Civil Society and the Legacy of Dictatorship

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Civil Society and the Legacies of DictatorshipAuthor(s): Michael Bernhard and Ekrem KarakoSource: World Politics, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Jul., 2007), pp. 539-567Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40060172 .

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CIVIL SOCIETY AND THELEGACIES OF DICTATORSHIP

By MICHAEL BERNHARD and EKREM KARAKOC*

makes for an effective and durable democracy? The litera-ture on democratization emphasizes that successful democracies

need to embed themselves effectively in their societies. This process hasbeen referred to as "the deepening of democracy" or its "habituation

phase.1 It has at least two distinct dimensions the attitudinal and thebehavioral.

The dominant stream in this literature has focused on how citizens'attitudes evolve after the installation of a democratic regime. Politicalscientists have argued that certain attitudes enhance the performanceof democracy and that citizens' satisfaction leads to more effective anddurable government. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba have described

this as a "civic culture."2 More recently Ronald Inglehart, Pippa Norris,and Christian Welzel have emphasized the importance of what theylabel "secular-rational" nd "self-expression values" over "traditional"and "survival" alues in the attainment of democracy.3 Even structuraltheorists like Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan acknowledge that democ-

racy is especially vulnerable unless both masses and elites develop at-titudes congruent with the system.4

Robert Putnam moves beyond the attitudinal dimension to include

political behavior. While he does argue hat certain attitudes, notably rust,

promote the functioning of democracy hrough he accumulation of socialcapital, his work emphasizes that behavior promotes its accumulation

* For comments on earlier versions of this article, hanks are due to Christopher Reenock, ClaudiuTufis, Quan Li, Venelin Ganev, Karen Dawisha, Joop Hox, Fatih Mehmet Sula, three anonymousreferees, and participants n the comparative politics reading group at Penn State University. Thisresearch was supported by a Summer Graduate Research Award from the Department of PoliticalScience, Penn State University.1Dankwart Rustow, Iransitions o Democracy, Comparative olitics (April 1V7U); nd AndreasSchedler, "What Is Democratic Consolidation?" ournal of Democracy (April 1998).

2 Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Boston:Little, Brown and Company, 1965).

3 Ronald Inglehart, Pippa Norris, and Christian Welzel, "Gender Equality and Democracy," Com-

parative Sociology , no. 3-4 (2002); and Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, "Islamic Culture andDemocracy: Testing the 'Clash of Civilizations' Thesis," Comparative ociology , no. 3-4 (2002).

4 Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Consolidation Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1996).

World olitics59 (July 2007), 539-67

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540 WORLD POLITICS

as well. Putnam's nnovation has been the observation that it is notjustwhat citizens believe but how they act that creates social conditions

conducive to democracy. Hence he emphasizes civic engagement andhow it promotes a democratic citizenry.5 It is through the explorationof this behavioral dimension that contemporary political science canget to the role that civil society plays in perpetuating democracy in thephases of democratization that follow the transition.

In this article we survey a portion of this vast literature nd note that theattitudes hat promote democracy seem to emerge earlier and more easilythan the behaviors. We examine the slow

emergenceof two behaviors as-

sociated with a robust civil society participation n organizational ife andin protests and explain variation across societies as a function of theirregime history. Our individual-level data come from the World ValuesSurvey (wvs 2000), and we analyze the behavior of more than forty-one thousand citizens from forty-two democracies.6 Using methods ofhierarchical inear modeling to control for both national and individualvariation across antecedent regime types, we find that certain patternsof dictatorship have powerful negative legacies for the establishment ofa democratic civil

society,while other

types poseless of a barrier.

The Attitudinal Dimension

The extensive literature that examines how attitudes and values changein the aftermath of dictatorship consistently shows that with demo-cratic transition and generational turnover, the citizens of successfulnew democracies come to adopt values and attitudes similar to thosecommonly found in long-standing democracies. Thus, for example, re-search on the democracies created in the wake of the defeat of the Axisshows that these countries have developed strikingly similar politicalcultures to those of more long-standing democracies. Sidney Verba'sanalysis of Germany found that the postwar generation was abandon-ing the passivity of its elders and becoming more civic in orientation.7This was in turn confirmed by others.8 In Italy, where citizens have

5 Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press, 1993).

6Inter-university Consortium or Political and Social Research, World ValuesSurveys nd European

Values urvey 1999-2001 (computer ile) (Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, 2002).7Verba, "The Remaking of Political Culture," n Lucian Pye and Sidney Verba, eds., Political Cul-ture and Political Development Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).8David P. Conradt, "Changing German Political Culture," n Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba,eds., The Civic Culture Revisited Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1980); and Russell J.Dalton,"A Changing Social Consciousness," n Peter H. Merkl, ed., The Federal Republic t Forty New York:New York University Press, 1989).



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CIVIL SOCIETY/LEGACIES OF DICTATORSHIP 541

exhibitedhigh

levels of dissatisfaction for avery long time,

discontenthas focused on the performance of the government rather than on de-mocracy as a system.9 As early as 1971 in Italy and Germany, Inglehartfound postmaterial values on a scale comparable to that of long-stand-ing West European democracies.10 And finally, Japan, with its distinctreligious and militaristic raditions, also exhibits levels of support for de-mocracy similar to those found in established democracies.11

Thus, in many new democracies the values and attitudes of citizenstoward the political system have come to resemble those of more estab-lished democracies.

Manyscholars have noted

increasing supportfor

democracy as a political ideal in Southern European countries that de-mocratized in the 1970s and in the East Asian countries that made thetransition in the 1980s.12 That support for democracy can coexist withvarying degrees of dissatisfaction with governments and their policieswithout posing serious threats to democracy as a system and an ideal isa hallmark of consolidated democracies.

Many have noted increased support for democracy in the postcom-munist countries as well.13 Some scholars have pointed out just how

rapidlythe attitudes and values of East Germans came to resemble

those of West Germans.14 n marked contrast to countries where de-mocratization is proceeding smoothly, however, support for democracyin Russia has been deteriorating, with up to 40 percent of the popula-tion expressing nostalgia for the old system.15 Democracy has contin-ued to deteriorate in Russia, particularly since the elections of 2003.

16

9Leonardo Morlino and Marco Tarchi, "The Dissatisfied Society: The Roots of Political Changein Italy," European Journal of Political Research 30 (July 1996).10Ronald Inglehart, "The Silent Revolution n Europe: ntergenerational hange in Post-IndustrialSocieties," American Political Science Review 65 (December 1971).

11Scott Flanagan, "Value Cleavages, Contextual Influences, and the Vote," n Scott Flanagan,Shinsaku Kohei, Ichiro Miyake, Bradley M. Richardson, and Joji Watanuki, eds., TheJapanese Voter(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); and Yun-Han Chu, Larry Diamond, and Doh Chull Shin,"Halting Progress n Korea and Taiwan," ournal of Democracy 2 (January 2001).12Jose Ramon Montero, Richard Gunther, and Mariano Torcal, "Democracy n Spain: Legitimacy,Discontent, and Dissatisfaction," Studies n Comparative nternational Development 2, no. 3 (1997);Dieter Fuchs, Giovanna Guidorossi, and Palle Svensson, "Support or the Democratic System," nHans-Dieter Klingemann and Dieter Fuchs, eds., Citizens and the State (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1995); and Chu, Diamond, and Shin (fn. 11).

