Pacific, culturalist arguments are found on both authoritarian and democratic sides of the argument, in Bangladesh, Iran and Pakistan, as well as in Burma, China, and Singapore (with political actors in Indonesia and Malaysia employing both culturalist categories). When authoritarians cling to power based on cultural legitimation, it is likely a democratic revolutionary movement will attempt to undermine such claims with culturalist arguments of its own. In turn, a democratic regime may face a “fundamentalist” challenge, as is the case currently in Indonesia, for example.

Democratic revolutions lost Yet Huntington the cultural particularist insists upon interpreting the repression of four key democratic revolutions in civilizational terms: in China in 1989, in Iran in 1979, in Malaysia in 1998, and in Serbia before the year 2000. In China, Huntington argues that peasants were indifferent to democracy, dooming the urbanbased student protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989.34 This was not surprising given the supposedly authoritarian orientation of “Sinic civilization.” In Iran, instead of a democratic, there was an Islamicist movement. The failure of democracy in Iran was typical of Muslim societies, which are said to be “inhospitable” to Western liberal culture.35 Malaysia is doubly disadvantaged, with its Malay majority part of Islamic civilization and its government invoking anti-democratic “Asian values.”36 In Serbia, the rise of extreme nationalism spelled the end of any post-communist democratization.37 Serbia’s Orthodox Christian cultural tradition had heavily stacked the cards against liberalism. The Islamicist outcome of the Iranian revolution of 1979 was not pre-ordained. While much of Iranian society mobilized against the Shah, there were deep

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divisions about what political form should be created after his fall. The Iranian revolution was largely peaceful (violence involved soldiers shooting unarmed civilian protesters), and there was no guerrilla army to give radicals an overwhelming advantage in the transition process, such as in Cuba in 1960 or Nicaragua in 1979. There were several critical junctures during which more secular politicians and intellectuals could have become the leading force in the revolution. Had they convinced Ayatollah Khomeini to participate in elections before the Shah fell or had they won widespread support for Shapur Bakhtiar, the fleeing Shah’s liberal successor, the democratic opposition would have been strengthened. When the moderate politician, Mehdi Barzagan, was appointed by Khomeini to head the first provisional revolutionary government, he began a transition to democracy. But he was out-maneuvered by radicals who used the seizure of US hostages to undermine his power.38 The Islamicists also eventually banished Abolhasan Banisadr, the first elected president of the Islamic Republic, who also had liberal tendencies. But the last act of the Iranian revolution is still to be staged. The reformist president Muhammad Khatami, twice elected with overwhelming majorities, is engaged in intense struggle with Islamicist hard-liners (who like to cite Huntington’s civilizational clash thesis!). Student protest in mid-1999 and in 2002 called for religious and political changes. There have been discussions of religious reforms, of an “Islamic Protestantism,” and of political democratization.39 The Islamic “fundamentalist” regime of Iran was not a cultural inevitability, but the result of the (temporary) defeat of the democrats. Proponents of democracy in China 1989, Malaysia 1998–9, and Serbia before 2000 were also numerous. Their defeat was due to contigent circumstances and not an inevitable outcome (as the recent overthrow of Suharto in Indonesia and Miloševi¼ in Serbia demonstrates). In Chapter 4, it was argued that cultural differences have little to do with why Chinese leaders shot peaceful demonstrators in 1989 while Eastern Europe regime collapsed in the face of popular protest in Eastern Europe before they could shoot. In Chapter 5, it was suggested that ethnic conflict was intentionally provoked by the Miloševi¼ regime to demobilize democratic protests. In Malaysia, the dismissal and arrest of deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim in September 1998 by prime minister Mohamad Mahathir led to the formation of a Malay-based middle-class protest movement. Although the immediate cause for the political crisis in Malaysia was a personal dispute between Anwar and Mahathir, the reformasi campaign that grew out of it found much more popular resonance than did opposition that arose after previous elite conflicts within the dominant United Malays National Organization (UMNO). This reformasi campaign rejected the regime’s claim that “Asian values” made democracy culturally inappropriate.40 Anwar articulated a culturalist argument in favor of democracy in rallies held around the country. His account of Asian traditions is that they are compatible with – and even conducive to – democracy, a point made by other Asian democrats such as former South Korean president Kim Dae Jung.41 Anwar effectively combined Islam with his liberal program, as had earlier occurred

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in Indonesia.42 Although a mixture of repression and electoral manipulation has diminished the reformasi challenge to the regime, the government has still not recovered its Malay political base. That authoritarians have used cultural arguments to justify their non-democratic rule does not prove that these “civilizations” are inherently hostile to democracy. Huntington fails to distinguish civilization primordialism from culturalist propaganda.

Democratic revolutions regained The “October Revolution” in Serbia put an end to the disastrous Miloševi¼ dictatorship which had unleashed four Balkan wars in a decade in the name of Serbian nationalism.43 Vojislav Koštunica, Miloševi¼’s opponent in presidential elections, skillfully defanged the latter’s anti-Western pan-Serbianism with his moderate nationalism and democratic credentials. When Miloševi¼ manipulated the elections, 600,000 marched in Belgrade and overthrew his regime.44 During the crisis, Miloševi¼ received little support from neighboring states sharing Serbia’s Christian orthodox tradition. Indonesian students were not very impressed by the Suharto regime’s claim to have established a culturally appropriate (authoritarian) “pancasila democracy.”45 Although pancasila provides the country’s foundational principles, its instrumentalization by the Suharto regime led its teaching to be the most hated subject in Indonesian schools. The efforts of Muslim intellectuals to combine Islamic with democratic ideas preceded the protest movement that overthrew the Suharto regime in May 1998.46 His New Order government had argued that its “Pancasila democracy” model embodied indigenous values of deliberation and consensus, excluding the masses from politics except during brief “election” campaigns through the “floating mass” principle. The regime justified such a closed political system as a necessary condition for rapid economic development, a claim the 1997 Asian crisis undermined. The democratic revolution against Suharto thus not just falsified claims about the incompatibility of Islam and democracy but was also a blow to advocates of authoritarian “Asian values.”47 By defeating an extreme nationalist regime in Orthodox Serbia, and a developmental dictator in Muslim Indonesia, democratic revolutions showed that culturalist arguments could not stop the third wave of democratization.

Conclusion Huntington, as a prophet of a clash of civilizations, contends that the legitimacy of political rule, political diffusion, international pressure and economic modernization must be considered within a specific cultural context. Religion, he claims, is the basis of most civilizations. Such arguments appear to contradict his previous democratic universalism on the assumption that democracy is only “appropriate” in Western, Christian civilization. But it has been shown in this chapter that this must not necessarily be the case. Democracy can be legitimate, can be diffused, can receive international support, and can be furthered by economic modernization

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in non-Western cultures as it was earlier in the West. Democracy is universal precisely because it is culturally adaptable. Democratic revolutionaries have countered authoritarian claims about the supposed incompatibility of democracy with non-Western civilizational traditions through cultural arguments in favor of democratization. Chinese students derived legitimacy from the Confucian tradition of protest against despotic role during the Tiananamen Square demonstrations in 1989. In Indonesia, student protestors called for a return to the true principles of pancasila and Islamic democracy. In Iran, reformists, including clerics, battle against hard-line Mullahs over the proper political role of Islam. Student demonstrators have called for a democratic interpretation of the Iranian revolution and have supported calls for a “protestant” Islam that is compatible with democracy. In Serbia both Koštunica and Miloševi¼ claimed to be nationalists. The overthrow of the Miloševi¼ regime and the consolidation of democracy proved the democratic revolutionary interpretation of Serbian nationalism to be stronger. A major part of the universal appeal of democracy has often been its cultural specificity. Cultural difference has not just been instrumentalized by authoritarians, but has been invoked against them as well. Civilizational clash can provoke a democratic revolution.

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Democratic revolutions kept the “third wave” of democratization rolling. Philippine “people power” was the first democratic transition in Asia, which then diffused as a model of a peaceful uprising against an unyielding dictatorship to Bangladesh, Burma, China, Pakistan and South Korea, where popular movements also challenged autocracies. In Eastern Europe, the “Gorbachev factor” cannot fully explain region-wide democratization. While his reforms were a pre-condition of the transformation, Gorbachev did not intend these democratic changes and in some cases even actively resisted them.1 Liberalization, much less democratization, was adamantly opposed by hard-liners in East Germany and Czechoslovakia and, for over a decade, by the Miloševi¼ regime in Serbia. Democrats had to rebel if the spread of democracy in Eastern Europe in 1989 was not to be stopped at the borders of the GDR or (SSR. The “October revolution” in Serbia completed Eastern European democratization in the year 2000. Despite the importance of democratic revolutions in spreading democracy in Asia and Eastern Europe, they have been neglected in the democratization literature. In part, this is due to the emphasis placed on elite-initiated negotiations as against societal-led transformation. Even when mass mobilization has clearly played a significant part in democratization, round-table talks, military intervention and regime collapse have often been stressed instead. “Democratic revolution” is an ideal typical concept, and no democratization has involved a purely societalled uprising. Both regime and society must tango in a transition. But when mass demonstrations bring down the regime, or force a rapid transition, it is important that the role of society not be underplayed.2 Timing is a helpful way to distinguish these two transition paths. When a non-democratic regime initiates negotiations with opposition elites that lead to a democratic transition, then the conventional transitologist model is appropriate. But when round-table talks, intervention by a faction of the military or ruling party, and/or regime collapse follow popular mobilization, a democratic revolutionary path has been taken. These talks, interventions and collapse are not insignificant, but they are of secondary importance to the popular uprising itself. Whether elite negotiation or societal mobilization prompts a transition is the crucial distinction in the democratization process. Another reason for transitologists’ hesitation is that it is widely presumed that revolutions inevitably lead to anti-democratic radicalization, as the experience of Cuba, Iran and Nicaragua seemed to demonstrate. This radicalization thesis is

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also the reason why most theorists of revolution do not accept the notion of democratic revolutions. “Real” revolutions are radical efforts to bring about significant socio-economic change, not “mere” democratization. The case of the Philippines, considered in Chapter 1, shows how moderates can out-maneuver radicals in order to bring about democratic consolidation. (In Eastern Europe, there were no powerful anti-democratic radicals competing against democrats, except in Serbia and possibly Romania.3) Despite political change in the Philippines, society and the economy were hardly transformed in a “progressive” direction, although the claim that the Philippines returned to “cacique democracy” missed important changes that did take place. Whether the Philippine “people power” led to a revolutionary outcome depends on how important democratization alone is considered to be. In Eastern Europe, democratic revolutions did bring great social and economic changes (as well as new state forms) to Czechoslovakia and East Germany. Yet even here admission to the revolutionary hall of fame has been halfhearted, perhaps because liberal capitalism is not considered radical enough. The instrumentalization of civilizational conflict against the West to justify non-democratic rule was discussed in Chapters 5 and 6. It is, in a sense, a variation of the “revolutions-lead-to-radicalization” view discussed above. In China, Iran and Serbia, civilizational radicals (“Asianist,” Islamicist and Serbian nationalist, respectively) defeated democratic moderates. But these defeats were neither inevitable nor are they irreversible. Just as a democratic revolution in Belgrade brought Miloševi¼ down, so too are hard-liners in Beijing and conservative Mullahs in Tehran threatened by democratic revolutions in the future (in Iran student protests have been occurring periodically since 1999). Justifications offered by “civilization clashers” have been turned into cultural arguments against them. Vojislav Koštunica, a democrat and nationalist alike, defeated Slobadan Miloševi¼ in presidential polls and led a revolutionary movement that overthrew him when the election results were manipulated. In Iran, student activists, intellectual critics and reformist clerics advocate “Islamic democracy,” a position also taken in the Indonesian and Malaysian reformasi movements. Democrats have effectively countered civilization clashers by reconciling cultural difference with democracy. In short, theories of revolutions need to be “democratized” and the democratic transition literature “revolutionized.” As a contribution to this effort, the remainder of this conclusion will consider the “whys” and “hows” of democratic revolutions. The next section looks at why democrats rebel. The following part focuses on how they rebel. Finally, it will be asked why democratic revolutions have often led to troubled transitions.

Why democrats rebel Relative deprivation All the Eastern European countries considered here experienced economic decline or even crisis before democratic revolutions broke out. This was also the case in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines in Asia. (China, South

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Korea and Thailand are exceptions in that popular uprisings occurred despite rapid economic growth.) As was argued in Chapter 3, such economic discontent was worsened by relative deprivation: Eastern Europeans knew they lagged behind Western Europeans. East Germans felt particularly deprived because they compared themselves to West Germans. Asian countries hit by financial crisis missed the regional “economic miracle.”4 But in China, continued economic growth did not compensate for the sense of deprivation felt by sectors of the population left out from or disadvantaged by the economic development. Many students and intellectuals were aggrieved that their incomes “lagged behind industrial workers and were a small fraction of the earnings of successful entrepreneurs, while future job prospects remained weak.”5 In addition, students were unhappy about the continuation of the job assignment system that contrasted with the unprecedented economic freedoms enjoyed by private business. More generally, farmers appeared to benefit more from the early regime reforms than city dwellers, particularly since urbanites were accustomed to enjoying privileges. Corrupt cadres were resented by all. A sense of relative deprivation arose in comparison not just to other social groups but also to the recent past: the highest inflation since the late 1940s, in 1988 and 1989, led to a drop in absolute income of an estimated half of all city dwellers.6 Thus, despite economic growth, many urban Chinese felt relatively deprived in 1989. Political dissatisfaction was as great as economic discontent, as polls in Czechoslovakia and the GDR show.7 Eastern Europeans compared their lack of freedom to the freedoms of the West. In Asia, the comparison was more often to a country’s own democratic past, such as pre-martial law democracy in the Philippines or in Indonesia to the short-lived economic experience with democracy in the 1950s.8 But here, too, the global democratic trend was relevant. Neither Asians nor Eastern Europeans wanted to miss out of being a part of a regional democratization wave. Although discontent was widespread, such dissatisfaction cannot account for the timing of a democratic revolution. If democrats were so unhappy, why did they not rebel earlier? Aside from the long list of popular uprisings in Poland, most Eastern Europeans had not rebelled after defeats in the 1950s. Explaining why democrats rebel at a particular point in time requires looking at disappointed expectations, outrage, and ethical commitment. Revolutionary potential and revolutionary situations It is part of the common sense of the study of revolution that frustrated expectations create growing revolutionary potential. This original (inverse) J-curve hypothesis suggested that revolutions become likely after a period of economic stagnation or decline.9 Later, a neo-Tocquevillian approach was added, with the claim being that revolutions begin when an unpopular regime starts to reform itself politically.10 But as Steven Saxonberg argued for Eastern Europe, revolutionary potential increased fastest when political reforms were rejected by communist hard-liners.11 In Eastern Europe, Gorbachev’s reforms led to general hopes for change, in terms of both economics and politics. These expectations were fulfilled in “mature”

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post-totalitarian Hungary and Poland, where regime soft-liners outdid glasnost by democratizing, not just liberalizing, their political systems in order to undertake economic reforms. But these hopes were dashed under “frozen” post-totalitarianism in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, where regimes refused to undertake either economic or political reforms. In a notorious interview in 1987, a leading East German communist official in charge of ideology, Kurt Hager, ruled out Gorbachev-style reforms for the GDR: “just because your neighbor puts up new wallpaper, does not mean you’d feel obligated to do the same.”12 Cries of “Gorbi, Gorbi” heard after rock concerts and other public gatherings in the GDR were thus deeply subversive. The East German regime had survived by keeping expectations of change low with an orthodox and pro-Soviet stance. Now reforms were emanating from the Soviet Union itself, which the GDR leadership tried to resist in a sudden burst of self-assertion. Honecker choose orthodoxy over loyalty to the Soviet Union (a regime slogan had once been “learn from the Soviet Union”).13 Also, the GDR leadership had won pragmatic acceptance in East German society despite its inflexibility because of its image as being the most efficient regime in Eastern Europe (as so called “Red Prussians”). This accounts for the extreme outrage of East Germans when they discovered their leaders had been leading a life of relative privilege in a secluded residential setting and heard that the “chief financial fixer” of the regime, who had engaged in shady deals and semi-criminal trading, had been allowed to flee to West Germany.14 In Asia, internal, not external, events led to a rise in expectations. An exception is Nepal, where the Eastern Europe transformation in 1989, and the overthrow of the Romanian dictator Ceau_escu in Romania in particular, contributed to rising expectations of change within the country itself.15 In the Philippines, hopes that the lifting of martial law by Marcos in 1981 would lead to political liberalization were brutally dashed by the Aquino assassination in 1983 and other acts of repression.16 In South Korea, regime promises of political liberalization in 1987 were broken by the torture and killing of a student demonstrator, the suspension of debate on constitutional reform by president Chun Doo Hwan, and the nomination of a military man to succeed him as president.17 Yet while frustration sets off protests, a spark is still needed to set off a revolutionary explosion. Without such a triggering mechanism, a revolutionary moment may pass. South Korean student activists had launched a series of mass demonstrations against the Park and Chun governments, yet this military dictatorship survived for two and a half decades in power. Suharto survived a similar series of student-led protests from the early 1970s to the late 1990s in Indonesia.18 The Burmese long faced a repressive, hated dictatorship and a severe economic crisis (which culminated in the dictator Ne Win launching what “may have been the most massive demonetization in the contemporary world” in which all bank notes above $2.50 were abolished, making 70 per cent of the circulation currency in the country immediately invalid).19 Yet periodic university protests during the first 26 years of military rule had not posed a grave threat to the regime’s survival. As discussed in Chapter 5, it took the Serbian opposition a decade to

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topple Miloševi¼, though on several occasions (particularly during the 1996–7 protests) mass mobilization brought his regime to the brink of collapse. Focused popular outrage is needed to set off a mass revolt to turn revolutionary potential into a revolutionary situation. There is no logical limit to the possible sources of popular anger. It can be as little as a harangue by a hard-liner. Erich Honecker’s infamous, if probably apocryphal, dismissal of the significance of the flight of tens of thousands of East Germans with the words “we will not shed a single tear for those who left” crystallized cynicism about the regime, increasing popular mobilization and prompting his removal from power.20 When Ceau_escu spoke on December 21, 1989 in Bucharest to demonstrate that he was still in command after unprecedented demonstrations in Timisoara, the crowd began booing. This open expression of anger led to an intensification of popular protests. Outrage could also be set off by brutal repression. The assassination of opposition leaders (such as Benigno Aquino in Philippines) or the arrest of oppositionists (like Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia) can unleash huge demonstrations. Shootings or beatings of demonstrators fueled rebellions in the Asian cases (in Bangladesh, Burma, China, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand) as well as in Eastern Europe (in Czechoslovakia, East Germany and, particularly, Romania). The revolutionary “trigger” that received most attention in this book (in Chapters 1 and 5) was stolen elections. Enraged voters responded to electoral theft with mass mobilization that overthrew dictators in the Philippines and Serbia. The flagrant violation of electoral procedure was perceived as a fundamental attack on their status as citizens. Because the Marcos and Miloševi¼ regimes had held elections regularly to keep up democratic appearances, the moving forward of presidential polls in both countries raised popular expectations that political change could be achieved because elections had never been totally meaningless. This, too, helps to explain the enormous outrage when these regimes tried to manipulate the results. Opposition victories, established by independent poll watcher groups in both countries, strengthened people’s sense of political efficacy and undermined the image of dictators known for their wiles and long thought invincible. Stolen elections can spark off democratic revolutions. But it still must be explained why democrats rebel and do not “free ride,” as might be expected if the rational choice literature is taken too seriously. As was argued in the introduction, instrumental rationality cannot explain such action. Democratic rebels are motivated by value rationality in the Weberian sense. Utility maximization involves finding means to enjoyable ends. Ethical actions are considered worthy in and of themselves regardless of the consequences. Democrats rebel because they feel morally obligated to do so, whatever the risks. Amatai Etzioni speaks in this context of a distinct “moral dimension” of human behavior.21 Why democrats have to rebel and why they can However counter-intuitive it may seem, a central thesis of the democratization literature is that several non-democratic regime types are likely to initiate negotiations with the opposition (with examples of this phenomenon most often

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drawn from Southern Europe and Latin America). Authoritarian regimes in which reformers have gained the upper hand and are backed by state key institutions with collective interests (such as the “military as institution”) seek to make a political pact with moderates in the opposition.22 But the democratization literature is too elite-centered on this point. A societyoriented perspective sheds more light on the issue. The willingness of a nondemocratic regime to begin negotiations increases when revolutionary potential rises. As the cases of Poland and Hungary in 1988–89 illustrate, reformist regimes attempt to meet rising expectations in order to avoid the disappointment and outrage that can lead to mass mobilization. In other words, regimes attempt to act before it is too late. Negotiated transitions pre-empt possible democratic revolutions. As has been argued throughout this book, sultanism and (frozen) posttotalitarianism are the regime forms least likely to surrender power except under duress. In sultanism, the regime is the ruler, his family, and friends. They thus have no collective, institutional interests in surrendering power. Potential “softliners” have been banned to the periphery of power. In frozen post-totalitarianism, reformers have long been purged as the regime has developed an anti-reformist raison d’être (which in the GDR included blocking out the “stateness” problem of a rump socialist German state).23 Frozen post-totalitarianism is hard-line rule with little chance of internal reform. As Jeff Goodwin has aptly formulated this point, there is often “no other way out” against unyielding dictatorships except rebellion.24 But that there is a way out also needs to be stressed. It has been argued that both bureaucratic-authoritarian and totalitarian rule are too strong to be overthrown by mass uprisings.25 Sultanism and frozen post-totalitarianism, by contrast, are vulnerable to popular revolts because they lack both societal and elite legitimacy. Attempts to legitimate sultanistic rule through developmental reforms (such as in the Philippines under Marcos after the declaration of martial law) or through nationalism (under Ceau_escu in Romania and Miloševi¼ in Serbia) are eroded by increasing personalism. A ruler can hardly present himself (modern sultanistic rulers have all been male) as representing the public good when corruption undermines reform and greed the national interest. Sultanism is the least legitimate form of authority. Within the ruling elite, a sultanistic ruler fears members of the regime staff who have grown too powerful. They are often not purged entirely so that they can later be restored to power should another reshuffle be deemed necessary. Or they are left formally in power while their influence is undermined by informal personalistic ties within the regime. The ruler is dependent upon a divide-andconquer strategy because he cannot rely on ideological commitment among his staff in an atmosphere of cynicism. While such a strategy prevents a reformist faction in the regime from developing, what can be called the “Iliescu factor” threatens the ruler should he show signs of weakness. Alienated but not powerless officials covertly seek support from members of the party or the military angered by the way their professionalism has been undermined by the ruler’s patrimonialism. Aside from Romania, down-but-not-out regime officials contributed to a

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split in the regime that provided favorable conditions for a successful uprising in the Philippines (defense minister Enrile and the second-in-command of the armed forces Ramos), in Indonesia (vice president Habibie and armed forces chief Wiranto), and Serbia (army chief Pavkovi¼). This military role in democratic uprisings against sultanistic regimes has often led to the claim that these were less uprisings than coups.26 There is ample evidence in particular of civilian oppositionists consulting with military defectors from the regime. As will be shown in the case of Burma below, without the “Iliescu factor” of military support from within the regime, democratic revolutions are likely to be suppressed. A kind of military “balance of power” is needed if mass protests are to succeed. But this military “coup” element only becomes relevant after a mass uprising begins. A dissident military or party faction of the regime is unable to move against the dictator until huge demonstrations against him begin. In frozen post-totalitarianism, the regime compensates for its lack of societal legitimacy through what Steven Saxonberg calls conservative pragmatic acceptance.27 The regime is accepted as long as no realistic alternative is seen. The population pretends to support the regime in order to get along in daily life. But this strategy of “living within a lie” is regime-threatening when hopes for change become widespread. Once the regime loses its pragmatic acceptance, little stands in the way of revolt except a realistic threat of severe repression (a point considered below). The regime is a uniformly hard-line but it is easily paralyzed. With its ideological legitimation largely eroded (discussed in Chapter 4), it becomes vulnerable to a dissident movement demanding the end of communism because security elites no longer “believe” in defending the regime. There is a way out of post-totalitarian communism once civil society lives within the truth and regime officials recognize they have been ruling through a lie.

