Institutional Choice After Communism: A Critique of Theory-Building in an Empirical Wasteland (1998) Michael Bernhard

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Institutional Choice After Communism:

A Critique of Theory-Building

in an Empirical Wasteland

Michael Bernhard

Associate Professor of Political Science

The Pennsylvania State University

University Park PA 16801

e-mail: [email protected]

Program on Central & Eastern Europe

Working Paper Series #47

Abstract

During the past decade there has been a tendency in political science to belittle area-based compara-

tive politics and argue that comparativists need to become more "scientific" like their colleagues in

other subdisciplines. Robert Bates, the former president of the APSA's organized comparative politics

section, even has called area specialists traitors to science who have forsaken the search for general-

izable knowledge. This tendency in the discipline has been contemporaneous with the collapse of Eu-

ropean communist regimes, and the discipline's treatment of these events provides one of the first op-

portunities to assess the emergent orthodoxy. Mainstream journals have published a number of articles

by specialists in democratization who do not have extensive training in the region. Such "trespassers"

have applied existing theories of democratization to Eastern Europe. This paper critically evaluates thepart of this literature devoted to questions of institutional choice in new democracies. The major find-

ing is that much of this literature is marred by highly suspect interpretations and outright errors of

fact. In many cases, these inaccuracies are so great as to render much of the theoretical insight drawn

by these articles suspect. The conclusion of the paper is that by radically separating empirical from

nomothetic knowledge, and determination of fact from theorizing, the errant trespassers create well

specified theories that are based on slim or bad evidence. In short, they practice bad science.

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]





1

Institutional Choice after Communism:

A Critique of Theory-building in an Empirical Wasteland1

Michael Bernhard

Associate Professor of Political Science

The Pennsylvania State University

Introduction

During the last decade there has been a trend within political science to discount the value

of area-based comparative politics and argue that comparativists need to become more "scientific"

like their colleagues in American politics and some branches of international relations. This

tendency is evident in publications of the American Political Science Association such as PS:

Politics and Political Science and CP-APSA (the newsletter of the organized comparative politics

section of the association). A related development is the abolition of many of the area-based joint

committees of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council,

at the behest of the SSRC, which is now more interested in supporting cross-national quantitative

and fonnal research. In certain departments where behavioral and formal approaches predominate,

area specialists are denigrated as mere "journalists" who just "report the facts."

In this regard political science is beginning to mirror developments in other fields such as

economics and sociology, which have seen a sharp decline in the number of "area specialists"

employed at top proqrams." The most visible aspect of this new trend in political science has been

the Bates controversy. 3 Robert Bates, former president of the APSA's organized comparative

politics section, claims that area specialists have turned their backs on the scientific pursuit of

generalizable knowledge." While Bates denies that he wishes to relegate area specialists to the

secondary role of data collectors for theoreticians, like some of his colleagues, two paragraphs later

he talks about how game theory (his favored approach) "requires precisely the kinds of data

gathered by ethnographers, historians, and students of culture." And his proposals for a fusion of

game theory and area studies (analytic narratives, etc.) do not really specify the role of area



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specialists (other than conversion to game theory). Bates' provocative argument has in turn raised

the ire of many area-based comparativists and has elicited a number of strong responses,"

This tendency in comparative politics has come to prominence at the same time as European

communist regimes have collapsed and been replaced by fledgling democracies or neo-authoritarian

regimes (1989 to the present). Political science journals have published a legion of works by

specialists in problem areas (often trained in the politics of other regions) applying existing theories

of democratization to East European cases." These publications provide an opportunity to assess

the approach advocated by Bates. This paper presents a critical review of a portion of this body of

work, the literature concerned with institutional choice in new democracies. While this represents

a selection bias, the sample represents a broad enough survey of the literature on post-communism

published by non-East Europeanists in mainstream political science journals, that any tendency that

emerges in it should be seen as significant. Further, Bates (and many others) have argued that

democratic change in Eastem Europe has made research from the advanced industrial democracies

relevant to the region.8 The literature on institutional choice is exceptionally well-suited to test this

claim because its foundations can be traced back to work on the emergence of democratic

institutions inWestern Europe.9 This literature also employs a strategic choice framework which is

related to the game theoretic approach that Bates advocates.

The Perils of Trespassing

This new "theory-driven" approach has emboldened scholars to write on regions that they

have not studied before. The rationale is that scholars who have theoretical knowledge of certain

problem areas (e.g. democratization, political party building, elections, public opinion, institutional

choice) should be able to assimilate knowledge quickly about a region to which their theoretical

expertise pertains or collaborate with scholars from the region in question. This intellectual

phenomenon has been given the name of "trespassing".



3

While some of the work published by trespassers has been theoretically rich and accurate

in its depiction of Eastern European developments, much of it is marred by highly suspect

interpretations and outright errors of fact. Some of these mistakes are so spectacular that they

qualify as "howlers", a term from the culture of English public school boys. A howler is a mistake

that is so wondrously and egregiously wrong that listeners want to howl with lauqhter."

Unfortunately, one comes across howlers far too often in the work of many trespassers. Howlers

go beyond simple mistakes like the misspelling of names or the mislabelling of parties, though these

too abound." For instance, in three articles published over a four year period, Josep Colomer,

known for his application of game theoretic models to the democratic transition in Spain, presents

three different versions of the rules of the semi-contested elections of 1989 in Poland. Each time

they contain different significant errors."

The nature of Colomer's howler, carried out across three journals, is most troubling. He has

interesting ideas about how game theory can help us to understand the process of transition. Still

his attempts to apply them beyond the Spanish case fall flat, because the large number of errors

cast overwhelming doubt on whether he knows these cases well enough to apply his models to

them. Given that game theory pays careful attention to actors, their motivations, their preferences,

and the rules of the game by which they play, a failure to understand the rules of the case in

question constitutes a major barrier to any attempt to apply the model.

A splendid howler also appears in the introduction to a special issue of Comparative Political

Studies, devoted to assessing the relative weight of the "Leninist Legacy" versus the "imperatives

of liberalization" in post-Communist transformations. Witness the following passage on the

Smallholders' Party in Hungary, co-authored by the issue's editors, Beverly Crawford and Arend

Li,iphart:



4

The proportional representation (PR) electoral formula adopted after 1989 permitted

political participation of the Smallholders, a party established in 1946, which raised

the issue of restitution in 1990. Its commitment to reprivatize the land was calculated

to attract the same constituency that voted it into power right after World War 1 1 . 1 3

Not only is the density of inaccuracy in this passage astounding, but the way in which it compounds

as one reads on is truly breathtaking. First, an Independent Smallholders Party reemerged in 1930,

after its predecessor had been incorporated into Count Bethlen's governing party in the 1920s. In

the 1930s it had been part of the opposition to the increasingly radical right drift of the Hungarian

government. During WWII, like many agrarian parties, it moved ideologically leftward and was one

of main parties in the resistance that emerged late in the war. The party participated in the first

coalition government following liberation from Nazi occupation in 1944-5.14 Thus, it categorically was

not established in 1946. Second, it is odd that the authors would pick 1946 as the year of the party's

establishment, because the election to which they refer took place on November 4, 1945! The

Smallholders took 57% of the vote. Third, to say that they were trying to attract the same

constituency by the land privatization issue in 1990 is also off-base. In 1990 the Smallholders took

only 12% of the vote; 15 in 1945 they attracted such a high percentage of the vote because they were

seen as a viable alternative to the communists and their allies.

The two howlers above are meant to be illustrative of the sorts of gross inaccuracies found

in this literature. Although it would be possible to correct errors that have found their way into print,

my purpose here is to do more than simply chronicle the errors and omissions of trespassers. The

empirical inaccuracies encountered in this literature raise questions about the viability of trespassing,

as well as Bates' hasty dismissal of area specialization. Though evidence of this type does not

logically preclude Bates' hopes for strong methodological frameworks using area-based data, clearly

a reconsideration of how to apply existing theory to new cases seems warranted. The subsequent



5

sections of the paper will be devoted to a highly critical consideration of the work of several authors

writing on institutional choice in Eastern Europe in order to discuss some of the larger problems to

which trespassing can lead and to discuss several important pitfalls that must be avoided in drawing

up strategic, actor-based accounts of institutional choice.

Vagaries of Institutional Choice

The demise of communism in Eastern Europe brought with it a wave of institutional reform.

Comparative politics has concerned itself with this process, most often taking up questions of the

forms of legislative and executive power adopted by new democracies. In a number of cases

analysts have used either theories developed in other contexts or general methodologies like

strategic choice and applied them to new democracies in the region. This section will examine how

well a number of authors have applied these theories in the Eastern European context.

The works considered here point to four potential problem areas: (1) confirming theory in the

face of weak evidence; (2) errors of fact and their deleterious effect on interpretation; (3) weak

historical grounding as a fatal starting-point for theory building; and (4) fitting the evidence to the

theory. While the pieces considered herein contain errors that sometimes cross these categories,

each in some sense contains mistakes that are archetypical of one of these individual problems.