13William Mishler and Richard Rose, "Trajectories f Fear and Hope: Support for Democracy nPost-Communist Europe," Comparative olitical Studies 8 (January 1996); and Geoffrey Evans and

Stephen Whitefield, "The Politics and Economics of Democratic Commitment: Support or Democ-racy n Transition Societies," British ournal of Political Science 5 (October 1995).

14Russell J. Dalton, "Communists and Democrats: Democratic Attitudes in the Two Germanies,"British Journal of Political Science 24 (October 1994); and Robert Rohrschneider, Learning Democracy(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).15Richard Rose and Doh Chull Shin. "Democratization Backwards," British Journal of PoliticalScience 1 (April 2001).

16Freedom House, "Country Report, Russia," Nations in Transit 2004, http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=47&nit=342&year=2004 accessed March 2, 2006).



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The Behavioral DimensionResearch on how citizens' behavior changes under democracy is less

widespread than research on attitudinal change.17 Putnam, a notable

exception, links participation in social organizations with support for

democracy and the effectiveness of government.18 His work in turn has

inspired others to pursue the links between participation in organiza-tions and the robustness of democracy.19 his behavioral dimension al-lows the literature on values and attitudes to engage with the literatureon the role of civil

societyin democratization.

The literature on democratic transition features a mobilized civilsociety as the critical actor in the breakthrough to democracy. This iscommon to historicist, rationalist, and process-centered accounts of de-mocratization.20 Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter capturethis moment in their metaphor "the layers of an exploding society."21Yet in many countries this moment of optimism and activism was fol-lowed by a period of withdrawal and greater passivity toward politics.It thus remains an open question whether there are other factors thatcondition the

degreeof this withdrawal.

A substantial portion of the research on posttransition civil societycomes out of the study of postcommunist countries in Europe. This di-mension seems to figure more prominently in discussions of democrati-zation in this region because Soviet-type systems were unprecedented ntheir monopolization not only of political organization but of all formsof social organization. The question, then, is whether postcommunistcountries have a unique legacy to overcome in democratization.

The literature to date on postcommunist civil society has beensomewhat

ambiguousin both

theoryand

findings.Linz and

Stepanpoint to two possible pathologies with postcommunist civil society. Atone point they suggest that conventional authoritarian regimes shouldhave a head start over postcommunist regimes, due to their legacy of

17It is worth recalling hat Almond and Verba fn. 2) also found significant differences n organi-zational participation n the five countries hat they studied (p. 247).

18Putnam (fn. 5); and idem, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 2000).

19John Brehm and Wendy Rahn, "Individual-Level Evidence for the Causes and Consequencesof Social Capital," American ournal of Political Science 1 (July 1997); Pamela Paxton, "Social Capitaland Democracy: An Interdependent Relationship," merican Sociological eview 67 (April 2002); and

Natalia Letki and Geoffrey Evans, "Endogenizing Social Trust: Democratization n East-Central Eu-rope," British Journal of Political Science 35 (July 2005) .20 Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelene Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Devel-opment and Democracy Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Adam Przeworski, Democracyand the Market New York: Cambridge University Pressl991); and Linz and Stepan (fn. 4).Z1U Donnell and bchmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore: ohns Hopkins Uni-versity Press, 1986), 48.



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totalitarianism,at the

pointof transition.22

Specifically, hey arguethat

a weaker starting point for civil society in posttotalitarian contextsmeans that more extensive reform of the legal system is necessary andthat economic reform is critical for creating a more diverse civil andpolitical society.23 Elsewhere in their argument, they identify anotherpotential pathology - that countries with strongly mobilized opposi-tional civil societies (for example, Brazil and Poland) may have difficul-ties creating a viable political society because of the very strength oftheir civil society.24 n both cases, however, they think of such legaciesas

problemsthat need to be faced on the road to

craftinga consolidated

democracy, rather than as problems of a more long-term duration.Marc Howard finds that citizens in postcommunist countries have

been more reticent about joining organizations and generally speakingare less active than citizens in other new democracies.25 Bela Gresko-vits also contends that civil society is weak in postcommunist Central

Europe, despite strong support for democracy. Rather than joining or-

ganizations and demonstrating, he contends, citizens use protest vot-ing to express their periodic dissatisfaction with democracy.26

Anderson and Mendes' work on thepropensity

toprotest

and onelectoral outcomes finds that levels of protest potential are on balancelower in postcommunist countries than in more established democra-cies. The reason is that supporters of the parties that win elections aremuch less likely to protest in newer democracies than in older ones. Inolder democracies regular protest has become part of the repertoire ofeven the winners.27 n contrast to those who note the weakness of civil

society in postcommunist contexts, Grzegorz Ekiert and Jan Kubik ex-

plain the consolidation of democracy in Poland as a product of an ac-

tive, engagedcivil

societyeven in the face of an underinstitutionalized

party system, that is, a weak political society.28These in-depth observations about the nature and strength of civil

society in the postcommunist context raise a number of more general22Linz and Stepan (fn. 4), 55-56.23Ibid., 62, 64.24Ibid., 9-10, 232-33, 271-72. One case that demonstrates he plausibility f such fears s Weimar

Germany; ee Sheri Berman, "Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic," World olitics49 (April 1997).

25Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 2003).26Greskovits, The Political Economy f Protest and Patience (Budapest: Central European Univer-

sity, 1998).27Christopher .Anderson and Silvia M. Mendes, "Learning o Lose: Election Outcomes, Experience

with Democracy, nd Political Protest Potential," ritish ournal fPolitical cience 6 (January 005).28Ekiert and Kubik, Contentious Politics n New Democracies: bast Germany, Hungary, Poland,and Slovakia, 1989-93," World olitics 50 (July 1998); and idem, Rebellious Civil Society Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press, 1999).



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theoretical issues. Doesprogress along

the behavioral dimensionlagfarther behind the attitudinal dimension in postcommunist countries

as compared with other new democracies? Perhaps as the elements ofa civic culture are coming into place, the development of civil soci-ety remains a more difficult and time-consuming enterprise. Could itbe, then, that the lag between the attitudinal and behavioral dimen-sion that has been observed in the postcommunist context is unique?A communist past may be only one particular negative legacy for thecreation of a democratic civil society; or it may be the worst, as onecan infer from Howard's

regressions.29After

all,communist

systemsworked to monopolize political and social organization to an unprec-edented degree and this had important ramifications for the startingpoint of posttransition civil society. This suggests that in general an-tecedent regime type may well be a critical variable in how posttransi-tion civil society develops. In the following section we develop a moresystematic theory of how antecedent regime type affects civil society infledgling democracies.