How democrats rebel Moral leadership Crusades against corrupt dictatorships are often led by “non-political” leaders who symbolize the moral character of the struggle. Eastern European dissidents spoke of anti-politics and a playwright became president of Czechoslovakia. Although they had long seemed to be engaged in little more than isolated discussions, Eastern European dissidents said out loud what had long been a “hidden transcript” that people dared not speak openly in the face of power.28 (The “why no Havel” question posed about East Germany in Chapter 3 asks why such a strong moral leader did not emerge during the revolution there. While GDR civic movement leaders criticized the regime, as “revisionists” they did not want to end socialism nor were they willing to accept German reunification, which turned out to be the hidden “truth” of most East Germans.) When democratic revolutions occur, dissidents who have long “lived within the truth” become the movement’s natural leaders. They possess what John Kane calls “moral capital.” Such leaders are

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Conclusion seen to be about something larger than gain … [They] serve and … stand for something apart from themselves, to achieve something beyond mere private ends. They must, in other words, establish moral grounding. This they do by avowing their service to some set of fundamental values, principles, and goals that find a resonant response in significant numbers of people. When such people judge the agent or institution to be both faithful and effective in serving these values and goals, they are likely to bestow some quantum of respect and approval that is of great political benefit to the receiver. This quantum is the agent’s moral capital.29

Moral leaders are particularly likely to emerge during a crisis and may have a “distinctly unheroic mien, charismatic in neither popular nor Weberian senses.” In crisis situations, “moral capital may elevate even quite ordinary persons into positions of leadership.”30 Such leaders contrast their lack of political experience with the well-practiced cynicism of the dictatorial regime. During her presidential campaign against Marcos in 1986, Corazon C. Aquino claimed to be a “simple housewife,” contrasting her political naïveté with Marcos’ extensive “experience” with cronyism and corruption.31 In Serbia, Vojislav Koštunica said in the final electoral rally of his fateful presidential campaign against Slobadan Miloševi¼ in 2000: “I am an ordinary man like most of you, and don’t want to change the world. My intention is to change the country with you.”32 His campaign posters – which read “Who can look you in the eye? Koštunica” – contrasted his personal credibility with Slobodan Miloševi¼’s moral turpitude. This phenomenon of non-political, moral leadership helps explain why many democratic revolutionary movements have been led by women, particularly in Asia (as analyzed in Chapter 2).33 Perceived as non-political in patriarchal societies, female politicians embodied popular outrage against highly personalized, often sultanistic, dictatorships. Their gender enabled these Asian women leaders to appear non-partisan despite their dynastic origins. As women, they were thought able to bring private, familial virtues into the public sphere. They also often brought religious symbolism to the national politics. The moral appeals of these women leaders were crucial in mobilizing mass protests against dictators. Non-violent, spontaneous, and urban-based revolts The non-violent character of democratic revolutions has been stressed. When violence occurred, it was usually when regime troops shot peaceful protestors (in Romania in Eastern Europe, and Burma, China, Indonesia, Nepal, as well as Thailand, in Asia). Leaders of democratic revolutions advocated non-violence. In the case of the Philippines or the GDR, for example, they drew inspiration from the writings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.34 Women leaders in Asia were not expected to take up arms and macho dictators have been shamed into not using force against these opposition movements (with the important exception of Burma). In Pakistan, a gender-based division of labor occurred in the Bhutto family,

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with her brothers resorting to terrorism while Benazir adopted a non-violent strategy.35 Also, religious groups were crucial in promoting non-violence. In the Philippines, the Catholic Church supported seminars and training in the techniques of non-violence; during “people power,” members of religious orders, and particularly nuns, were sent to the frontlines of the demonstrations, thereby playing a crucial role in keeping protests peaceful. In East Germany, civic movement leaders found a “niche” in the Protestant Church where they received encouragement and support in their philosophy of non-violence.36 Democrats rebel spontaneously. The East German revolution was an example of “spontaneous cooperation” in which people knew where and when to gather for demonstrations (such as in the Leipzig Nikolaikirche courtyard after Monday prayer services) without receiving explicit instructions.37 Political communication, often difficult before mass mobilization began, became easier as non-official channels quickly spread information about protests, often aided by the presence of the foreign media.38 In Eastern Europe, Radio Free Europe (with the special case of West German television in the GDR) and in Burma, BBC Radio, were crucial of spreading news about where democrats were rebelling and when. Such communication channels and mobilizational opportunities were concentrated in cities. Democratic revolutions have thus been urban-based. Mass protest movements were centered in Belgrade, Bucharest, Dresden, East Berlin, Leipzig and Prague in Eastern Europe, and in Bangkok, Beijing, Dacca, Islamabad, Karachi, Jakarta, Kathmandu, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Rangoon, Seoul and Tehran in Asia. Spontaneity also helps explain why organs of state repression were so helpless at times of mass protest. The case of East Germany is particularly telling in this regard. The size of the secret police, the Stasi, had reached grotesque proportions by 1989. But while the Stasi had organized protest under control, it was helpless in the face of spontaneous mass demonstrations.39 As the first major rally occurred in Leipzig in October 9, 1989, the Stasi withdrew its forces, unable to cope with such a crowd. Without careful opposition planning that could be spied upon, the Stasi’s weapons (it was termed the “sword and shield” of the communist party) were blunted.40 Dissidents, cross-class coalitions, and failed regime repression As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, the rise of “dissidence” in Eastern Europe began after the repression of the Prague Spring by Soviet tanks. At the same time, Eastern European regimes had lost their ideological legitimacy, forcing them to rely on pragmatic acceptance to maintain their hold on power. No longer under the sway of communist ideology, critical intellectuals abandoned their earlier demands for a better socialism (“revisionism”), calling instead for the end of communism.41 This transformed intellectuals into a “regime alternative” opposition because they wanted not to reform communism but to abolish it altogether. It also led to a change of strategy. Beginning with KOR (Workers’ Defense Committee) in Poland in the mid-1970s and culminating with the Czechoslovakian Civic

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Forum’s recruitment of worker support in 1989, dissidents successfully built crossclass coalitions against communist rule. As argued in Chapter 4, the turn to dissidence makes it more likely that a posttotalitarian regime will collapse before it will shoot. Chinese student protesters in 1989 were revisionists, calling for reformed socialism that did not directly challenge the regime.42 Although workers were eager to join the protests, student leaders kept them at a distance. The Chinese student opposition did not actively try to form a Solidarno[¼-like coalition of workers and students.43 Student demonstrations instead took an elitist stance, calling for the return to socialist ideals, and were thus reluctant to rally workers against the self-proclaimed party of the proletariat. Had the students more actively sought worker support, a protest “tipping point” might have been reached that would have led to regime collapse.44 This failure of opposition alliance-making allowed the Chinese communist regime to pull together in a time of crisis based on the continued ideological legitimacy of “early” posttotalitarianism. The Chinese regime was thus able to repress a revisionist opposition in 1989. But while the dream of a better socialism persisted in 1989 China, the credibility of the ideology of Marxism has “evaporated” after the Tiananmen massacre and a turn toward anti-communist dissidence is evident.45 A cross-class coalition has also been decisive in the struggle against sultanistic regimes. Such personalistic regimes lack legitimacy due to the concentration of power and wealth within a small circle of family and friends. These non-democratic “family affairs” alienate all major social groups, leading to the formation of a coalition that includes rich and poor alike. Such cross-class coalitions are more likely to succeed than working-class or peasant struggle against a regime dominated by the industrial bourgeoisie or rural landlords.46 This was the case in the Philippines, as discussed in Chapter 1, in which a broad multi-class coalition against the Marcos regime emerged. In Indonesia, students also received middleand upper-class support in their demonstrations against the personalistic Suharto regime in 1988.47 In addition, cross-class coalitions swept away personalized military regimes in Pakistan (1988) and Bangladesh (1990), as well as the Panchayat system in Nepal. Even in South Korea, where sultanistic tendencies in the military regime were weak, protests were successful because a coalition of radical students and workers received broad support from the middle class.48 Although they lack any form of ideological legitimacy, sultanistic regimes may still shoot when mass mobilization occurs, as the case of Romania considered at the end of Chapter 4 showed. This is due to the personalistic ties between part of the military (or in the case of Romania, the secret police, the Securitate) and the ruler, which undermines the institutional integrity of the armed forces. But such personalization of state coercion also weakens the rulers’ hold on other elements of the military alienated by deprofessionalization and wooed by regime-internal opponents. As discussed above, Ion Iliescu in Romania and Juan Ponce Enrile in the Philippines had both been marginalized by the increasing patrimonialization of the rulers, but they remained on the periphery of the regime to rally parts of the military against the sultanistic ruler once mass mobilization had begun. This explains why in Romania, Ceau_escu shot but still fell, as regular troops defeated the pro-

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regime Securitate supporters. In the Philippines, Marcos tried to shoot by sending in troops to crush the military rebels. But “people power” stopped the tanks, enabling Enrile and his co-conspirator General Fidel V. Ramos to rally the military against Marcos. In Indonesia, elements of the military controlled by Suharto’s son-in-law kidnapped and killed several student demonstrators. They also launched a pogrom against ethnic Chinese in Jakarta in an effort to co-opt mass anger and save the regime. But the military hierarchy regained control, yielded to the demonstrators’ demands, and removed Suharto from power.49 In Nepal, troops were ordered (probably by the king and the palace secretariat) to fire at Jana Andolan protestors on April 6, 1990 near the royal palace. Despite many dead and injured, the regime was forced to give in to the demonstrators’ demands two days later.50 In Thailand, regime troops fired on demonstrators in May 1992, but the king intervened and military factions opposed to the coup leaders forced the junta to retreat, leading to a renewed transition to democracy.51 When mass protests break out, sultanistic rulers may shoot but they still often lose power due to a breakaway faction that forces regime change. The important exception to this rule of sultanistic regimes that shoot (or attempt to do so) but still collapse in the face of democratic revolutionary movements was Burma in 1988. Though highly personalized under the rule of Ne Win, the military was able to repress huge protests in 1988 through incredible brutality, which probably claimed tens of thousands of lives (particularly of school pupils and university students).52 Before this crackdown, Ne Win’s regime had been on the brink of collapse after months of mass demonstrations. Some soldiers had shown solidarity with the demonstrators. Then an internal coup was launched. Yet it did not topple but rescued the crumbling regime. The new military junta, with the Orwellian name of SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council), purged would-be reformers and gradually removed Ne Win and his family from power (several of his relatives were sentenced to death for a purported counter-coup attempt shortly before the dictator’s death in 2002).53 So instead of military softliners protecting demonstrators against repression as occurred in Romania, Indonesia, and Thailand, potential reformers were purged by the SLORC. Lacking any support within the regime, protesters could be shot at will. This repression was so all-encompassing that when elections were stolen in 1990, no major protests occurred, as was examined in Chapter 5. In Burma, hard-line military rule repressed a democratic revolution. When, however, the “Iliescu factor” in sultanism is present, providing a balance of power when a mass uprising occurs, such regimes are likely to collapse even when they shoot.

Troubled transitions to democracy Establishing the rules of the game Transitions after revolution have seldom been smooth. The chief difficulty has been the need to transform revolutionary into democratic legitimacy. While professing democratic intentions, revolutionary leaders can only earn democratic

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credentials by holding free and fair elections, respecting human rights, and guaranteeing the sovereignty of democratic institutions (thus precluding nondemocratic reserve domains of power). But this transformation of legitimacy is difficult. Before the new electoral “rules of the game” are firmly established, the struggle for power in the name of the revolution may continue. The quest for justice for those victimized by the dictatorship is always controversial, but particularly so after democratic revolutions. Will it involve “revolutionary justice” against the losers of the revolution or a process governed by democratic norms? The greatest problem after a democratic revolution, however, is coping with the high expectations it creates. Not only are many disillusioned with the move from direct popular democracy to indirect parliamentary rule, but charges of corruption are particularly harmful to the new political order. By overthrowing a dictatorship before establishing an alternative political order, democratic revolutions create an institutional vacuum.54 New constitutions have to be written (for example, in Nepal, the Philippines and Romania) or thoroughly reformed (as in Indonesia). In the case of East Germany and Czechoslovakia, constitutional arrangements were overshadowed by the creation of new state forms, a direct or indirect byproduct of democratic revolution.55 Given the institutional vacuum involved, democratic revolutions mark only the beginning, not the end, of a democratic transition. In negotiated transitions to democracy, new institutional arrangements are agreed upon in advance. A government legitimated by free and fair elections completes the democratization process by putting these institutional plans into practice. After a revolution, however, the old order has been destroyed and a new one must be created. Even if elections were actually won by the opposition, they were then stolen by the regime. The new revolutionary democratic government finds itself at the start of a transition process. This causes confusion about what the new “rules of the political game” are and, even when the rules are understood, raises the question about whether they will be obeyed. Disloyal oppositionists may claim that the new government lacks democratic legitimacy (until free elections are held). Or they may continue with a revolutionary strategy that was part of the uprising against the dictatorship. Either way, the institutional vacuum and disloyal opposition create grave dangers for post-revolutionary democracies. After democratic revolutions in Asia and Eastern Europe, disloyal opposition was often practiced by members of the ancien régime and sometimes found among factions of the military, radical guerrillas or terrorists, or ethnic secessionists. Hard-core Panchayat system loyalists in Nepal, “Marcos loyalists” in the Philippines and paramilitary forces in Serbia were among the disloyal oppositionists from the fallen regime who attempted to undermine the new democratic order. Marcos loyalists claimed the ex-president had been kidnapped by the Americans to Hawaii and refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Aquino regime, which they claimed had seized power through a putsch. In Serbia, the assassination of prime minister Zoran Ðin}i¼ in March 2003 was allegedly organized by Milorad Lukovi¼, a former officer of Miloševi¼’s paramilitary police.56

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Multiple coup attempts in the Philippines and a successful one in Pakistan point to the threat the military can pose to the new democratic order. Threats from factions of the Thai military remained a concern after military rule was overthrown in 1992. Interestingly, one of the most unstable new democracies in South America in the 1980s was Argentina, in which popular mobilization had also played a major role in the transition. Unlike in pacted transitions, particularly with military regimes, the role of the armed forces in the new democratic order after a revolution has to be established through trial and error. Concerns about human rights prosecutions can cause further alarm in military circles. In the Philippines, military rebels continued to try to seize power for themselves, which they felt “people power” had cheated them from earlier.57 In Nepal, an initial coalition between the Nepali Congress Party and an alliance of (really social democratic) communist parties that overthrew the Panchayat system broke down. After a short-lived communist government, a major Maoist guerrilla threat emerged, gravely threatening the country’s democratic stability.58 In the Philippines, the largest communist insurgency in Southeast Asia resumed after peace talks with the Aquino government collapsed. Once allies in the antiMarcos struggle, the communists had become, along with the military rebels, the major disloyal opposition to the new democratic government. In Indonesia, radical Islamicist groups had been repressed under Suharto’s rule. But with the advent of democratization, key leaders returned from exile in Malaysia and radical groups flourished.59 The October 2002 bombing in Bali by Jemaah Islamiah (affiliated with Al Qaida) indicates the extent to which these groups have become a threat to the Megawati government.60 Ethnic secessionism threatened the new Indonesian democratic order. While the country might have had difficulties under any circumstances, the revolutionary character of the transition probably made them worse. In Spain, which had a negotiated transition, constitutional arrangements for regional autonomy agreed upon before a transfer of power helped marginalize the national terrorist organization ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) in the Basque electorate.61 In Indonesia, by contrast, the legacy of repression from the Suharto era and a centralistic political system had to be confronted and transformed under the unstable conditions of democratic rule after revolution. Violent military intervention in East Timor occurred in this political vacuum. The peace talks that began in Aceh after democratic procedures and federalist arrangements were established suggest that secessionists can be more easily convinced to consider autonomy under such conditions. As discussed in Chapter 2, women leaders of democratic revolutions often faced disloyal opposition due to male chauvinism. During anti-dictatorship struggles, women leaders were seen as best able to mobilize popular support through their moral capital. After taking power, however, male rivals and sometimes even female family members denounced women leaders as weak, incapable of dealing with the hard realities of politics. Political intrigues and coup attempts were the result. In the Philippines, Cory Aquino faced two embittered rivals, her defense minister, Enrile, and her vice president, Salvador H. Laurel. They launched

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several military putsch efforts, including one entitled “God save the Queen,” which expressed their belief that Aquino should reign but not rule. In Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto faced vehement opposition from her mother, who demanded that she let her brother, Mir Murtaza, be given control of the family political dynsasty. Her brother’s murder under mysterious circumstances during an anti-regime demonstration contributed to the downfall of her second government. The key to democratic consolidation after a revolution is the holding of free elections. This institutionalizes voting as the path to power and allows disloyal opposition forces to win office, giving them a stake in the electoral system. In Chapter 1, it was shown how elections enabled the Aquino government to peel away one layer of disloyal opposition after another. Marcos loyalists, military rebels, and even some former communist insurgents and Muslim secessionists participated in polls, thus helping legitimate this mechanism of deciding who holds power. Several of them won office, giving them an additional stake in the system. In Romania, polls were crucial in the success of democratic consolidation after a particularly rocky transition to democracy. The opposition’s victory in national polls in 1996 helped remove doubts about the authenticity of the democratic revolution after the undemocratic methods of the interim Iliescu/ National Salvation Front regime.62 Elections also provide democratic legitimacy and undermine revolutionary claims to power. As the case of Portugal showed in the mid-1970s, elections can be the key to marginalizing parties that continue to claim revolutionary against democratic legitimacy: there center-left, center-right and conservative parties badly defeated the communist party and put radical members of the Armed Forces Movement on the defensive. J. J. Linz and Alfred Stepan argue that before elections, political groups “can always make the claim that they legitimately represent the wishes and needs of the people. It is virtually impossible to verify or dispute their claim without elections. Elections create new democratic claimants.”63 As discussed in Chapter 3, in former East Germany, the civic movement leaders who claimed to speak for the revolution lost their political standing after their party won less than 3 per cent of the popular vote in the first and final free elections held in the GDR. In South Korea, student radicals suffered a similar fate at the polls. In Indonesia, democratic politicians marginalized both student radicals and Islamicist Muslim parties in the first elections after Suharto’s fall held in June 1999. In the Philippines, the restoration of polls contributed to the dramatic decline in communist party strength in the late 1980s through to the mid-1990s.64 Elections helped undermine revolutionary claims to democratic legitimacy. Justice or revenge? The problems of “transitional justice” have received increasing attention in the democratization literature.65 But a distinction should be drawn between the way this issue plays out after a negotiated transition and after a democratic revolution. Many non-democratic regimes which have extricated themselves from power have won guarantees from the opposition that high-ranking officials will not be prosecuted

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for human rights violations. Pinochet in Chile is the best publicized example of this phenomenon. A dictator who has been overthrown is not able to secure such protection. In the most extreme cases, the autocrat is subjected to immediate “revolutionary justice” and executed, as happened with Ceau_escu in Romania. In Serbia, Miloševi¼ was extradicted by the democratic successor regime to the Hague Tribunal (the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia). But in other cases, with the dictator under house arrest or in exile, the process of transitional justice becomes acute. If the democratic regime moves to trial, jail and confiscate the ill-gained wealth of the dictator and his top henchmen, it may be accused of subjecting them to victors’ justice (a similar criticism was made about the war crime trials of Nazi leaders in Nürnberg). If it does not, the regime will be seen as denying justice to the victims of the dictatorship and allowing dictatorial legacies to disturb the democratic present. South Korea has perhaps gone furthest in bringing transitional justice, jailing the country’s last two military leaders who had been president, Chun Doo Hyun and Roh Tae Woo. The Philippines has done little. Few members of the Marcos regime have been prosecuted and the trial of the former dictator’s wife, Imelda Marcos, ended in shambles. The Aquino regime also failed to gain back much of Marcos’ billions of dollars in stolen wealth.66 Women leaders of democratic revolutions in Asia faced the greatest difficulty in seeking justice for victims of the dictatorship because its leading victim was their father or husband. They were accused of trying to wreak personal revenge as the daughter, wife or widow of a martyr. This was complicated in Bangladesh by the feud between the two lady leaders around crimes committed in the past. After overthrowing the dictatorship together, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia became rivals for the country’s leadership. After Khaleda Zia won the first free elections in February 1991 elections, Sheikh Hasina became everything other than a loyal oppositionist. She accused Khaleda Zia’s husband, General Ziaur Rahman (who had himself been murdered as president) of being behind her father’s (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s) assassination. Elected prime minister in 1996, Sheikh Hasina focused on bringing her father’s killers to justice while Khaleda Zia accused her of wreaking revenge. This bitter dispute over the injustices of the past has continued since Khaleda Zia won the October 2001 elections. Corruption or reform? A revolutionary transition heightens expectations of rapid change that are inevitably disappointed. “The people” return to their homes unhappy that the brief, shining moment of popular protest (Aristide Zolberg terms them “moments of madness”) has disappeared.67 The euphoric sense of participating in the “parliament of the streets” (as it was known in the Philippines) is replaced by regular elections and careerist politicians. Worse, accusations of corruption are particularly damaging to a regime that has risen to power promising moral renewal. Reformist movements have arisen in several Southeast Asian countries after democratic revolutions. They have attempted to topple corrupt democratic governments in the name of the original “people power” revolution.