The first sub-section will be devoted to the problem of confirmation because the work considered

utilizes the original theory on which much of the work on institutional choice is based - the "Rokkan

hypothesis. "

Confirming Theory in the Face of Weak Evidence

Arend Lijphart has explained institutional choice in three new East Central European

democracies (Poland, Hungary, and Czecho-Slovakia) by adapting Stein Rokkan's work on why

many Northern European countries adopted proportional representation (PR) and bicameral



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parliaments as power sharing compromises at the tum of the last century. Rokkan argued that these

institutions met the interests of both rising working-class parties and older conservative parties.

Under PR the working-class parties secured a guarantee of a minimal level of representation during

the period of their incorporation into the polity, while the older conservative parties would not be

eliminated from the legislature as the electorate was expanded. Bicameralism, involving a lower

house elected by universal suffrage and an upper house with restricted suffrage, also represented

a kind of compromise between these two forces."

Lijphart argues that a similar sort of logic is present in East Central Europe except that the

communists and their successors play the same role as the conservatives and the new democratic

parties play the role of the rising working-class parties. It should be noted, however, that in many

of the cases that Rokkan studied there were often two competing older parties that stood to lose by

expansion of the franchise. Lijphart also argues that presidentialism in this context plays a similar

compromise role, separating executive and legislative power, giving both sides a better chance to

safeguard their power. However, it is not readily apparent how presidentialism, an arrangement

notable for its winner-take-all attributes, can be expected to function consistently as a power sharing

mechanism in the fashion that bicameralism did in Rokkan's original study." Thus, in modifying the

Rokkan hypothesis for contemporary East Central Europe, the author expects these new

democracies to opt for a combination of proportional representation and presidentialism.

At the time Lijphart wrote the article, only Poland had a highly proportional system, while

Czecho-Slovak PR was limited by a 5% threshold clause, and the Hungarians had a mixed electoral

system. According to the author, two out of the three cases he studies thus fit the first hypothesis

concerning voting rules (210-11). With regard to the hypothesis concerning presidentialism, only

Poland comes close, being semi-presidential in nature, whereas Hungary and Czecho-Slovakia are

classically parliamentary (212-13). The author then claims that at least one out ofthree cases fits

the hypothesis, despite the fact that most current theory on semi-presidentialism argues that it is



7

neither presidential nor parliamentary, nor between them, but something unique in itselt."

Lijphart sees Poland as the perfect case for his modification of the Rokkan hypothesis.

Though Poland comes closest to what the author predicts, the logic of emergence of these

institutions is radically different from the logic that the author's theory outlines. For instance, the

creation of a president with substantial powers independent of parliament and the parliament-based

govemment was not designed with power-sharing in mind, but with the perpetuation of communist

power within what should have been a liberalized form of authoritarianism."

Li.iphartalso argues that the transformation of the Polish presidency from an office that was

filled by a parliament over half of which was chosen in non-democratic elections to one filled by

direct popular election was "logical". There was no reason for this to follow inexorably. It would

have been just as "logical" for the next stage of institutional reform to reduce the powers of a

presidency created for Jaruzelski, the man who introduced Martial Law in 1981, to that of a

conventional head of state as in Czecho-Slovakia or Hungary. What made Poland different was the

presence of a charismatic opposition leader, Lech Walesa, who was left on the political sidelines

with the formation of the Mazowiecki government.20 It was Walesa's attacks on Jaruzelski and his

own ambition to retum to politics by replacing the president that initiated the chain of events that led

to the direct election of the president. The future president's actions brought about a split in

Solidarity, represented an abrogation of the terms of the Roundtable agreement (though the costs

of reneging were low because of the temporary collapse of the communists and the defection of

their allies), and led to a second pact in September 1990 between the major political forces in the

country. The process of preserving a powerful executive office and opening it up to universal

contestation had little to do with a logic of power-sharing and protecting the interests of both parties.

The post-communists were enfeebled allowing W~sa and his followers to compel Jaruzelski to

resign. In the deliberations over how he was to be replaced, the idea that the president should be

popularly elected was first raised by Mazowiecki's supporters who saw this as their only way to best



8

Wa~sa.21

The reason that Lijphart provides for the introduction of PR for the parliamentary elections

in Poland is wrong. He says that " ...the chastened Communists now insisted on a pure form of PR

for the next Sejm elections in order not to be driven from power altogether" (213). He is right about

the motivations of the communists and why they voted for the introduction of PR. However, they

were in no position to insist on anything. By late 1990 the communists had split into two competing

social-democratic formations and controlled no more than a third of the Sejm. Solidarity's

parliamentary delegation by this time was split between eleven factions as well. No political party

or faction in the parliament called for a majoritarian arrangement and only the two largest Solidarity

factions (ROAD and PC) called for a mixed system. The logic that led to PR in the Polish system

was not the logic of the modified Rokkan hypothesis. Rather, all factions found themselves in the

position of Rokkan's conservatives, intensely anxious that anything less than a highly proportional

system might lead to their elimination from parliament. Thus, while Poland seems to conform to the

modified Rokkan thesis on the basis of its outcome, that outcome was produced by different logics

than those posited by the hypothesis. Only by a selective reading of the evidence can it be said that

Poland conforms to the hypothesis.

There is the additional problem that Hungary does not correspond at all to the hypothesis.

The author explains the electoral divergence here on the basis of inaccurate assessments of

electoral strength by both the communists and the opposition. The results of the election of 1990

seem to show that the reform communists should have pushed for greater PR and the opposition

for greater majoritarianism, just the opposite of what he says their bargaining positions were.

However, the two largest opposition formations (and those who did best under the new electoral

system in 1990), the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) and the Association of Free Democrats

(SzDSz), initially favored a majoritarian system. But in order to keep a united front with the smaller

opposition parties going into the national roundtable, they supported a mixed system. In the Czecho-



9

Slovak case, which conformed in one dimension to the modified Rokkan hypothesis (PR), the author

explains the presidential divergence on the basis of a different logic - consociationalism. This is

having one's cake and eating it too. Parliamentarism with PR is an essential part of con-

sociationalism and the author later admits that this is really the operative logic in this case (216-

217).22

On the basis of this analysis the author's major conclusion is "Rokkan's theoretic insights,

with the various extensions and qualifications that I have added, are by and large vindicated" (219).

Yet Hungary does not correspond to the pattern, Czecho-Slovakia was following a different logic -

consociationalism, and the analysis of the Polish case presented here - the only one corresponding

to the modified Rokkan thesis (if the semi-presidentialism problem is ignored) - shows that the logic

operating in these institutional choices was not the one specified by the author.

In conclusion, this example points out two potential problems when authors try to validate

theories with empirical materials which they do not know well. First, they may present the facts

incorrectly as in the case of the characterization of executive power in Poland. This is precisely the

sort of error that will be discussed in the section on fitting evidence to theory below. Second, even

if the results are congruent with what theory predicts, this does not necessarily confirm the theory.

These expected results could be the product of a causal logic quite different from the one specified

in the theory. This is well-illustrated by the accounts above concerning the origins of PR and semi-

presidential ism in Poland, and the consociational logic at work in the Czecho-Slovak case.

Errors of Fact and Their Deleterious Effect on Interpretation

John Hibbing and Samuel Patterson, two specialists in American politics, have written an

article on the foundational elections of March 1990 in Hungary. The work, which is full of interesting

analysis,23also contains a large number of mistakes in its discussion of the origins of the electoral

rules for that contest. The ramifications of the errors go beyond the mere misstating of fact but later



10

affect the conclusions they draw.

Hibbing and Patterson begin their discussion with the assertion that "after it became apparent

that open elections would actually occur, a national roundtable convened to draft an electoral law"

(432). However, the agenda of the National Roundtable (NRT) was much broader than this. It

included twelve working groups which discussed a broad range of political and legal, as well as

economic and social issues." They add that "One side was occupied by the ruling Communist party,

which by that time had changed its name to the Hungarian (Magyar) Socialist party ...• (432). Though

the Roundtable had concluded by September, the party changed its ideological color only in October

1989. In discussing the origins of Hungary's mixed electoral system, the authors contrast the

socialists' initial desire for a single-member district plurality electoral system with the opposition's

desire to see the parliament elected by a system of proportional representation (432-3). PR was

in fact only favored by the historic opposition parties which had relatively weak followings and a lack

of well-known leaders even on the local level. 25 The opposition that emerged in the 1980s favored

an electoral system which had more majoritarian elements. SzDSz favored a predominantly

majoritarian system and they persuaded the Young Democrats (FiDeSz) to go along with them. MDF

initially leaned toward an arrangement with greater reliance on SMD, but ultimately advocated the

mixed SMD-party list proposal which the opposition as a whole adopted in closing its ranks before

entering into negotiations with the regime. This was accomplished at an Opposition Roundtable

(ORT) that preceded the NRT.26 The authors also state the compromise on electoral rules worked

out by the Roundtable decided that "The new parliament, like the old, was to have 386 members"

(433). This was not the case; the Roundtable put the number of deputies at 350. It was only when

the agreement was to be written into law by the old 386-member parliament, which became

assertive of its prerogatives, that the original number of 386 members was worked back into

electoral law as a compromise amendment."

