The experience of civil society as an anticorruption actor in East Central Europe.

• Author: Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina
• Position: EU AS A GOOD GOVERNANCE PROMOTER

1. The double paradox

   The celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall in East Central Europe was accompanied by the usual soul-searching customary at such moments. After successfully completing their EU accession, most countries in the region experienced the full brunt of an economic crisis and their politics after EU accession reflected some disappointment. While their overall democratization seems incontestable, particularly in comparison with the less successful eastern half of post communist Europe, many of the expectations of 1989 were not fulfilled. Among the disappointments, the persistence of corruption and the underdevelopment of civil society are perhaps the most surprising, seeing that the great popular movement of Solidarnosc started in Gdansk as a protest against local corruption and in due course reached such proportions as to undermine the whole Polish regime. This paper addresses precisely those two interconnected issues. Why, despite their most remarkable progress on democracy, have most East Central European states retained modest levels of governance? Is civil society still able to play any significant role in improving governance, even after its institutionalization at low levels of participation, after its initial high mobilization in the early years of democratization?

   Does the impact, or lack of impact, of civil society do anything to explain the quality of governance? To answer those questions, this paper will analyze the association between civil society and good governance (section 1), put it to the test (section 2); and propose a model to explain the difficulty of establishing ethical universalism as the normative basis of governance in democratic post communist countries (section 3). Finally this paper will draw on a database of 'good governance' projects in civil society to understand under what circumstances the impact of civil society materializes (section 4). The database used for the project was constructed during 2009-2010 by the Romanian Academic Society for the Open Society Institute and includes 471 projects from sixteen countries. The period examined runs from 1998, the first year of assessment of the whole post-communist region of by Freedom House Nations in Transit which examined both governance and civil society in depth.

   Since the World Bank began monitoring the world governance indicators (2), very little significant progress has been registered globally, despite an unprecedented investment in good governance policies and the raising of awareness encouraged by NGOs like Transparency International (Kaufmann, 2005). One set of explanations refers to the quality of our indicators, time-lagging and statistical aggregates not being sensitive enough to capture incremental evolution. According to that argument, progress does exist but we fail to notice it. The second type of explanation seems more substantial: both qualitative and quantitative measurements capture little evolution because, despite the unprecedented attempt to create a legal global anticorruption framework as well as national efforts to show goodwill and endorse international standards, there is little to show. Good governance is the outcome of a very long historical process, and quantitative models of good governance invariably attach a considerable proportion of the explanation to historical factors (La Porta et al, 1999; Treisman, 2000). Perhaps the evolution towards good governance is such a lengthy incremental historical process that it is simply not apparent if studied with reference to such a short period of time as fifteen years.

   Eastern Europe is the ideal test case for such questions. The paradox of good governance in East Central Europe is that the region registered the largest initial progress in its first years of transition--indeed positioning it on average as showing the most successful transition among all the regions of the world- only to stagnate afterwards at a level well below the average governance scores of the OECD, despite international assistance, EU conditionality and finally successful EU accession (see figure 1). In other words, Eastern Europe's positive evolution towards consolidating democracy, spectacular when compared to Communist times, was not matched by an equally dramatic improvement in the rule of law and the curbing of corruption. Even the most advanced post communist countries embarked upon their EU accession with a Corruption Perception Index (an aggregated score by Transparency International) below the lowest level in Western Europe, and their culture was frequently described as being wholly corrupt (Miller and all, 2001; Treisman, 2003; Rose-Ackerman and Kornai, 2004).

   The definition of corruption is arguable and varies according to the norms of a given society. Good governance is a normative concept and an ideal type and perfect governance does not exist anywhere. Some of the current definitions refer to its outcome, others describe the mechanisms of it, and still others the process itself. Drawing on classic work by Weber and Talcott Parsons (Parsons 1997: 80-82) I define it here as the governance mode under which public goods are distributed on the basis of ethical universalism. The opposites of such a governance mode based on rational-legal authority are classic patrimonialism, as defined by Max Weber, or post-modern particularism, such as defined by Guillermo O'Donnell as an extreme form of client relationship, including "various sorts of non-universalistic relationships, ranging from hierarchical particularistic exchanges, patronage, nepotism, and favours to actions that, under the formal rules of the institutional package of polyarchy, would be considered corrupt" (O'Donnell 1996, p. 40). We know that in societies undergoing transition there are competing normative regimes which strive to become dominant. Democratic transition can therefore de described also as an effort to reach a governance mode based on ethical universalism. The battle that post communist countries wage is not the legal one against individual corruption from developed Europe, where the norm of government impartiality and integrity is already set, but a struggle to enshrine such norms and unseat the norm of particularism.

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   The paradox of civil society is no less challenging. Despite both the repression and coerced mobilization of Communist times, most countries of the region had a spectacular input from civil society during their early democratization years. Not only was the Berlin Wall brought down by the millions in the streets of central Europe, but further to the South and East impressive numbers mobilized against Soviet Union or national communism, even in places so underdeveloped as Albania and Moldova, Europe's poorest (Arato 1990; Ekiert and Kubik 2001; Beissinger 2002). There was sufficient civil societal mobilization over more than twenty years to create new national states in the Balkans and former Soviet Union and to bring down Balkan nationalist leaders and post-Soviet apparatchiks in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. It is then paradoxical to read the feeble figures for civic association membership in surveys (World Values Survey 2000; 2008; Mungiu-Pippidi 2006) or to see the civil society of the region portrayed as extremely weak (Howard 2003). Indeed, in numerous post transition settings many of the resistance groups, social movements, and civic organizations which made democracy possible did not manage to consolidate themselves after its arrival. The third sector which resulted has weak connections with the original revolutionary civil society, and the participation of citizens in joining or supporting voluntary associations is low. There are two major factors explaining that decline: one is the achievement of the overall goal of early civic movements, political freedom, which channelled energies into politics, party and state building. The other is the advent of capitalism at a low level of wealth in those societies, and the development of a consequent materialistic culture across the whole post communist region (Inglehart 1997). With the main goal of freedom fulfilled, civil society fell back onto being a multitude of individuals concerned with personal survival amidst difficult economic transitions. As Kopecki suggested (2003, p 7), the capacity for mobilization has not been altogether lost; but the level of permanent civic activity was institutionalized at a level inferior to that in Western Europe (Howard 2003).

2. Civil society and control of corruption

   After 1989 a strong civil society was presented in the literature as the ideal vehicle to dislodge corrupt and incompetent governments (Ash 1990), to fortify civil liberties and human rights (Keck and Sikkink 1998) to promote good governance and economic prosperity, and to ensure stability of democracy (Esman and Uphoff 1984; Clark 1990; Riddell and Robinson 1996; Michael 2004).

   How is civil society supposed to bring about improvement of governance? Answers at that question vary considerably. Two theoretical traditions picture civil society as a counter-weight to government. John Locke in his treaties on government delineated a model for the state that rests on a "compact" or on "trust"--the consent of civil society--and insisted on a right of resistance to unjust authority. Alexis de Tocqueville attributed the robustness of the American democracy to the density of voluntary associations. In the steps of such classic literature, we find at least two distinct approaches discussed in relation to governance and civil society: a neo-tocquevillian social capital idea, which presumes civil society works indirectly by creating an associative texture of society, so fostering collective action based on horizontal ties and social trust (Putnam 1994); and a social accountability idea which stresses civil society's direct role in citizen empowerment, and the oversight...