1 he Legacy of DictatorshipThe literatures on attitudinal and behavioral change in new democra-cies that we have discussed base their explanations argely on microlevelsurvey data from within countries. The recent literature on postcom-munist civil society suggests that part of what we observe may be alegacy of the form of antecedent dictatorship. Thus countries with dif-ferent historical trajectories out of dictatorship and into democracyhave different starting points and therefore face different challengesin

creatingeffective democratic

regimes.The weakness of

postcom-munist civil society seems to be a product of the fact that the Stalinistproject in Russia and Eastern Europe had at its core the destructionof civil society and its replacement with a form of social organizationadministered from above and enforced by the application of high levelsof violence.30

29Howard (fn. 25), chap. 4.30Leszek Kolakowski, "The Myth of Human Self-Identity: Unity of Civil and Political Society in

Socialist Thought," in Leszek Kolakowski and Stuart Hampshire, eds., The Socialist Idea (New York:Basic Books 1974); Piotr Ogrodzinski, "Civil Society and the Market under Real Socialism," in Michael

Bernhard and Henryk Szlajfer, eds., From the Polish Underground: Selections from 'Krytyka,' 1978-1999(University Park: Penn State University Press, 1995); Michael Bernhard, "Civil Society after the FirstTransition: Dilemmas of Post-communist Democratization in Poland and Beyond," Communist andPost-Communist Studies 29 (September 1996); Ekiert and Kubik (fh. 28, 1999): and Howard (fn. 25).

Some argue that this legacy goes beyond the Stalinist project and is a product of the developmen-tal trajectory of Eastern Europe as a region. For a sustained historical argument along these lines, see



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If citizens inpostcommunist

countries tend toengage

less in thekinds of activities that we associate with a thriving democratic civil so-ciety that is, joining organizations and giving voice to their concerns

through public actions like demonstrations and protests it probablyalso means that other forms of dictatorship also leave legacies that af-fect patterns of civil society. Thus we expect that most countries with a

legacy of dictatorship will face greater challenges in creating and sus-

taining civil society than will long-standing democracies. The first andmost obvious thing that we expect to find in terms of regime legacy is:

- Hypothesis 1. Long-standing democracies will have more developedcivil societies than democracies with a more recent dictatorial legacy.

Among those countries that have experienced dictatorship thereis also a fundamental distinction between the legacies of totalitarian

regimes and those of authoritarian regimes. Linz in his typology ofmodern forms of dictatorship uses the degree of social pluralism andmobilization as important factors that distinguish between these twoforms of dictatorship.31 The degree of pluralism and the extent of or-

ganizational infrastructure that exists at the point of transition from

dictatorship to democracy represent a starting point for the organiza-tion of civil society under democracy. If one thinks of the legacies of

dictatorship in terms of a path-dependent approach to democratiza-tion, democracy will be constructed through the adaptation and trans-formation of elements in place at the termination of dictatorship.32 orthis reason, legacies are an essential part of understanding the develop-mental trajectory of civil society in new democracies.

Totalitarian regimes worked actively to homogenize their societ-ies and subject them to the discipline of the state. Autonomous social

organization was abolished and replaced by state-administered appa-ratuses that coordinated the behavior of different social groups. Such

organizations included trade unions, professional associations, youthgroups, the mass media, the educational system, and even, at the high

Valerie Bunce, "The Historical Origins of the East-West Divide: Civil Society, Political Society, and

Democracy n Europe," n Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord, eds., Civil Society efore Democracy: essonsfrom Nineteenth-Century urope Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).

31Juan Linz, "Totalitarian nd Authoritarian Regimes," n Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson Polsby,eds., Handbook fPolitical Science, ol. 3 (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975).32

Terry Karl, "Dilemmas of Democratization n Latin America," Comparative olitics 3 (October1990); James Mahoney, The Legacies of Liberalism: Path Dependence and Political Regimes in CentralAmerica Baltimore: ohns Hopkins University Press, 2001); and Grzegorz Ekiert, The State againstSociety: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1996).



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pointof totalitarian

aspirations,eisure-time clubs.

Additionally,these

organizations were used to mobilize the population in support of theregime: participation in civic rituals was required of all citizens.33

Authoritarian regimes, by contrast, allow for what Linz calls "lim-ited pluralism." Specifically, authoritarian regimes are less aggressiveabout trying to homogenize their societies. They allow for the differen-tiation of groups and subcultures but discourage the active expression ofthose differences at the political level. For that reason Linz describes thepluralism that emerges under authoritarian regimes as "not responsible."

Furthermore, xceptfor critical

periodsin their

history (likethe installa-

tion of the regime or the unveiling of important new initiatives), authori-tarian regimes discourage citizens from actively participating n politics.Instead, they encourage them to retreat nto their private lives, to con-centrate on work and family, and to leave politics to those who rule.34

Given the varying degrees to which totalitarian and authoritarianregimes intervene in their societies, they should have a different im-pact on civil society following a democratic transition. First, we wouldexpect authoritarian regimes to have a higher degree of real plural-ism at the moment of

transition, simplybecause there had not been

a prior policy of homogenization. Second, we would expect differentbehavioral legacies because of the different ways in which the two re-gime types approached issues of mobilization. In the case of totalitar-ian regimes, where there was forced mobilization of the masses intoempty public rituals of obedience, we would expect a certain apathy, fnot outright hostility, toward participation in organizations and pub-lic political demonstrations a posttotalitarian hangover of sorts fromadministered organizational life. By contrast, under authoritarian re-

gimes,where real social differences were tolerated but their

expressionwas discouraged if not even repressed, we would expect less of a nega-tive orientation toward public organizations and political expression.Thus we also expect to find:

- Hypothesis 2. Totalitarian legacies will have a greater negative effecton civil society than will authoritarian legacies.

Another legacy that should affect posttransition civil society is theduration of the previous dictatorship. We would expect that that long-lived dictatorship will have a more profound impact on the behaviorand organizational capacity of society. In those societies ruled by dicta-

33Linz (fn. 31), 191-92.34Ibid, 264.



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torshipfor

longer periodsof

time, negative legacieson civil

societywill

be more profound.35 y contrast, after the fall of short-lived dictatorshipswe would expect that activists and organizational networks from earlierperiods of democracy would quickly reengage in politics. Therefore,the longer a dictatorship persists, the less likely it is that organizationalinfrastructure, activist cadres, and knowledge will be preserved. Ear-lier democratic or pluralistic forms of political behavior are "unlearned"

through generational turnover and as the institutional remnants ofmore open political systems fade.36Thus:

- Hypothesis 3. Countries hat experience onger periods under dic-tatorship will have weaker civil societies han those with shorter experi-ences.

