Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 17 – Most Western
commentators focus on the absence of genuine democracy in the so-called “hybrid”
regimes but fail to notice that such regimes are also characterized by a lack
of genuine dictatorship, according to Yekaterina Shulman, a Moscow legal
affairs commentator.
“It is easy to see that the
democratic façade [of such states] is made from papier-mache,” she writes on
Kasparov.ru, “but it is more difficult to understand that the Stalin moustache
is also simply attached” rather than reflecting a reality, a reflection of the
increasing horror Europeans feel about human victims (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=53EDA74872D4D).
Because of confusion on this point,
Schulman argues, “there is nothing more important in contemporary political
science than the study of hybrid regimes,” a category that includes those
described as “illiberal democracies, imitation democracies, electoral
authoritarianism, and non-tyrannical autocracy.”
Only by recognizing the true nature
of such hybrid regimes, she insists, can one avoid falling into the trap so
common in recent decades of assuming that anything bad will get worse,
especially since “not level of civilization” apparently has the capacity to
prevent that from happening.
Schulman makes six other points
besides the one cited above. First, she says, hybrid regimes represent “authoritarianism
at a new historic stage.” That is, they are authoritarian because they seek to
promote passivity in their populations rather than to mobilize them as do
totalitarian states.
Second, most but not all of them are
exporters of natural resources rather than industrial powers. Consequently, for
the elite to enrich its members and remain in power requires that the
population go along with things rather than that that population be mobilized
to achieve new goals.
Third, hybrid regimes seek to ensure
the continuance in office of those who are there and to do so with “a relatively
low level of force.” They lack “the moral capital of monarchies” and the “repressive
apparatus of totalitarianism.” Their
media can generate impressive levels of approval but do not seek to promote
high levels of involvement.
To put it most bluntly, “propaganda
with dizzying effectiveness forms the opinion of precisely those people whose
opinion has no importance not because these are some sort of poor second-class
people but because their opinion in no way correlates with their action. They
can provide the powers with approval but not support.”
Fourth, the only people such hybrid
regimes have to concern themselves with is the “active minority.” Those who
back it and are necessary are incorporated into the power arrangements; those
who oppose it are excluded and even encouraged to leave the country
permanently.
Fifth, Schulman says, “hybrid regimes
are quite stable and vital” because they rely on what are almost market
economies and a partially free public milieu, and thus they are unlikely to
collapse in the same ways that classical dictatorships do or to expand
dramatically either. But none of this
means they are as stable as they imagine.
Such regimes want stability and are
prepared to take any steps to maintain it including things that look
destabilizing. But precisely because
they want stability and pursue it in this way, they make the kind of mistakes
which can lead to their collapse precisely because they do not have real
support, only approval, and thus are less maneuverable than many assume.
And sixth, “the very appearance of
imitation democracy is not the result of the failures of non-imitation
democracy but rather” opposition to the kinds of state violence people accepted
a half century ago. If ‘hypocrisy’ is the tribune which vice pays to virtue,
imitation is that which dictatorship pays to democracy,” Schulman says.
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