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Leaders of democratic revolutions have found their inability to meet high popular expectations after democratic revolutions frustrating. Václav Havel said: “It’s not my fault that I became a character in someone’s dream. Neither is it my fault that the person woke up.”68 Other “moral leaders” have faced similar problems. Vojislav Koštunica also suffered from inflated expectations. Like Havel, he found himself quickly out-maneuvered by more experienced and less scrupulous politicians who undercut his power as president (although Koštunica himself often took an obstructionist stance in this power struggle). The reputation of women leaders in Asia was damaged most by disappointed expectations, however. Their gender had helped shift attention away from their dynastic origins and contributed to their moral capital. But this moral standing made these women leaders particularly vulnerable to being discredited by corruption scandals. Benazir Bhutto’s two governments, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, were both plagued by charges of malfeasance in office. Her husband in particular drew fire for allegedly corrupt behavior. In Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines such charges weakened women leaders as well. This pattern of moral claims being undermined by corrupt practice was also found in Thailand where the liberal party, one of the so called “angel parties” which had campaigned against warlordism and corruption, lost power over a land scandal. Corruption scandals threaten the stability of many new democracies. But the problem is particularly acute after the overthrow of a corrupt dictatorship by a self-professed moral opposition. Good governance becomes the chief litmus test of the new democratic government. The disappointment of high expectations by corruption scandals has led to the rise of several reformist movements in Southeast Asia that have threatened democracy in the name of saving it. In Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, mass movements formed, demanding the end of corruption. They were drawn predominantly from the middle class and were urban-based (and many of its leaders were former activists in the anti-dictatorship struggle). In turn, populist leaders countered that these movements favored the interests of the rich over the poor, invoking class struggle against reformism.69 In Indonesia, a coalition of Muslim parties that had elected Abdurrahman Wahid to the presidency broke up after the Bulog affair and other scandals came to light. This led to renewed student demonstrations and the rival of the slogan “korupsi, kolusi dan nepotisme” (KKN, or corruption, collusion and nepotism) once shouted against Suharto. Wahid’s quick impeachment and removal from office by a hostile parliament spurred on by the protests was controversial. In the Philippines, a reformist movement gathered strength after twenty-odd corruption scandals during Joseph Estrada’s presidency from 1998–2001, as discussed in Chapter 1. Estrada, in turn, used his appeal as an ex-action star who played the part of the downtrodden hero to claim to be a fighter for the poor in politics.70 A well publicized “dispute among thieves” in the Estrada administration led to revelations about a lottery payola affair. This prompted the mobilization of approximately a million people in January 2001 at the site of the former “people power” movement after impeachment proceedings against Estrada collapsed in Congress. As during the original “people power” movement, these mass protests were again supported by

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the powerful Catholic Church and the business community located in the Manila business district Makati. The fall of Estrada was followed by months of counter demonstrations and riots by his angry, largely lower-class, followers. In Thailand, reformers pushed through a radical new constitution in 1997 after mass demonstrations following the country’s economic disaster in that year. It put strict penalties on vote buying and the concealment of assets. The overwhelming winner of the January 2001 general elections was Thaksin Shinawatra, a kind of Thai Berlosconi, reportedly the richest man in Thailand. This did not keep him from making popular appeals to the electorate. When he was charged with concealing some of his assets, which should have led to his removal from office, he played the populist card, denouncing an elite conspiracy against him. That, and direct pressure on the Supreme Court, saved him his job as prime minister.71 Disappointment about the failure to achieve good governance led to the formation of mass movements which forced the removal of elected leaders, directly in the Philippines and indirectly through parliamentary procedures in Indonesia (Thaksin in Thailand barely survived). These reformist movements after reformasi (the Indonesian name for the anti-Suharto movement) posed a major problem for democratic consolidation. In order to satisfy middle-class demands for good governance, democratic rules of the game were either broken or bent. In turn, several politicians used populist appeals to win the support of the poor, who were disappointed that democratic revolutions had brought them few material gains. This cycle of reform and populism has been a destabilizing element in these Southeast Asian democracies. Overcoming an institutional vacuum, coping with acute problems of transitional justice, and meeting high expectations of good governance are demanding tasks. Nonetheless, peaceful, spontaneous and urban-based popular revolutions have often led to democratic consolidation. Democratic revolutions bring about democracy through revolutionary means. Nothing more, but nothing less.

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Introduction 1 M.A. Mercado (ed.) An Eyewitness History: People Power – The Philippine Revolution of 1986, Manila: The James B. Reuter, S.J., Foundation, 1986; B. Lindner, Die demokratische Revolution in der DDR 1989/90, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1998; A. Santoso, “Jakarta’s May Revolution,” Inside Indonesia, 56, Oct.–Dec. 1998. Online. Available: http://www. insideindonesia.org?edit56/ (accessed September 10, 2002); and S. Stojanovioic, Serbia: The Democratic Revolution, Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2002. A collection of essays by key participants in various democratic struggles published also used the phrase “democratic revolution” in its title: L. Diamond (ed.) The Democratic Revolution: Struggles for Freedom and Pluralism in the Developing World, Lanham, MD: Freedom House, 1992. 2 An edited volume on revolutions, J.A. Goldstone, T.R. Gurr and F. Moshiri (eds) Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century, Boulder: Westview, 1991, includes a chapter on the Philippines but does not incorporate it adequately into the book’s analytical framework. Despite systematic consideration of the Philippine case, M. Parsa, States, Ideologies, and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of Iran, Nicaragua, and the Philippines, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 3, does not consider “people power” to have been a revolution. J. Goodwin, No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements 1945–1991, Cambridge: Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2002 views the 1989 Czechoslovak and East German uprisings as revolutionary but compares them with “Third World” social revolutions, thereby overlooking the possibility of democratic revolutions in developing countries. A comprehensive effort to apply social movement theory to what are termed here democratic revolutions is D. McAdam, S. Tarrow and C. Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, which has lengthy sections on the “yellow revolution” in the Philippines as well as on the Tiananmen protests in China. But they prefer the term “contentious politics” that covers a wide range of behavior that they term “collective political struggle” (p. 5). In an earlier book, C. Tilly, European Revolutions, 1492–1992, Oxford: Blackwell, 1993, pp. 234–6, had classified events in Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1989 a revolution. But in the face of objections by other scholars, he claimed that the issue was “not so pressing.” The argument here is that the point is worth pressing. 3 The most important variation in a transition initiated by societal protest is whether a faction of the regime survives to head an interim government. This was the case in East Germany, Indonesia, Romania and South Korea, for example. While an important factor, it is not as significant as the revolutionary mobilization itself. In all of these cases, interim governments continued to be swept along by the revolutionary tide. Societal-based oppositionists came to power, sometimes within a matter of months. The issue of round tables as well as military coup attempts and internal party opposition (which is termed here the “Iliescu factor”) is discussed in more detail below. But the point remains that these transitions began with societal mobilization “from below,” not elite agreement “from above.”

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4 B. Wheaton and Z. Kavan, The Velvet Revolution: Czechoslovakia, 1988–1991, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992, pp. 34–5. 5 T.L. Brown, The Challenge to Democracy in Nepal: A Political History, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 114–15. 6 K. Richburg, “Opposition in Malaysia Joins Forces and Rallies,” International Herald Tribune, September 28, 1998, pp. 1 and 9 and “No Room for Rivals in Mahathir’s Malaysia,” The Economist, September 26, 1998, pp. 67–8. 7 R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: The Challenge, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959. 8 Cited in Lindner, op. cit., p. 149. 9 M.R. Thompson, “Reluctant Revolutionaries: Anti-Fascism and the East German Opposition,” German Politics, 8, April 1999, pp. 47–72. 10 T.-J. Cheng and E.M. Kim, “Making Democracy: Generalizing the South Korean Case”, in E. Friedman (ed.) The Politics of Democratization: Generalizing the East Asian Experiences, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994, pp. 125–47. 11 S. Mydans, “Indonesia, Unprepared, Gets Ready for an Election,” International Herald Tribune, April 29, 1999, p. 4. 12 T. Skocpol, States and Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 4. 13 M.S. Kimmel, Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990, pp. 16–25. 14 K. Griewank, Der neuzeitliche Revolutionsbegriff, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1955/1973 and R. Kosseleck, “Der neuzeitliche Revolutionsbegriff als geschichtliche Kategorie,” Studium Generale, 22, 1969, pp. 825–38, cited and summarized in J. Gebhardt, “Strukturprobleme einer Revolutionstheorie,” Zeitschrift für Politik, 24, 1977, 33–4. 15 J.A. Goldstone, “Revolution,” in J. Krieger (ed.) The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World Second Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 730. 16 H. Arendt, On Revolution, London: Penguin, 1963/1990. 17 Palmer, op. cit., pp. 4–12. 18 Ibid., pp. 11 and 12. 19 M. Parsa, op. cit., p. 3 20 B. Anderson, “Cacique Democracy in the Philippines: Origins and Dreams,” New Left Review, 169, May–June 1988, pp. 3–31. Two good studies on (the lack of) land reform in the postMarcos Philippines are J. Putzel, A Captive Land: The Politics of Agrarian Reform in the Philippines, London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1992 and J.M. Riedinger, Agrarian Reform in the Philippines: Democratic Transitions and Redistributive Reform, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. 21 R. Dix, “Eastern Europe’s Implications for Revolutionary Theory,” Polity , XXIV, Winter 1991, pp. 227–42. 22 J. Habermas, Die nachholende Revolution, Frankfurt am Main: Edition Suhrkamp, 1990. Other authors were more blunt, terming them “a species of ‘bourgeois revolution.’ ” C. Barker and C. Mooers, “Marxism and the 1989 Revolution,” paper presented to the PSA conference, University of Wales at Swansea, April 1994, collected papers, p. 999. Cited in R. Sakwa, “The Age of Paradox: the Anti-revolutionary Revolutions of 1989–91,” in M. Donald and T. Rees (eds) Reinterpreting Revolution in Twentieth-Century Europe, New York: St Martin’s, 2001, p. 164. In his interesting discussion, Sakwa argues the 1989 uprisings are best understood as “antirevolutions” because East European dissidents rejected revolutionary methods and utopias, rebelled against communist states that claimed revolutionary legitimacy, and broke with the “enlightenment” tradition of revolution. But Sakwa measures “revolution” against the Jacobin model, thereby overlooking the enlightenment roots of “the democratic revolution” explored by Arendt and Palmer (as discussed above). 23 J.B. Rule, Theories of Civil Violence, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. 24 D.P. Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution since 1945, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, p. 7.

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25 The exception is when coups lead to revolutionary outcomes such as in the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia or Quaddafi’s coup in Libya. 26 On China see, H.E. Salisbury, The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng, New York: Avon Books, 1992. R.C. Tucker has long compared Stalinism with Czarist tyranny. See, for example, his “Stalinism as Revolution from Above,” in R.C. Tucker (ed.) Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation, New York: W.W. Norton, 1987. 27 “Sombre,” The Economist, November 27, 1999. 28 K. Sontheimer, So war Deutschland nie: Anmerkungen zur politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik, Munich: Beck, 1999, pp. 44–53. 29 This is a central message of H. Kelsen’s classic treatise of the nature and value of democracy: Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie, Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1963, orig. 1929. 30 P. Ackerman and C. Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994. 31 D.J. Elwood, Philippine Revolution 1986: Model of Nonviolent Change, Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1986. 32 M. Moffett, “Mexican Opposition’s Filipino Advisers Help It Battle Entrenched Ruling Party,” Wall Street Journal, October 5, 1988, p. 34. 33 E. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR 1949–1989, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 1997, pp. 376–7 and 393. 34 Robert Helvey, a retired US army colonel who has worked closely with Gene Sharp, traveled to Budapest in early 2000 on behalf of the International Republican Institute to consult with Otpor on working out an effective non-violent strategy: United States Institute for Peace, “Whither the Bulldozer? Nonviolent Revolution and the Transition to Democracy in Serbia,” August 6, 2001. Online. Available HTTP: www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr72.html (accessed September 30, 2002). 35 P. Routledge, “Backstreets, Barricades, and Blackouts: Nepal’s Urban Terrains of Resistance,” Program on Nonviolent Sanctions and Cultural Survival: Seminar Synopses, March 9, 1993. Online. Available HTTP: www.wcfia.harvard.edu/pungacs/DOCS/s93 (accessed February 14, 2003). 36 Lindner, op. cit., chp. 7. 37 K.-D. Opp, P. Voss and C. Gern, Die volkseigene Revolution, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993. 38 A. Laothamatoas, The Mobile Phone Mob: The Middle Class and Businessman and the Development of Democracy (in Thai), Bangkok: Matichon Publishing, 1993, cited in J. Ungpakor, The Struggle for Democracy and Social Justice in Thailand. Bangkok: Arom Pongpangan Foundation, 1997, p. 109. 39 M. Babovi¼, “Potential for an Active Society,” in M. Lazi¼ (ed.) Protest in Belgrade: Winter of Discontent, Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999, pp. 60–2. 40 J. Ungpakor, op. cit., pp. 108–12. 41 M. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. 42 S.L. Popkin, “Political Entrepreneurs and Peasant Movements in Vietnam,” in M. Taylor (ed.) Rationality and Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 9–62. 43 G. Tullock, The Social Dilemma: The Economics of War and Revolution, Blacksburg, VA: University Publications, 1974, p. 47, emphasis in the original. 44 M.I. Lichbach, The Rebel’s Dilemma, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995, p. 18. 45 Another criticism is that Lichbach devotes only passing attention to democratic revolutions such as in the Philippines in 1986 or in East Germany in 1989. 46 M. Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1, Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (eds) New York: Bedminister, 1968, pp. 24–5 47 A.R. Zolberg, “Moments of Madness,” Politics and Society, 2, Winter 1972, pp. 183–207. 48 A. Etzioni, The Moral Dimension, New York: The Free Press, 1988. 49 S. Saxonberg, The Fall: A Comparative Study of the End of Communism in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 2001, pp. 142–3.

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50 M.R. Thompson, “Putting People Power Back Together Again: Some Theoretical Puzzles from the Philippines,” in Frederick D. Weil (ed.) Extremism, Protest, Social Movements, and Democracy, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1996, pp. 397–415. 51 L.J. Cohen, Serpent in the Bossom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Miloševi¼, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001, p. 428, fn. 31 and D. Bujoševi¼ and I. Radovanovi¼, October 5th: A 24– Hour Coup. Belgrade: Medija Centar, 2001. 52 A. Codrescu speaks of a “scripted revolution” in The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile’s Story of Return and Revolution, New York: William Morrow, 1992. Also see N. Ratesh, Romania: The Entangled Revolution, New York, Praeger, 1991, pp. 33–6 and A.U. Gabanyi, Die unvollendete Revolution: Rumänien zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie, Munich: Piper, 1990. 53 Two of the most influential are G. O’Donnell and P.C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986 and A. Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. The most systematic form of elite analysis of democratization has been done by game theoreticians. They have focused on strategic conflicts and cooperation among elite actors in the regime and opposition. Such an emphasis comes at the price of ignoring popular uprisings against unbending rule. For example, the influential work of J.M. Colomer ignores the impact of mass protests on democratization in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. J.M. Colomer, Strategic Transitions: Game Theory and Democratization, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. 54 For a recent overview of the vast literature on the Spanish transition see J.J. Linz and A. Stepan, “The Paradigmatic Case of Reforma Pactada-Ruptura Pactada: Spain,” ch. 6 in Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. 55 O’Donnell and Schmitter, op. cit., p. 19. 56 See the recent discussion of this issue in G. Gill, The Dynamics of Democratization: Elites, Civil Society, and the Transition Process, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000, particularly chs. 3–5 and L. Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, ch. 6. 57 Saxonberg, op. cit., chs. 9–11. 58 The best known example is Samuel P. Huntington’s concept of “replacement” in Huntington, op. cit., ch. 3. 59 A. Stepan, “Paths toward Redemocratization: Theoretical and Comparative Considerations,” in A. Stepan, Arguing Comparative Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 129–30, originally published in G. O’Donnell and P.C. Schmitter (eds) Transitions from Authoritarianism: Comparative Perspectives, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Stepan’s consideration of two other possible democratic transition paths is also relevant to this discussion: a violent revolt by democratic reformists against the autocratic regime and a Marxist-led revolutionary war that nonetheless results in democratization. 60 Ibid. 61 T.L. Karl and P.C. Schmitter, “Modes of Transition in Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe,” International Social Science Journal, 128, 1991, pp. 275–7. 62 G.L. Munck and C.K. Leff, “Modes of Transition and Democratization: South America and Eastern Europe in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics, 27, April 1997, pp. 344 and 353–6. 63 This point is made by Gill, op. cit., pp. 211–12. 64 O’Donnell and Schmitter, op. cit., pp. 27 and 11. 65 C. Friedrich and Z. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965, chp. 26. 66 O’Donnell and Schmitter, op. cit., p. 33. 67 V. Havel et al., The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, London: Hutchinson, 1985, p. 27. The concept of post-totalitarianism has been most

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69 70 71

72

73 74 75 76 77 78

79

80 81

82

Notes systematically developed by Juan J. Linz. See his collaborative work with A. Stepan, op. cit., ch. 3. Also see M.R. Thompson, “Neither Totalitarian nor Authoritarian: Post-Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe,” in A. Siegel, The Totalitarianism Paradigm after the End of Communism: Towards a Theoretical Reassessment, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998, pp. 303–28. H.E. Chehabi and J.J. Linz (eds) Sultanistic Regimes, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Weber’s original description of “sultanism” can be found in M. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, G. Roth and C. Wittich (eds) Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, pp. 231–2. Its “orientalist” connotations do not undermine its analytical usefulness – the term has become too embodied in the literature to be replaced by one more politically correct. To be technical, highly personalistic, “modern” regimes should be referred to as “neo-sultanistic” as Weber’s analysis of sultanism is part of his discussion of traditional authority. Havel, The Power of the Powerless, pp. 39–40. Kimmel, op. cit. Karl and Schmitter, op. cit., pp. 275–7. Also see T.L. Karl, “Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America,” Comparative Politics, 23, October 1990, p. 8 and J.J. Linz, “Transitions to Democracy,” The Washington Quarterly, Summer 1990, p. 152. R. Snyder, “Paths out of Sultanistic Regimes: Combining Structural and Voluntarist Perspectives,” in Chehabi and Linz, op. cit., pp. 67–78. Another exception is M. Parsa, op. cit., who considers why the Philippines did not succumb to radicalization after the overthrow of a dictator as had earlier occurred in Iran and Nicaragua. Snyder, op. cit., pp. 67–78. If Eastern Europe is more broadly defined, then it must be added that several former Soviet Republics, such a Belarus, have been threatened by, or succumbed to, non-democratic forces. Linz and Stepan, op. cit., p. 316–28. S. Saxonberg, op. cit., makes a similar argument, distinguishing the “non-violent revolutions” of the (SSR and GDR from the “institutional compromise” in Hungary and Poland. J. Elster (ed.) The Roundtable Talks, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. K. Jowitt, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction, Berkeley, University of California, 1992 and B.R. Barber, Jihad versus McWorld: How the Planet is Both Falling Apart and Coming Together and What this Means for Democracy, New York, Times Books, 1995. S.P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs, 72, Summer 1993, pp. 22–49, S.P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996, and Foreign Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington’s the Clash of Civilizations? The Debate, New York: The Council on Foreign Relations, 1996. Huntington, The Third Wave, ch. 3. Ibid., pp. 113 and 142–9. Huntington excludes Czechoslovakia, due to round-table talks between the communist regime and Havel. But these talks took place only after hard-liners had been fatally weakened to the point of collapse by mass demonstrations. He includes Greece and Argentina, which are excluded from this book. While popular uprisings took place in these countries, the military hierarchy did not lose control of the transitions in either country, yielding power only after negotiating with opposition leaders. Due to this lack of regime collapse, the latter two cases are more clearly mixtures of uprising and negotiation (which Huntington terms “transplacement”) than the Czechoslovak case where a collapsing communist regime merely negotiated the last stage of its rapid downfall in the face of massive popular protest. A. Karantnycky, “The Decline of Illiberal Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, 10, 1999, pp. 112–25 and Larry Diamond, “Is the Third Wave Over?” Journal of Democracy, 7, July 1996, pp. 20–37. Interestingly, there is strong evidence that the third wave began later than Huntington dates it and it is only since the end of the Cold War that the democratizations have clearly outpaced breakdowns of democracy. Dating the beginning of the wave with transitions in Spain, Portugal and Greece, overlooks the military coup in Chile in 1973 as well as breakdown of democracy in Bolivia, Guatemala, Surinam, Bangladesh, Lebanon and several other countries: C. Welzel, “Humanentwicklung, Systemwettbewerb und Demokratie” in H.-D. Klingemann

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and R.I. Hofferbert (eds) Die Zukunft der Demokratie: Herausforderungen im Zeitalter der Globalisierung, Berlin: WZB-Jahrbuch, edition sigma, 2000, pp. 471–502. I wish to thank Dietrich Thränhardt for this reference. 83 T. Skocpol and M. Somers, “The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22, 1980, pp. 176–8. 84 This is the position which V. Bunce, an area specialist of Eastern Europe, advocated in her article “Comparative Democratization: Big and Bounded Generalizations, Comparative Political Studies, 33, 2000, pp. 703–35 after initially dismissing comparisons of democratization between Eastern Europe and the developing world. For the earlier position see her “Should Transitologists be Grounded?” Slavic Review, 54, 1995, pp. 11–127. 85 Interestingly, the first nationalist revolution in Asia also took place in the Philippines, beginning with the uprising against the Spanish in 1896 and continuing until it was crushed by American colonial forces in the early twentieth century. See the perceptive study of U. Mahajani, Philippine Nationalism: External Challenge and Filipino Response, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1971.

1

The puzzles of Philippine “people power” 1 S.P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991, pp. 103–4. On Pakistan, see J. Cotton, “From Authoritarianism to Democracy in South Korea,” Political Studies, 37, no. 2, June 1989, pp. 251–2 and B. Bhutto, Daughter of Destiny, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989, pp. 320–1. In China, protesting students in April and May 1989 had a photo exhibit with pictures of Filipino “people power”: R. Wagner, “Political Institutions, Discourse, and Imagination in China at Tiananmen,” in J. Manor (ed.) Rethinking Third World Politics, London: Longman, 1992, p. 131. On Indonesia, see V. Boudreau, “Diffusing Democracy: People Power in Indonesia and the Philippines,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 31, Oct.–Dec. 1999, pp. 3–18. 2 Perhaps as a diplomatic gesture, Czech President Václav Havel said in a visit to Manila in 1995: “Your peaceful People Power Revolution was an inspiration to us for our own revolution.” Quoted in V.G. Kulkarni and R. Tasker, “Promises to Keep,” Far Eastern Economic Review, February 29, 1996, p. 22. This author’s discussions with several participants from the 1989 democratic revolution in East Germany suggested they were familiar with the term “people power,” particularly as Western journalists had used it to describe events in Eastern Europe, but did not associate it with the Philippines. In the case of Nepal, the phrase “people power” was sometimes used to describe the popular anti-dictator revolt, but the major “demonstration effect” came from Eastern Europe, particularly Romania. Having picked up the term indirectly, it is not surprising that the literature suggests a lack of awareness in Nepal that the term originated from the Philippines. See G. Chitrakar, People Power, Kathmandu: Sita Chitrakar Bhatbhateni, 1992, pp. 23 and 27 and T.L. Brown, The Challenge to Democracy in Nepal: A Political History, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 1l4–15. 3 S.N. Terkel, People Power: A Look at Nonviolent Action and Defense, Dutton: Lodestar Books, 1996 and P. Ackerman and C. Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994. 4 For a more detailed discussion see M.R. Thompson, “Off the Endangered List: Philippine Democratization in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics, 28, January 1996, pp. 179–205. 5 The paraphrase is of S.P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968. 6 On types of non-democratic regimes see J.J. Linz, “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes,” in N. Polsby and F. Greenstein (eds) Handbook of Political Science, vol. 3, Reading: AddisonWesley, 1975, pp. 175–411. This book-length essay has recently been reprinted with an extensive new introduction: Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000.