Finally, we expect that duration will have a more pronounced effectin countries that have a totalitarian legacy. This is because the totali-tarian impulse seeks to remake society in conformity with some ab-stract ideal. Social pluralism is therefore more aggressively suppressedunder totalitarian and posttotalitarian regimes.37 As we already noted,authoritarian regimes tolerate social pluralism but discourage its activearticulation politically. Thus even if civil society is denied a voice underauthoritarian regimes, the social basis for the reemergence of a pluralis-tic civil society has not been as actively disorganized and suppressed asunder totalitarian regimes. Hence we also expect to find:

35Green s work on in the strength of postcommunist civil society shows strong variation betweencountries hat are part of the Confederation of Independent States and those that are not. We suspectthat this is a product of how long different postcommunist countries were under the system. TheCIS countries had been constituent parts of the USSR since the end of the Russian Civil War. The

non-CIS states were in large part added to the USSR in 1939 or became part of the Soviet bloc af-ter WWII. See Andrew T. Green, "Comparative Development of Post-Communist Civil Societies,"Europe-Asia tudies 4 (May 2002).36It is clear that the longer a dictatorship s in place, the slimmer the chances that historical par-ties will resurrect hemselves. In the post-Soviet countries there are no significant historical parties.In Eastern Europe the record s a little more complex. For instance, the Christian democrats and theliberals reemerged n Romania as important opposition parties, and in the Czech Republic the socialdemocrats have even led successive governments. n Poland and Hungary, by contrast, historical par-ties have been much less important actors. n Southern Europe and Latin America, the resurrection fparties has been much more common.

37In the case of the postcommunist countries, democratic ransitions were not made directly romthe totalitarian phase of their development but were made from a posttotalitarian hase. This had im-

portant ramifications or the extent of violence used by the regime against he society (the curtailment

of terror as an instrument of social change) and for which areas of life were homogenized and admin-istered by the state (a retreat rom the aspiration o control private ife and leisure activity). Still statecontrol of social organization and the requirement o participate n public rituals of support remained.Though posttotalitarian egimes approached more conventional orms of authoritarianism ver time,Linz and Stepan (fn. 4) maintain "posttotalitarian" s a distinct regime type due to its past legacies andits unique organizational pattern of social life.



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- Hypothesis 4. The impact of the duration of antecedent dictatoriallegacy will be more pronounced for countries with a totalitarian legacy.

We next turn to a discussion of how we will test the hypotheses.

Research Design

Our sample was limited to democracies that participated in the WorldValues Survey 2000. Since our object of interest is civil society un-der democratic regimes, we limited the sample to countries that weredemocratic in the survey years (1999 to 2001). Inclusion of a coun-try in our sample was based on the dichotomous coding developed byBernhard, Nordstrom, and Reenock.38 This is an event history data setthat codes countries as democratic/nondemocratic on the basis of threecriteria stateness, high levels of political competition, and inclusionof the population in the political system.39

Our sample thus includes forty-two democracies, from a variety ofworld regions and with diverse historical paths to democracy.40 hosecountries are listed in Table 1. As in all studies relying on WVS, hesample includes a greater proportion of countries with higher levelsof development. Still the sample is diverse in terms of level of devel-opment, antecedent regime type, democratic longevity, and quality ofdemocracy.

The left-hand column of the table lists the long-standing democra-cies we use as a reference group in some of our statistical models. Thesecountries include a number of stable democracies in Europe and NorthAmerica. What is notable about their developmental trajectory s thatthey made the transition to democracy in an evolutionary fashion,moving from competitive forms of oligarchy with restricted suffrage tofully competitive and almost completely inclusive forms of polyarchyby some time in the first half of the twentieth century. All of these de-mocracies already had highly competitive political systems with levelsof empowerment approaching 50 percent of the adult population or

38For details on the coding scheme used, see Michael Bernhard, Timothy Nordstrom, and Chris-topher Reenock, "Economic Performance, nstitutional Intermediation, and Democratic Survival,"Journal of Politics 63 (September 2001), 783-85.JVLinz and btepan (fn. 4); and Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: articipation nd Opposition New Haven:Yale University Press, 1971).40While we have forty-two democracies, we have forty-three different legacies. The German sam-ple has been divided into East and West to control for the different regime histories of the two partsof the country before unification.



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Table 1Countries in the Data Set by Regime Legacy and Duration of

Antecedent Dictatorship

Long-standingDemocratic Authoritarian" Totalitarian"

Belgium Argentina (6) Austria (6)Canada Bangladesh 8) Bulgaria 42)Denmark Chile (14) Czech Republic (41)Finland Greece (6) East Germany (39)France India (2) Estonia (57)Iceland Japan (76) Hungary (38)Ireland Mexico (78) Italy (14)Luxembourg Portugal 43) Latvia (57)Netherlands Philippines (8) Lithuania (57)Sweden South Africa (81) Macedonia (37)United States South Korea 14) Moldova (57)

Spain (35) Poland (41)Turkey 2) Romania (39)Venezuela(20) Russia (65)

Slovenia (37)Slovakia 41)Ukraine (65)West Germany 11)

aThe duration n years f the ast period f dictatorship s shown n parentheses.

higher in the interwar period. Except for periods of foreign occupationduring World War II, all have had continuous democratic rule untiltoday.41

The other columns show democracies (circa 2000) that had an an-

tecedent dictatorial legacy. All of these regimes had at least one experi-ence with totalitarianism or authoritarianism n the interwar or postwarperiods, and many of them had several. The duration of the last spell of

dictatorship follows the country name in parentheses. Among the casesof authoritarian legacy we find some countries that had longer legaciessuch as the apartheid state in South Africa, the long-lived PRIregime inMexico, and imperial Japan, as well the countries of the Iberian Penin-sula, whose initial attempts at democracy collapsed in the interwar era.

41Belgium, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands had interruptions n democracy

during the World War II German occupation. However, democracy was restored after the war andtook up where it had left off when interrupted by the occupation. n all four countries here was a con-tinuity of the constitution, and politicians not discredited by collaboration with the Axis were restoredto power. Thus we do not consider his interruption o be a breakdown n regime.



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There is also a mix of more short-lived authoritarianregimes,

includ-ing many countries in Latin America and Southern Europe that havealternated between competitive forms of rule like democracy or oligar-chy and periodic military dictatorship (Argentina, Chile, Turkey, andGreece). We also find some Asian countries that show this pattern ofswings between democracy and authoritarianism (Bangladesh, Philip-pines, and South Korea). Finally, n this category there are also a coupleof countries that have relatively ong periods of democracy n the postwarperiod but that either experienced short-term breakdowns of democ-

racy (Indiain the

1970s)or that

inaugurated fairlystable

democracyafter long spells of stable authoritarianism for example, Venezuela).42The third column of the table includes all countries that have a to-

talitarian episode in their past. This column, too, reports the durationof antecedent dictatorship. Among them, the postcommunist countriesspent long periods of time under totalitarianism and posttotalitarian-ism. Countries with a fascist legacy are also listed in this column. Theirexperience with totalitarianism is, of course, more distant, and manyof these countries have been democracies for a long period of time, for

example,West

Germany, Italy,and Austria.43

Dependent Variables

We use two different dependent variables. The first is participation incivil society organizations. This not only reflects the behavioral dimen-sion but also gauges the infrastructural development of civil society.The second, participation in protest, is also a direct measure of thebehavioral dimensions of an engaged citizenry.

For our first dependent variable, participation in civil society orga-

nizations,we use a

question posedin wvs 2000.

