Second Time As Farce

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Second Time As Farce?
Slovakias 2006 Government in Comparative
Perspective
Kevin Deegan-Krause, Wayne State University
Woodrow Wilson Center Presentation, 29 June 2006
, Updated and annotated, 1 July 2006
kdk_at_wayne.edu, www.pozorblog.com
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My Question What happened in Slovakia betw
een
1994-1998?
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• My Answer
• Slovakias democracy nearly collapsed because
• An ambitious and unscrupulous leader
• with a lot of votes,
• with compliant coalition partners,
• with a centralized, organized party,
• overpowered weak rival institutions

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My New Question Could it happen again?

• In other, less condensed words
• To what extent does Slovakia face similar
  dangers?
  
• To what extent are the potential dangers
  different?
  
• How can they be avoided
• Note that I am focused here on what I see as the
  main problem of the 1994-1998 Meciar government
  which was a question of politics rather than
  corruption, or minority rights, though these were
  extremely important. This assessment does not
  ask about the economic and minority questions
  directly. Those will require separate analysis.

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Slovakias democracy nearly collapsed
A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the
primary control on the government but experience
has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary
precautions. --Federalist 51
Slovakia has had an unbroken string of free and
fair parliamentary elections, so to what extent
can we talk about near collapse? Because the
near-collapse occurred in a realm other than
electoral politics.
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Slovakias democracy nearly collapsed
A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the
primary control on the government but experience
has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary
precautions. --Federalist 51
Power
Vertical (Electoral) Accountability
People
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Slovakias democracy nearly collapsed
A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the
primary control on the government but experience
has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary
precautions. --Federalist 51
Horizontal (Institutional) Accountability
Power
Power
Power
Vertical (Electoral) Accountability
People
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Slovakias democracy nearly collapsed
the great security against a gradual
concentration of the several powers in the same
department, consists in giving to those who
administer each department the necessary
constitutional means and personal motives to
resist encroachments of the others. The provision
for defense must in this, as in all other cases,
be made commensurate to the danger of attack.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Horizontal (Institutional) Accountability
Power
Power
Power
Vertical (Electoral) Accountability
Slovakia suffered from a near-fatal lack of
horizontal/institutional accountability in the
1990s. This, in turn, almost permitted the
destruction of vertical accountability in the
form of flawed elections. My inclination is that
Slovakias civil society would have been strong
enough to overcome an illegally-elected Meciar
government, but it would have required civil
disobedience (a la Serbia in 2000) and created
significant chaos.
People
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An ambitious and unscrupulous leader

• A leader willing to
• Violate relationships of horizontal (and perhaps
  vertical) accountability
  
• Engage in deception or misdirection toward that
  end
  
• Accept the use of violence toward that end

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A thug

• What is the same?
• Absolute self-confidence
• Will to power

• What is different?
• Professional training
• Generational experience
• Nature of goals?
• Emphasizes economy rather than nation?
• Breadth of goals?
• Desire for prominence beyond Slovakia?

Fico and Meciar are obviously not identical, but
they share many similar personal traits. One key
question is whether Fico, unlike Meciar, has
ambitions beyond Slovakia and therefore might
moderate his efforts in the hopes of reserving a
chance for future advancement. He also seems
less able (or willing) to disguise personal
ambition, which may ultimately work against his
own efforts.
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with a lot of votes

• 1,005,488 votes
• 34.9
• 61 seats

• 671,185 votes
• 29.1
• 50 seats

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with a lot of votes

• What is the same?
• Largest share by large margin
• Right to form government

• What is different?
• Relative size of next largest party
• Programmatic reasons for support
• Largely national for Meciar in 1994
• Largely economic for Fico

From the perspective of comparision, Ficos party
may lack some of the positive support that
Meciars had in 1994 as that party already had a
track record of achieving some major goals
(albeit hotly disputed). Meciars party also had
stronger support in 1994 among those who opposed
accountability than Ficos appears to have now.
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• Interlude Voting for Thugs, The Project
• Why vote for somebody who isnt willing to let
  you vote against him?
  
• Cant choose
• Clientelism, electoral fraud, police powers
• Dont know
• Media control, cover-ups of abuse
• Know and Choose
• Accountability violation desirable as end in
  itself
  
• Accountability violation acceptable as means to
  something else
  
• Accountability violation tolerable in pursuit of
  unrelated goal
  

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with compliant coalition partners
Size of delegations
Size of delegations
73.5
58.8
Seats in government
Seats in government
Interestingly here Fico has managed to take a
weaker initial position than Meciar had in 1994
and take a greater share (though only by a small
margin) of government seats. If recent reports
of portfolio distribution are right, he also
managed to keep a greater share of key ministries
(particularly defense).
66.6
68.8
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with compliant coalition partners

• What is the same?
• Size of government majority
• Identity of partners
• Anti-accountability inclinations of partners