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7 This term was coined by Marcos’s one-time chief media advisor and later defector Primitivo Mijares in the latter’s The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, San Francisco: Union Square Publications, 1986. Mijares was apparently murdered by Marcos agents for writing this tell-all book about his regime. For accounts of Mijares see M.R. Thompson, “The Marcos Regime,” in H. Chehabi and J.J. Linz (eds) Sultanistic Regimes, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988, pp. 206–8 and S. Seagrave, The Marcos Dynasty, New York: Harper and Row, 1988, pp. 269–74. 8 Colorful accounts include C.N. Pedrosa, Imelda Marcos, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987 and K. Ellison, Imelda: Steel Butterfly of the Philippines, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988. 9 R. Tiglao, “The Consolidation of the Dictatorship,” in A. Javate-de Dios, P. Bn. Daroy and L. Kalaw-Tirol (eds) Dictatorship and Revolution: Roots of People’s Power, Manila, Conspectus, 1998, p. 41. Also see B.A. Aquino, Politics of Plunder: the Philippines under Marcos, Manila: Great Trading Books, 1987, pp. 57–62. 10 S. Haggard, “The Political Economy of the Philippine Debt Crisis,” in J.M. Nelson (ed.) Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 215–55. Also see E.S. de Dios (ed.) An Analysis of the Philippine Economic Crisis: A Workshop Report, Quezon City: University of the Philippines, School of Economics, 1984 and Aquino, Politics of Plunder, pp. 63–9. 11 Aquino, Politics of Plunder, pp. 69–74; E.S. de Dios, “The Erosion of the Dictatorship,” in J. de-Dios, et al., Dictatorship and Revolution, pp. 109–11, and M.R. Thompson and G. Slayton, “An Essay on Credit Arrangments between the IMF and the Republic of the Philippines: 1970– 1983,” Philippine Review of Economics and Business, 22, March–June 1985, pp. 75–6. 12 On “crony capitalism” see W. Bello, D. Kinley and E. Elinson (eds) Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines, San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1982, P. Hutchcroft, “Oligarchs and Cronies in the Philippine State: The Politics of Patrimonial Plunder,” World Politics, 43, April 1991, pp. 429–34, and Aquino, Politics of Plunder. 13 John Crewdson, “Marcos Graft Staggers,” Chicago Tribune, March 23, 1986, cited in Aquino, Politics of Plunder, pp. 47–8. 14 I wish to thank Paul Hutchcroft for suggesting this phrase. 15 Ma. A. Carbonell-Catilo, J.H. de Leon and E.E. Nicolas, Manipulated Elections, Manila, 1984, Thompson, Anti-Marcos Struggle, chs. 7–8, and J.C. Franco, Elections and Democratization in the Philippines, London: Routledge, 2001, ch. 5. 16 See the longer discussion in M.R. Thompson, The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines, New Hagen: Yale University Press, ch. 7. 17 For an overview see R. Snyder, “Explaining Transitions from Neopatrimonial Dictatorships,” Comparative Politics, 24, 1992, pp. 379–99. 18 The best book on this topic remains the “journalistic account” of G.R. Jones: Red Revolution: Inside the Philippine Guerrilla Movement, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989. Also see R.J. Kessler, Rebellion and Repression in the Philippines, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. 19 G. Hawes, “Theories of Peasant Revolution: A Critique and Contribution from the Philippines,” World Politics, 42, no. 2, January 1990, p. 277. 20 T.J.S. George, Revolt in Mindanao: The Rise of Islam in the Philippines, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1980, C.A. Majul, The Contemporary Muslim Movement in the Philippines, Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1985, W.K. Che Man, Muslim Separatism: The Moros of the Southern Philippines and the Malays of Southern Thailand, Singapore: Oxford University, 1990, T.M. McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern Philippines, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 21 Thompson, The Anti-Marcos Struggle, ch. 6. 22 At this time the NDF was led by the charismatic Horacio Morales, a reformist-minded Marcos government official who had disappeared in the communist underground Sound-of-Music like on the evening he was to be awarded his prize as one of the country’s “ten most promising young men” in 1977. 23 Snyder, op. cit.

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24 A.W. McCoy, Closer than Brothers: Manhood at the Philippine Military Academy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Also see the earlier government report full of background details: The Final Report of the Fact Finding Report (pursuant to R.A. no. 6832), Makati: Bookmark, 1990. 25 The classic work on clientelist politics remains C. Landé, Leaders, Factions, and Parties: The Structure of Philippine Politics, New Haven: Southeast Asian Studies, Yale University, 1965. For an incisive critique of clientelism see J. Sidel, Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, ch. 1. Sidel stresses the importance of coercion and local monopolies against the image of stable bifactionalism in the clientelism literature. He argues that “bossism” not clientelism characterizes much of local politics in the Philippines. While this critique has merit, patronage retains its importance in Filipino politics alongside other “resources” such as violence. 26 S. Burton, Impossible Dream: The Marcoses, the Aquinos, and the Unfinished Revolution, New York: Warner Books, 1989, p. 344. 27 De Guzman and Tancango, An Assessment of the 1986 Philippine Special Presidential Elections: A Study of Political Change through People Power, Vol. 1., Manila: University of the Philippines, College of Public Administration, 1986, pp. 128–9. 28 The author wishes to thank Ruby Paredes for pointing this out. Rizal lets his characters debate the merits of ilustrado-idealism and cynicism, violent and non-violent revolutions in his two great novels, Noli Mi Tangere (1886) and El Filibusterismo (1891). Victor Sumsky, in a forthcoming book on Rizal, will explore these issues in detail. 29 P.N. Abinales, “Progressive–Machine Conflicts in Early Twentieth Century American Politics and Colonial State Building in the Philippines,” unpublished manuscript, 2000. 30 R. Ileto, “The Past in the Present Crisis,” in R.J. May and F. Nemenzo (eds) The Philippines after Marcos, London: Croom Helm, 1985, p. 12. 31 K.B. Teik, “‘Asian Values’ and the Asian Economic Crisis,” paper presented to the conference “Globalization and Asian Civilizations: Implications of the Asian Economic Crisis,” Okinawa, Japan, 27–9 January, 1999. 32 See M.R. Thompson, “Moral Appeals and Collective Action in the 1953 and 1986 Elections,” in C.J-H. Macdonald and G.M. Pesigan (eds) Old Ties and New Solidarities: Studies on Philippine Communities, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila, 2000, pp. 250–68. 33 See the discussion of the American reforms in A.B. Callow, “The Crusade against the Tweed Ring,” in Callow (ed.) The City Boss in America: An Interpretative Reader, New York, 1967. 34 M. Roces, “The gendering of post-war Philippine politics,” in K. Sen and M. Stivens (eds), Gender and Power in Affluent Asia, London: Routledge, 1998, p. 312. 35 B.J. Tria Kerkvliet, “Contested Elections in the Philippines,” in R.H. Taylor (ed.) The Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 36 E.-L. Hedman, “Mapping the Movement: NAMFREL in Six Philippine Cities,” South East Asia Research, 7, 1999, pp. 189–214. For a celebratory account of NAMFREL’s success see K. Byington, Bantay ng Bayan: Stories from the NAMFREL Crusade 1984–86, Manila: Bookmark, 1988. 37 The NAMREL Report one the February 7, 1986 Elections, Manila: NAMFEL, 1986, p. 8. 38 R. Paredes (ed.) Philippine Colonial Democracy, Quezon City: Ateneo University Press, 1989. 39 Thompson, The Anti-Marcos Struggle, chs. 6 and 7. 40 See the discussion in O. Törnquist, “Communists and Democracy in the Philippines,” Economic and Political Weekly, XXVI, 6–13 July 1991, pp. 1,683–91. After he was released from prison under the Aquino administration, Morales returned to his earlier role as a leading government reformer. 41 The authoritative account of US support for the Marcos dictatorship is R. Bonner, Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of US Foreign Policy. New York: Times Books, 1987. 42 One of the unsolved mysteries of “people power” is why Ramos joined Enrile and RAM in a Manila military camp so readily after coup plans were discovered. Based on an interview with Ramos’s close associate (and later Philippine intelligence chief), Jose Almonte, I am convinced

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Notes Ramos knew early on about RAM’s activities and plans. He may long have remained uncommitted, but his sympathies for the project were obvious as he shared a common enemy with Enrile: Fabian Ver. F. Nemenzo, “Reflections on the Philippine Coup d’état,” in R. David (ed.) Coup d’état in the Philippines: Four Essays, Quezon City: University of the Philippines, Third World Center, pp. 17–18. W. Chapman, Inside the Philippine Revolution: The New People’s Army and Its Struggle for Power, New York: W.W. Norton, 1987, pp. 225–30 and Phil Bronstein, “Anti-Marcos Battle Plans: Shadowy Coalition Vows Violence if the Election is Rigged,” San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 2, 1986, pp. A1 and A10. On the communists see A.G. Nudas, God with Us: the 1986 Philippine Revolution. Quezon City: Loyola Center, 1986, pp. 41–2; on the social democrats M.B. Soriano, The Unused Guns of the 4-Day Edsa Revolt, Quezon City: Marcelo Soriano, 1986, p. 80. A handful of people were actually killed during the revolt. A policeman, who had overreacted, or lost his senses, shot a civilian. Several soldiers loyal to Marcos were killed as rebel soldiers captured major media installations in the last two days of the uprising. On the peaceful character of “people power” see Elwood, Philippine Revolution 1986 and P. Rosenthal, “Nonviolence in the Philippines: The Precarious Road,” Commonwealth, June 20, 1986. The peacefulness of “people power” led many Filipinos to pronounce it a miracle. But millions of ordinary people worked very hard devising clever tactics to make God’s miracle working easier. R. Tiglao, “Seeing the Light: After Years of Instability and Era of Growth Beckons,” Far Eastern Economic Review, Sept. 3, 1992, pp. 33 and 35. K. Maxwell, “Regime Overthrow and the Prospects for Democratic Transition in Portugal,” in G. O’Donnell, P. C. Schmitter and L. Whitehead (eds), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Southern Europe, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, pp. 109–37. Office of the President, Report of the Citizens’ Mendiola Commission, February 27, 1987. Final Report of the Fact-Finding Commission, op. cit., pp. 146–58. See the discussion in D.G. Timberman, A Changeless Land: Continuity and Change in Philippine Politics, Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1991, ch. 7. Amnesty International, Philippines: The Killing Goes On, New York: Amnesty International, 1992. A. McCoy, “After the Yellow Revolution: Filipino Elite Factions and the Struggle for Power,” in P. Krinks (ed.) The Philippines under Aquino, Canberra: Australian Development Studies, 1987, p. 32. See the excellent essays in P.N. Abinales (ed.) The Revolution Falters: The Left in Philippine Politics After 1986, Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1996. Also see M.R. Thompson, “The Decline of Philippine Communism,” South East Asia Research, 6, 2, July 1998, pp.105–29. A fascinating personal account of this factionalization in the communist party by a leading participant is J. Rocamora, Breaking Through: The Struggle within the Communist Party of the Philippines, Pasig City: Anvil, 1994. On the role of Al Qaeda in founding the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines see R. Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, chp. 4. For a critique see B. Litner, “Think Local,” Far Eastern Economic Review, December 5, 2002, p. 72. Franco, op. cit., pp. 14–18. On “bossism” see Sidel, op. cit. See B. Kerkvliet and R. Mojares (eds) From Marcos to Aquino: Local Perspectives on Political Transition in the Philippines, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991 as well as A. McCoy (ed.) An Anarchy of Families, Madison: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. McCoy’s chapter in the first volume and introduction in the second focus on the significance of the Lopez family, which had its roots in the sugar plantation economy but later became a leading national economic power.

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61 Institute for Popular Democracy, Political Clans, Quezon City: Institute for Popular Democracy, 1987; E. Gutierrez, I. Torrente and N. Narca, All in the Family: A Study of Elite and Power Relations in the Philippines, Quezon City: Institute for Popular Democracy, 1992; and E. Gutierrez, The Ties that Bind: A Guide to Family, Business and Other Interests in the Ninth House of Representatives, Manila: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 1994. 62 Franco, op. cit., pp. 14–18. 63 E.-L. Hedman, “State of Siege: Political Violence and Vigilante Mobilization in the Philippines,” in B.B. Campbell and A.D. Brenner (eds) Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 125–51. For a chilling, up-close account of a victim of violence in the sugar-growing province of Negros Occidental see A. Berlow, Dead Season: A Story of Murder and Revenge, Vintage Books, 1996. 64 B. Anderson, “Cacique Democracy and the Philippines: Origins and Dreams,” New Left Review, 169, May/June 1988, pp. 3–33. (This evocative term is used intentionally, rather than clientelism, “bossism,” or “booty capitalism” as I see them all as but different points on the same spectrum – the economic oligarchy’s monopolization of state power. See the studies by Landé, op. cit., P. D. Hutchcroft, Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998, and Sidel, op. cit.) 65 Franco, op. cit., pp. 215–39. 66 On the rise of multi-factionalism at the local level see M. Kimura, “Philippine Political Parties and the Party System in Transition: Leaders, Factions, and Blocs,” Pilipinas, 18, Spring 1993, pp. 43–65. Also see his monograph Elections and Politics Philippine Style, Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1998. On the weakening of parties see C. Landé, Post-Marcos Politics: A Geographical and Statistical Analysis of the 1992 Presidential Elections, Singapore: Southeast Asian Studies, 1996, chp. 5. 67 I. de Castro, “Money and Moguls: Oiling the Campaign Machinery,” in Philippine Center for Investivative Journalism and Ateneo Center for Social Policy and Public Affairs (eds), 1992 and Beyond: Forces and Issues in Philippine Elections, Manila: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 1992, pp. 36–70. 68 Landé, Post-Marcos Politics, op. cit., chp. 2. 69 A typical Philippine newspaper article on Estrada’s “improper” lifestyle is “Decadence,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, October 25, 2000, p. A8. Also see T. Fuller, “A Portrait of Lifestyle and Liability,” International Herald Tribune, November 4, 2000, pp. 1 and 4. On Estrada’s broken English, known as “bakya English” in Tagalog (wooden shoes which poor, uneducated Filipinos wear) see V.L. Rafael, “Taglish, or the Phantom Power of the Lingua Franca,” Public Culture, 8, 1995, pp. 110–11. 70 See the excellent article by E.-L. Hedman, “The Spectre of Populism in Philippine Politics and Society: Artista, Masa, Eraption!” South East Asia Research, 9, 2001, pp. 5–44. 71 Philippine Center for Investigative Journal, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and Institute for Popular Democracy Reports, December 4, 1995. 72 Estrada also wrote an anti-base pamphlet, Senador J.E. Estrada, Ang mga Base Militar ng Amerika sa Pilipinas: Isang Hamon ng Pagkabansa, Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1988. 73 A. Doronila, “Estrada Sends Chilling Messages to Business Community,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, January 1, 2001, pp. A1 and A12. 74 C. Landé, “The Return of ‘People Power’ in the Philippines,” Journal of Democracy, 12, 2, April 2001, pp. 99–102. 75 Alfred McCoy, “Erap, Chavit, Pulisya, Jueteng: Philippine Police and the Program of Legitimacy,” talk delivered to the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University Of WisconsinMadison, January 26, 2001. 76 On the role of students and text messaging see “Text Messaging is a Blizzard that Could Snarl Manila,” New York Times, January 20, 2001. Online. Available HTTP: www.nytimes.com/2001/ 01/20technology/20MANI.html (accessed February 1, 2001), on Estrada’s continued popularity among the poor, Landé, “The Return of ‘People Power,’ ” pp. 95–102.

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2 Female leadership of democratic revolutions in Asia 1 S.E. Alvarez, Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women’s Movements in Transition Politics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 2 G. Waylen, Gender in Third World Politics, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996, ch. 6. 3 Sahana Pradhan was president of the opposition United Left Front, but her role in the Jana Andolan uprising was largely overshadowed by the male-dominated Nepali Congress party. 4 Several of the student leaders in China were women, but they were not the leaders or part of a clearly defined collective leadership. 5 V. Spike Peterson and A. Sisson Runyan, Global Gender Issues, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993, p. 48, table 3.1. 6 On current female leaders see Women World Leaders, www.terra.es/personal2/monolith/ 00women.htm. 7 J. Blondel, World Leaders, London: Sage, 1980, p. 116. 8 For example, S.B. Ortner and H. Whitehead (eds) Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981 and M.Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (eds) Woman, Culture, and Society, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974. 9 L.K. Richter, “Exploring Theories of Female Leadership in South and Southeast Asia,” Pacific Affairs, 63, Winter 1990–1, p. 526. 10 N. Chowdhury, “Bangladesh: Gender Issues and Politics in a Patriarchy,” in B.J. Nelson and N. Chowdhury (eds) Women and Politics Worldwide, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, p. 94. 11 B. Lintner, Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s Unfinished Renaissance, Bangkok: White Lotus, 1991, p. 15. 12 K. Robinson, “Women: Difference Versus Diversity,” in D.K. Emmerson, (ed.) Indonesia Beyond Suharto, Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1999, pp. 237 and 260. 13 R.S. Milne and D.K. Mauzy, Malaysian Politics under Mahathir, London: Routledge, 1999, p. 117 and S. Elegant, “Malaysia: Bound by Tradition,” Far Eastern Economic Review, July 27, 2000, p. 66. 14 D.D. Aguilar, Feminist Challenge: Initial Working Principles Toward Reconceptualizing the Feminist Movement in the Philippines, Malate, Metro Manila: Asian Social Institute, 1998; for an historical overview see B.A. Aquino, “Philippine Feminism in Historical Perspective” in Nelson and Chowdhury (eds) op. cit., pp. 591–604. 15 Examples of articles in the press are R. Halloran, “Asia’s Women Leaders on the Outs,” Global Beat, May 6, 1998. Online. Available HTTP: www. nyu.edu/globalbeat (accessed September 10, 2002). T. McGirk, “Legacies: Feminine Mystique,” Time, No. 6, 1997. Online. Available HTTP: www.time.com (accessed September 10, 2002), A. Perry, “New Model of Women Leaders in Asia,” Dawn, June 16, 2000. Online. Available HTTP: www.dawn.com (accessed September 10, 2002), and Z. Sardar, “Kept in Power by Male Fantasy,” New Statesman, August 7, 1998. Online. Available HTTP: www.findarticles.com (accessed September 10, 2002). Among academics, R. Jahan, “Women in South Asian Politics,” Third World Quarterly, No. 3, July 1987, pp. 848–70 and Richter, op. cit. are notable exceptions in addressing this issue comparatively. Female leaders in Asia have not been active feminists and have usually done little to advance the cause of women, which may account for the limited interest feminist academics have shown in this subject. For “mainstream” political scientists, leadership studies generally are of limited interest and the proliferation of female dynastic leaders in Asia of only trivial concern. For historians, this subject apparently remains too contemporary. 16 T. Bartholomeusz, “Mothers of Buddhas, Mothers of Nations: Kumaratunga and Her Meteoric Rise to Power in Sri Lanka,” Feminist Studies, 25, Spring 1999, pp. 211–25. 17 See the interesting discussion in R.S. Rajan, Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture, and Postcolonialism, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 103–28. 18 C.H. Landé, “The Return of ‘People Power’ in the Philippines,” Journal of Democracy, 12, April 2001, 99–102.

