Democracy: Russia vs China, Essay Example

Russia and China are the two most important countries in world that are not liberal democracies. They are following individual patterns to establish economic and political systems that work for them. China has moved to reform its economy in terms of legal and administrative system, but it has taken few steps to introduce democracy. Russia, in contrast moved first and more quickly on democracy. After communism Russia moved rapidly to free and fair elections in hope they would produce western style democracy. To oversimplify, China is reforming its economies before its politics, while Russia is doing the reverse.

A vibrant democracy thrives on the important foundations like adequate elite commitment, civic society, economic modernization and adequate institutional conditions. China and Russia are both facing challenges to keep up to the prerequisites for their democratic foundation.

Absence of elite commitment: The elites need to be persuaded that their interests would be best met by adopting democratic institutions. According to Anderson, the problem a nation faces to form and establish its democracy can be managed with farsighted and committed efforts of the cohesive elite community. They guide the nation towards pluralism, carefully preparing citizens for democratic citizenship.¹

When an individual, a ruling elite or a political class that controls a political system allows democratization to proceed, it tries to control the form of democracy as well as the process and speed of its implementation. According to Ogden, “Those in power assess their self interest and then decide how and when to democratize. Thus in most cases it is the elite that chooses to allow the political, legal and institutional changes that bring a transition to democracy.”²

China’s institutional elements are deeply embedded in society, and are yielding sufficient economic resources and coercive capabilities to keep the communist elite in power indefinitely. Diamond and Plattner says, “This elite is determined to keep its power through authoritarian rule.”³ Thus, the elite participation in democracy is more in China as compared to Russia.

While the Russian Elite generally concurs in their support for equal influence and powerful leaders, they are split down the middle regarding system for a multi party system. What is more, support for party competition diminishes over time among most elite groups. According to Ogden, “The private business leaders have a particularly low opinion of such a system. The State Duma members expressed more positive interest than other groups in 1998 but later their support declined due to chaotic party system.”² The elite’s ambivalent attitudes to party competition do not conform to a pluralist democracy and can be seen as negative experiences with fragmented political parties.

The Schumpeterian “elite democracy” model is close to the Russian elite’s conception of democracy. Such support for strong leadership and limited competition increase the obstacle in forming Pluralist constitutional democracy.⁴

Weakness of Civil Society: Arato and Cohen, says that weakness in civil societies is a major threat to consolidate democratic change. “Russia in the debilitating burden of hundreds of years of authoritarian rule is said to lack crucial elements of civil society- interpersonal trust and a broad array of non-state voluntary organizations.”⁵ According to Crawford and Lijphart, Russians are distrustful to form groups and promote their collective interests and continue their tradition of extreme atomization and selfishness. He also argues that one of the primary objectives of Stalinism was destruction of civil society so that potential threats to monocratic rule could be exterminated.⁷

Civil Society in People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a rather new phenomenon, both as a concept and as a reality, especially comparing with modern Western world. China has adopted the new form of “harmonious society”. Adopted and popularized by Hu to promote CCP’s concern for greater equity and social justice. On one hand, party leaders are prepared to alleviate living standards of the middle class, reduce resentments while they were also ready to severely suppress protest and collective outrage. Dickson says, “They strongly monitor social network sites and scrutinize conglomerations – and uses rapid action teams to stop any kind of protests.”⁸ Thus the factual civil society is still a misnomer in China.

Low level of economic modernization: If economic development is a key aspect of democracy then China is moving in the right direction. Zakaria says “The Chinese economy has developed dramatically in the last 25 years. Russia’s GNP in contrast has shrunk almost 40% since 1991 and have started improving due to high oil prices.”⁹ If China continues its pursuits of economic growth, builds a bourgeoisie, and then liberalize its politics, then these would be genuine steps to attain democracy. The Russian path has, wittingly or not, violated the two key lessons that one can glean from the historical experience of democratization: emphasize genuine economic development and building effective political institutions. Yeltsin did little to build political institutions in Russia.⁹ The 1993 constitution that he has bequeathed to Russia is a disaster, creating a dependent judiciary, a weak parliament and an-out of control presidency. His decision of not forming a political party was one of the major proponents against democracy. Putin has strengthened Yeltsin’s chief legacy, which is not liberal democracy but super-presidency. Putin has targeted the freedom of media, and threatened Russia’s oligarchs with raids and imprisonment.

Thus though the path of China towards democratization looks brighter, Russia with a president whose powers had been abducted by the prime minister (Putin), a leader who crushes the opposition, bans political parties and stifles the media and then says he has liberalized the country is a mere fiction.

Notes

1. Leslie E. Anderson, Lawrence C. Dodd “Learning Democracy”(2005)
2. Suzanne Ogden, “Inklings of Democracy in China” (2002)
3. By Larry Jay Diamond, Marc F. Platter “ The Global Divergence of Democracies”(2000)
4. Anton Steen, Political Elites and New Russia, (2003)
5. Arato, Andrew and Jean Cohen, “Civil Society and Democratic Society”(1992)
6. Crawford Beverly and Arend Lijphart “Explaining Political and Economic change in Post Communist Eastern Europe (1995)
7. J. Dickson, The Future of China Party’s State, (2007)
8. Fareed Zakaria, “The Future of Freedom: Illiberal democracy at home and abroad” (2007)
9. Jane Q. Doe, “Title of an Article,” Title of a Magazine, 12 Aug. 1999, 23.
10. John R. Doe, “Title of an Article,” Title of a Scholarly Journal 18 (1987): 115.
11. Firstname Lastname, Title of a Sample Book (City: Publisher, year), 267.
12. Martin Maner, Women and Eighteenth-Century Literature [online], 14 Apr. 1999 [cited 9 Aug. 1999]; available from World Wide Web: <http://www.wright.edu/~martin.maner/18cwom99.html> [one screen].

[Designed for Word 97.]