While the authors ultimately get the shape of the Hungarian system correct (176 deputies



11

elected from single member districts, 152 deputies elected through proportional representation on

a county level, and 58 deputies elected by proportional representation on a national level), the

ramifications of their errors go beyond mere fact and affect the interpretations that they make. On

the basis of their misunderstanding, the authors then conclude that "The electoral law compromise,

combining single-member and PR structures, gave a slight advantage to the opposition parties,

inasmuch as 54% of the new parliamentary seats were, in one way or another, proportionally

allocated" (433). It was, however, only the "historic' and not the newer political opposition (MDF,

SzDSz, and FiDeSz) who favored PR. The mixed system was something that emerged out of the

deliberations of the ORT to which the communists ultimately acceded at the NRT.

28

It was not as

though the opposition supported PR and the regime SMD and they compromised on a mixed

system. Further, in as much as SzDSz and MDF would have done better individually under a single-

member district plurality arrangement and collectively under a single-member district majority

arrangement, according to simulations run by the authors (450), it is hard to argue that the mixed

system benefitted the opposition as a whole. After all, these two largest opposition parties had

favored a system that included a greater percentage of seats elected in single-member districts.

Contrary to Hibbing and Patterson's argument, the incorporation of proportional elements into the

system worked to the advantage of the socialists, raising their level of representation higher than

it would have been under SMD.

This example points out that mere errors of fact have a significance beyond "journalistic"

concems. Such fads are the bases on which we draw conclusions. Because Hibbing and Patterson

misunderstand the electoral rule preferences of the actors involved in the Hungarian Roundtables,

they in tum misinterpret the significance of the choice for the distribution of seats in the Hungarian

Parliament. The socialists were helped by the proportional elements that were included in the mixed

system because of the concems of the small historic opposition parties. The majoritarian elements

that they favored worked to increase the representation of the large opposition parties.



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Weak Historical Grounding as a Fatal Starting Point for Theory Building

The next two pieces considered are useful in understanding how an underappreciation of

historical context produces bad starting assumptions for analysis and undermines attempts to build

theory. In the first of them Josep Colomer explains institutional outcomes in Eastern Europe as the

product of the strategic choices of political actors." He explains variations in institutional outcomes

solely in terms of these choices while neglecting other potential independent variables (international,

cultural, social, economic). He argues that the changes in Eastern European "have occurred ... in

pretty much the same international contexts, and with comparable socioeconomic starting

conditions" so the difference in institutional outcomes are due to different strategic behaviors (74-5).

First, this statement masks either indifference to the history of the region or ignorance of it.30

Second, the strategic calculations of political actors cannot be divorced from these other variables.

The very existence of a specific set of actors, their respective political strengths, and their interests

in large measure derive from the context within which they operate. If these were "similar" or

"comparable" in all cases we should expect similar actors with similar interests exercising similar

choices. By this I do not mean to discount the importance of the strategic choices of key actors in

the process of creating new institutions, only that neglecting or unreflectively homogenizing the

context within which they operate across cases is a mistake. Even subtle differences in context can

strongly affect the interests and strategies of those actors.

The author posits four possible strategic choices prior to the holding of foundational

democratic elections on the basis of two bipolar variables - the relative strength of the regime

incumbents and their opponents, and future expectations about how both will fare in elections. He

makes four propositions on the institutional pattern that is likely to result (a bipolar dependent

variable - majoritarianism and unified powers, pluralism and divided power) on the basis of these

two independent variables. [1] Where regime incumbents are in the ascendent bargaining position

and are optimistic about their electoral chances they will opt for majoritarianism and centralized



13

powers. [2, 3, 4] In all other cases (where the opposition is in the superior bargaining position and

they are uncertain or optimistic about their electoral chances, where the opposition is in the superior

bargaining position and they are pessimistic about their electoral chances, where the incumbents

are in the dominant position but their electoral prospects are uncertain or favor the opposition), the

ascendent actor will push the system toward pluralism and divided powers (75-6).

Majoritarian/unified systems include the following elements - a majoritarian-plurality electoral

system, a unicameral legislature, and parnamentarisrn. Pluralist/divided systems in contrast include

proportional representation, a separately elected president, and a multicameral legislature. The

choice between these two options is of critical importance to the author. He claims that a

majoritarian/unified system was the institutional norm in communist countries." The extent to which

the communists were able impose their will on the transition will determine, according to the author,

the extent that such institutions will survive and is a measure of how far institutional change has

progressed in post-communist countries {82}.

This is a strong misunderstanding of the history and significance of institutional forms in

Eastern Europe and this leads Colomer astray. He ignores that the communists ruled through a

party-state, not a competitive system. He attributes significance to the particular constellation of

institutions in a part of the system that was little more than window-dressing. In communist

countries there was only one slate of official candidates nominated to run for the seats in parliament

with some small exceptions.f The communist party controlled who could run and who was elected.

If elections are not contested, the electoral rules are of no consequence. Voting was a ritual of

obedience, not an exercise of political choice. In communist countries it was not the parliament that

was sovereign, but the party-state bureaucracy." The Prime Minister was not responsible to

perflarnent in any real sense but to the Political Bureau of the party of which he was, almost without

exception, a member. The task of the government was to guide the state bureaucracy in fulfilling

the directives of the party-state elite. Real political reform in Eastern Europe was a question of



14

separating the party from the state, not moving away from the meaningless formal rules of a sham

electoral system in which there was no party subsystem autonomy."

Following foundational elections Colomer posits that new democratic institutions will evolve

in the direction of pluralism and divided powers. His expectation is that any sort of pluralist

arrangement will continue because "any party must find it hard to bet on majoritarian institutions that

could eliminate it altogether from a role in government or even in parliament" (77). Further, he sees

incentives developing that will lead to the abandonment of majoritarianism. If the opposition wins

under majoritarianism and splits into competing parties, these parties are likely to favor pluralist

institutions in subsequent deliberations on the shape of the political system. If the incumbents win,

they are likely to leave majoritarian institutions unchanged only if they expect to do well in future

elections. Otherwise, they too will have incentive to reform the system further in the direction of

pluralistic arrangements (77-8).

The application of these hypotheses to concrete cases reveals problems with the author's

reasoning and his understanding of the cases. In this latter aspect, Colomer also seems to read the

facts selectively to fit his theory (the subject of the next section). He begins with an account of the

semi-contested elections of 1989 in Poland. He argues that the communists, the Polish United

Workers' Party (PZPR), were partly optimistic and partly pessimistic because they kept the

majoritarian electoral system for contested seats yet reserved sixty-five percent of the lower house

for themselves (he should say for them and their allies) (79). How can a political actor be partly

optimistic and partly pessimistic about their chances in the same election? Here is a case of a

preformulated model driving research by interpreting the evidence in such a way as to render it

nonsensical. The author's theoretical assumptions tell us that the communists must be optimistic

because of the retention of majoritarian elements, yet in that they did not permit contestation of sixty-

five percent of the seats in the Sejm, they were also obviously pessimistic. Here is a set of facts

begging for a better explanation.



15

Why does the author get this so wrong? He does not understand that the Polish roundtable

was not about dernocranzatlon." It was designed to create a broadened, liberalized dictatorship.

It would have left the communists and their allies in control of the Sejm, with enough votes to decide

who would first occupy the strengthened presidency. It was not intended to be a foundational

election for democracy. It resulted in rapid democratization only by accident. First, nobody expected

that the vote on the uncontested seats, in particular the national list which contained the names of

the leading regime politicians, would function as a referendum on the fitness of the communists to

continue to rule. Second, nobody expected so many of the communist candidates to fail to win

enough votes in those uncontested elections as to be denied seats in the first round. Third, not

having anticipated these two results, nobody had calculated how the parties allied to the communists

would react. They made democracy possible by defecting from the communist coalition and

supporting a Solidarity-led government. After the electoral disaster, given that the guarantees were

to be dropped in subsequent elections, they sought to distance themselves quickly from the

communists. The author's interpretation of the Polish case and his incorporation of it into his

framework is so off, because he fails to note that the elections of 1989 were not designed to create

democracy, but to extend communist rule on a new basis for another five years.

In his discussion of the first contested presidential elections in Poland, the author continues

to misunderstand the actions and motivations leading up to the transformation of that office from one

appointed by parliament to one contested in direct elections. He somehow shifts the impetus for this

change from W~sa himself onto his future Solidarity opponents: "Even some of Lech Walesa's

old comrades began to search for a candidate who could beat him in a popular election, 'and

therefore pushed through parliament a law providing for direct election of the president" (81-2). The

impetus behind this change came from Wa~sa who sought to replace Jaruzelski as president. In

doing so, he did not confine his attacks to Jaruzelski, but also capitalized on the economic

dissatisfaction created by the Mazowiecki government's "shock therapy". The government, under



16

attack and faced with demands to abrogate the political aspects of the Roundtable Agreement

unilaterally, opted to stand for the rule of law and defend its economic policy. Thus, the move toward

a directly elected presidency was not something that the Mazowiecki government planned. Further,

the decision to make the presidency a directly-elected office was the result of direct negotiation

between all major political forces in September 1990. Though the Mazowiecki's camp was the first

to call for direct elections, Wa~sa and his supporters also supported this position despite some

equivocation about parliamentary selection. Furthermore, the issue was not only limited to the

question of the presidency but was intertwined with the replacement of the parliament elected in

1989 as well. The reasons why various political forces favored direct as opposed to indirect

presidential elections are very complex and have more to do with their assessment of under which

system their candidate stood a better chance of winning and how a presidential campaign would

affect their party's fortunes than with any logic of power-snannq."