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19 For an interesting summary of “culturalist” arguments about shakti, or feminine power, in South Asia see McGirk, op. cit. 20 For an overview see S.W. Schmidt, L. Guasti, C.H. Landé and J.C. Scott (eds) Friends, Followers, and Factions: A Reader in Political Clientelism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. 21 Ma. S.I. Diokno, “Unity and Struggle,” in A. Javate-de Dios, P. Bn. Daroy, and L. Kalaw-Tirol (eds) Dictatorship and Revolution: Roots of People’s Power, Metro Manila: Conspectus, 1988, p. 133. 22 M. Hiebert with S. Jayasankaran, “A Single Spark,” Far Eastern Economic Review, October 29, 1998, p. 13. 23 N.F. Anderson, “Benazir Bhutto and Dynastic Politics: Her Father’s Daughter, Her People’s Sister,” in M.A. Genovese (ed.) Women as National Leaders, Newbury Park: Sage, 1993, pp. 52–3. 24 Lintner, op. cit., p. 15. 25 Joseph Silverstein, “Aung San Suu Kyi: Is She Burma’s Woman of Destiny?,” in Aung San Suu Kyi (ed.) Freedom from Fear and other Writings, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1991, p. 267. 26 Anderson, op. cit., p. 43. 27 S. Jayasankaran, “High Wire Act,” Far Eastern Economic Review, October 9, 1997, pp. 14–15. 28 Ninez Cacho-Olivares cited in R.C. Ileto, “The Past in the Present Crisis,” in R.J. May and Francisco Nemenzo (eds) The Philippines after Marcos, London: Croom Helm, 1985, p. 9. 29 A.P. Policarpio, Jr, Ninoy: The Willing Martyr, Manila: Isaiah Books, 1986. 30 T. Fuller, “Paradoxical Anwar Moves Comfortably on the Political Poles,” International Herald Tribune, Oct. 2, 1998, p. 4. 31 K.B. Teik, “‘Asian Values’ and the Asian Economic Crisis,” paper presented to the conference “Globalization and Asian Civilizations – Implications of the Asian Economic Crisis,” Japan Foundation Asia Centre: Penang, Malaysia, January 27–9, 1999, pp. 5–6. 32 Lintner, op. cit., p. 15. 33 C. Baxter, Bangladesh: From a Nation to a State, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997, p. 93. 34 Anderson, op. cit., pp. 49–50. 35 J. McBeth, “Mother Earth: Megawati’s No Politician, But She May Be President,” Far Eastern Economic Review, June 3, 1999, p. 24. 36 A. McIntyre, “Megawati Sukarnoputri: From President’s Daughter to Vice President,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 32, January–June 2000, Online. Available HTTP: csf.colorado.edu/ bcas/sample/megawati.htm (accessed August 18, 2002). 37 Lintner, op. cit., p. 15. 38 Anderson, op. cit., p. 49. 39 Chowdhury, op. cit., p. 100. 40 Mya Maung, Totalitarianism in Burma: Prospects for Economic Development, New York: Paragon House, 1992, p. 144. 41 Chowdhury, op. cit., p. 100. 42 B. Bhutto, Daughter of Destiny: An Autobiography, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989, pp. 154–5. 43 Anderson, op. cit., pp. 47–8. 44 Hiebert with Jayasankaran, op. cit., p. 12. 45 Anderson, op. cit., p. 41. 46 McBeth, op. cit. 47 J.-M. Col, “Managing Softly in Turbulent Times: Corazon C. Aquino, President of the Philippines,” in Genovese (ed.) Women as National Leaders, pp. 13–40; Chowdhury, op. cit.; and McBeth, op. cit. 48 Silverstein, op. cit. 49 Hiebert with Jayasankaran, op. cit., p. 12. 50 L. Simons, Worth Dying For, New York: William Morrow, 1987, p. 224. Mrs Marcos called Aquino the “complete opposite of what a woman should be,” which was someone who was “gentle, who does not challenge a man, but who keeps her criticism to herself and teaches her

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63 64 65

66 67

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69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Notes husband only in the bedroom.” On the former First Lady’s own less-than-gentle style, see Carmen Pedrosa, Imelda Marcos, New York: St Martin’s, 1987. For a fascinating comparison of “Imelda’s” and “Cory’s” influence in Philippine politics see M. Roces, Women, Power, and Kinship: Female Power in the Post-War Philippines, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. S. Burton, Impossible Dream: The Marcoses, the Aquinos, and the Unfinished Revolution, New York: Warner Books, 1989, p. 312. R. Singh with A. Sheikh, “A Bloodless Coup,” India Today, June 30, 1998, p. 45, cited in Anderson, op. cit., p. 59. Simons, op. cit., p. 224. L. Komisar, Corazon Aquino: The Story of a Revolution, New York: George Braziller, 1987, p. 78. M. Cohen, “First choice,” Far Eastern Economic Review, June 3, 1999, p. 21. K.B. Richburg, “They Love Megawati, Whatever Her Policies,” International Herald Tribune, June 3, 1999, p. 9. D.K. Emmerson, “Indonesia: the New President Could Surprise Her Detractors,” International Herald Tribune, August 1, 2001, p. 8. J.R. Rush, “Bringing Marcos Down, Part III: Suspending Disbelief,” UFSI Field Staff Reports, Indianapolis: University Field Staff, 1986, p.4. Ibid., p. 5. D.I. Steinberg, The Future of Burma: Crisis and Choice in Myanmar, Lanham: University Press of America, 1990, pp. 21–2 and chs. I and II. Silverstein, op. cit., p. 267. H. Crouch, “Patrimonalism and Military Rule in Inondesia,” World Politics, 31, 1978, pp. 71– 87. Two influential studies of the Indonesian political economy under Suharto are R. Robison, Indonesia: The Rise of Capital, Winchester: Unwin Hyman, 1986, and J. Winters, Power in Motion: Capital Mobility and the Indonesian State, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. Jomo K.S., “From Miracle to Debacle,” in Jomo K.S. (ed.) Tigers in Trouble: Financial Governance, Liberalisation and Crises in East Asia, London: Zed Books, 1998. J. Urschel, “College Cry: ‘Free Burma’ – Internet Links Campuses in ‘90s-style protests,” USA Today, April 30, 1996, pp. 1 and 2. J. Silverstein, “The Evolution and Salience of Burma’s National Political Culture,” in R.I. Rotberg (ed.) Burma: Prospects for a Democratic Future, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998, p. 28. M.R. Thompson, “Off the Endangered List: Philippine Democratization in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics, 28, January 1996, pp. 179–205. Wajed Miah, the husband of former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina once said his wife is “half-educated and simply not fit to govern.” Taufiq Kiemas has made similar remarks about his wife Megawati. Here the wise words of Indira Gandhi, whose husband “exuded … hostility” after she became politically active, are worth recalling: “to hurt the male ego is the biggest sin in marriage.” Quoted in S.K. Datta-Ray, “For Some in Asia, It’s Hard to Stand by Their Woman,” International Herald Tribune, August 3, 2001, p. 7. G.N. Almendral, “The Fall of the Regime,” in Javate-de Dios, et al., op. cit., pp. 188–9 and M.R. Thompson, The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, pp. 132–7 and 165. J. Clad, “Cory Comes Out Fighting,” Far Eastern Economic Review, November 5, 1987, cited in Col, op. cit., p. 35. Richburg, op. cit. A.M. Weiss, “Benazir Bhutto and the Future of Women in Pakistan,” Asian Survey, 30, May 1990, pp. 433–4. H. Kamm, “Bhutto is ‘Pained’ By Family Feud on Brother’s Future,” International Herald Tribune, January 15–16, 1994, p. 4. “All Change in Pakistan,” The Economist, November 9, 1996, p. 89. A. Rashid, “In-Law Trouble,” Far Eastern Economic Review, January 9, 1997, p. 20. S. Kamaluddin, “The Lady is a Sir,” Far Eastern Economic Review, September 5, 1996, p. 20.

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76 A.B. De Brito, C.G. Enriquez and P. Aguilar, The Politics of Memory and Democratization: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 77 M. Nicholson, “Gas Finds Trigger Promise of Riches,” Financial Times, May 5, 1998, first page of survey. 78 “Begum Zia’s Burden,” The Economist, April 4, 1992, p. 63. 79 S. Kamaluddin, “Great Expectations: Voters Hope June Poll will End Political Chaos,” Far Eastern Economic Review, June 13, 1996, p. 27. Also see “Bangladesh’s Reluctant Army,” The Economist, February 24, 1996, pp. 79–80. 80 A. Rashid, “Wheeler Dealer,” Far Eastern Economic Review, April 28, 1994, pp. 32–3. 81 Anderson, op. cit., p. 65. 82 R. Chandrasekaran, “It’s Wahid against Megawati in Indonesia,” International Herald Tribune, August 12–13, 2000, p. 4; McBeth, op. cit., p. 24. 83 J. Clad, “Tainted Watchdog,” Far Eastern Economic Review, September 17, 1987, p. 22. 84 Václav Havel et al., The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, London: Hutchinson, 1985.

3

The East German “Wende” as a democratic revolution 1 H. Bahrmann and C. Links, Chronik der Wende: Die DDR zwischen 7. Oktober und 18. Dezember 1989, Berlin: Ch. Links, 1994, p. 39. 2 B. Lindner, Die demokratische Revolution in der DDR 1988/90, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1998, p. 148. 3 The tragedy of Krenz as an old-style communist who did too little and acted too late in a revolutionary situation is captured in his memoirs when he writes: “I gave all that I was capable of to my party, which expelled me [in December 1989] and my country [which ceased to exist in October 1990].” E. Krenz, Wenn Mauern fallen:Die friedliche Revolution – Vorgeschichte – Ablauf – Auswirkungen, Vienna: Paul Neff, 1990 (the author’s translation). Later, Krenz received a six-and-a-half-year jail sentence for the GDR’s shoot-to-kill policy against East Germans trying to flee the country. 4 G. Grass, Two States – One Nation?, New York: Harvest Books, 1991. 5 W. Lepenies, Folgen einer unerhörten Begebenheit. Die Deutschen nach der Vereinigung, Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag, 1992, cited in C. Ross, The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR, London: Arnold, 2002, p. 143. 6 F. Parkin, Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique, London: Tavistock, 1979, introduction, noted in the time before the collapse of state socialism that he had little doubt that his Marxist colleagues in the West, should they have had the chance, would have gladly joined the storming of the Winter Palace, assuming of course suitable arrangements for a sabbatical could be made. 7 This was demonstrated both in polls taken of those who fled the GDR before the revolution as well as in a retrospective, representative poll conducted in Leipzig after the revolution. The former is reported in R. Hilmer and A. Köhler, “Der DDR läuft die Zukunft davon: Die Übersiedler-/Flüchtlingswelle im Sommer 1989,” in Deutschland Archiv, 22, 1989, pp. 1389– 93. For the latter see the survey results in K.-D. Opp, P. Voss, and C. Gern, Die volkseigene Revolution, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993, ch. III. 8 Ross, op. cit., pp. 141–2. The most thorough account of the civic movement is E. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR 1949–1989, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1997. The best English language studies are C. Joppke, East German Dissidents and the Revolution of 1989: Social Movement in a Leninist Regime, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995 and J. Torpey, Intellectuals, Socialism, and Dissent: The East German Opposition and its Legacy, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. 9 E. Pond, Beyond the Wall: Germany’s Road to Unification, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1993, p. 134.

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10 Quoted in TAZ Journal, DDR Journal zur Novemberrevolution, Berlin: Die Tageszeitung, 1990, p. 126 cited in Joppke, op. cit., p. 160. 11 Ibid. 12 “Beitrag der 13. Autonomen Gruppe zum Kongreß der Vereinigten Linken am 25. und 26. November in Berlin,” reprinted in C. Schüddenkopf (ed.) “Wir sind das Volk!” Flugschriften, Aufrufe und Texte, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990, p. 239. 13 W. Schäuble, Der Vertrag. Wie ich über die deutsche Einheit verhandelte, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1991, p. 15 (translation by the author). 14 Ibid. 15 J. Pelikan, “Warum ist es schwer, ein Kommunist in der DDR zu sein?” in H. Jäckel (ed.) Ein Marxist in der DDR: Für Robert Havemann, Munich: Piper, 1980, p. 50. 16 W. Rüddenklau, Störenfried, Berlin: BasisDruck, 1992, p. 15. 17 J. Danyel (ed.) Die geteilte Vergangenheit. Zum Nationalsozialismus und Widerstand in den beiden deutschen Staaten, Berlin: Akadamie Verlag, 1995, p. 45. 18 S. Meuschel, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft in der DDR, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992, p. 67 ff. 19 Quoted in E. Deuerlein, DDR 1945–1970. Geschichte und Bestandsaufnahme, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1971, p. 194. 20 Enquete-Kommission “Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland”: Ideologie, Integration und Disziplinierung, III, 1, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1995, p. 144. 21 Ibid. 22 C. Joppke, “Intellectuals, Nationalism, and the Exit from Communism: The Case of East Germany,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Miami, August 1993. 23 Cited in Joppke, East German Dissidents, pp. 72–3. Seven GDR judges and prosecutors were tried in Frankfurt (Oder) in 1997 charged with violating East German law in the course of their prosecution of Havemann in the 1970s and early 1980s. He had been held under house arrest for five years until his death and charged with “endangering the public order” and violating currency laws. Though sharply criticizing the behavior of these GDR justice officials, the court found them not guilty. Writing in Der Spiegel, 41, Oct. 10, 1997, “Freispruch als Schuldspruch,” pp. 254–6, Wolf Biermann said his friend Robert Havemann was denied justice by three German states: by the Nazi regime which sentenced him to death in 1943, by the GDR, and now by the Federal Republic. Of course, a very different point can also be made: that while Havemann was denied basic legal due process by the Nazis and the SED, his East German persecutors received the benefit of a fair trial. 24 J.J. Linz, “Opposition to and under an Authoritarian Regime,” in Robert Dahl (ed.) Regimes and Oppositions, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973. 25 S. Heym, Schwarzenberg, Munich: C. Bertelsmann, 1984. 26 I say “relatively,” because, to some extent, as Antonia Grunenberg and other authors have shown, anti-fascism appealed to East Germans of all kinds because of genuine revulsion at Nazism, but also because it provided a kind of absolution for those who had lived through the Nazi period. A. Grunenberg, Antifaschismus – ein deutscher Mythos, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1993 and C. Keller (ed.) Antifaschismus, Geschichte und Neubewertung, Berlin: Aufbau, 1996 with a selection of articles by leading authorities on anti-fascism. 27 C. Offe, “Prosperity, Nation, Republic,” German Politics and Society, 22, Spring 1991, p. 26. 28 Rüddenklau, Störenfried, op. cit., pp. 12–123. 29 The author experienced an example of this popular skepticism while teaching at the Dresden University of Technology in the early 1990s. Discovering that the building in which he taught had a monument built by the GDR regime to honor German and Eastern European resistance fighters who had died when this edifice had been a Gestapo prison, the author suggested to several students that it might be worthwhile to organize a class tour. They replied that such tours had been required of them in the “bad old” East German days. The mixture of boredom,

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officiousness and propaganda that they associated with these meetings made them highly skeptical of any further tours. A. Mitter and S. Wolle (eds) Ich liebe euch doch alle!, Berlin: Basis Druck, 1990, pp. 47–8 who cite a Stasi document. The Czechoslovak secret service estimates are cited in J.J. Linz and A. Stepan, Democratic Transitions and Consolidation: Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and Latin America, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1996, p. 321. On the Charter 77 signatories see J.F.N. Bradley, Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution: A Political Analysis, Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, Columbia University Press, 1992, p. 21. J. Torpey, Intellectuals, Socialism, and Dissent: The East German Opposition and its Legacy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995, p. 208. A. Hirschman, “Exit, Voice and the Fate of the GDR: An Essay in Conceptual History,” World Politics, 45, 1993, pp. 173–202. Ibid., pp. 175–6. Hirschman fails to recognize that this represented a major flaw in his theory. It consists of Hirschman’s effort to apply his theory to the GDR without distinguishing the relationship between “exit” and “voice” under conditions of freedom and unfreedom. His original theory was applied to conditions of freedom in which “exit” alternated with “voice” as strategies to cope with a failing organization. But under conditions of unfreedom, such as in East Germany after the building of the Wall, both “exit” and “voice” could be suppressed. The New Forum was the only “mass-based” civic movement group: over 200,000 people signed its founding appeal and it played a leading role in many rallies throughout the country. The second largest organisation was the Sozialdemokratische Partei (SDP), later SPD after it merged with the West German social democrats: it claimed 10,000 members. Other groups were small and drew largely on a limited clientele, particularly Church pastors and peace activists: the best known were the Demokratischer Aufbruch (Democratic Awakening), Demokratie Jetzt (Democracy Now), Vereinigte Linke (United Left) and the Grüne Partei (Green Party). H. Knabe, “Politische Opposition in der DDR: Ursprüngen, Programmatik, Perspektiven,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 1–2, January 5, 1990, pp. 26–8. Also see Neubert, op. cit. Joppke, East German Dissidents, pp. 127–32. Ibid., p. 59. Rüddenklau, op. cit., p. 13. Joppke, East German Dissidents, pp. 130–1. Ironically, several oppositionists arrested after this 1988 demonstration – an answer to the official “Luxemburg–Liebknecht combat demonstration” that used Rosa Luxemburg’s slogan “freedom is always the freedom of those who dissent” against the SED – chose to go into West German exile rather than face prison terms. This pragmatic willingness to accept “exit” in adverse situations proved a source of embarrassment to the civic movement. For the text of Heym and Wolf’s speeches on 4 November 1989 see C. Schüddenkopf, op. cit., pp. 207–8 and 213–15. The “Für unser Land” appeal is reprinted in S. Prokop (ed.) Die kurze Zeit der Utopie: Die “zweite DDR” im vergessenen Jahr 1989/90, Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1994, pp. 214–19. Also see in the same book the article by C. Wuttke, “‘Für unser Land!’: Ein Aufruf im Gegensog,” pp. 88–99. J. Torpey, “Two Movements, not a Revolution: Exodus and Opposition in the East German Transformation, 1989–1990,” German Politics and Society, 26, Summer 1992, p. 30. Opp, et al., p. 104. For example, some civic movement leaders began to compare the GDR and the Nazi dictatorships, despite the crucial difference differences between them: Enquete-Kommission “Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland”: Widerstand, Opposition: Zwei Diktaturen in Deutschland IX, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1995, p. 621. Before the East German revolution, civic leaders’ commitment to anti-fascism led them to reject such comparisons. With the emphasis on the “totalitarian” character of the two regimes, however, the key analytical contrast shifted toward that between dictatorship and democracy rather than between capitalism

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50 51

52 53

54

55

56

57

58 59 60 61 62 63 64

Notes and socialism. Many former civic movement leaders have focused on seeking justice for victims of communist rule. The most thorough account is D.V. Friedheim, “Democratic Transition Through Regime Collapse: East Germany in 1989,” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, December 1997, ch. 6. Although much has been written about the Leipzig events, an incomplete archival record of state documents has made it difficult to offer a definitive history. Friedheim suggests these public records were “cleaned up” sometime after October 1989. The surviving archives, however, point to a plan to crack down violently on the demonstrations that was derailed only at the last minute. Pond, op. cit., pp. 117–20. Friedheim, op. cit., pp. 315–47. Ibid., chs. 4 and 6. Friedheim’s excellent study is based on over 100 interviews with members of “Secret Crisis Teams” who made the decisions whether to employ force against demonstrators and archival work in Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin. M. Damm, “Die Gewaltlosigkeit des Umbruchs in der DDR im Herbst 1989,” unpublished master’s thesis, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2003. For example, in Dresden the civic movement pioneered the practice of silent marches with demonstrators carrying candles. Holding a candle in one hand and shielding it from the wind with the other symbolized the opposition’s concern not to start a “handgreiflicher Streit” (i.e. a violent conflict) with the authorities. For a more thorough analysis see M.R. Thompson, “Why and how East Germans rebelled,” Theory and Society, 25, 1996, pp. 263–99. East Germany was long considered Eastern Europe’s best economic performer. In 1980 the World Bank reported that it had the world’s tenth highest per capita income, more than Britain’s: 1980 World Bank Atlas cited in D. Childs, The GDR: Moscow’s German Ally, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983, p. 147. The GDR’s economic decline had become so obvious by 1988 that international estimates were revised, with the country slipping to 26th place among the industrialized nations: S.P. Ramet, Social Currents in Eastern Europe, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991, p. 51. D. Voigt, H. Belitz-Demiriz and S. Meck, “Die innerdeutsche Wanderung und der Vereinigungsprozess: Sozialdemographische Struktur und Einstellungen von Flüchtlingen/Übersiedlern aus der DDR vor and nach der Grenzöffnung,” Deutschland Archiv, 23, May 1990, p. 736 and Richard Hilmer and Anne Köhler, “Die DDR läuft der Zeit davon: Die Übersiedler-/Flüchtlingswelle im Sommer 1989,” Deutschland Archiv, 22, December 1989, p. 1,385. Those East Germans who could not receive West German TV (in the low-lying areas in and around Dresden) were popularly known to be living in the “Tal der Ahnungslose” (valley of the unknowing). R. Rose, W. Zapf, W. Seifert and E. Page, “Germans in Comparative Perspective,” Studies in Public Policy, No. 218, Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, 1993. The most famous commentary on this event was Bertolt Brecht’s secret poem: “After the uprising of the 17th June/The Secretary of the Writers’ Union/Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinalle/ Stating that the people/ Had forfeited the confidence of the government/And could win it back only/By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier/In that case for the government/To dissolve the people/And elect another?” Cited in H. Ashby Turner, Jr, Germany from Partition to Reunification, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992, pp. 80–1. Opp et al., op. cit., Die volkseigene Revolution, chp. 3. Ibid., pp. 93–5 and 346–7. Ibid., p. 95. Ibid., pp. 93–5. Ibid., p. 111. A. Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. On the unintended consequences of Gorbachev’s reforms in Eastern Europe see J. Lévesque, The Enigma of 1989: The USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Although popular in both East and West Germany, Gorbachev never

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openly criticized the SED regime despite its resistance to his reforms (although he purportedly did so in private). He was concerned about the consequences of the opening of the Wall and supported the effort of Krenz and his successor Modrow to salvage the GDR as a state. Opp et al., op. cit., p. 120. This is the terminology of Linz and Stepan, op. cit., chs. 3, 4, and 17. They classify Poland as being authoritarian but in the late 1980s it “behaved” almost identically to the “mature” posttotalitarian regime in Hungary. For a more thorough discussion, including the background about the term “post-totalitarian,” see M.R. Thompson, “Neither Totalitarian nor Authoritarian: Post-Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe,” in A. Siegel (ed.) The Totalitarian Paradigm after the End of Communism: Towards a Theoretical Reassessment, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998, pp. 303–28. The classic statement on totalitarian terror (and its decline after Stalinism as discussed in her preface to the second addition) is H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1976. S. Saxonberg, The Fall: A Comparative Study of the End of Communism in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 2001, pp. 167–83. No representative surveys were permitted by an SED regime which did not want to know too much about the true views of its own population. Yet by the late 1980s even sectoral surveys (factory workers, young people, etc.) of carefully selected interviewees began to show widespread discontent. For an overview of these surveys see T. Gensicke, Mentalitätsentwicklungen im Osten Deutschlands seit den 70er Jahren: Vorstellung und Erläuterung von Ergebnissen einiger empirischer Untersuchungen in der DDR und in den neuen Bundesländern von 1977 bis 1991, Speyer: Forschungsinstitut für Öffentliche Verwaltung bei der Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften Speyer, 1992. The most important pre-revolution poll was conducted by the Zentralinstitut für Jugendforschung in Leipzig which showed severe declines in youth identification with the GDR after 1985. See W. Friedrich, “Mentalitätswandlungen der Jugend in der DDR,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B 16–17, 1990, pp. 26–41. Friedheim, op. cit., pp. 189–90. K.W. Fricke, Opposition und Widerstand in der DDR: Ein politischer Report, Köln: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1984, p. 217. R.G. Reuth and A. Bönte, Das Komplott: Wie es wirklich zur deutschen Einheit kam, Munich: Piper, 1993, pp. 40–6. J. Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, 1945–1989, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, SED IV A2/2021/153 cited in Kopstein, op. cit., p. 66. Quoted in V. Grasnow and K.H. Jarausch (eds) Die deutsche Vereinigung: Dokumente zu Bürgerbewegung, Annäherung und Beitritt, Cologne: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1991, p. 57. U. Beck, “Opposition in Deutschland,” in B. Giesen and C. Leggewie (eds) Experiment Vereinigung: Ein sozialer Grossversuch, Berlin: Rotburch Verlag, 1991, p. 24. R. Rose and C. Haerpfer, “The Impact of a Ready-made State: die priviligierte Position Ostdeutschlands in der postkommunistischen Transformation,” in H. Wiesenthal (ed.) Einheit als Privileg: vergleichende Perspektive auf die Transformation Ostdeutschlands, Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1996, p. 127. D. Pollack and G. Pickel, “Die ostdeutsche Identität – Erbe des DDR-Sozialismus oder Produkt der Wiedervereinigung? Die Einstellung der Ostdeutschen zu sozialer Ungleichheit und Demokratie,” in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 41/42/1998, p. 17.