Respondentswere

42India is seen by many as the epitome of democracy n a developing country, and Venezuela hasthe reputation or being a stable Latin American democracy. However, the history of both countriesis less stable than that of our long-term democracies. Democracy in India was suspended by IndiraGandhi in the mid-1970s, and Venezuela's long episode with democracy began only in 1958. The situ-ation there, beginning in the 1990s, became quite unstable after several unsuccessful coup attempts bythe current president, Hugo Chavez, several unsuccessful attempts to remove Chavez from power (bygeneral strike, plebiscite, and coup d'etat), and Chavez's rewriting of the constitution to enhance hisown power. Because of concerns expressed by one of the reviewers of this article, we ran our modelswith India categorized as a long-term democracy o assure ourselves hat its coding was not affectingour results. t had no effect.

43Today, many think of Germany, Austria, and Italy as not very different from other OECD oun-

tries given their long postwar history as democracies. However, we felt that these countries, as a resultof their histories, aced particular egacies with regard o civil society. And indeed their levels of orga-nizational and protest behavior s below the mean figures or the long-term democracy group. At thesuggestion of a reviewer we recategorized hem as long-term democracies and reran our regressions.The recategorization aused many of our independent variables o lose significance. We read this assupportive of our categorization.



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asked whetherthey belonged

to arange

ofvoluntary organizations,

in-cluding (1) social welfare providers, (2) churches, (3) cultural societies,(4) labor unions, (5) national political parties, (6) local political partyorganizations, (7) human rights groups, (8) organizations devoted toconservation, the environment, ecology, and animal rights, (9) profes-sional associations, (10) youth movements, (11) sports or recreationclubs, (12) women's groups, (13) the peace movement, (14) organiza-tions concerned with health issues, and (15) others. The scale rangesfrom 0 to 15. An individual who answered positively to belonging to

anyof these

organizationswas scored a 1 for civil

society participationfor each organization and a 0 if the answer was no.Our second dependent variable is participation in protest actions.

Following Dalton and van Sickle, we measure participation in protestusing four questions from wvs 2000.44 Respondents were asked if they"have participated, might participate or would never participate" nfour acts of protest: (1) boycotts, (2) lawful demonstrations, (3) unof-ficial strikes, and (4) occupying buildings or factories. Following Dal-ton and van Sickle, we assigned values of 1 to participation in lawful

demonstrations,2 to

joiningin

boycotts,2 for

goingon

strike,and 3

for occupying buildings or factories. The protest scale ranges from 0 forno participation to a maximum of 8.

Independent variables

Our main independent variable is antecedent regime type. We havecoded a series of dummy variables that capture whether the antecedent

regime was totalitarian or authoritarian. For the distinction betweentotalitarian and authoritarian regimes we use the typology devel-

oped byLinz. This

codingincludes a

largenumber of countries that

moved from pure totalitarianism to posttotalitarianism in the 1950sand 1960s.45 For many of our models we use the long-standing stabledemocracies as a reference group. We thus coded a dummy variable forthem as well. Finally, we gauge the duration of the antecedent dictator-

ship using Polity IV's coding of regime durability for the period priorto democratization of the country.46

44Russell J. Dalton and Alix van Sickle, "The Resource, Structural nd Cultural Bases of Protest,"Center for the Study of Democracy, http://repositories.cdlib.org/csd/05-ll (accessed May 8, 2006).

45Linz (fn. 31); and Linz and Stepan (fn. 4).46Monty Marshall and Keith Jaggers, Polity IV Dataset Users' Manual, www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/

polity (accessed December 23, 2005). In some cases we corrected or what we considered o be inac-curacies or some countries. For instance, Polity codes Poland as having two different regimes in the

period from the 1940s to the 1980s. Clearly his was a continuous regime ruled by the same party stateover the course of this period.



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552 WORLD POLITICS

Our statistical models include a number of controlvariables,

on boththe national and the individual levels that are cited in the literature ashaving an impact on participation in organizational life and protest.Appendix 1 provides the justification for their inclusion and a shortsynopsis of how we measured them.

Methodology

To test our hypotheses we use multilevel regression models (hlm). Us-ing dummy variables n ols to assess the impact of national-level con-textual variables would result in the underestimation of the standarderrors of the coefficients. This causes Type I error.47 nstead, we useHLM,which also allows us to control simultaneously for both individu-al-level and national-level variables.48 hus each of our models includestwo equations. When participation in civil society organizations is thedependent variable, this is the specification:

Participationn CivilSociety ^ +ft. (Trust..) p2j(Age.)+ . .ft. (x,..) e.. (1)

Pqj Yoo Yoi Authoritarian Legacy.) + y02Totalitarian Legacy.) +

Y03(Duration f Dictatorship.) + y04(Development.) + yO5(Level f

Democracy.) + y06(Democratic Longevity.) + UQ. (2)

When protest participation is the dependent variable, we use thesetwo equations:

Protest = (30. ft. Trust.) + (32(Political nterest.)' + P3(Postmaterialism .)U+-WA' ' U

(3)Poj

= Too Y0i(Autnoritarian Legacy.) + y02(Totalitarian egacy.) +

Y03(Duration f Dictatorship.) + Y04(Development.) Y05(Level f

Democracy.) + Y06(Democratic Longevity.) + Y07(Political risis.)' +Y08(AGDP/Capita.) + U0.

' '(4)

Using the models above we estimate, in the first and third equa-tions, the effect of individual-level predictors on participation in civilsociety organizations and/or protest. In these models we do not specify

47Marco R. Steenbergen and Bradford S.Jones, "Modeling Multilevel Data Structures," AmericanJournal of Political Science 46 (January 2002).48Since we were concerned about the skewness of our data, we ran a number of alternative speci-fications to see whether the findings were stable. For instance, some might argue that a Poisson modelwould be more appropriate for this analysis because our dependent variable is a count variable. Weran Poisson, ols, and binomial versions of our models, and the results are consistent for both reducedand full maximum likelihood estimations. See Evan Schofer and Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas, "TheStructural Contexts of Civic Engagement: Voluntary Association Membership in Comparative Per-

spective," American Sociological Review 66 (December 2001).



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cross-level interactionsamong

variables and thus hold individual-levelcoefficients constant across groups.49 Equations 2 and 4 estimate theeffect of antecedent regime type, as well as contextual variables suchas level of democracy, economic development, and longevity of demo-cratic regime.

In order to determine whether duration effects differ according o typeof antecedent dictatorship, we also run an interaction model betweentwo national-level variables: duration and antecedent regime type. Forreasons we will explain, we run this model only for the countries with a

previous historyof

dictatorship.This takes the

followingform:

Po = Yoo+Yqi Authoritarian Legacy.) + y02(Duration of Dictatorship.)+ 703(Development.) + y^CLevel of Democracy.) + y05(Democratic Longevity.)+ y06(Authoritarian Legacy *Duration of Dictatorship.) + LL (5)

We now turn to the the empirical findings.

