Thesis on "State Building and Civil Society in Eastern Europe After the Communism"

Thesis 12 pages (3283 words) Sources: 7 Style: Harvard

[EXCERPT] . . . .

building and civil society in Eastern Europe after the communism

General considerations

Poland and Ukraine are two of the countries that have come out of the Communist block and have embarked in a process known as transition, from the general characteristics of a Communist society (dictatorship, single-party system, state economy) to those of a Capitalist one (market economy, multi-party system, active civil society). In both cases, the governments also had to dedicate their work towards a process of state building that included, in many cases, creating the appropriate institutions, ensuring their functionality and their interconnectivity.

However, the ways that the two countries developed were significantly different. Despite the fact that, economically, both countries reflected a decrease in their GDP after 1989 (or 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in the case of Ukraine), Poland was much quicker to rebound and to firmly set its course towards building a truly democratic society, which included a vibrant civil society, increased transparency in the decision making process and an economic shock therapy that, despite the initial hardships, eventually proved the easiest way to reach a functional market economy. In the case of Ukraine, the absence of transparency, especially during the 1990s, meant that different power sharing agreements made obscure groups of interest take an important role in the country's leadership.

This paper aims to present a parallel between the state and society building processes after the fall of Communism in two countries, Poland and Ukraine, on three different levels to include the construction of a political society, of an economic society and of a civil society. Further more, it will also aim to examine why Poland and Ukraine developed differently and will argue that the objectives that Poland had laid ahead for itself, including NATO and EU accession, meant that it had to abide by the implementation of all these reforms.

The construction of the political society

One of the struggles in both countries came with building the appropriate political institutions in the post-Communist period. In Ukraine, the political transformation was not as concrete and final as the one in Poland and sometimes just resumed to a process in which the institutions that had been created (Presidency, Prime Minister or Parliament) were fighting to share power. There were no clear institutional rules that defined the relationship between these institutions

Additionally, the primary body of institutional rules, the Constitution, took very long to be adopted, despite the fact that in other formerly Communist countries, this process was reasonably quick after the fall of the Communist regime. This was not necessarily the case of Poland, where a new constitution was adopted in 1997, but where the old constitution had suffered numerous amendments that had transformed it to better fit the institutional needs of the new post-Communist society. At the same time, some of the existing elements of the Communist constitution could still to be used as a regulator of institutional activity and a defining instrument of the role of each of the branches of government.

In Ukraine, there was no such previous constitution and the state initially proposed a draft that advocated for a mixed presidential-parliamentary system. This was eventually rejected and for years, there were no rules as to how the different institutions of government would work with one another. Further more, some of the institutions were hardly created, but rather transformed from formerly Communist institutions without an actual change. The Ministry of Economy, for example, was formed by transforming the former central planning institution during the Communist period

Another important difference in the political and institutional construction of Ukraine as compared to that of Poland was the fact that in Ukraine, much of the former Communist nomenclature remained in power, including key areas such as the Ministry of Economy or the Ministry of Finance. In Poland, this nomenclature was pushed aside reasonably quickly and replaced with a group of people who were inspired and adhered to the ideals for change.

In the case of political construction, in Ukraine there are also additional elements to be considered. Poland was already an independent and sovereign country in 1989, at the fall of the Communist regime, while Ukraine was only an existing republic within the Soviet Union. One of the challenges of the Ukrainian government was the consolidation of its territorial integrity and its sovereignty, the challenge to avoid civil wars as in the case of Georgia or the Republic of Moldova. The differences between Western and Eastern Ukraine were consistent (and still are), but the fact that the first two presidents of Ukraine had strong ties with Eastern Ukraine and that the industrial East had the economic upper hand as well meant that secessionist threats were put down quite soon after 1991.

Economic society

The immediate evolution of the economic society after 1989 was similar in the two countries, especially from an overall macroeconomic perspective and was characterized by a sharp decrease after the collapse of the Communist system. In Ukraine, this began to be felt as soon as 1992 and the GDP decrease continued an accelerated fall throughout the period 1992-1994 (decreases of 9.9%, 14.2% and 23% respectively)

However, Poland is quite a different example. According to different sources, Poland had both the mildest and shortest recession of all countries in Central and Easter Europe or the former Soviet Union

, which was reflected in only a 6% drop in production output over a period of two years. Poland was also the country in Central and Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union where economic growth resumed fastest, after only two years from the fall of Communism. At the end of the 1990s, Poland had recorded an increase with 40% of its GDP, as compared to 1990.

Some of the reasons of the economic declines in the first post-Communist years were similar in both Poland and Ukraine. The most notable one was the fact that the formerly Communist economies of the two countries were not adapted to the new challenges of the market economy that each government was trying to implement. Transforming the economies into systems that would be able to cope with the competition challenges of the capitalist societies would take a couple of years (in the case of Poland) and are still incomplete (in the case of Ukraine).

Another common reason was that both had counted on the former Soviet space (as well as the formerly Communist Central and Eastern European) markets as the main markets for their products and goods. Realigning their economies to match demand on the Western market would, again, take time.

However, the differences in reasons for the economic decline are numerous as well and include internal differences, as well as external objectives and perspectives. From this latter view, Poland had set for itself as the main objective NATO and EU accession ever since 1990 and its Western trajectory was constantly in that direction, including in what the economic transformation of the country is concerned. In 1991, Poland was already a member of the Visegrad Group, just one example of its commitment to a Euro-Atlantic integration. For Ukraine, this perspective did not come until the Orange Revolution in 2004. Even more, as the first Ukrainian president had shown, the decision factors in Ukraine were not certain which type of economic policy should be adopted and whether the liberal shock policies in Poland would be functional in Ukraine as well.

Further more, some of the characteristics of market economy and small market reforms had already been adopted in Poland by the end of the 1980s, during the Communist period, as can be reflected in some key indicators as the World Bank's Index of Liberalization. This meant that the subsequent reforms that were implemented during the 1990s already had a sustainable platform on which they could be supported and Poland had a head start compared to Ukraine. The liberalization index for Poland was almost 0.6 in 1990, as compared to 0.2 for Ukraine. By 1998, the index had gradually increased in Poland to over 0.8 and only to 0.6 in Ukraine

At the same time, one also needs to consider the differences in the internal environment, which affected the economy. Some have shown that the political situation in Ukraine and the fact that it permitted the rise to power of different groups of interest and of "opaque groups" was a direct consequence of the economic decline, both because of the endemic corruption and of the fact that many of the governmental and government guaranteed credits were used for personal interest or personal businesses. The opaque political scene reflected in an economic scene that was not transparent and that led to its decline.

The situation was quite different in Poland from this point-of-view. As in most of the formerly Communist countries, one of the challenges of transition was to ensure that the right balance was set between giving the enterprises and businesses enough liberty to develop in the new market economy and applying the appropriate discipline by the government… READ MORE

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