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4 To shoot or not to shoot: China and Eastern Europe 1 This offers another contrast to China: secessionist movements in Tibet and, to a lesser extent, in northwestern China, have been brutally repressed as part of the general illiberality of post-1989 communist rule. 2 Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 3. 3 The best study of Gorbachev’s policy toward Eastern Europe and its many unintended consequences is J. Lévesque, The Enigma of 1989: The USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. 4 E. Pond, Beyond the Wall: Germany’s Road to Unification, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1993, pp. 111–12. 5 “Disturbed over China: Declaration of the Synod of the Protestant Church of Saxony,” in Gerhard Rein (ed.) Die protestantische Revolution 1987–1990: Ein deutsches Lesebuch, Berlin: Wichern, 1990, cited in Pond, op. cit., p. 304, n. 1. 6 Pond, op. cit., pp. 111–12. 7 B. Wheaton and Z. Kavan, The Velvet Revolution: Czechoslovakia 1988–1991, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992, pp. 61 and 72. Also see p. 114. This conclusion was confirmed by an official commission of inquiry after the events which issued a report in October 1990. 8 M. Thompson, “Whatever happened to ‘Asian values’?” Journal of Democracy, 12, October 2001, pp. 154–65. South Korea’s former president has criticized this instrumentalization of Asian culture against democracy: Kim Dae Jung, “Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia’s Anti-Democratic Values,” Foreign Affairs, 73, November/December 1994, pp. 189–94. 9 R. Collins, “German-Bashing and the Theory of Democratic Modernization,” Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 24, 1, 1995, pp. 3–21. 10 S. Manning, “Social and Cultural Prerequisites of Democratization: Generalizing from China,” in Edward Friedman (ed.) The Politics of Democratization: Generalizing East Asian Experiences, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994, pp. 232–48. 11 Not all culturalist arguments about China are so essentialist. See L.W. Pye “Tiananmen and Chinese Political Culture: The Escalation of Confrontation from Moralizing to Revenge,” Asian Survey, 30, April 1990, pp. 331–47. Fascinating research on “reverse” orientalism has been conducted by M. Hill, “‘Asian Values’ as Reverse Orientalism: The Case of Singapore,” paper presented at The New Zealand Asian Studies Society, 13th International Conference, Dunedin, New Zealand, November 24–7, 1999. 12 J. Segal and J. Phipps, “Why Communist Armies Defend their Parties,” Asian Survey, XXX, October 1990, pp. 959–76. 13 Ibid., pp. 960–1 and 972–3. 14 A point which Weber also analyzed. M. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. and trans. by G. Roth and C. Wittich, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, 1, pp. 212–13. 15 T.H. Rigby and F. Fehér, introduction in Rigby and Fehér (eds) Political Legitimation in Communist States, London: Macmillan, 1982, p. 15. 16 Maria Marcus, “Overt and Covert Modes of Legitimation in East European Societies,” in Rigby and Fehér, pp. 82–93, cited in G. di Palma, “Legitimation from the Top to Civil Society: PoliticoCultural Change in Eastern Europe,” World Politics, 43, 1991, pp. 55. 17 Di Palma, op. cit., p. 56. 18 D.V. Friedheim, “Democratic Transition through Regime Collapse: East Germany in 1989,” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, December 1997, pp. 53–65. Also see his methodological notes, pp. 479–86. 19 Ibid., table 37, p. 421 and chp. 8. 20 J.J. Linz and A. Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 322–8. Also see J.F.N. Bradley, Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution: A Political Analysis, New York: Columbia University Press, East European Monographs, 1992 and Wheaton

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and Kavan, op. cit. For a comparison of regime collapse in Czechoslovakia and the GDR see S. Saxonberg, The Fall: Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary and Poland in a Comparative Perspective, London: Harwood Academic, 2001. A. Scobell, “Why the People’s Army Fired on the People,” in R.V. Des Forges, Luo N. and Wu Y. (eds) Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of 1989: Chinese and American Reflections, Albany: State University Press of New York, 1993, pp. 191–221. S. White, After Gorbachev, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 23–7, R. Sakwa, “The Revolution of 1991 in Russia: Interpretations of the Moscow Coup,” Coexistence, 29, December 1992, pp. 335–75, and J.B. Dunlop, The Rise and the Fall of the Soviet Empire, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, ch. 5. Gorbachev’s own (controversial) account is The August Coup, London: HarperCollins, 1991. M. Pei, From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, chs. 1 and 2. Also see X. Han, “Democratic Transition in China: A Comparative Examination of a Deified Idea,” in Des Forges et al., op. cit., pp. 224–8. Pei, op. cit., p. 58, emphasis in the original. In 1997–8, Freedom House gave Malawi a rating of “free” while Singapore was only considered “partly free” although the former had a real GDP per capital (PPP) of only US$695 while the latter had one of US$20,987. A. Karatnycky (ed.) Freedom in the World 1997–1998: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties, New Brunswick: Transactions Publishers, 1998. Pei, op. cit., p. 52. Ibid., p. 57. M. Selden, “The Social Origins and Limits of the Democratic Movement,” in Des Forges et al., op. cit., p. 124. Pei, op. cit., table 2.2, p. 59. The National Statistics Bureau (ed.) Zhongguo tongji nianjian 1988, Beijing: Chinese Statistics Press, 1988, pp. 117–30, cited in S. Wang, “From a Pillar of Continuity to a Force for Change: Chinese Workers in the Movement,” in Des Forges et al., op. cit. p. 180. M. Blecher, China Against the Tides: Restructuring through Revolution, Radicalism and Reform, London: Pinter, 1997, p. 106. Ibid., pp. 107–8. S. Saxonberg, “Regime Behavior During Crisis: A Comparison of East European Regimes in 1989,” paper presented at the APSA conference in Atlanta, Georgia, September 2–5, 1999, p. 4. He cites I. Janis and L. Mann, Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice and Commitment, New York: Free Press, 1977. T. Tsou, “The Tiananmen Tragedy: The State-Society Relationship, Choices, and Mechanisms in Historical Perspective,” in Jan Elster (ed.) The Roundtable Talks, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 213–40. Ibid., p 222. Ibid., pp. 223–4. T. Brooke, Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Opposition Movement, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, introduction. Scobell, op. cit., pp. 194–5. Selden, op. cit., pp. 126–7. Wheaton and Kavan, op. cit., pp. 206–8. R. Karklins and R. Peterson, “Decision Calculus of Protesters and Regimes: Eastern Europe 1989,” The Journal of Politics, 55, August 1993, p. 610. A. J. Nathan, “Chinese Democracy in 1989: Continuity and Change,” Problems of Communism, 38, September–October 1989, 17, cited in Karklins and Petersen, op. cit., p. 610. Karklins and Petersen, op. cit., p. 610. R. Snyder and J. Mahoney, “The Missing Variable: Institutions and the Study of Regime Change,” Comparative Politics, 32:1, October 1999, pp. 103–22. A. Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies, London: Hutchinson, 1976, pp. 102–13 and Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis, London: Macmillan, 1979, pp. 59–73.

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46 C.J. Friedrich and Z.K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956, p. 135. 47 Ibid., p. 131. 48 In The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, London: Collins/Harvill, 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn demonstrated how opposition to Stalinism was both possible and morally imperative. But he cites mostly cases of individual courage, not organized, collective resistance. 49 H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1976, orig. second edition, 1966, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii. One of the most striking indications of this change was the state of the arts: “When Stalin died the drawers of writers and artists were empty; today there exists a whole literature that circulates in manuscript and all kinds of modern painting are tried out in the painters’ studios and become known even though they are not exhibited. This is not to minimize the difference between tyrannical censorship and freedom of the arts, it is only to stress the fact that the difference between a clandestine literature and no literature equals the difference between one and zero.” 50 Václav Havel et al., The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, London: Hutchinson, 1985. 51 Havel, op. cit., pp. 27–8. 52 J.J. Linz, “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes,” in Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby (eds) Handbook of Political Science, Cambridge, MA: Addison Wesley, 1975, Vol. 3, pp. 175– 411 and Linz and Stepan, op. cit., chs. 3, 4, and 17. 53 Z.K. Brzezinski, The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956. 54 J.F. Hough, The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977. 55 Havel, op. cit., pp. 39–40. 56 Ibid., pp. 39–40. 57 For another approach to applying a modified version of totalitarianism theory to China, see W. Xie, “The Semihierarchical Totalitarian Nature of Chinese Politics,” Comparative Politics, 25, April 1993, pp. 313–30. C. Chao uses the term “post-totalitarian authoritarian regime” in his paper “Some Thoughts on the Party-Legislature Relations of Leninist Regimes: The Case of China,” Conference on Institutional Analysis of Political Transitions in Germany and China, Beijing, September 13–14, 1999. 58 Linz and Stepan drew the term “frozen” post-totalitarianism from an article by Timothy Garton Ash, “Czechoslovakia Under the Ice,” in The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe, New York: Random House, 1989, pp. 61–70. 59 Erich Apel, the initiator of East Germany’s “New Economic System,” committed suicide in 1965 shortly after his reformist plans were shelved. Hermann Weber, DDR: Grundriß der Geschichte 1945–1990, Hannover: Fackelträger, 1991, pp. 119–21 and 260. 60 S. L. Shirk, The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, p. 12. 61 Scobell, op. cit., pp. 191–5. 62 P.G. Roeder, Red Sunset: The Failure of Soviet Politics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 239–45. 63 Scobell, op. cit., p. 192. Such party–military interpenetration went back as far as the 1920s when key members of the old guard had held key military positions. 64 De-Maoization not only began later than de-Stalinization; it was also less intensive, perhaps due to the fact that the Chinese leadership had no equivalent of Lenin to turn to as was the case in the Soviet Union after Stalin was denounced. G. Rozman, “Stages in the Reform and Dismantling of Communism in China and the Soviet Union,” in G. Rozman, S. Sato and G. Segal (eds) Dismantling Communism: Common Causes and Regional Variations, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1992, pp. 31–2. 65 Friedheim, op. cit., pp. 189–90.

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66 Aside from all his personal tribulations, Deng saw his own family tortured at the hands of Red Guards. His son was thrown out of a window and crippled. The mere restoration of “socialist legality” was a huge improvement for cadres so traumatized. 67 In the case of East Germany, an extensive literature grew up about its increasingly technocratic orientation in the wake of the pioneering study of P.C. Ludz, The Changing Party Elite in East Germany, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972. But the regime tried to make the planned economy more efficient without undertaking any fundamental transformation. 68 In later post-totalitarianism, such as in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, the state began to subsidize farmers, meaning that market reforms were often initially viewed hostilely by farming collectives accustomed to state largess. See M. Selden, “Post-Collective Agrarian Alternatives in Russia and China,” in B.L. McCormick and J. Unger (eds) China After Socialism: In the Footsteps of Eastern Europe or East Asia?, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996, pp. 7–28. 69 This “miracle” growth rate was canonized in a World Bank report, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, Box 1.3, p. 59, which reported China enjoyed an annual GNP growth of 9.4 per cent from 1979 to 1989, with a surge of 11.34 per cent from 1982–8. 70 Selden, “Limits of the Democratic Movement,” pp. 114–20. 71 Paul Krugman, “The Myth of Asia’s Miracle,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 1994, pp. 62–78. 72 This point is stressed by Saxonberg, The Fall, op. cit. 73 B.L. McCormick, Su Shaozhi and Xiao Xiaoming, “The 1989 Democracy Movement: A Review of the Prospects for Civil Society in China,” Pacific Affairs, 65, Summer 1992, pp. 86–187. 74 Selden, “Post-Collective Agrarian Alternatives in Russia and China,” pp. 7–28. 75 M. Goldman, Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China: Political Reform in the Deng Xiaoping Era, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, pp. 11–12, suggests the ideas of democracy introduced into China in the early twentieth century (which found most famous expression in the so called May 4th movement of 1919) were ruthlessly rooted out with the purge of intellectuals beginning in the 1950s, particularly after the devious “Hundred Flowers” campaign of 1956. An anti-Gang of Four demonstration in Tiananmen Square on April 5, 1976, though small, could also be dated as the beginning of the revival of China’s democracy movement. 76 Selden, “Limits of the Democratic Movements,” p. 111. 77 A. Walder, “The Political Sociology of the Beijing Upheaval of 1989,” Problems of Communism, September–October 1989, pp. 30–40 cited in Karklins and Peterson, op. cit., p. 609. 78 The term “Nischengesellschaft” (a society of niches) was coined by the West German diplomat Günter Gaus to describe the situation in the GDR. See his Wo Deutschland liegt, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1986, orig. 1983. 79 On the East German Stasi see D. Childs and R. Opplewell, The Stasi: East German Intelligence and Security Service, New York: New York University Press, 1996. On the StB see Wheaton and Kavan, op. cit. W. Süß, Staatssicherheit am Ende: Warum es den Mächtigen nicht gelang, 1989 eine Revolution zu verhindern, Berlin: Ch. Links, 1999, shows in great detail how the Stasi was unable to stop the democratic revolution in the GDR of 1989. 80 Cited in Süß, op. cit., pp. 339 and 360–1. 81 Wheaton and Kavan, op. cit., pp. 11–13. On the establishment of Charter 77, see G.H. Skilling, Charter 77 and Human Rights in Czechoslovakia, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981. 82 Karklins and Peterson, op. cit., pp. 606–7. 83 Joppke, East German Dissidents, ch. 5. 84 Goldman, op. cit., p. 10 and Selden, “Limits of the Democratic Movement,” p. 127. 85 Selden, “Limits of the Democratic Movement,” p. 121. 86 Although there are different degrees of reluctance. In Czechoslovakia, for example, the police and people’s militia refused to consider the use of force from the outset while the army was initially undecided. Wheaton and Kavan, op. cit., p. 114. 87 Saxonberg, The Fall, chp. 10. 88 Linz and Stepan, op. cit., pp. 349–50.

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89 For a list of major positions held by family members see A.C. Nahm, A History of the Korean People: Tradition and Transformation, Seoul: Hollym, 1988, pp. 418–19. 90 V. Georgescu, “Romania in the 1980s: The Legacy of Dynastic Socialism,” East European Politics and Society, 2, 1988, p. 82 cited in Linz and Stepan, op. cit., p. 350 and V. Tismaneanu, “Ceau_escu’s Socialism,” Problems of Communism, 34, Jan.–Feb. 1985, p. 63. Kim Il Song published over 40 books while it is claimed that his son and current North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, has written six operas (as well as making five holes-in-one in golf): “Through the Looking Glass,” The Economist, July 10, 1999, p. 12. 91 “Through the Looking Glass,” The Economist, p. 12. 92 Ibid. and Congress of the United States, North Korea Advisory Group Report to the Speaker US House of Representatives, November 1999, p. 12. I wish to thank Joanna Kudanowska for the latter reference. 93 H.M. Enzensberger, “Portrait of a Party: Prehistory, Structure and Ideology of the PCC,” in R. Radosch (ed.) The New Cuba: Paradoxes and Potentials, New York: William Morrow, 1976, cited in J.M. del Aguila, Cuba: Dilemmas of a Revolution, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1988, p. 74. 94 M. Almond, The Rise and Fall of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, London: Chapmans, 1992, p. 70 cited in Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, p. 349. Ceau_escu also had close ties to Castro: P.I. Mihai, Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1987. I am grateful to Aura Axente for this reference. 95 Almond, op. cit. p. 67. 96 Linz and Stepan, op. cit., chp. 18. 97 J.J. Lopez, Democracy Delayed: These Case of Castro’s Cuba, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, chp. 1. 98 S.J. Hoon, “Darkness at Noon,” Far Eastern Economic Review, Oct. 10, 1996, p. 27.

5 Stolen elections and the “October revolution” in Serbia 1 C. Gagnon, “International Non-Government Organizations and Democracy Assistance in Serbia,” report prepared for the Columbia University Project on Evaluating Western NGO Strategies for Democratization and the Reduction of Ethnic Conflict in the Former Communist States, December 1998. Online. Available HTTP: www.ceip.org (accessed February 2, 2003). 2 S.P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order, New York: Touchstone, 1996. 3 J. Kane, The Politics of Moral Capital, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 32. 4 Ibid., p. 10. 5 S.P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991, pp. 174–8. 6 M. Krennerich, Wahlen und Antiregimekriege in Zentralamerika, Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 1986. 7 S. Bakash, “Iran’s Remarkable Election,” Journal of Democracy, 9, January 1998, pp. 80–94. 8 D. Blair, Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power in Zimbabwe, London: Continuum, 2002, pp. 48–62. 9 P. Brooker, Non-Democratic Regimes: Theory, Government, and Politics, New York: St Martin’s, 2000, p. 230, emphasis added. A similar definition is given by D. Nohlen in his Wahlrecht und Parteiensystem, Opladen: Leske und Budrich, third edition, 2000, pp. 27–32. One way to make this concept compatible with stolen elections is to differentiate “open” from “closed” semicompetitive elections. In the former, although the regime attempts to manipulate the results in advance of the balloting, it may not succeed, giving the opposition a “fighting chance.” Should the opposition succeed in getting more votes, then an unyielding regime would have to steal the vote or ignore the results. 10 Chalmers Johnson, Revolutionary Change, Boston: Little and Brown, 1966, pp. 99 and 153. 11 M.S. Kimmel, Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990, p. 9.

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12 E. Kiser and M. Levi, “Using Counterfactuals in Historical Analysis: Theories of Revolution,” in P.E. Tetlock and A. Belkin (eds) Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological and Psychological Perspectives, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 204. 13 R. Aya, Rethinking Revolutions and Collective Violence: Studies on Concept, Theory, and Method, Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 1990, p. 42. 14 V. Havel, “The Power of the Powerless,” in J. Vladislav (ed.) Václav Havel or Living in Truth, Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1986, pp. 36–122. 15 T. Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. 16 L.J. Cohen, Serpent in the Bossom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Miloševi¼, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001, pp. 62–4. 17 L. Silber and A. Little, The Death of Yugoslavia, London: Penguin Books, 1995, ch. 4 and R. Thomas, The Politics of Serbia in the 1990s, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, ch. 5. 18 Thomas, op. cit., pp. 76–8. 19 The extreme personalism of the Miloševi¼ regime has been pointed out by other authors as well. See Thomas, op. cit., pp. 3–4, 424–6 and V. Goati “The Nature of the Order and the October Overthrow in Serbia,” in I. Spasi¼ and M. Suboti¼ (eds) Revolution and Order: Serbia after October 2000, Belgrade: Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, 2001, pp. 45–58. 20 H.-J. Hoppe, “Die politische Führung des Miloševi¼-Regimes,” Bericht des Bundesinstitutes für ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien, 26, 1999. 21 Cohen, op. cit., p. 117. 22 M. Ottaway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003, pp. 137–60. 23 A. Schedler, “Elections without Democracy: The Menu of Manipulation,” Journal of Democracy, 13, April 2002, p. 49. 24 V.R. Gagnon, op. cit. and “Ethnic Conflict as Demobilizer: The Case of Serbia,” Cornell University: Institute for European Studies Working Paper 1/96, May 1996. 25 D. Popadi¼, “Student Protests: Comparative Analysis of the 1992 and 1996–97 Protests,” in M. Lazi¼ (ed.) Protest in Belgrade: Winter of Discontent, Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999, pp. 157–60. 26 Ibid., pp. 154–5. 27 Only two republics, Serbia and Montenegro, remained to constitute the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Although developments in Montenegro posed a major challenge to the regime in Belgrade by 1997–8, for the sake of simplicity, this account of the anti-Miloševi¼ struggle will be restricted to events in Serbia. 28 A. Weckbecker and F. Hoffmeister, Die Entwicklung der politischen Parteien im ehemaligen Jugoslawien, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997, p. 22; also N.J. Miller, “A Failed Transition: The Case of Serbia,” in K. Dawisha and B. Parrot (eds) Democratization and Authoritarianism in Postcommunist Societies, Vol. 2: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for Democracy in SouthEast Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 168. 29 Miller, op. cit., pp. 169–70; Thomas, op. cit., pp. 128–35; and Cohen, op. cit., pp. 166–7. 30 Miller, op. cit., pp. 180–3. 31 M. Bogdanovi¼, “Chronology of the Protest,” in M. Lazi¼ (ed.) op. cit., 1999, pp. 211–39. 32 These creative protest forms found their way into S. Tarrow’s well-known book on social movements, Power in Movement Social Movements and Contentious Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, second edition 1998, pp. 91–3. Also see E. Petronijewi¼, “Streets of Protest: Space, Action and Actors of Protest 96/97 in Belgrade,” Polish Sociological Review, no. 3, 1998, pp. 267–86 for a portrayal of the movement. 33 M. Lazi¼, “Introduction: The Emergence of a Democratic Order in Serbia,” in M. Lazi¼ (ed.), op. cit., pp. 11–12 and Popadi¼, op. cit., pp. 154–5. 34 T. Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, second edition 2000, pp. 305–6.