Results

We begin with a discussion of the data for the main variables in ourmodels (more detailed descriptive statistics on all variables can be foundin Appendix 2). Figure 1 displays the level of participation n civil soci-

ety organizations for all countries in our sample arrayed by regime type.As one would expect, the long-standing democracies exhibit the high-est levels of participation in civil society organizations (mean = 2.07).The countries with a totalitarian/posttotalitarian egacy have the lowest

group mean (0.69). Authoritarian regimes fall between the democraticand the totalitarian legacy groups (1.13). These rankings are consistent

with what we expect in hypotheses 1 and 2.Figure 2 reports similar findings for the protest variable. Once again,

as expected, the long-standing democracies have the highest level of

participation in protest (mean = 0.92), followed by the authoritarian

legacy group (0.49), and those with a totalitarian past are the lowest(0.42). Even though what we see here is consistent with what we expectin the hypotheses, the mean scores on the protest scale for totalitarian

49There is a controversy about whether to use group-mean versus grand-mean centering in theliterature on multilevel models. Raudenbush and Bryk argue that in the absence of cross-level nter-actions grand mean centering s the most appropriate. Hox argues that if the object of interest is aninteraction between an individual-level ariable and a contextual variable, roup mean centering s thebetter option. In this study, given the absence of any cross-level interaction variables, we use grandmean centering for our independent variables. See Stephen Raudenbush and Anthony Bryk, Hierar-chicalLinear Models (Newbury Park, Calif: Sage, 2002); and Joop Hox, Multilevel Analysis Mahwah,N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002).



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554 WORLD POLITICS

Figure 1Participation in Civil Society Organizations by Regime Type

and authoritarian legacies are much closer than in the organizationaldimension.

Table 2 presents our regression results for participation in civil soci-ety organizations. Model 1 reports the findings for the individual-levelpredictors of civil society participation from wvs. Our results for thesevariables are significant across the board, confirming long-established



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556 WORLD POLITICS

Table 2Predictors of Organizational Participation3

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Regime variablesDuration - - -0063f (.0060)Authoritarianism - - -.8794*** (.3430)Totalitarianism - - -1.2665*** (.3959)

Individual-level ontrol variablesTrust .1592*** (.0638) .1586*** (.0636) .1588*** (.0636)Education .1227*** (.0148) .1228*** (.0148) .1228*** (.0148)Income .0487*** (.0075) .0486*** (.0075) .0486*** (.0077)Postmaterialism .1342*** (.0262) .1336*** (.0262) .1336*** (.0262)Age .0568*** (.0135) .0566***^ .0135) .0568*** (.0136)Gender .1404*** (.0590) .1405*** (.0590) .1404*** (.0589)Religiosity .2052*** (.0432) .2055*** (.0432) .2054*** (.0432)

National-level control variablesLevel of Democracy - -.0498 (.0839) -.0290 (.0798)Development - -.0004 (.0151) .0072 (.0162)Democratic Longevity - .0167*** (.0058) -.0057 (.0081)

Random effect:

Variance componentConstant .6230*** .4320*** .3460***

2-LogLikelihood 163047 163032 163022

N = 43,979; p


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Table 3Predictors of Protest Participation3


Regime variablesDuration - - -.0021 1 (-0020)Authoritarianism - - -.3282** (.1890)Totalitarianism - - -.3659** (.2016)

Individual-level ontrol variablesTrust .1310*** (.0204) .1297*** (.0201) .1297*** (.0201)Education .0472*** (.0063) .0475*** (.0063) .0475*** (.0063)Income .0104** (.0061) .0102*** (.0060) .0102** (.0060)Postmaterialism .1608*** (.0285) .1596*** (.0179) .1597*** (.0178)Age .01031 (.0085) .01011 (.0085) .0102* (.0085)Gender .1468*** (.0212) .1469*** (.0212) .1469*** (.0212)Religiosity -.1666*** (.0340) -.1664*** (.0339) -.1664*** (.0039)Political Interest .1539*** (.0189) .1539*** (.0189) .1539*** (.0189)

National-level control variablesLevel of Democracy - .0489** (.0286) .0593** (.0285)Development - -.0103* (.0065) -.0082** (.0046)Democratic Longevity - .0072*** (.0024) .0004 (.0034)

Economic Growth-

-.0030 (.0102) -.0092 (.0113)Crisis - -.0737 (.0850) -.0361 (.0807)Random effect:Variance component

Constant .0840*** .0543*** .0489***

2-LogLikelihood 133232 133214 133209

N = 41,197; p


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558 WORLD POLITICS

Table 4Interaction of Regime Type and Duration for Countires

with Dictatorial Legacies3

Organizational articipation Protest


Regime variablesDuration -.0057* (.0042) -.0275*** (.0089) -0021t (-0019)Authoritarianism .3743** (.1964) -.6864** (.3223) .0347 (.0876)Authoritarian*Duration - .0283*** .0094) -

Individual-level ontrol variablesTrust .0654 (.0797) .0657 (.0796) .0962*** .0236)Education .1017*** .0166) .1019*** .0167) .0412*** .0065)Income .0354*** .0059) .0352*** .0059) .00801 (.0075)Postmaterialism .1197*** .0314) .1194*** .0314) .1095*** .0127)Age .0371*** .0149) .0372*** .0149) .0137* (.0101)Gender .1796*** .0759) .1795*** .0759) .1454*** .0231)Religiosity .1506*** .0540) .1502*** .0540) .1337*** .0422)

National-level control variablesLevel of Democracy -.0464 (.0773) -.0857 (.0704) .0626** (.0305)

Development .0050 (.0140) -.0070 (.0150) -.00801 (.0070)Democratic Longevity -.0017 (.0075) -.0080 (.0090) .0008 (.0044)Economic Growth - - -.0035 (.0118)Crisis - - -.0370 (.0892)

Random effect:Variance component

Constant .2699*** .2264*** .0484***

2-LogLikelihood 121007 121002 95747

N = 31,258; p


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expectationsin

hypotheses1 and

2,the results in model 6

(Table 3)for authoritarian and totalitarian legacies are very close and thus arecause for concern. We use the additional tests to determine whetherthe two dictatorial legacies are statistically distinct (hypothesis 2) fromeach other. For hypothesis 4 on the potentially different impact of du-ration on previous dictatorial legacy, we need to drop the democraciesfrom the model because their dictatorial duration scores are all 0 andthis creates a multicollinearity problem which makes it impossible toestimate the interaction effect of duration and regime legacies.

In model 7participation

in civilsociety organizations

is thedepen-dent variable, and countries with a totalitarian legacy are the reference

category. The results here confirm that there is a distinct impact forthe two types of dictatorship. The coefficient on authoritarian legacyis both positive and significant. Duration is also negative and signifi-cant in this specification, and the level of significance is stronger thanin the previous models, where stable long-lasting democracies are thereference category. The results for model 9 where protest behavior isthe dependent variable are less supportive of our theory. Our concernsover the differences in the

magnitudebetween the totalitarian and au-

thoritarian legacy coefficients for protest in model 6 are shown as war-ranted. The two types do not have statistically distinct effects. Thuswhile both have a different impact than long-standing democracy, heydo not differ from each other with regard to protest. Here too, the du-ration variable remains negative and significant.

