ECONOMY

660 democratization
that often drives this process. Conversely, agency-based explanations go a long way
in analyzing the thrust and parry of the transition period, as multiple actors struggle
for survival and dominance. Yet they have been aptly criticized for suffering “from a
myopia of the moment” (Bratton and van de Walle 1997, 27) and lack of attention to
the limitations and opportunities inherited from the past. One resolution has been a
division of labor: “structuralist approaches are good at accounting for the general
causes of regime breakdown and the consolidation of new democracies. Process
approaches may explain the timing of breakdown and transition as well as the specific
trial-and-error process of searching for a new viable regime” (Kitschelt 1992, 1029).
Yet the most recent wave of democratization, which followed the collapse of Communism
in 1989–91 in the Soviet Union and its east European satellites, shows that
these two perspectives have much to contribute to each other. First, several structural
preconditions inherited from the authoritarian regimes act to foster democratization,
rather than constrain it. Moreover, elite agency matters long after the initial bargaining
and well into the subsequent “consolidation” period. Second, elites can deliberately
use these legacies to construct democratic regimes—subject to constraints from
both elite competition and informal institutions. Third, the formal institutions of the
state are as important as those of participation and electoral competition. Indeed, if
there is a dominant lesson to be learned from the experience of post-Communism,
it is that weak states threaten both democratic freedoms and the rule of law (e.g.
Holmes 1997).
2.1 Structures Enabling Elites
First, both structure- and agency-based accounts tend to assume that structure constrains
elites. It is only in moments of crisis that elites can act more freely. Yet if elite
actors are the central agents of democratization, then where do their relative power,
preferences, and strategies come from? Classifying elites “hardliners,” “softliners,”
or “liberalizers” often leads to tautologies: the actors concluding the bargains are
centrists, and we know they are centrists because they concluded the bargain. Just
as importantly, why are some elites so much more successful than others in implementing
their strategies?
Post-Communist cases demonstrate that the key to elite action is their cognitive,
organizational, and social endowments: skills and experiences, reputations, informal
alliances and networks. Ironically, for the elites involved in democratization, these
resources have their origin in the authoritarian anciens régimes and they can be used
to facilitate or obstruct democratization. In central Asia, for example, regional leaders
empowered by their control over scarce resources and, hence, ability to distribute
patronage under Soviet rule dominated the negotiations for institutional change
following the regimes’ collapse. Not surprisingly, facing almost no popular opposition,
they opted to change little of the system with which they continued strongly to
identify and from which they continued to benefit disproportionately (Jones Luong
2002). But such elite endowments can also have more subtle effects: for example,