In turning next to Hungary, he says "some Hungarian communists trusted strongly enough

in their own personal popularity to advocate retention... of single member districts" while "the historic

opposition parties favored PR." He claims that out of this the mixed system that Hungary chose

emerged as some sort of compromise (79). In this discussion he omits the role of the most

important opposition forces, the new opposition parties of the 1980s - FiDeSz, SzDSz, and MDF.

The mixed system as noted above was not a compromise between the historic opposition

(Smallholders, Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, etc.) and the communists. It was the result

of a compromise between the historic and more recent opposition at the Opposition Roundtable, to

which the communists later consented at the National Roundtable. Both the SzDSz and the MDF

initially favored single-member district plurality voting, like the communists. This is something that

the author's model does not consider possible, that opposition parties could favor single member

district voting systems. Further, they saw the need to compromise with the historic opposition

parties who favored PR and thus negotiated an electoral law that was mixed in character. This



17

electoral system has remained unchanged since the onset of democratization in Hungary. It has

helped to produce stable ruling coalitions (first led by the MDF and then by the Hungarian Socialist

Party), both of which had little incentive to move it in a more pluralist direction. The results of the

elections of May 1998 do not indicate that a change in the system or the stability it has produced is

imminent.

The Hungarian example points out that the author's assertion that the opposition will favor

pluralism and decentralization even when it has favorable expectations about its electoral future is

stated too strongly. Further evidence against this finding was also provided earlier by the positions

of ROAD and PC (favoring a mixed system) in the deliberations on the rules for election of the Polish

Sejm in 1991. The author misses this when he discusses this period in Poland, saying that "the

splits...within... Solidarity... led the leaders of the various Solidarity-rooted opposition factions to join

the communists in calling for a new proportional electorial system" (81). ROAD and PC were

outvoted by a coalition of deputies from the post-communist and peasant parties, as well as

Solidarity's smaller formations.

In fact, the Polish case also contains another example which seems to undermine his

findings concerning pluralism's stability. Specifically, moderately strong parties may favor mixed

systems or forms of proportional representation that mitigate against fragmentation (adding or

increasing threshold levels for representation, national lists, multiple candidate ridings with

distribution systems that reward larger parties, e.g. favoring d'Hondt over Hare-Niemeyer or

adjusting district magnitude). This is indeed what transpired in Poland in 1993. A coalition of the

largest parties in Parliament (including former regime and Solidarity groups) were able to institute

such a package of modifications following the fall of the Suchocka government. 37 The number of

parties elected to the Sejm fell precipitously from 29 to 6.38 In cases where fragmentation makes

governance difficult and microparties constitute a high percentage of the legislature, the largest

parties will have strong incentive to change the electoral statute to one that is more restrictive, even



18

if this only means a more restrictive form of PR.39 In any case this observation and finding would

seem to infirm the author's contention that " ... wherever institutional elements of pluralism and

division of powers were initially adopted, they were always later confirmed" (81). Moreover, as in

the case of Poland, extreme forms of PR are sometimes mitigated.

Curiously, the author groups Bulgaria along with Hungary and Poland as a case "where

hardline communists experimented during the Soviet period with a gradual shift to 'softer' positions,

where liberalization of some sort preceded democratization, and where incumbents found

themselves forced to bargain with the opposition, typically in 'roundtable talks.' These cases usually

featured 'reform communists' and relatively smooth and long processes of change" (78). He then

puts the beginning of the Bulgarian Roundtable in November 1989 (80). Communist Bulgaria could

hardly be described as a liberalized system; rather it was among the more orthodox states in the

bloc. Party leader Zhivkov strongly resisted innovation (though there were cycles of lip-service to

reform followed by little concrete action). He was not removed until November 9-10, 1989. The

roundtable talks with the opposition began on January 16, 1990. The process of change could in

no way be characterized as long and smooth; it was extremely conflictual. The main opposition

group, the Union of Democratic Forces, stormed out of the talks several times and mass

demonstrations were necessary to compel the Bulgarian Communists to sign the agreement. The

most significant outcome of the negotiations was the election of a Grand National Assembly to draw

up a new constitution," something which the author omits.

The author's lack of familiarity with the history of Bulgaria under communism leads him to

make a number of erroneous interpretations. Bulgaria should not be grouped with Hungary and

Poland as a reformist communist regime. The communists were in fact fairly resistant to change

even after the fall of Zhivkov. This can be seen in the difficult course of the roundtable negotiations

there. It was only in January of 1990 that the party began to talk like the reform communists of the

1960s in Poland, Hungary, and Czecho-Slovakia, and not until April 1990 did the party rename itself



19

the Bulgarian Socialist Party." The compromise electoral system chosen for the constituent Grand

National Assembly was not similar to the compromise in Hungary as the author suggests (80). It

represents a compromise between a resistant, rather than a reformist, party and an opposition,

which despite its late emergence, had begun to flourish. No institutional issues were definitively

settled. Under the terms of the agreement they were to be settled by the constituent in the next

eighteen months.

The author attributes the emergence of plurality-type institutions to "assertive oppositions"

in Romania, Czecho-Slovakia, and East Germany (81). While the collapse of the communists in the

face of powerful protests coordinated by the opposition in Czecho-Slovakia and East Germany

explains much in terms of the selection of PR in both these cases, it does not fit Romania.

Romania, as one of the credible cases of neo-totalitarianism in the region, had no opposition to

speak of.42Though the events that led to the overthrow of Ceausescu included genuine moments

of popular protest and outrage against the dictator, the overall process was controlled by a small

group of politicians with the backing of the army. The National Salvation Front (FSN) proved to be

an organization controlled by party prominents whose careers had been destroyed by Ceau~escu.

They were not an opposition in the sense that Solidarity, Civic Forum and Public against Violence,

or the Union of Democratic Forces was. The FSN soon established itself as the party of power with

the backing of many elements from the old regime. Opposition began to emerge in the form of

historic parties, the Social-Democrats, the National Liberal Party, and the Agrarians, as well as the

Hungarian Democratic Union, representing the interests of the Hungarian minority.

The initial institutions in Romania were not a result of a process of bargaining. There was

no roundtable. The institutional forms were simply imposed by the FSN. After the National Salvation

Front decided to become a political party and run in the elections it had promised, it created a

provisional assembly - the Provisional National Unity Council. The FSN was able to impose its

institutional choices by reserving a high percentage of the seats for itself while splitting the



20

remaining seats among the large number of political parties that had emerged in Romania since the

revotution.?

Thus in Romania there was no assertive opposition that imposed plurality-type institutions

(bicameralism, presidentialism, PR) on the incumbents. The political force which represented the

greatest continuity with the past imposed plurality type institutions on an extremely weak opposition.

Given the electoral supremacy that the FSN would demonstrate, and that it resorted to irregularities

to inflate its majority and harassment to keep the opposition weak, it is hard to understand why they

chose PR as opposed to any other system. In the first presidential elections lIiescu, the head of the

FSN, would take eighty-five percent of the vote. In the first legislative elections the FSN took two-

thirds of the vote with its nearest competitor being the Hungarian Democratic Union with seven

percent of the vote."

The Romanian case is sufficiently different that the assumptions about actors that the author

makes (opposition versus incumbents) do not work. This case in particular points out the limitations

of the author's historically inaccurate assumption concerning the uniformity of the starting point of

East European countries undergoing institutional change. Clearly, Romania with its rather different

configuration of actors has a rather different starting point than many of the other countries

considered here. Further, the forces of continuity with the past, the FSN, imposed just the sort of

system that the author posits as antithetical to continuity. In short, the author misreads the case to

support his theory even though it contradicts many of his central premises.

The problem of historical misunderstanding also lies at the root of the author's problematic

assertions concerning presidentialism. Opting for presidential ism over parliamentarism is an

important measure of institutional innovation in his mind since it was an element in the old Soviet-

type framework. The problem here is that the author assumes that this constellation of mock-

democratic institutions would somehow protect the interests of the political forces associated with

the old regime against reform. He thus assumes that movement away from this framework toward



21

multicameralism, presidentialism, and a multi-party system represents a break from the past. By

this criterion, he makes the dubious assertion that Romania was one of the two leaders in

institutional reform (in an article published in April 1995!) (83).