In model 8 we test hypothesis 4 about whether different regime leg-acies condition the impact of duration on organizational behavior. Our

expectation here was that duration should be more critical for countrieswith a totalitarian

legacy.And indeed the interaction term for authori-

tarian legacies and duration is positive and significant. When we ran asimilar model for protest as the dependent variable we did not find asimilar interaction effect (findings not reported here). Thus hypothesis4 was confirmed for organizational behavior but rejected for protest.

In Figure 3 we examine the effects of duration on the organizationaldimension of civil society.52 o generate this figure we set all other inde-

pendent variables at their mean and vary the duration of the antecedent

dictatorship across the two antecedent regime types. The figure showsthat the effect of duration is different for countries with authoritar-

52In these figures the lines are drawn over the range of the least common denominator minimumand maximum values for the regime legacies (authoritarian 2, 81; totalitarian 6, 65). The figure of 35

represents the mean value for both types combined.



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560 WORLD POLITICS

Figure 3The Effect of Duration by Regime Type on Participation

in Organizations

ian and totalitarian legacies. For the authoritarian part of our sample,countries with a

longer regimeduration will on balance have

strongercivil societies (from the coefficients in model 8 it is clear that the net

impact of authoritarianism is still negative). For totalitarian legacies,however, the impact of greater duration is negative. This also meansthat the power of the totalitarian effect was strong enough to drivethe negative result for duration in model three. By interacting durationwith the two legacies, we see that it actually has a different impact forthe two types of regimes.

In Figure 4 we show the impact of duration on protest behavior forall dictatorial

legacies.We do not differentiate its

impacton the ba-

sis of those legacies because interactions between duration and legacywere not significant for the protest model. For protest, regime durationhas a small net negative effect on behavior. While we cannot directlytest this, our suspicion for why antecedent regime type is importantfor organizational behavior, but not for protest, is the differing natureof the two activities. Protest requires a lesser degree of formal politicalorganization (but obviously is enhanced by better organization). It canbe, though is not always, more ad hoc and spontaneous. It is our beliefthat totalitarian

regimeswith their

legacyof

greater suppressionof un-

derlying social pluralism and the rooting out of earlier forms of social

organization makes it harder in posttransition societies to form andsustain social and political organizations. Apparently these differencesare not so great with regard to protest.



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Figure 4The Effect of the Duration of Dictatorial regimes on

Protest Behavior

ConclusionsWe began with the notion that the survival and effective operation ofdemocracy following transitions involved at least two processes. First,the values and attitudes of citizens change in ways that are more con-gruent with the smooth operation of a democratic system. There is a sub-stantial iterature hat shows that in successful democracies, often in thecourse of a generation, citizens' attitudes become more "civic," rust in fel-low citizens and the government grows, and democracy omes to be seen asthe most preferred political system. The second process, hat of behavioralchange, seems to occur at a slower pace. Here we looked at two dimensionscentral to the functioning of the sort of robust civil society that connectscitizens and the state in the sort of responsive relationship under whichdemocracies perform well participation n organizations and protests.

Among the democracies in our sample, we indeed saw wide varia-tion in the behavior of citizens in different nations. As expected, we sawthe highest level of participation in the oldest established democracies.In the case of newer democracies, we found that despite the attention

paid to civil society's central role in many transition processes, the sortof demobilization predicted by O'Donnell and Schmitter is a common

phenomenon.53 What was interesting in our findings is that the legacyof the antecedent form of dictatorship, whether it was authoritarian or

53And we should add that in our sample we see little evidence that civil societies stay mobilizedand complicate he task of establishing a viable political society as Linz and Stepan (fn. 4) feared wasa possibility.



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562 WORLD POLITICS

totalitarian,and how

longit had endured were critical factors in ex-

plaining the lower levels of activity in posttransition civil societies.We theorized that totalitarianism should have a greater effect in re-

tarding the emergence of civil society than authoritarianism because ofthe all-encompassing nature of its organizational monopoly. Here wefound this to be true for the organizational dimension but not for pro-test. Whereas the coefficient for antecedent totalitarian regimes wasmore negative in the protest models, the result was not statistically dif-ferent from the result for authoritarian legacies.

We alsoargued

that the duration of the antecedentregime

shouldalso affect the development of posttransition civil society, with long-lived dictatorship having a more negative effect. This theory was con-firmed in the protest dimension: the duration of antecedent dictatorshiphad a negative impact. However, there was an unexpected finding inthe organizational dimension. When we interacted antecedent regimetype with duration, we found a strong negative effect for totalitarianregimes and a slight positive impact for authoritarian. This differentialimpact was masked when we ran models without the interactions term.Thus we found that

long-livedauthoritarianism was less of a barrier

to civil society in the organizational dimension than was short-livedauthoritarianism.

Our research builds on classical theoretical insights from RobertPutnam and Juan Linz. Putnam directed us toward an examination ofthe behavioral aspects of building democracy in posttransition societ-ies. By taking his insight out of the realm of subnational comparisonand putting it into a cross-national perspective, we came to a differentunderstanding: more proximate historical legacies such as a history of

dictatorshipalso can have

lasting effects;and in the case of countries

like Italy with a fascist past, this continues to affect the nature of itscivil society today.

Linz s understanding of the nature of authoritarianism and totali-tarianism framed our explanation of the differential effects of mod-ern forms of dictatorship. We also benefited from the discussion of thetasks necessitated by the pathways out of different forms of dictator-ship to consolidated democracy in his coauthored work with Stepan.However our notion of legacy is different from theirs. For them legaciesconstitute a set of barriers and a set of tasks in the

processof

craftinga

consolidated democracy. Our notion of legacy is that of a residual ef-fect that may require more than the kind of elite-based purposive actioninherent in a notion like "crafting." Rather, such legacies are subject toslower patterns of change and constitute part of the structural onditions



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to which theprocess

of democratization ssubject

in different contexts.

Finally, in their concluding reflections Linz and Stepan also note thatprior regime type and time variables are key components of any expla-nation of posttransition democratic success and merit further research.We believe that our examination of both of these and their interactionvalidates their insight and contributes something new, both substan-

tively and empirically, about the impact of these two legacy variables.Our research builds in many ways on Marc Howard s work on post-

communist civil society. We confirm Howard's findings on the strongly

negative impactof the communist

experienceon the

organizationaldi-

mension of civil society. His findings based on the 1995 wvs data hold

up in our models using the 2000 surveys. In addition, we find that the"curse" f totalitarianism is not limited to postcommunist countries: italso still has residual effects in the former Axis countries. Furthermorewe also find that the negative legacies were not confined to countrieswith a totalitarian past and that authoritarian legacies also negativelyaffect civil society, though not as strongly. We also add a new dimensionto understanding the impact of dictatorial legacies on civil societyduration of rule of antecedent

dictatorship.We show not

onlythat the

nature of the dictatorial rule poses daunting posttransition challengesfor the building of democracy but also that the duration of dictatorialrule affects those legacies. More stable forms of totalitarianism (likecommunism) intensify that impact, whereas for authoritarian regimesduration seems to diminish the impact slightly.