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35 J.M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. 36 S. Cveji¼, “General Character of the Protest and Prospects,” in Lazi¼ (ed.), op. cit., p. 65. 37 Lazi¼ in Lazi¼ (ed.), op. cit., p. 19. 38 Ibid., p. 20; M. Babovi¼, “Potential for an Active Society,” in M. Lazi¼ (ed.) op. cit., p. 43; Thomas, op. cit., p. 293; D. Doder and L. Branson, Milo]evi¼: Portrait of a Tyrant, New York: The Free Press, 1999, p. 234; and L. Sell, Slobodan Milo]evi¼ and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, p. 260. 39 Repression had already increased before the Kosovo war. Cf. M. Nikoli¼, The Tragedy of Yugoslavia: The Rise, the Reign and the Fall of Slobodan Miloševi¼, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002, pp. 96–104; Cohen, op. cit., pp. 324–5, 344–5 and 348–52. 40 S. Staletovi¼, “Vuk Strikes Again,” London and Belgrade: International Institute for War & Peace Reporting, Balkan Crisis Report 20 August, 1999. Online. Available HTTP: www.iwpr.net (accessed October 12, 2002). 41 Cohen, op. cit., p. 328. 42 The complete statement is to be found in Centar za slobodne izbore i demokratiju, Guide Through Electoral Controversies in Belgrade, Belgrade: CeSID, 2000, pp. 84–5. 43 M. Collin, This is Serbia Calling: Rock’n’Roll Radio and Belgrade’s Underground Resistance, London: Serpent’s Tail, 2001, pp. 199–200. 44 J. Rowland, “Big Turnout for Belgrade Rally,” BBC News Online, September 25, 1999. 45 International Crisis Group, “Yugoslavia’s Presidential Election: The Serbian People’s Moment of Truth,” Washington, DC: International Crisis Group, Balkans Report no. 102, September 19, 2000, p. 10. Online. Available HTTP: www.crisisweb.org (accessed October 12, 2002) and D. de Krnjevi¼ –Miškovi¼, “Serbia’s Prudent Revolution,” Journal of Democracy, 12, no. 3 (2001), pp. 102–3. In addition, he might have preferred holding elections before the onset of another winter with a lack of basic supplies, which would have further eroded his standing among the population. 46 S. Birch, “The 2000 Elections in Yugoslavia: the ‘Bulldozer Revolution,’” Electoral Studies, 21, 2002, pp. 502–3 and Nikoli¼, op. cit., pp. 132–4. Foreign aid also contributed to the opposition’s success. For a balanced assessment regarding scope and impact of external assistance see Thomas Carothers, “Ousting Foreign Strongmen: Lessons form Serbia,” Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Policy Brief, 1, no. 5, 2001. Online. Available HTTP: www.ceip.org (accessed October 18, 2002). 47 Cohen, op. cit., pp. 408–13 and International Crisis Group, op. cit., pp. 1–5. For an analysis of Koštunica’s political views see N. Cigar, Vojislav Koštunica and Serbia’s Future, London: Saqui Books (in association with The Bosnian Institute), 2001. Some of the “deficiencies” of Zoran Ðin}i¼ (DS) and Vuk Draškovi¼ (SPO) have been described in Dejan Anastsijevi¼ (ed.) Out of Time: Draškovi¼, Djindjic and Serbian Opposition Against Milo]evi¼, London: International Institute for War and Peace Reporting and Central Europe Review, 2000. 48 See, for example, the surveys carried out by the Centar za Proucavanje Alternativa, Belgrade. Online. Available HTTP: www.cpa-cps.org.yu/cpa-cps/cps and those produced for the National Democratic Institute, Washington, DC Online. Available HTTP: www.ndi.org. 49 Julius Strauss, “She Wants to Flee: He’d Rather Fight on in the Bunker,” Sunday Telegraph, October 1, 2000, p. 22. 50 Cohen, op. cit., p. 428, fn. 31 and Dragan Bujoševi¼ and Ivan Radovanovi¼, October 5th: A 24– Hour Coup, Belgrade: Medija Centar, 2001. 51 Mirna Jan=i¼, “State Media Revolt,” London and Belgrade: International Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Balkan Crisis Report 181, October 5, 2000. Online. Available HTTP: www.iwpr.net (accessed January 16, 2003). 52 Cohen, op. cit., p. 414. 53 Lukovi¼ became a suspect in Ðin}i¼’s killing in March 2003 because the former was reportedly planning to have him sent to the Hague to be put on trial as a war criminal. S. Erlanger, “Was Leadership of Serbia Squeezed too much?” International Herald Tribune, March 18, 2003, p. 3.

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54 E.-L. Hedman, “In Search of Oppositions: South East Asia in Focus,” Government and Opposition, 32, no. 4, 1996, pp. 578–97. 55 W.A. Callahan, Pollwatching, Elections and Civil Society in Southeast Asia, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, pp. 95–6. 56 While vote-buying was a problem in the elections, several political parties engaged in it, not just on the military side. G. Reinecke, “Thailand – die gefährdete Demokratie,” in G. Schubert, R. Tetzlaff and W. Vennewald (eds) Demokratisierung und politischer Wandel, Münster: Lit, 1994, p. 227. 57 Callaghan, op. cit., p. 97. 58 C. Fink, Living Silence: Burma under Military Rule, London: Zed Books, 2001, pp. 63–9. 59 Ibid., pp. 70–1. 60 Frustrated at their loss of power, several of Ne Win’s relatives purportedly tried to launch a counter-coup attempt, for which the junta had them sentenced to death: S. Mydans, “A Coup Plot Gone Awry, or a Burmese Comic Opera?” The New York Times, July 8, 2002. Online. Available HTTP: www.rebound88.net/sp/junta/scoup-court.html (accessed March 25, 2003) and R. Horn, “The Puppet Master of Burma,” Time Asia, December 16, 2002. Online. Available HTTP: www.time.com/time/asia/magazine (accessed March 25, 2003). 61 R.H. Taylor, “Elections in Burma/Myanmar: For whom and why?” in R.H. Taylor (ed.) The Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 164– 83. 62 B. Lintner, Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for Democracy, London: White Lotus, 1990. 63 For a comparison of military regimes in Thailand and Burma see Chao-Tzang Yawnghwe, “The Politics of Authoritarianism: The State and Political Soldiers in Burma, Indonesia, and Thailand,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1997. On Thailand also see ChaiAnan S., “Old soldiers never die, they are just bypassed: The military, bureaucracy, and globalisation,” in K. Hewison (ed.) Political Change in Thailand: Democracy and Participation, London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 42–57. 64 Another similar example is Madagascar. After the presidential election on December 16, 2001, Didier Ratsiraka, the incumbent president, rejected claims that his challenger Marc Ravalomanana had defeated him by a first round victory. Ravalomanana, however, could count on vigorous support from the population. Ratsiraka was forced to withdraw to the coastal provinces. When his last bastions fell in June 2002, he finally chose to go into exile.

6

Democratic revolutions and the “clash of Samuel Huntingtons” 1 S.P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late 20th Century, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991 and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Touchstone, 1996. 2 J. Heilbrunn, “The Clash of Samuel Huntingtons,” The American Prospect, 39, July–August 1998, pp. 22–8. I am grateful to Hermann Kreutzmann for this reference. 3 “The Muslim world and America: sermons that resound with the clash of civilizations,” The Economist, February 15, 2003, p. 42. 4 Huntington, The Third Wave, ch. 3, particularly pp. 113 and 142–9. He speaks of peaceful mass uprisings that led to regime “replacements.” 5 M. Goldman, Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China: Political Reform in the Deng Xiaoping Era, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 5, 44, and 356. 6 I. Anwar, The Asian Renaissance, Singapore: Times Books International, 1996. On Indonesia’s Islamic-democratic discourse see A. Uhlin, Indonesia and the “Third Wave of Democratization,” New York: St. Martin’s 1997. On the critique of the Suharto regime’s “Asian values” disourse see Uhlin’s “‘Asian Values Democracy’: Neither Asian nor Democratic – Discourses and Practices in Late New Order Indonesia,” Center For Pacifc Asia Studies at Stockholm University, Occasional Paper 39, April 1999.

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7 S. Razavi-Faqih and I. Urbina, “Completing what we started,” New York Times, December 11, 2002. Online. Available HTTP: www.iranian.com/Opinion/2002/December/Democracy (accessed March 23, 2003). and D. Lindsey, “Rebirth of a nation,” Salon, July 23, 1999. Online. Available HTTP: www.salon.com/news/features/1999/07/23/iran/ (accessed March 23, 2003). 8 Even after Huntington began warning of civilization clash, he continued to don his democratic hat occasionally, offering advice to democrats in different cultures and developing strategies for Western efforts to encourage democratization: “Democracy for the Long Haul,” Journal of Democracy, 7, April 1995, pp. 3–13. 9 Huntington, The Third Wave, op. cit., pp. 49–50. 10 Ibid., p. 58. Emphasis added. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., p. 62. 13 M.R. Thompson, “The survival of ‘Asian values’ as ‘Zivilisationskritik,’ ” Theory and Society, 29, 2000, pp. 651–86. 14 Quoted in F. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961, p. 87. In fairness, it must be added that Mann later changed his position to become an advocate of democracy. 15 A. Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996. J. Lévesque, The Enigma of 1989: the USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 explores how democratization in Eastern Europe was an unintended consequence of Gorbachev’s liberalization policies. 16 Huntington, The Third Wave, op. cit., pp. 59–72 and K. Deutsch, “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” American Political Science Review, 55, Sept. 1961, pp. 493–514. For an overview of ethnic conflict and modernization see D. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, ch. 3. 17 Huntington, The Third Wave, op. cit., p. 65. 18 Ibid, pp. 66 and 72. 19 Ibid, pp. 72–3. 20 Ibid, pp. 5 and, 74–85. 21 Ibid, p. 77. 22 Ibid, p. 310. 23 Ibid. 24 Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, op. cit, p. 25. 25 Ibid., p. 185. 26 Ibid., p. 193. 27 M. R. Thompson, “Whatever happened to ‘Asian values’?” Journal of Democracy, 12, 2001, pp. 163–4. 28 Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, op cit., p. 94. 29 Ibid. 30 This argument lay behind the declaration of a U.N. regional conference in April 1992 in which the Asia-Pacific countries condemned the West’s use of human rights as a condition for aid. M. Richardson, “Value Clash Looms for U.S. and Asia,” International Herald Tribune, May 3, 1993, p. 1. 31 Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, op. cit., pp. 192–8. 32 E. Palmujoki, Regionalism and Globalism in Southeast Asia, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, pp. 45–50. Burma has been officially renamed Myanmar, a country name which the opposition rejects. 33 B. Moore, Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, Boston: Beacon Press, 1966. 34 Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, op. cit., p. 105. 35 Ibid, p. 114. 36 Ibid, chp. 5 37 Ibid, p. 261.

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38 H.E. Chehabi, Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. 39 Hashem Aghajari, a college professor, was sentenced to death for such views, which prompted the student protests of 2002: S. Razavi-Faqih and I. Urbina, op. cit. and Dossier, “Iran’s Student Upheavals: What Happens Next?” The Estimate: Political and Secruity Intelligence Analysis of the Islamic World and Its Neighbors, XV, January 10, 2003. Online. Available HTTP: www.theestimate.com/public/011003.html (accessed March 23, 2003). 40 Thompson, “Whatever Happened to ‘Asian Values’?” op. cit., pp. 160–1. 41 Kim D.J., “Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia’s Anti-Democratic Values,” Foreign Affairs, 73, March–April 1994, pp. 109–26. 42 Anwar, op. cit. and Uhlin, Indonesia and the “Third Wave of Democratization,” op. cit. 43 L.J. Cohen, Serpent in the Bosom, The Rise and Fall of Slobadan Milosevi¼, Boulder: Westview, 2001. 44 Ibid, ch. 10. 45 Uhlin, “ ‘Asian Values Democracy – Neither Asian nor Democratic,’ ” op. cit. 46 Uhlin, Indonesia and the “Third Wave,” op. cit. 47 Uhlin, “ ‘Asian Values Democracy – Neither Asian nor Democratic,’ ” op. cit.

Conclusion 1 C. Gati, The Bloc that Failed: Soviet–East European Relations in Transition, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990, p. 70; S. Saxonberg, The Fall: A Comparative Study of the End of Communism in Czechoslovak, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 2001, pp. 131–4; and J. Lévesque, The Enigma of 1989: The USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. 2 L. Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, chp. 6. 3 There were radicals in most of Eastern Europe in the strategic sense, however. For example, in Poland, wildcat strikes in 1988 signaled the emergence of a militant trade union movement not under the control of Solidarity. In negotiations, both the government reformists and the solidarity moderates were concerned to reach a settlement before the initiative passed to these strategic radicals. 4 The classic though ironically titled source, given the World Bank’s later criticism of the East Asian “model” after the regional economic crisis, is World Bank, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. 5 M. Selden, “The Social Origins and Limits of the Democratic Movement,” in R.V. Des Forges, Luo N. and Wu Y. (eds) Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of 1989: Chinese and American Reflections, Albany: State University Press of New York, 1993, p. 111. 6 Ibid., p. 112–19. 7 In Czechoslovakia, a December 1989 survey showed that nearly 90 per cent of the population was greatly dissatisfied with the political system and over 90 per cent with the economy: Saxonberg, op. cit., p. 76. K.-D. Opp, P. Voss, and C. Gern, Die volkseigene Revolution, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993, ch. 3 show similar results for East Germany. 8 On pre-martial law democracy in the Philippines see M.R. Thompson, The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, ch. 1. On Indonesia, see D. Bourchier and J. Legge (eds) Democracy in Indonesia in the 1950s and 1990s, Clayton, VA: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1994. 9 J.C. Davies, “Toward a Theory of Revolution,” American Sociological Review, 1, 1962, pp. 5–19. 10 L. Stone, “Theories of Revolution,” World Politics, 2, 1966, pp. 159–76. Davies, op. cit., had already made reference to Tocqueville and had applied a political expectations approach to the Russian revolution without developing the point systematically.

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11 Saxonberg, op. cit, p. 231. 12 Interview with Hager in Stern, April 9, 1987, cited in C. Ross, The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR, London: Arnold, 2002, p. 131 13 Saxonberg, op. cit, pp. 194–5. 14 E. Pond, Beyond the Wall: Germany’s Road to Unification, Washington, DC: Brookings, 1993, pp. 140–2. 15 T.L. Brown, The Challenge to Democracy in Nepal: A Political History, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 114–15. 16 Thompson, op. cit., ch. 7. 17 Sung-joo Han and Yung Chul Park, “South Korea: Democratization at Last,” in J.W. Morley (ed.) Driven by Growth: Political Change in the Asia-Pacific Region, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993, pp. 179–82. 18 E. Aspinall, “Opposition and Elite Conflict in the Fall of Soeharto,” in G. Forrester and R.J. May (eds) The Fall of Soeharto, Bathurst, Crawford House Publishing, 1998, pp. 130–53. 19 D.I. Steinberg, The Future of Burma: Crisis and Choice in Myanmar, Lanham: University Press of America, 1990, pp. 21–2 and chs I and II. 20 Cited in A.O. Hirschman, “Exit, Voice, and the Fate of the GDR: An Essay in Conceptual History,” World Politics, 45, 1993, p. 195. Whether Honecker actually made this statement is less important than the fact that many people believed that he did, because it corresponded so well with his intransigence in the face of mounting protest. 21 A. Etzioni, The Moral Dimension, New York: The Free Press, 1988. 22 A. Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 23 Saxonberg, op. cit., and M.R. Thompson, “No Exit: ‘Nation-Stateness’ and Democratization in the German Democratic Republic,” Political Studies, 44, June 1996, pp. 267–86. 24 J. Goodwin, No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 25 On the former, see G. O’Donnell and P.C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, p. 33; on the latter, C. Friedrich and Z. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965, ch. 26. 26 For example, on the Philippines see R. David (ed.) Coup d’État in the Philippines: Four Essays, Quezon City: Third World Studies Center, 1986 and on Serbia D. Bujoševi¼ and I. Radovanovi¼, October 5th: A 24–Hour Coup, Belgrade: Medija Centar, 2001. 27 Saxonberg, op. cit., chs. 5, 6, and 10. 28 J. C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Expressing a similar idea using the terminology of rational choice, Timur Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995 speaks of “preference falsification” as a coping strategy in which people pretend to support a regime which they in fact loathe. 29 J. Kane, The Politics of Moral Capital, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 10, emphasis in original. 30 Ibid., p. 32. 31 L.M. Simons, Worth Dying For, New York: William Morrow, 1987, p. 224. 32 Quoted in L.J. Cohen, Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of Slobadan Milo]evi¼, Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001, p. 412 33 Outside of Asia, Violeta de Chamorro won presidential elections against the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in 1990, initiating a transition to democracy. 34 Richard Attenborough’s 1982 film about Gandhi aroused the interest of Filipino opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. The film was also shown in the GDR, where it proved influential in the peace movement. In the Philippines, a church group held seminars about the ideas and practice of non-violence by Gandhi and King. Similarly, in East Germany, several Church and peace groups studied their thoughts as well (aided by a popular biography of Gandhi in German)

Notes

35

36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48

49 50 51

52 53

54 55

56

155

as well as those of a West German political scientist, Theodor Ebert. On the Philippines see D.J. Elwood, Philippine Revolution 1986: Model of Nonviolent Change, Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1986; P. Rosenthal, “Nonviolence in the Philippines: The Precarious Road,” Commonwealth, June 20, 1986; and Thompson, The Anti-Marcos Struggle, op. cit., chps. 7–8. On the GDR, see E. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR 1949–1989, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1998, pp. 374–83; S. Grabner, Mahatma Gandhi: Politiker, Pilger, und Prophet, Berlin: Neues Leben 2002, second edition, pp. 7–10; G. Besier and S. Wolf, “Pfarrer, Christen und Katholiken”: Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit der ehemaligen DDR und die Kirchen, Neukirchen: Neukirchener 1992, p. 365–75; and M. Damm, “Die Gewaltlosigkeit des Umbruches in der DDR im Herbst 1989,” unpublished master’s thesis, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2002, pp. 97–101. N.F. Anderson, “Benazir Bhutto and Dynastic Politics: Her Father’s Daughter, Her People’s Sister” in Michael A. Genovese (ed.) Women as National Leaders, Newbury Park: Sage, 1993, pp. 49–50. See the references in footnote 34. Opp, Voss, and Gern, op. cit., chp. XII. For a discussion of political communication and popular uprisings see J.J. López, Democracy Delayed: The Case of Cuba, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, particularly ch. 3. See Walter Süß, Staatssicherheit am Ende: Warum es den Mächtigen nicht geland, 1989 eine Revolution zu verhindern, Berlin: Ch. Links, 1999. Opp et al., op. cit., ch. IX. East German exceptionalism in this regard was discussed in Chapter 3. Selden, op. cit., pp. 126–7. Selden, op. cit., p. 121. Karklins and Petersen, op. cit., p. 610. D. Kelley, “Chinese Marxism since Tiananmen: Between Evaporated and Dismembered,” in D.S.G. Goodman and G. Segal (eds) China in the Nineties, Oxford: Clarendon, 1991, pp. 19– 34. For an overview of this argument, see R. Snyder, “Explaining Transitions from Neopatrimonial Dictatorships,” Comparative Politics, 24, 1992, pp. 379–99. Aspinall in Forrester and May, op. cit., pp. 130–53. Chung-in Moon and Yong-Cheol Kim, “A Circle of Paradox: Development, Politics and Democracy in South Korea,” in A. Leftwich (ed.) Democracy and Development: Theory and Practice, Cambridge: Polity, 1996, pp. 147–52. M.R.J. Vatikiotis, “Romancing the dual function: Indonesia’s Armed Forces and the Fall of Soeharto,” in Forrester and May (eds) op. cit., pp. 154–66. Brown, op. cit., chs. 5 and 6 and G. Chitrakar, People Power, Kathmandu: Sita Chitraka Bhatbhateni, 1992, pp. 90–110. Chai-Anan S., “Old Soldiers never Die, They are just Bypassed: The Military, Bureaucracy, and Globalisation,” in K. Hewison (ed.) Political Change in Thailand, London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 52–3. B. Litner, Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for Democracy, London: White Lotus, 1990. S. Mydans, “A Coup Plot Gone Awry, or a Burmese Comic Opera?” The New York Times, July 8, 2002. Online. Available HTTP: www.rebound88.net/sp/junta/scoup-court.html (accessed March 25, 2003) and R. Horn, “The Puppet Master of Burma,” Time Asia, December 16, 2002. Online. Available HTTP: www.time.com/time/asia/magazine (accessed March 25, 2003). Yossi Shain and Juan J. Linz, Between States: Interim Governments and Democratic Transitions, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. In East Germany, round-table participants drew up a new constitution that was never implemented in the rush to unification. In Czechoslovakia, the new constitution had soon to be changed to apply to the successor states. S. Erlanger, “Was Leadership of Serbia Squeezed too much?” International Herald Tribune, March 18, 2003, p. 3.

156

Notes

57 See the excellent study of the military rebels by A.W. McCoy, Closer than Brothers: Manhood at the Philippine Military Academy, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000. 58 T.L. Brown, The Challenge to Democracy in Nepal: A Political History, London: Routledge, 1996, chs. 5–7 and B. Litner, “Nepal struggles to cope with diehard Maoist violence,” Asia Pacific Media Service. Online. Available HTTP: asiapacificms.com (accessed February 14, 2003, originally published in Jane’s Intelligence Review, June 1999). 59 R. Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Nework of Terror, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, ch. 4. 60 J. McBeth, “Weak Link in the Anti-Terror Chain,” Far Eastern Economic Review, October 24, 2002, pp. 14–19. 61 J.J. Linz and A. Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 98–107. 62 The re-election of Illiescu as president in 2000 did not dispel this optimism, as his new government seems to have abandoned its old less-than-democratic ways. 63 Linz and Stepan, op. cit, p. 121. 64 A. McCoy, “After the Yellow Revolution: Filipino Elite Factions and the Struggle for Power,” in P. Krinks (ed.) The Philippines under Aquino, Canberra: Australian Studies Development Studies Network, 1987, p. 32 and M.R. Thompson, “The Decline of Philippine Communism,” South East Asia Research, Vol. 6, July 1998, pp. 105–29. 65 A. Barahona de Brito, C. Gonzaléz-Enriquez and P. Aguilar (eds) The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 66 J. Clad, “Tainted watchdog,” Far Eastern Economic Review, September 17, 1987, p. 22. 67 Aristide R. Zolberg, “Moments of Madness,” Politics and Society, 2, Winter 1972, 183–207. 68 “Sombre,” The Economist, November 27, 1999. 69 See the forthcoming book edited by E.-L. Hedman and J. Sidel, Populism and Reformism in Southeast Asia: The Promise of New Politics. The next paragraphs are a summary of the ideas presented in M.R. Thompson, “Demokratisierung, Good Governance und Korruption in Südostasien,” in Oskar Kurer (ed.) Korruption und Governance aus interdisziplinärer Sicht, Neustadt, Aisch: Degener, 2003, pp. 209–32. 70 E.-L. Hedman, “The Spectre of Populism in Philippine Politics and Society: Artista, Masa, Eraption!” South East Asia Research, 9, 2001, pp. 5–44. 71 D. McCargo, “Populism and Reform in Contemporary Thailand,” Southeast Asia Research, 9, 2001, pp. 89–107.