Presidentialism has different ramifications in different contexts. In certain cases it is meant

to preserve the power of the incumbents undemocratically. For instance, the terms of the Polish

Roundtable were designed to assure the communist leader (Jaruzelski) executive power. In

contrast, the agreement to have the old Parliament elect Mladenov president in Bulgaria before the

elections to the Grand National Assembly in Bulgaria in 1990 had precisely the opposite intent. The

Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP) favored direct election of a powerful president with a term of

several years. This was because Mladenov was the most popular figure in the country due to his

role in overthrowing Todor Zhivkov. The oppositional Union of Democratic Forces (SDS) favored

having the communist-era parliament elect Mladenov to a less powerful presidency until the freely

elected Grand National Assembly promulgated a constitution and in that way defined the role, term,

and powers of the president. The latter view prevailed when a satellite party of the communists,

the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BZNS), defected and supported the SDS on this issue."

In other cases presidential ism serves as the best vehicle for the will to power of charismatic

or highly popular leaders, especially where the selection mechanism is direct election. Both Lech

W~sa and Ion lIiescu made successful use of it, whereas Imre Pozsgay and Petur Mladenov were

denied the possibility of using their popularity to capture a plebiscitary presidency (the former by the

referendum organized by FiDeSz and SzDSz and the latter by the defection of BZNS). Such

plebiscitary presidentialism can serve the interests of those who want to break more decisively with

the past, as in the case of W~sa and his followers, or those who wish to preserve their past

positions of power, as in the case of lIiescu and the FSN in Romania. Similarly, election of the

president by the parliament (even if not elected competitively) can serve as a break on change as

in the election of Jaruzelski or as a way to minimize the power of a popular leader from the old



22regime, as in the case of Mladenov. Thus, the forms of pluralist democracy that the author fastens

onto as talismans of institutional innovation do not necessarily have the meanings that he attributes

to them. Only careful consideration of context will tell us the significance of different institutional

choices for the overall course of reform. At the root of these problems lies his historical

misunderstanding of the significance of the role of parliament, government, and electoral rules in

communist systems.

In this section I also will consider some of the arguments made by Barbara Geddes, a

political scientist well-known for her innovative work on "building state-capacity" in Latin America,

in her contribution to the special issue of Comparative Political Studies mentioned above." The task

she sets for herself in this piece is to determine the residual effects of Leninism on the new political

institutions of four East European countries (Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania). Like the work

of the previous author, her attempts to gauge the effects of the "Leninist legacy" on institutional

choice in Eastern Europe are compromised by historical misunderstanding.

Geddes attempts to understand these differences by contrasting her four East European

cases with a number from Latin America. She contrasts 'the low survival rate of the parties that had

influenced political life prior to Leninist hegemony and the modest success in the new political

environment of the few 'historic' parties that did survive" with the success of many pre-authoritarian

parties in Latin America (243). In explaining why this is so, she fails to appreciate differences in the

history of authoritarianism in the two regions. Though she notes that communism in Eastern Europe

in its Stalinist (totalitarian) phase was much more repressive than its conventionally authoritarian

Latin American cousins and that the duration of East European communist regimes was longer than

that of Latin American dictatorships, she argues that repression is not always effective. Instead she

claims that positive incentives to coopt the politically inclined are needed: "When an authoritarian

regime simply outlaws parties, they go underground. They continue to exist, although in much

reduced fashion, even in jail. The parties lose contact with casual adherents and are prevented from



23

attracting new supporters, but committed activists maintain clandestine networks" (246). In contrast,

she says that the politically active in Eastern Europe chose a life of constrained political choice and

upward mobility over the danger of underground opposition. In certain cases she points to the

emergence of reform wings within parties as evidence of this (Hungary in the 1980s and

Czechoslovakia in the 1960s), while she points to Poland in the 1980s as an exception (247).

The Hungarian and Polish cases to which she alludes present a set of contrasting historical

experiences to test her thesis concerning the failure of historic parties to playa strong role in the

post-authoritarian environment in Eastern Europe. Both Poland and Hungary went through

wrenching crises of Stalinism in 1956. In Hungary, the reformist group around Nagy was defeated,

but reform continued to live on within the party after Kadar, Moscow's obedient servant in 1956,

let repression begin to ebb in 1961, and began to introduce incremental economic reforms. Here

a reformist wing did indeed play an important role in the party. In Poland, GomuJka, who clashed

openly with Khrushchev in eye-to-eye meetings in 1956 and whose differences with the Polish

Stalinists had led to his removal as party leader and landed him under house arrest, reemerged to

lead the party in 1956. In the years following this, he increasingly sided with orthodox over reformist

elements in the party, and this led to the removal or flight of most reformists from the PZPR. In

Hungary, Kadar provided incentives to work within the system for those committed to reform,

whereas in Poland GomuJka's policies severely weakened the basis for reform within party circles.

According to Geddes' thesis, in Poland we would reason that historic parties should have

reemerged. They did not; after revisionism was defeated in the 1960s, a whole range of new extra-

systemic resistance movements emerged in late 1970s and culminated in Solidarity in the 1980s.

What accounts for this? First of all, the difference in repression was even more drastic than

Geddes admits. To begin with, Stalinist repression followed on the heels of WWII and, if not Nazi

occupation, nasty forms of indigenous authoritarianism. All political forces saw their leaderships and

cadres diminished if not decimated (including the communists). This strongly magnified the



24

advantages of controlling the state. Only the communists had both a fair chance and the resources

to rebuild their party organization in three of the cases the author discusses (Poland, Romania, and

Bulqaria)." The author misunderstands differences in the way in which the Soviets treated different

East European countries after World War II, describing the period 1945-48 as "more-or-Iess

democratic" (245). Additionally, in all of these countries the traditional ruling class managed to

disgrace itself during the interwar period or the war. Communism in Eastern Europe was forced

upon societies that were already tom to shreds. It was not imposed on countries which had a

"normal" party political life, as in many Latin American cases. In this way this author misreads the

historical record of Eastern Europe when comparing it to Latin America. What occurred in Eastern

Europe from 1939 to 1952 is not comparable (in the sense of similar) to what happened even under

the most repressive dictatorships in postwar South America (e.g. Argentina, Chile, Uruguay).

Secondly, she ignores another important aspect of the "Leninist legacy." Communist parties

in Eastern Europe not only imposed dictatorship but they remade society in a comprehensive

fashion. They replaced the main mechanisms of economic allocation (market and tradition) with a

command bureaucratic economy. This further remade the societies of Eastern Europe, changing

them fundamentally from what existed in the interwar period. This change is another critical reason

why historic parties have been of little consequence in post-communist Eastern Europe. The

constituencies for which they were organized to represent either no longer exist or have been

radically transformed by the experience of communism. The author fails to take this into account.

Geddes concludes this section on the weakness of historic parties with the following

conclusion, "As a result of the failure of traditional parties to survive and prosper in the new

democratic environment, the political institutions - electoral rules, forms of representation-with

which they were symbiotically entwined failed to reemerge" (243). On a theoretical level this sounds

elegant, but the referent "political institutions" is unspecified. Within the East European context this

can have a plethora of meanings. Is she referring to the early democratic constitutions of the 1920s



25

in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, or the authoritarian institutions that replaced them? Does she mean

Horthy's authoritarian regime in Hungary? Or does she mean the institutions that existed in the short

interregnum between the end of the war and the full-blown implementation of Stalinism? In only one

case, Hungary, was there anything like a free election in any of the four countries. Exactly what

institutions were to be resurrected? There is very little in the way of a usable democratic institutional

past in much of Eastern Europe. Why would anyone adopt sets of highly unsuccessful democratic

institutions created in the wake of World War I, sixty years and at least two authoritarian regimes

later? Czecho-Slovakia, a case not considered by this author, is the only East European case with

a usable institutional past.

This author's observations on the weakness of historic parties or the reemergence of old

institutional frameworks is not incorrect. However, her explanation of why this is the case, is based

on a flawed historical understanding of the legacies of the Second World War and Stalinism. Her

discussion of the ramifications of this for contemporary Eastern Europe will be considered in the next

section.

Fitting the Facts to the Theory

In explaining why individual East European countries chose specific new institutions in the

contemporary context, Geddes' ex ante theoretical commitments seem to color her understanding

of the evidence. She argues that in situations where the Communists thought they were strong they

favored "institutional arrangements that would benefit a dominant party, such as a strong presidency

and majoritarian forms of legislative representation" (261). Yet when she talks about the four

individual cases many problems emerge with this hypothesis and the way she understands the

cases.

For instance, in discussing the results of the Roundtable Agreement in Poland, she argues

that the communists were strong due to uncertainty about Soviet intentions and for that reason a



26

strong presidency was created and the parliament was elected by a majoritarian system (262).

While she notes that sixty-five percent of the Sejm was reserved for the communists and their allies,

she does not seem to appreciate that these arrangements were meant to protect communist power

by non-democratic guarantees. This was a party which needed guarantees for victory in an election

before it would allow any contestation of seats because of their popular weakness. Strength and

weakness here lie in two dimensions. The communists in Poland were able to negotiate more

favorable terms in the Roundtable Agreement because of uncertainty about the Soviets. The

institutions that resulted were designed not because the communists expected to win elections on

their own strength, but because they could negotiate guarantees for themselves to protect their

electoral weakness.