Our findings on antecedent regime duration for postcommunistcountries are also relevant for understanding the comparative suc-cess of democratization processes in this region. Specifically, the corecountries of the old Soviet Union

experiencedthe

longest periodof

totalitarian/posttotalitarian rule and also, in many regards, have a farweaker record of democratic achievement than the countries subjectedto Soviet- type rule in the period during and after World War II (East-Central Europe, the Baltic States, and the Balkans). In assessing therelative success of democratization efforts in the region, our finding onthe impact of duration on civil society represents a potential explana-tion that should be assessed in comparison with others such as geogra-phy and natural resource endowments.54

Our research also movesbeyond

Howard in that we consider the

strength of civil society along more than one dimension. We not only54

Jeffrey S. Kopstein and David A. Reilley, "Geographic Diffusion and the Transformation f thePostcommunist World," World olitics 53 (October 2000); and M. Steven Fish, Democracy erailed nRussia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).



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564 WORLD POLITICS

test ourtheory

in terms of theorganizational

dimension but also ex-plore the impact of dictatorial legacies on protest behavior. Here wefind that an antecedent dictatorial regime s duration has a negative ef-fect on protest behavior. However, we do not detect a statistical differ-ence between countries with totalitarian versus authoritarian legacies.This finding does not quite concur with Greskovits's contention thatthere is a uniquely low level of protest in postcommunist societies.Rather, both they and countries with an authoritarian legacy are lessdeveloped than established democracies in this regard. It is a dictator-

ships

longevityand not its form that differentiates its

impactfrom that

of other dictatorships.In this regard our work also sheds some light on the controversy

between Howard's findings on organizational behavior and Kubik andEkiert s on protest. While we confirm Howard s contention about theweakness of organization in postcommunist civil society, our findingsabout protest are more mixed. Unlike Kubik and Ekiert, we do not findthat protest in postcommunist countries is particularly developed, es-pecially when compared with the situation in long-standing democra-cies.

Thus,we do not confirm Ekiert and Kubik s

findingsin the Polish

case that higher levels of protest (contentious politics) substitute for theaspects of a more robust political society in democratic consolidation.To be fair, however, their data are different from ours: their conclusionsare based on event counts drawn from news coverage and their timeframe is 1992-93. In this regard, t is important when debating generalpropositions about civil society to specify which dimension the researchaddresses and the kind of data on which conclusions are based.

Our findings also speak to the literatures on attitudinal and behav-ioral

changein new democracies. These two extensive literatures do

not incorporate the impact of antecedent regime type. It is importantto note that our findings do little to change either literature's under-standing of the individual-level explanation of values, attitudes, orprotest behavior. When we introduce our antecedent regime variable,however, we note some differences between our findings for national-level variables and those of some of the influential work in these litera-tures. For example, Paxton's work finds an important and significantreciprocal relationship between level of democracy and strength of civil

society.55When we introduce

regime legacyand dictatorial duration

into our models, level of democracy is not significant for organizationalbehavior. It is significant for protest, however. Similarly Anderson and

55Paxton (fn. 19).



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Mendes' work onprotest

shows that democraticlongevity

has an im-

portant impact on protest behavior.56 However, when we include our

regime variables n the last of our protest models, democratic longevityis no longer significant.

What these two examples demonstrate is that political legacy vari-ables are an important national-level factor that should become part ofthe standard repertoire of the study of political culture and protest be-havior in new democracies. Further, we believe our findings speak to the

importance of the incorporation f historical legacy variables nto researchcurrents hat

investigatehe

impactof

temporally proximateconditions on

political outcomes. Given the widespread urrency f path-dependent ap-proaches to issues of democratization, we need to begin including legacyvariables n our tests to assure that we do not give too much weight tothe conditions of the present if they are a product of a legacy of the past.

Appendix 1: Control Variables

National Level

level of democracy

We controlled for the potential impact of higher levels of democracyon behavior using the Polity combined score for a given country for the

year of the survey data.57

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

To control for the potential impact of higher levels of development, weincluded a measure of GDPper capita for the year the survey was con-

ducted for a given country.58

DEMOCRATIC LONGEVITY

To control for the impact of the potential effect of long-lived democracyon citizen's organizational or protest behavior, we included a measureof the number of years of continuous operation of democracy in a givencountry at the time the survey was conducted.59 n calculating demo-cratic longevity, we did not count voluntary partition and occupation as

56Anderson and Mendes (fn. 27).57Marshall and Jaggers fn. 46).58The World Bank Group, World Development ndicators Online 1960-2005), http://publications.

worldbank.org/WDI/ (accessed May 14, 2006).59Bernhard, Nordstrom, and Reenock (fn. 38).



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566 WORLD POLITICS

regimebreakdown. This is relevant for

Belgium,the Czech

Republic,Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and France.For those models in which we used protest as the dependent vari-

able we included an additional two variables routinely used for controlpurposes. These were:

ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

We controlled for possible effects of economic growth or contractionon protest behavior by including a measure of annual economic perfor-mance for the

yearthe

surveywas conducted.60

POLITICAL CRISIS

We included a dummy variable to capture those instances in which acountry was undergoing a political crisis at the time the WVS was con-ducted.61

Individual Level

interpersonal trust

This was measured using the standard WVSquestion of "whether peoplecan be trusted" or "need to be cautious."

EDUCATION LEVEL

We used the response to the WVS question on the respondent s high-est level of educational attainment (ranging from 0=no schooling orelementary school dropout to 8=higher education).

INCOME LEVEL

We used the response to the WVS question in which participants wereasked to scale their individual relative income from 1 to 10.

POSTMATERIALISM

This was computed from WVS n the basis of Inglehart s four-item scaleof "postmaterialist alues."62

60The World Bank Group (fn. 58). We ran several alternative specifications of this variable, n-

cluding taking the average of the previous years (from two to eight). The different specifications didnot change our findings for the main independent variables.61Arthur S. Banks, Cross-National Time Series Data Archive (Binghamton: Centre for Social

Analysis, State University of New York, 2005).62Ronald Inglehart, Cultural Shift in Advanced ndustrial Society Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1990).



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POLITICAL NTEREST

We used the response to the wvs question on the respondent's interestin politics (l=not interested, 4=very interested).

We also included gender and age as standard controls.

Appendix 2: Descriptive Statistics

Variable Mean sd Min Max

Organizational Participation 1.24 1.78 0 15

Protest Index 0.56 1.29 0 8Postmaterialism 1.83 0.63 1 3Trust 0.28 0.45 0 1

Age 3.36 1.60 1 6Gender 0.48 0.50 0 1Income 4.82 2.54 1 10

Religiosity 1.34 0.57 1 3Education 4.50 2.20 1 8Political Interest 2.74 0.96 1 4Democratic Longevity 32.29 29.10 3 82Level Democracy 8.77 1.59 4 10

Development (thousands) 12.39 11.72 0.3 44.8Economic Growth 2.95 3.22 -5 11Crisis 0.19 0.39 0 1Duration of Dictatorship 26.44 25.94 0 81

Longstanding Democratic

Regime 0.26 0.44 0 1Authoritarian Legacy 0.33 0.47 0 1Totalitarian Legacy 0.42 0.50 0 1

Documents

Civil Society and the Legacy of Dictatorship