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Index

Ackerman, Anton 62 Afghanistan 37 Al Qaeda 29, 30, 121 Albania 81 Alliance for Change (SZP) (Serbia) 92 Almond, M. 80 Almonte, Jose 133(42n) Anderson, B. 30 Anderson, N.F. 49 anti-fascism 54–6, 62–3, 140(26n) Anwar Ibrahim 106, 113; see also Wan Azizah Wan Ismail Aquino, Agapito (“Butz”) 26, 28, 42 Aquino, Benigno S. Jr. (“Ninoy”) 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 39, 40, 84, 112, 113 Aquino, Corazon C. (“Cory”)19, 21, 35, 38, 42, 85, 95, 116, 121–2; attraction of “Filipina Mary” (Corazon) 24; campaign costs 23; emphasis on honesty, sincerity, religious faith 44; male antagonism toward 47; support for 24, 28–9, 44–5 Aquino government 120; assasination of Benigno 21, 22, 24; coups against 28; and decline in communist/Muslim secessionist movements 29–30; electoral policies 28; electoral/ revolutionary legitimacy of 27–8; instability of 33; people support for 26–7; popularity of 28–9; and recovery of Marcos millions 49–50, 123; and willingness to negotiate with Marcos 21 Arendt, H. 5, 73, 146 Argentina 22, 121 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand 29 Asian values 99, 103, 105, 107, 151(6n) Association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN) 104 Aung San 39, 40, 41, 45

Aung San Oo 42 Aung San Suu Kyi 35, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46, 96 authoritarian regimes 66, 84, 101, 108, 114 Awami League (Bangladesh) 48 Bakhtiar, Shapur 106 Bali 121 Banadaranaike, Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias 37 Bangladesh 15, 35, 36, 37, 38, 105, 110, 118, 123 Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) 48 Banisadr, Abolhasan 106 Batista, Leon 18 BAYAN (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, New Nationalist Alliance) (Philippines) 27 Beck, Ulrich 63 Becker, J. 56 Benedicto, Roberto 21 Berlin Wall 4, 16, 51, 52, 62 Bhutto, Benazir 35, 37, 42, 43, 47–8, 49, 117, 122, 124 Bhutto, Mir Murtaza 48, 122 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali 40 Biermann, Wolf 56 Blondel, J. 36 Bohley, Bärbel 4, 52, 56 Brandt, Willy 62 Brass, G. 51 Braun, V. 56 Brezhnev, Leonid 69, 75 Brook, T. 71 Burma 35, 85, 96–7, 105, 112, 119 cacique democracy 16, 19, 33, 110 Caetano, Marcello 28 Cambodia 6 Campos, Jose 21

Index Castro, Fidel 18–19, 80 Castro, Fidelito 80 Castro, Raul 80 Catholicism 101, 117, 125 Ceau_escu, Nicolae 3, 9, 20, 23, 80–1, 82, 112, 113, 118 Chan, Anson 38 Charter 77 (Czechoslovakia) 56, 78 Chavez, Hugo 104 China 6, 12, 15, 65, 99, 105, 106, 110, 118; backwardness of 77; decisive leadership in 69–70; democratic movement in 77, 147(75n); and economic reform 69, 76, 111, 147(69n); future of 82; party legitimacy in 75, 76, 81, 146(64n); and political mobilization in 69; posttotalitarianism in 75, 146(57); revisionist protest in 78–9; stability in 78; student movement in 70–2, 78, 79, 82; urban protest in 69 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 68, 74, 75, 79, 81 Chun Doo Hwan 112, 123 Civic Movement (East Germany, GDR) 4, 55, 56, 71–2, 77, 78, 122; and acceptance of unification 58; call for reforms 57; commitment to anti-fascism 54–6; consider uprising as a “Wende” 52; leaders of 53; New Forum group 52, 57, 141(37n); and non-violent protest 57, 58–9; and publicizing of GDR injustices 58, 141(45n); refusal to cooperate with emigrants 58; as revisionist not dissident 54; revolutionary aspects 53–6 clash of civilizations 14–15, 66, 98–9, 102–4, 105, 107–8, 110, 152(8n) class-based movements 8, 118–19 clientelism 23, 30, 31, 38, 133(25n) Cojuangco, Eduardo 21, 31 Cojuangco, Jose “Peping” 50 COMELEC 25 Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) 68, 75, 76 communist regimes 12, 54, 55, 63, 102, 117, 121; and decline in elite legitimacy 67–8; and defense against popular protest 66–7 Confucianism 99, 101–2, 108 Cuba 80, 81, 109 Cuenco, Rudolfo 21

175

Czechoslovakia 1, 101; active opposition in 56, 71; Civic Forum group 117–18; fear in 65; “frozen” post-totalitarianism in 75, 78, 82; ideological decay in 76; leadership in 70; loss of control in 67–8; political dissatisfaction in 111, 153(7n); possible “Chinese solution” in 66; reform expectations in 61; regime constraints in 79, 147(86n); secret police in 9; uprising in 3; urban population in 69; “velvet revolution” 13, 14; worker support in 117 Danyel, J. 54 democracy, cultural appropriateness of 98–9; and cultural specificity 98–9, 108; diffusion of 104; factors contributing to 99; importance of negotiation 10; and large demonstrations 11; and mass mobilization 10–12; and modernization thesis 105; particularist 102–4; and role of civil society 10; spread of 5, 98; troubled transitions to 119–25; universalist 99–102 Democratic Movement of Serbia (DEPOS) 91 Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) 93 democratic revolutions, acceptance of notion of 110; Asia/Eastern Europe 2; definition of 1; and disloyal opposition 120; dissidents, cross-class coalitions, failed regime repression 117–19; as ideal typical concept 109; importance of 109; and institutional vacuum 120, 125; lost/failed 1, 3, 105–7; media involvement 117; military involvement 114–15; and moral leadership 115–16; non-violent, spontaneous, urban-based 116–17; in practice 115–19; reasons for 110–15; regained 107; and relative deprivation 110–11; and revolutionary potential/situations 111–13; skepticism concerning 3–4; spontaneity of 8–9; and surrendering of power 113–15; too late 14–15; too little 4–10; too much 10–14; troubled transitions 119–25, see also revolutions democratization 11; corruption/reform dichotomy 123–5; elite centered 10, 55, 56, 59, 67–8, 87–8, 109, 114, 129(53n); establishing rules of the game 119–22; justice 120; justice/

176

Index

revenge dichotomy 122–3; negotiated 1, 3, 126(3n); prompted by revolutionary potential 19–20; and quest for justice 120; third wave 15, 16, 99–108, 109, 130(82n) Deng Xiaoping 65, 69–70, 75, 76, 78, 82, 147(66n) Derichs, C. 137(50n) dictatorship 5, 7; conjugal 20; overthrowing 9–10, 14–15, 81, 85, 107, 120, 123; personal 20; unrestrained 90; uprisings against 3; and use of gender arguments 43–4 Ðin}i¼, Zoran 92, 93, 94, 97, 120 Disini, Herminio 21 Dix, R. 5 Draskovic, Vuk 90, 92, 93 Dresden 57, 58–9, 142(51n) Duvalier, François 19, 23, 26 East Germany (GDR) 7, 10, 65; antifascism in 54–6; anti-regime demonstrations in 58–9; attitude toward reunification 51–3; changing aims of demonstrators 52; civic movement revolution in 51–64; consequences of opposition loyalty 57–8; and credibility of ideology in 76; disillusionment after unification in 63; dissident opposition in 78–9; economic deprivations 111; economic peformance 59, 62, 142(53n); emigration from 57–8; exit, voice, loyalty model 53, 56–7, 63; as “frozen” post-totalitarian regime 61, 82; and Gorbachev factor 60, 61–3; and lack of criticism by cultural elite 55, 56; lack of dissidence in 54; leadership in 70; and loss of party legitimacy 67; and nation building 55–6, 62; New Economic Policy in 75; nightly emigration from 59–60; non-violence in 58–9, 65; organized opposition in 71; political aspects 51–2; positive attitude toward democracy in 64; reasons for rebellion in 59–61, 63; and regime change 112; regime constraints in 79; secret polls in 61, 143(70n); society niches 77, 147(78n); spontaneous cooperation in 117; uprisings in 60, 142(57n) elections 122; acceptance of 85–6; attitudes toward 96–7; manipulation of 86; and opposition capabilities 86, 87; and postelectoral behavior 87; and procedural legitimacy 90; and regime change

expectation 86–7; and regime splits 87–8; stunning 85, see also stolen elections Emerson, Ralph Waldo 98 Enrile, Juan Ponce 23, 26, 28, 47, 115, 119, 121–2 Ensenberger, H.M. 80 Estrada, Joseph Ejercito (“Erap”) 31–3, 34, 46, 124 European Union (EU) 9, 100 exit, voice, loyalty theory 53, 141(36n); definition 56–7; in practice 57, 141(41n); see also Hirschmann, Alfred family-based regimes 80–1, 84, see also Marcos regime Federal Election Commission (SIK) (Serbia) 94 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) 91 female leaders 16, 116–17, 121–2, 123; as active feminists 136(15n); choice of 38–9; and continuing “his” cause 43–6; and democratic transitions 35–6; and dynastic succession 41–3; family/ male antagonism toward 43–4, 46, 47, 50; foreign press coverage of 45–6; and high expectations/dynastic realities 49–50; involvement of 35; and lack of political experience 44; and male chauvinism/troubled transitions 46–8; and martyrdom/mobilization 39–41; and patriarchy 36–7; and political dynasties 37–8; problems for 39; reasons for choosing 42–3; revenge/ justice dichotomy 48–9, see also leadership behavior Floriendo, Antonio 21 Franco, Francisco 10 Friedheim, D.V. 59, 67, 142 Friedrich, C. and Brzezinski, Z. 73 fundamentalism 105 Gagnon, V.P. 90 Gandhi, Indira 35, 37 Gandhi, Mahatma 7, 116, 154(34n) Gandhi, Rajiv 37 Gandhi, Sonia 37–8 GDR (German Democratic Republic) see East Germany (GDR) Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe 80 Giddens, A. 72 Goldstone, J.A. 5 Gomu$ka, W$adys$aw 63

Index Gorbachev, Mikhail 53, 60, 61, 63, 65, 67, 68, 69, 74, 75–6, 79, 100, 109, 111–12, 142(64n) Habermas, Jürgen. 5 Habibie, Bacharuddin Jusuf 11, 115 Hager, Kurt 112 Havel, Václav 6, 12, 54, 56, 74, 87, 124 Havermann, Robert 55, 140(23n) Haz, Hazmah 47 Hedman, E.-L. 95, 124(69n) Hermlin, Stefan 56 Heym, Stefan 51, 55, 58 Hirschman, Alfred 53, 56–7 Honecker, Erich 51, 65, 70 Hungary 61, 65, 82 Huntington, S.P. 14–15, 19, 84, 98–108 Ibrahim, Anwar 24, 40–1 Iliescu, Ion 9, 11, 81, 114, 118, 119 India 38 Indonesia 15, 35, 36, 37, 99, 107, 110, 112, 124 Iran 13, 15, 99, 105, 105–6, 108, 109, 110 Islam 105–6, 107, 108, 110 Jakes, Milos 66, 70 Jana Andolan uprising (Nepal) 3 Jemaah Islamiah 121 Kádar, János 74 Kane, J. 115–16 Karklins, R. and Petersen, R. 72 Kawaguchi, Yoriko 38 KBL (Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, New Society Movement) party (Philippines) 22 Kelsen, H. 7 Khaleda Zia 35, 42, 43, 45, 48–9, 123 Khatami, Mohammad 85 Khmer Rouge 6 Khomeini, Ayatollah 106 Khoo Boo Teik 41 Khrushchev, Nikita 75, 76, 78 Kiemas, Taufiq 49, 138(67n); see also Sukarnoputri, Megawati Kim Dae Jung 106 Kim Il Sung 80, 148(90n) Kimmel, M. 86 King, Martin Luther 7, 116, 154(34n) Kiser, E. and Levi, M. 86 KMP peasant organization (Philippines) 28 KMU (May First Movement) (Philippines) 28

177

Kohl, Helmut 51, 53 Konrad, Gyorgi 54 KOR (Workers’ Defense Committee) (Poland) 117 Ko]tunica, Vojislav 17, 85, 93, 99, 105, 107, 116, 124 Kraprayoon, Sichinda 96 Krenz, Egon 51, 52, 59 Krugman, P. 76 Kumaratunga, Chandrika Bandaranaike 37 Laurel, Salvador H. 28, 31, 42, 44, 47, 121–2 Lazi¼, M. 92 leadership behavior, decisive/paralytic 69–70; harsh/conciliatory 70; macro-/ micro-level comparisons 72, 73; and meeting popular expectations 124; moral 115–16; and post-totalitarianism 78; procrastinating 70; totalitariancum-sultanistic 80–1; unifying qualities 70, see also female leaders Leghari, Faroq 49 Leipzig 57, 58–9, 65–6, 77, 117, 142(46n) Lenin, V.I. 75 Lichbach, M. 9 Linz, J.J. 55; and Stepan, A. 67, 74, 75, 80, 122 living within a lie/living within the truth 13, 17, 77, 87, 115 Lopez family (Philippines) 21, 30, 134(60n) Lopez, J.J. 81 Lu, Annette 38 Lukovi¼, Milorad 94, 120, 150(53n) Macapagal-Arroyo, Gloria 32, 33, 38 McCoy, A. 29, 32 Madagascar 151(64n) Magsayay, Ramon 24 Mahathir bin Mohamad 35, 40, 41, 45, 105, 106 Makati crowd 32 Malawi 69 Malaysia 3, 15, 40, 99, 105, 106, 106–7, 113 Mann, Thomas 100 Mao Zhedong 6, 69, 73, 74, 75, 78 Marcos, Ferdinand E. 5, 9, 18, 18–19, 19, 39–40, 43–4, 95, 112, 119, 120 Marcos, Imelda Romualdez 20, 21, 43, 123, 137(50n) Marcos regime 113; and Aquino assassination 24, 25–6; broad-based

178

Index

opposition to 22; clientelist networks 23, 30, 31, 133(25n); communist-based insurgency against 22–3; as conjugal 20–1, 132(7n); enemies of 21; factional power-base 20; financial reach of 21; manipulation of elections by 23–4; military involvement in 22; moral/ reformist opposition to 23–5; “people power” removal of 26–7; personalistic character of 21; refusal to negotiate 21; sultanistic aspects 22, 23, 33 Marcus, M. 67 Marx, Karl 4–5 Masur, Kurt 59 Miah Wajed 138(67n) Michnik, Adam 54 Mielke, Erich 77 Mijares, Primitivo 132(7n) Milo]evi¼ regime 106, 109; autocratic 93, 105; and cycle of opposition protests 90–2; fall of 95; genesis/survival of 89–90; intimidation by 89; moral nature of protests against 92; and “October revolution” 92–5; opposition to 92–5, 112–13; personalistic rule 91; pseudo-democratic elements of 90; and state monopoly of media 89, 91, 94; and student activists 91; sultanistic aspects 89–90; and war in Croatia 91 Milo]evi¼, Slobodan 8, 15, 17, 20, 24, 81, 84, 89, 99, 105, 116, 123 Misauri, Nur 29 Mitra, Ramon 31 modernization theory 68–9, 100–1, 104, 105 Moore, B. 104 Morales, Horacio 25, 132(22n) Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) (Philippines) 29 Mugabe, Robert 85 Müller, H. 56 Nathan, A. 72 National Democratic Front (NDF) (Philippines) 22, 132(22n) National League for Democracy (NLD) (Burma) 96 National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) (Philippines) 25, 95 Ne Win 45, 96, 119, 151(60n) Nehru, Jawaharlal Pandit 37 Nepal 3, 110, 112, 118, 119, 120, 121 New People’s Army (NPA) (Philippines) 29

Nicaragua 13, 109 non-democratic regimes 19–20, 104–5, 110, 113–14 North Korea 80, 81 “November revolution” (1989, GDR) 51, 66 “October revolution” (2000, Serbia) 9, 15, 25, 92–5, 99, 107 O’Donnell, G. and Schmitter, P. 11–12 Olalia, Rolando 28 Olson, M. 8 Opp, K.-D. et al. 58, 60–1 opposition strategies, creative 91, 149(32n); cyclical nature of 90–2; and elections 95–7; electoral alliances 93–4; and elite defections 94–5; errors in 70–1; focus on grievances 91–2; isolated 91; liberal/democratic orientation 72; macro-/micro-level comparisons 72, 73; and posttotalitarianism 78–9; self-destructive behavior 92; as skillful 70; weakness of 71–2 Organization of American States (OAS) 104 orientalism 66, 144(11n) Otpor (Serbia) 7, 128(34n) Pakistan 35, 37, 40, 105, 110, 118 Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) 42, 47 Palma, G. di 67 Palmer, A.R. 5 Pani¼, Milan 91 Park Chung Hee 38, 112 particularism 100, 102–4 party legitimacy, doubts concerning 67–8; home-grown/indigenous hypothesis 68; macro-/micro-level comparisons 72, 73; mass/elite difference 67; military loyalty 66–7; and posttotalitarianism 75–7; security 67 Pavkovi¼, Nebojsa 94 PDI (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia) 41 Pei, M. 68, 68–9 “people power” (Philippines) 5, 8, 9, 13, 39, 101, 109, 110, 123, 124–5, 133(42n); background 18–19, 131(2n); and defeat of Marcos 22–7; democracy of 30–3; and democratic consolidation 27–30; necessity of 19–22; peacefulness of 27, 134(47n) “people power II” (Philippines) 32, 33, 34, 38

Index People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 68 Philippines 7, 84, 85, 95, 97, 101, 110, 112, 114, 118, 119, 120–1, 123, 124; “people power” in 18–34, see also Aquino regime; Marcos regime Pinochet, Augusto 122 Poland 10, 61, 65, 82, 101, 117 popular uprisings 5, 9, 11–12, 14–15, 52, 81, 82, 109, 123 post-totalitarian regimes 12, 13, 16, 61, 118, 143(67n); concept/definition of 74; “early” 75; “frozen” 12, 61, 66, 75, 82, 114, 146(58n); and leadership behavior 78; macro-/micro-level explanations 79–80; mature 75; and opposition strategies 78–9; and party legitimacy 75–7, 81–2; and possibility of dissent 73–4; and societal modernization 77–8, 82; subtypes of 75; surface ideology of 74, see also totalitarian regimes Prague Spring (1968) 54, 56, 75, 117 Przeworski, A. 65 Rais, Amien 44 Ramos, Fidel V. 26, 29, 31, 119, 133(42n) rational-choice theories 8–9, 87 Reagan, Ronald 26, 100 Reform the Armed Forces Movement of the Philippines (RAM) 23, 26, 28, 47, 95 regime change 6, 11, 15, 99, 111–12; and elections 86–7; and leadership behavior 69–70, 78; and linking the explanations 79–80; macro-level/ micro-level explanations 72; and opposition strategies 70–2, 78–9; and party legitimacy 66–8, 75–7, 81–2; and possibility of dissent 73–4; and pragmatic acceptance 82; and refusal to accept election results 86; and role of society 109; and shoot/collapse relationship 80–1, 82; and societal modernization 68–9, 77–8 Reinhold, Otto 62 revolutions, concept of 4–5; conspiracy theories 9; democratic 6–7, 127(22n); and focused popular outrage 113; and institutional vacuum 34; J-curve hypothesis 111; lost 17; organized/ spontaneous 10, 15–16; peasant 6; political aspects 4–5, 111–12; potential for 111–13; radicalization thesis 14, 109–10; and rebel’s dilemma 9; shoot/ collapse relationship 17; and social

179

transformation 5–6, 52; trigger events 17, 86, 97; urban 7–8; usual course of 52; violence as part of 6, 13, see also democratic revolutions Richter, L. 36 Rigby, T.H. and Fehér, F. 67 Rizal, Jose 24 Roces, M. 24 Roh Tae Woo 123 Romania 3, 12, 66, 80, 81, 82, 110, 112, 114, 118, 120, 122 Routledge, P. 7 Rüddenklau, W. 57–8 “Sa Kuko ng Agila” (“In the Claws of the Eagle”) (film) 31 Sandinistas 13, 23, 85 Saxonberg, S. 61, 111 Sayyaf, Abu (Philippines) 29 Schäuble, W. 52–3 Schmitt, Carl 98 Schorlemmer, Friedrich 52 SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) see Socialistische Einheitspartei Segal, G. and Philipps, J. 66–8 Selden, M. 69 Serbia 9, 12, 84–5, 90, 97, 99, 105, 106, 110, 112–13, 114, 120, see also Milo]evi¼ regime Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) 90, 92 Sharp, G. 7 Sheikh Hasina Wajed 35, 42, 43, 45, 48, 49, 123, 138(67n) Sheikh Mujibur Rahman 40, 42, 45, 48; see also Sheikh Hasina Wajed Sidel, J. 23(25n), 30(59n, 64n), 129(69n) Silverio, Roberto 21 Silverstein, J. 40 Sin, Cardinal 26 Singapore 69, 105 Singson, Luis “Chavit” 32 SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council) (Burma)119 Snyder, R. 14; and Mahoney, J. 72 social revolutions 1, 4, 5–6, 126(2n) Socialistische Einheitspartei (SED) regime 53, 55, 57, 58, 60–1, 62, 63, 67 societal modernization, concept 68; macro-/ micro-level comparisons 72, 73; and post-totalitarianism 77–8; and regime influence 68; relevance of 69; social/ political mobilization 69, 86–7, 88, 109; urban aspects 69 Somoza, President 20

180

Index

South Korea 110–11, 112, 118, 122, 123 Soviet Union 69, 73, 75–6, 100, 147(68n) Sri Lanka 37 Stalin, Joseph 6, 54, 69, 73, 75 stolen elections 84, 85; basis for 85–6; comparative perspective 95–7; concept of 86, 148(9n); definition of 85; and increase in organizational capacities 88; link with democratic revolution 85–8; and military involvement 95; and organizational capabilities 95; and regime loyalty 86, 87–8; and revolutionary outcomes 96–7; and societal mobilization 86, 87; as triggers 86, see also elections student protests 4, 70–2, 78, 79, 82, 91, 107, 108, 111, 118, 153(39n) Suharto, President 3, 4, 45, 106, 107, 112, 119, 151(6n) Sukarno, Guntur 40, 41 Sukarno, President 39, 40, 41, 42, 43 see also Sukarnoputri, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Megawati 35, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 138(67n) sultanistic regimes 118–19, 130(68n); and alienation of upper/lower classes 22; family/friends orientation 84; and personalization of ideology 12–13, 16, 18, 20, 80; and totalitarianism 80–1; vulnerability of 89–90, 114

totalitarian regimes 12, 54; and abolition of plural elements in society 74; central premise of 73; and charismatic leadership 74; opposition to 73; and sultanism 80–1, see also posttotalitarian regimes transitions to democracy see democratization transplacement regimes 130(81n) Tsou, Tan 70–1 Tullock, G. 8

Taiwan 66 Tanaka, Kakuei 38 Tanaka, Makiko 38 Thailand 96, 97, 110, 119, 121, 124, 125 Thaksin Shinawatra 125 Tiananmen Square (1989) 17, 65, 66, 69, 70, 71, 75, 82, 105, 108, 118 Tocqueville, Alexis de 98 Torpey, J. 56, 58

Yao Yilin 65

Ulbricht, Walter 62 United Malays National Organization (UMNO) 106 United States 100 urban-based uprisings 7–8, 69, 116–17, 124, 125 “velvet revolution” (Czechoslovakia) 13, 14 Ver, Fabian 21, 23, 26, 27 Vietnam 12 Wahid, Abdurrahman 124 Wan Azizah Wan Ismail 35, 42, 43, 45 see also Anwar Ibrahim Weber, M. 9, 67, 101 “Wende” (turning point) 51–3 Wolf, Christa 51, 56, 58

Zardari, Asif 49 Zhao Ziyang 71 Ziaul Huq, General 37, 43–4 Ziaur Rahman, General 40, 45, 48, 123 see also Khaleda Zia Zimbabwe 85 Zolberg, A.R. 9, 123