Similarly, in her discussion of the subsequent period in Poland, she describes the

communists as having moderate power because they had a "party majority in [the] Sejm" despite

low popular support (262). However, as noted earlier, in this period communist strength in the Sejm

had fallen to under a third of the mandates and was split between two parties (SdRP and PUS).

Further it was in this period when the Solidarity forces around W~sa were able to force an

abrogation of the Roundtable Agreement on the other players in the system and remove the

guarantees for the communists several years ahead of schedule, hardly a sign of even moderate

strength. In this period she also misses the crucial decision forum, the aforementioned multilateral

meeting of September 1990, which set the new rules of the game. As noted above, it is wrong to

attribute the change to a proportional electoral system only to the enfeeblement of the communists.

Finally, in her discussion of the period between the elections of October 1991 and September 1993,

she does not register the extensive change in the electoral law that radically reduced the number

of parties in parliament (see above). By this time the author's independent variable has little of the

explanatory power which she attributes to it. Although the communists had considerably diminished

power in this period, they were still the second largest party in parliament and voted with the bloc



27

of larger parties that supported the new election law, from which they more than any other political

party benefitted in 1993 (taking just over 20% of the popular vote and over 37% of the seats in the

Sejm). How does low communist strength help to explain that the electoral law was made

considerably more restrictive by a coalition of parties including, the main communist successor

party?

In her discussion of Hungary, the author fails to explain why Hungary has a mixed electoral

system. If the communists had high strength as she posits (262), her hypothesis would predict that

they would have imposed some sort of majoritarian system. But as we know from the discussion

above, the large opposition parties favored majoritarianism as well, but compromised with their

smaller partners in the ORT (which this author also does not take note of) and negotiated a mixed

system at the National Roundtable. The final agreement most closely resembled the joint position

of the ORT despite modifications made by the communist controlled parliament. This does not fit

her hypothesis. Her account of the contested rules for Hungary's presidency also points out a

limitation of her hypothesis. The Communists (MSzMP) favored direct presidential elections prior

to parliamentary elections. This is because the most popular politician in the country was Imre

Pozsgay, the reform communist leader. This preference was not based on the strength of the party

but on the popularity of its leading figure. In separating the two, the MSzMP hoped to take control

of the executive even if they did not win the parliamentary elections. This points out a problem with

the author's hypothesis as well. As we well know, observing the fortunes of the Democratic Party

in the United States between 1948 and 1994, presidential ism does not necessarily benefit the

dominant legislative party.

In her discussion of the Roundtable Agreement in Bulgaria, Geddes stresses the strength

of the communist party because there was "almost no organized opposition" (262). If this was the

case we should have expected the communists to impose a majoritarian-type electoral system. Yet

the system that emerged from the negotiations was a mixed system (50% majoritarian, 50%



28

proportional). As noted earlier, the Bulgarian electoral system was the product of compromise

between the SDS and the communists. In order to compel this compromise, the SDS had to break

off negotiations and organize several mass demonstrations. The author underestimates how far the

SOS had come since the fall of Zhivkov in November 1989. She also thinks of the Bulgarian

communists as reformists in the Hungarian sense (264). This is hardly the sense that their attempts

to stave off reform during the roundtable negotiations imparts.

The author also errs in describing the initial executive arrangements negotiated in Bulgaria.

She says that the "[c]urrent Communist party president [was] to continue" while the "next [was] to

be elected by [the] legislature" (262). This was another compromise between the SDS and the

Bulgarian communists. The SDS, which preferred elections later rather than sooner, agreed to

elections in June 1990 to have its way on the presidency. The specifics (outlined above) allowed

the SDS to avert Mladenov's election to a powerful presidency for a multi-year term. The status of

the next president was in limbo, as the new assembly was charged with the task of writing a new

constitution and thus was compelled in no way to create such an office." The author fails to take

account of the fact that the Assembly was created as a constituent and not just a representative

body. And again if the BKP was so strong, why did it need to trade its preference on the presidency

for early elections?

Finally, Romania at first glance seems to fit the author's hypothesis. She claims that in the

period from December 1989 to January 31, 1990 that the FSN established rules for a popularly

elected president and a parliament was elected by a majoritarian electoral system (263). Yet, this

was the period when the National Salvation Front created the Provisional National Unity Council, and

imposed its rules on the system through that body. The first elections were not organized until May

1990 and the FSN, as noted above, dominated in both the presidential and parliamentary contests.

The question that remains is why a party which was predominant like the FSN chose PR for that

election. This is strongly at odds with what the author's hypothesis on institutional choice predicts.



29

Ultimately, the work of this author, like both Lijphart and Colomer, is so weak on the details

of institutional choice in Eastern Europe that the generalizations she makes are unsustainable. In

every case she considers, she reads the evidence to support her hypotheses. Yet careful

reconsideration of the evidence shows her reading of the evidence to be off.

Conclusions

The first major conclusion of this piece is sympathetic to one of the concerns that Bates

raises - that political scientists working in comparative politics need extensive preparation in both

the discipline and the geographic areas on which they work." The problem encountered in this

literature which leads to this conclusion is not Bates' claim to the atheoreticity of area studies, but

the difficulties encountered by established political scientists trying their hand at writing on Eastern

Europe. Even the theoretically accomplished need to pay careful attention to context, making it

incumbent upon them to study carefully the history, culture, and ethnography of the areas upon

which they trespass.

The second conclusion of this study is that "howlers" are a major problem. They put

substantial amounts of contradictory and inaccurate data in the flagship journals of the discipline.

These are the materials which graduate students are encouraged to read first and foremost and

which we use to teach them the craft of political science. Howlers teach our graduate students that

accuracy does not matter. Further, by lacing our canonical work with gross inaccuracies we

miseducate them in substance. Finally, we threaten to mislead other researchers by publishing

faulty data.50 This raises questions about the review processes used by the journals in question,

especially about whether they have the desire or ability to evaluate empirical material on Eastern

Europe accurately.

Third, the problems of interpretation frequently encountered in this literature point out an

important weakness in the approach posed by Bates. Despite his sensitivity to the necessity of



30

interpreting "data"51and his obvious attention to it in his own work, much of the research considered

here fails to understand that things that seem similar on the surface are radically different when

placed in a different context. This has been social science cannon since Geertz's "Thick

Description."52 Perhaps the most explicit example of this is the case of the author who attributes

the wrong institutional significance to the "mock" parliamentary and executive institutions that

paralleled communist party-states despite the absence of party sub-system autonomy. This problem

also emerges strongly in the discussion of what presidential ism meant to different actors in different

countries and why they supported it or resisted it. It had no immutable ramifications (supportive or

obstructive of change), inexorably favored none of the political forces (former oppositionists or post-

communists) present in most cases, and this was all independent of what mechanism was used to

select the president (direct election, or indirect election by a newly elected or a communist-era

parliament). Even in these similar cases, it is dangerous for theory to assume that something that

looks similar on the surface means the same thing in all of them. Indeed, it should chasten us to

be even more careful about ascribing meaning derived from abstract theory or other contexts to new

contexts.

Many political scientists trained exclusively in scientific approaches (e.g., formal theory,

behavioralism) operate on the unstated assumption that the "facts" are just out there, need to be

collected, and then plugged into research designs.53 While the problems with this do not manifest

themselves as explicitly in the study of American politics (where these methods have been most

consistently and fruitfully applied), they jump to the fore when these approaches are applied in a

mechanical fashion to other cultural contexts. Here again, I find myself in agreement with Bates.

The application of abstract formal theory to cultural contexts removed from the culture of its authors

demands that data be interpreted and not just "collected". In comparative politics it is not so easy

to radically separate the production of empirical from nomothetic knowledge, and this severely

complicates any attempt to apply existing theories to new contexts unreflectively.



31

Fourth, the outright errors made by the authors undermine the claims of much of the

literature reviewed above to produce generalizable scientific knowledge. In failing to collect and

interpret the data that purports to support its theoretical claims accurately and convincingly, much

of this literature fails to sustain its theoretical claims. Shockingly, the work reviewed here is bad

science, not because it is atheoretical, but because it fails to offer compelling evidence to sustain

its theoretical claims. If science is the model, it is being practiced poorly.

Fifth, this sort of sloppy empirical work and flawed interpretation is especially damning for

strategic choice accounts. StrategiC choice frames the motivations, preferences, and interests of

the relevant actors as the independent variable explaining a given outcome. Failure to understand

the rules of the game by which they play or what the outcomes of the situation one is trying to

explain means to the players is fatal to any attempt to apply the model. This seems all too common

in the accounts described above. Often this leads to the impression that analysis proceeded from

the meanings of the outcomes in the abstract theory that informs the authors' conception of the

problem and that the preferences and motivations of the actors are later ascribed to them to fit the

results. If this is the case, the research methods seem distant from those of normal science.