• What is different?
• Experience of partners

Experience, of course, could cut either way. On
the one hand, Meciar and Slota are experienced in
coalition politics and could use this experience
to frustrate Ficos efforts to undermine
accountability (preferring to keep him as weak as
possible). To the extent, however, that Meciar
and Slota to find common cause about
accountability violation, this experience could
be quite powerful in undermining accountability
relationships.
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with a centralized, organized party
Meciar in 1994 had created a party that was
simultaneously one of the most centralized and
also one of the most robustly organized. This
provided a powerful tool for pursuit of his
anti-accountability interests.
Centralization
Organization
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with a centralized, organized party
Smer
Leader-dominance of parties based on 2004
Rohrschneider/Whitefield survey of academic
experts. Smer and HZDS highly centralized.
Arrows show change in parliamentary delgation
size. Centralized parties showed greater
volatility over time. Results for Smer suggested
it to be even more leader-driven than HZDS.
SDKU
Seats in Parliament, 2006
SMK
SNS
KDH
HZDS
KSS
ANO
Program and Organization Leader and
Charisma
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with a centralized, organized party

• What is the same?
• Central role of party leader

• What is different?
• Prior expulsion/ departure of dissidents
• Habits and mechanisms of organizational
  discipline
  
• Mechanisms to safeguard voter loyalty

In terms of centralization, Smer resembles HZDS
in 1994, but in other aspects it is closer to
HZDS in 1992 before that party had experienced
the departure of internal dissidents. This has
significant consequences Smer may contain a
significantly wider range of opinion regarding
the acceptability of accountability violation.
It may also be more prone to defections among
those who are not willing to accept this
coalitions national focus or who may disagree
about more mundane matters, and it may lack the
kinds of mechanisms for ensuring loyalty that
Meciar implemented (in many cases illegally) to
prevent future breakaway factions.
Evidence suggests that while voter loyalty to
Smer has increased over time, it is not remotely
as high as for Meciars HZDS in 1994 and that the
party may suffer a significant loss of support
over time.
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overpowered weak rival institutions.
Government
Pres-ident
Court
Security Service
Parliament Minority
Parliament Majority
Stages in Encroachment
State Media
Committees
Committees
Privati- zation
Voters
I posit a four-stage model of encroachments, each
leading to (permitting and then necessitating)
the next.
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overpowered weak rival institutions.
Government
Pres-ident
Court
Security Service
Parliament Minority
Parliament Majority

• Stages in Encroachment
• Legal
• Occupation of positions in government and other
  executive agencies, supermajority control of key
  parliamentary committees, exclusion of opposition
  from bodies overseeing executive agencies

State Media
Committees
Committees
Privati- zation
Voters
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overpowered weak rival institutions.
Government
Pres-ident
Court
Security Service
Parliament Minority
Parliament Majority

• Stages in Encroachment
• Legal
• Extra-Legal
• Use of government ministries and related agencies
  (now deprived of opposition oversight) to
  intimidate and attempt to oust constitutionally-pr
  otected opposition representatives, made possible
  by stage 1.

State Media
Committees
Committees
Privati- zation
Voters
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overpowered weak rival institutions.
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Government
Pres-ident
Court
Security Service
Parliament Minority
Parliament Majority

• Stages in Encroachment
• Legal
• Extra-Legal
• Reactive Extra-Legal
• Encroachment against disillusioned deputies,
  constitutional court, prosecutors made possible
  by stage 1 and necessary by clumsiness in stage 2.

State Media
Committees
Committees
Privati- zation
Voters
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overpowered weak rival institutions.
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Government
Pres-ident
Court
Security Service
Parliament Minority
Parliament Majority

• Stages in Encroachment
• Legal
• Extra-Legal
• Reactive Extra-Legal
• Electoral
• Efforts to prevent popular fallout (referendum
  marring, electoral law, state resources in
  campaign)

State Media
Committees
Committees
Privati- zation
Voters
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overpowered weak rival institutions.

• What is the same?
• Fundamental weaknesses of some institutional
  protections

• What is different?
• Experience of other institutions
• Some new institutional protections
• Role of EU

As with the question of an organized party, the
news here tends to be fairly optimistic while
the Dzurinda government did not protect its
institutions constitually (as many suggested),
the decentralization and increased experience of
government institutions suggest a more robust
capacity for self-defense, as does the greater
confidence and cohesion on within the
SDKU/KDH/SMK opposition. Still, some of the new
protected institutions (presidency, some regional
governments, are in hands friendly to the new
government)
The role of the EU remains an open question here.
It has lost some of the main tools of
conditionality but picked up others in taking
Slovakia in. Whether it uses these and whether
they succeed is unclear.
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Back to the Question Could it happen again?
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The Answer Probably not. At least not in th
e same way or to the same degree.But risk of
lesser encroachments may be significant.
Applying the specific elements of the 1994-1998
period to 2006 we find
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Comparative balance sheet