The problem here is that the evidence seems to be selectively employed to support

theoretical suppositions. The corrections that this paper has made to the evidence these authors

employ leads to a sixth conclusion. Strategic choice accounts necessitate thickly descriptive

accounts first to uncover the interests and intentions of the actors. Only when data has been

comprehensively collected and interpreted does it constitute a firm basis for testing how closely it

conforms to generalizations predicted by existing theory or provide a basis for making new

generalizations. Had these authors proceeded in a way which was more respectful of empirical

groundwork, the sorts of mistakes they made could have been avoided.

Finally, Bates' approach seems predicated on the assumption that political science has a

well-defined battery of theories about advanced democracies which can be applied to democratizing



32

regions like Eastem Europe. It is enough for analysts with a strong grounding in theory to ascertain

the facts of cases there and then apply well-established theories. However, in the literature

reviewed here, there does not seem to be this sort of theoretical consensus. For instance, both

Lijphart and Colomer expect presidentialism and PR to emerge in Eastern Europe. However,

Lijphart sees them as power-sharing mechanisms that will serve to protect the interests of all parties,

whereas Colomer sees them as strong evidence of movement away from the old regime in the

direction of genuine institutional reform. Geddes, in contrast, sees presidentialism as the sort of

mechanism favored by dominant parties rather than weak or uncertain ones. Where exactly is the

body of established and tested theory that one can apply to Eastern Europe? I do not mean to

suggest that we confront a theoretical tabula rasa. Certainly, the observation that weaker parties

will favor more proportional over more restrictive electoral arrangements is a fairly strong regularity.

The Hungarian case points out, however, that stronger parties may not opt for plurality or majority

systems under all circumstances. As for presidentialism, I believe I have made a strong case that

its significance is highly context-dependent. Here too it is possible to observe that charismatic

leaders or leaders with strong personal popular followings seem to favor a strong plebiscitary

executive. Yet neither side in Eastern Europe, reformers or conservatives, has a monopoly on this.

In this sense, I fear that the strictures for comparative politics proposed by Bates are predicated on

a view of our theoretical prowess which is at present premature.



33

Notes

1. I wish to thank to Andrew Arato, Kenneth Benoit, Zoltan Barany, Valerie Bunce, Grzegorz

Ekiert, Barbara Hicks, Krzysztof Jasiewicz, Timothy Nordstrom, John Schiemann, Regina Smyth,

Rudolf Tokes, and Robert Weiner for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper or in

clarifying the historical processes described herein. Their willingness to help should not be

necessarily construed as agreement with the views of the author. All errors or omissions are the

responsibility of the author.

2. With regard to economics, see James Millar, "Doom Without Gloom: Area Studies and the

Economics Profession," NewsNet: The Newsletter of the American Association of Slavic Studies

37:4 (September 1997), pp. 5-6.

3. Bates writings on this subject include: "Letter from the President," CP-APSA 7:1 (Winter

1996), p. 2 and "Area Studies and the Discipline: A Useful Controversey?" P.S. Political Science

and Politics XXX:2 (June 1997), pp. 167-8.

4. This is an exaggeration. A great deal of general theory has been generated by work devoted

to the in-depth understanding of a particular area of the globe. For a list of significant works of

political science produced by area specialists see, Chalmers Johnson, "Preconception versus

Observation, or the Contributions of Rational Choice Theory and Area Studies to Contemporary

Political Science," P.S. Political Science and Politics XXX:2 (June 1997), pp. 172-3.

5. Bates 1996, p. 2.

6. Examples of the former include Dale R. Herrspring, "The Rational Actor Model and Area

Studies,· NewsNet: The Newsletter of the American Association of Slayic Studies 37:4

(September 1997), pp. 1-3; Johnson, op. cit.; and Ian Lustick "The Disciplines of Political

Science: Studying the Culture of Rational Choice as a Case in Point," P.S. Political Science and

Politics XXX:2 (June 1997).

7. This has been the subject of some controversy. See the debate between Valerie Bunce, and

Philippe Schmitter and Terry Karl- Valerie Bunce, "Should Transitologists be Grounded?" Slavic

Review 54:1 (1995), pp. 111-127; Valerie Bunce, "Paper Curtains and Paper Tigers" Slavic

Review 54:4 (1995), pp. 979-987; Terry Lynn Karl and Philippe C. Schmitter, "From an Iron

Curtain to a Paper Curtain," Slavic Review 54:4 (1995), pp. 965-978; and Philippe C. Schmitter

with Terry Lynn Karl, "The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists," Slavic

Review 53:1 (1994), pp. 173-185.

8. Bates 1997, p. 167.

9. This is the so-called "Rokkan Hypothesis" as well as the extensive literature on institutional

variation in democratic systems. See Stein Rokkan, Citizens. Elections, Parties: Approaches to

the Comparative Study of Development, (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1970).

10. Tony Judt, "Crimes and Misdemeanors," The New Republic, (September 22, 1997), p. 37.

11. Jon Elster misspells the name of Czestaw Kiszczak, the co-architect of Martial Law and the

attempted normalization in Poland in the 1980s, as "Czeslav" ("Constitution-Making in Eastern

Europe: Rebuilding the Boat in the Open Sea," Public Administration 71 (Spring-Summer 1993),



34

p.203). Josep M. Colomer and Margot Pascual transform Kiszczak into "Kisczack." They also

rechristen former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki as "Maziowecki" ('The Polish

Games of Transition," Communist and Post-Communist Studies 27:3 (1994), pp. 286, n. 5 &

291). Constance Squires Meany renames two successive Polish prime ministers. Jan

Olszewski becomes "Olciewski" and Hanna Suchocka becomes "Suchoka" ("Foreign Experts,Capitalists, and Competing Agendas: Privatization in Poland, the Czech Republic, and

Hungary," Comparative Political Studies 28:2 (1995), pp. 286-7). The editors of the special issue

of the journal in which this piece appears carry "Olciewski" over into their introduction,

compounding the error (Beverly Crawford and Arend Lijphart, "Explaining Political and Economic

Changes in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: Old Legacies, New Institutions, and International

Pressures," p. 185).

12. Josep M. Colomer, 'Transitions by Agreement: Modeling the Spanish Way," American

Political Science Review 85:4 (December 1991); Colomer and Pascual, op. cit.;Josep M.

Colomer "Strategies and Outcomes in Eastern Europe," Journal of Democracy 6:2 (1995).Colomer's errors are by no means confined to the Polish case. For instance he also discusses

events in Hungary and East Germany in his 1991 piece. He makes Karoly Grosz the secretarygeneral of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party in 1987. He did not replace Janos Kadar until

1988. He also claims that Egon Krenz, Honecker's replacement as party boss in East Germany,

"called free elections". Krenz was forced to step down in December 1989. The Roundtable,

which established the first abortive date for free elections (they had to be moved up due to the

deteriorating situation in the country) and the election rules, did not meet until the day after

Krenz's resignation. These errors combined with those on Poland outlined below, also constitute

a unique multinational howler in themselves (Colomer 1991 , p. 1298).

13. Crawford and Lijphart, p. 175.

14. Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, A History of East

Central Europe, Volume IX, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974) p. 187; Peter Hanak

and Joseph Held, "Hungary on a Fixed Course: An Outline of Hungarian History," in TheColumbia History of Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, Joseph Held, ed., (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 187,204, & 207; and Andrew Janos, The Politics of

Backwardness in Hungary. 1825-1945, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 297-

299.

15. Gail Stokes, The Walls came Tumbling Down, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p.

179. In fact an argument can be made that the Smallholders' constituencies in 1945 and 1990

are radically different. See Rudolf Ttskes, "Party Politics and Political Participation in

Postcommunist Hungary," in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrot, The Consolidation of Democracy

in East-Central Europe, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 116.

16. Arend Lijphart, "Democratization and Constitutional Choices in Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary,

and Poland, 1989-1991," Journal of Theoretical Politics 4:2 (1992), pp. 208-9.

17. Though, it is not hard to think up individual scenarios where it might function this way. For

instance, a party that had weak electoral strength overall, might include a popular figure who

stood a chance of winning a direct national plebiscitary election.

18. See Giovanni Sartori, Comparative Constitutional Engineering, Second Edition, (New York:

New York University Press, 1994), chapter 7, and Matthew Soberg Shugart and John M. Carey,



35

Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics, (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1992), chapter 4.

19. To read a fuller exposition of this argument, see Michael Bernhard, ·Semi-Presidentialism,

Charisma, and Democratic Institutions in Poland," in Presidential Institutions and Democratic

Politics, Kurt von Mettenheim, ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 182-

186.

20. W~sa did not stand for Parliament and thus held no formal political position. He continued

as Chairman of Solidarity.

21. For an account of the intermingling of issues and the complex compromises made during this

period in Poland, see Bernhard, pp. 189-90 and 283, n. 35, 36, 37..

22. In this discussion, written before the dissolution of Czecho-Slovakia, Lijphart calls the country

"a textbook case of consociational democracy" (216), a concept strongly associated with his

name. In retrospect we can only hope he is wrong.

23. For instance, the technique they use to calculate and display relationship of votes to seats in

the electoral process is quite ingenious. See John R. Hibbing and Samuel C. Patterson, "A

Democratic Legislature in the Making, the Historic Hungarian Elections of 1990," Comparative

Political Studies 24:4 (January 1992), pp. 437, 440-41, 448. I found it quite useful insummarizing differences in the degree of proportionality of different electoral systems used in

Poland. See Bernhard, pp. 195 & 198.

24. For the organization of the Roundtable and the issues it discussed, see Rudolf l.Tokes,Hungary's Negotiated Revolution, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 335 ff.

25. Andras Bozold, "Hungary's Road to Systemic Change: The Opposition Roundtable," Eastern

European Politics and Society 7:2 (1993), p. 298 and Kenneth Benoit and John W. Schiemann,"Electoral System Origins: Institutional Choice in Hungary," Paper presented at the Northeastern

Political Science Association Meeting, November 9-11, 1995, p. 15.

26. Bozoki, pp. 298-9, Tokes 1996, p. 339, and Benoit and Schiemann, p. 15.

27. Bozoki p. 299, and Benoit and Schiemann, p. 17. Tokes (1996) reports that this compromise

was negotiated by MDF leader Antall, Prime Minister Nemeth, and Minister of Justice Kulcsar

after the completion of the NRT in September 1989 (p. 494, n. 108).

28. Rudolf Tokes reports that in an interview with Peter Tolgyessy (a key SzDSz negotiator at the

NRT), that Tolgyessy, Antall, and Nemeth convinced the relevant parliamentary committee to go

along with the mixed system by pointing out what happened to the communists in Poland

running under a majoritarian system (personal communication).

29. Colomer 1995, pp. 74-85.

30. Let us begin with the international dimension. First, the later a country began to reform the

more autonomy it had from the Soviet Union and the constraints it posed on the internalsovereignty of these countries (the dividing point being November 1989). Second, the degree of

interest of the West in these countries varied considerably ranging from intense in the case of

the DDR, to moderately high in the case of East Central E urop e, to on ly m ode ra te in the B alka ns.



36

In the socia-economic dimension we can begin with the nationality issue. We have one divided

nation (DDR), two homogenous nation-states (Poland and Hungary), a federation of two nations

with a substantial minority in one part (Czecho-Slovakia, Hungarians in Slovakia), and two

nations with substantial minorities (Hungarians in Romania and Turks in Bulgaria). While

GOP/capita was comparable across the region, it was, on balance, higher in the North and Westand declined the further East or South one traveled. Other economic conditions varied widely.

Certain countries had already initiated marketizing reforms (Poland, Hungary) while the rest were

still close to traditional methods of centralized planning. Certain countries were substantially

dependent on trade with the west (Hungary, DDR) while others were only moderately or

marginally involved. Some countries had substantial debt problems (Poland, Hungary) while

others had manageable or minimal debts to hard currency areas.

31. Specifically -- "an electoral system based on single-member districts winnable by plurality,

and a written constitutional scheme under which a single-chamber parliament chose a

nonexecutive president as head of state and an executive prime minister as head of governmentwith formal responsibility to the legislature" (Colomer 1995, p. 75).

32. In countries like Poland where small independent Catholic groups were allowed to sit in

Parliament, those deputies never ran directly against communist candidates. In Hungary where

there were opportunities to run in opposition to official candidates late in the 1980s, the number

of contested mandates was small and no organized group was able to field a substantial slate of

candidates.

33. Maria Hirszowicz, The Bureaucratic Leviathan, (New York: New York University Press,

1980), see chapter 1.

34. For more on the notion of party subsystem autonomy and its indispensability for democracy,

see Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1976), pp. 44-47.

35. This ties back to the problems that Colomer has in getting the rules to the elections of 1989

straight. In his first piece he says as a result of the Polish Roundtable, "the communists kept the

majority of seats in one of the chambers for themselves." ( 1991, p. 1298). He maintains this in

his third piece as well (Colomer 1995, p. 79), despite noting the presence of the other parties

allied to the communists in the second piece. The real story is that the Polish communists

shared a total of sixty-five percent of the seats with their former satellite parties (the United

Peasant Party, the Democratic Party, and small pro-regime Catholic groups). The party's share

was only 37.5 percent of the seats in the Sejm. This omission is critical because it was this

aspect of the Polish Roundtable agreement that permitted the early emergence of democracy

rather than the intended five-year period of broadened dictatorship which was to be followed by

free elections. Without taking account of the role of the satellite parties and their defection from

the communist coalition, it is impossible to understand how the plans for a communist-led

broadened dictatorship failed and were replaced by a Solidarity-led government which

accelerated the process of democratic reform.

36. See note 21.

37.Under the new electoral statute seats in multiple candidate electoral districts were distributedby the d'Hondt system which rewards bigger parties (rather than Hare-Niemeyer as in 1991).

Further, a representation threshold clause of 5% for parties and 8% for coalitions was also



37

implemented and the threshold for distribution of seats from the national list was raised from 5%

to 7%.

38. The number of caucuses in the Sejm following the elections of 1991 was much smaller than

the 29 suggested by the electoral returns. In 1993, the German Minority also won four seats in

the Sejm under special rates for minority representation.

39. The difference between SMD plurality and restrictive forms of PR can be overstated in terms

of results. In fact the Polish elections of 1993 produced a ratio of seats to votes (S=-4.8+2.04V)

that more uniformly compensated the larger parties than the Hungarian SMD plurality elections of

the second round in 1990 (S=-5.9+1.4V). In any case, it translated votes to seats in a fashion

more like that of the Hungarian plurality system than that of the highly proportional Polish

electoral rules of 1991, where the corresponding regression line was (S=-.24+1.15V). See

Hibbing and Patterson, p. 448 and Bernhard, 193-5 & 198 (the regression values were omitted

from figure 8.1, p. 195).

40. Stokes 147-8 & 175-6.

41. Stokes, p. 176.

42. Daniel Chirot describes the Romanian leader, Nicolae ceausescu, as a "little Stalin". See his

Modern Tyrants, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), chapter 7.

43. The Council was formed on February 1, 1990. Initially it was supposed to be composed of

180 deputies. This number soon grew to 210, 105 for the National Salvation Front while thirty-

five opposition parties received three each. Control of the body was assured by the FSN by

including parties allied to it among the opposition deputies. Eventually the number of deputies

grew to over two hundred and fifty (106 for the FSN, 105 for the parties, twenty-seven for nine

ethnic minority organizations, and three for the Association of Former Political Detainees). The

Provisional Council promulgated an electoral law providing for modified PR elections in 41electoral districts for parliament and direct election of the president on March 17, 1990. The

elections followed on May 20,1990. See Roger East and Jolyon Pontin, Revolution and Change

in Central and Eastern Europe, (London: Pinter, 1997), revised edition, pp. 178 & 182; Nestor

Ratesh, Romania: The Entangled Revolution, CSIS Washington Papers/152, (New York:

Praeger, 1991), pp. 130-1; and Robert Weiner "Democratization in Romania, in Romania in

Transition, Lavinia Stan, ed. (Brookfield, VT: Dartmouth House, 1997), p 8. I wish to thank

Robert Weiner for helping me to make sense of the differing reports on the size of theProvisional Council.

44. Stokes, p. 175.

45. Rumunyana Kolarova and Dimitr Dimitrov, "The Roundtable Talks in Bulgaria,· The

Roundtable Talks and the Breakdown of Communism, Jon Elster, ed., (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 191-2.

46. Barbara Geddes, "A Comparative Perspective on the Leninist Legacy in Eastern Europe,"

Comparative Political Studies 28:2 (July 1995), pp. 239-274.

47. In Hungary, non-communist political forces had a greater opportunity to reemerge and

reorganize due to the existence of a short period of real coalition government immediately

following the war.



38

48. The assembly did continue the presidency but in a form rarely seen, directly elected yet with

fairly limited executive powers.

49. Bates 1997, p. 169.

50. Witness how the misspellings moved through the special issue of Comparative Political

Studies (see footnote 10). This collection was subsequently published as a book with the errorsstill intact. See Liberalization and Leninist Legacies, Beverly Crawford and Arend Lijphart, eds.,

Research Series/96 (Berkeley: University of California Berkeley, International and Area Studies,

1997). Similarly Colomer tracks one of his errors from one piece to another. In discussing the

Polish elections of 1989 in his piece in the Journal of Democracy, he claims "new rules for a

second round had to be improvised" to fill the unfilled seats from the first round due to the defeat

of many prominent regime politicians who stood on a national list in the first round. This wording

is ambiguous on whether the second round as a whole or just rules for the filling of the seats left

empty from the national list had to be improvised. However, he cites an earlier piece which he

co-authored as the source for this information. In that piece he and his coauthor call the second

round itself "unexpected" when it was a routinely scheduled run-off election. See Colomer,

1995, p. 79 and Colomer and Pascual, p. 290.

51. Bates 1996, p. 2 and Bates 1997, p. 168.

52. See Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 3-30.

53. See Lustick (pp. 175-6) for similar criticism.





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