How Citizens Cope with Postcommunist Officials: Evidence from Focus Group Discussions in Ukraine and the Czech Republic
| Date | 01 August 1997 |
| Author | William L. Miller,Tatyana Koshechkina,Ase Grodeland |
| Published date | 01 August 1997 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00098 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
How Citizens Cope with Postcommunist
Ocials: Evidence from Focus Group
Discussions in Ukraine and the
Czech Republic
WILLIAM L. MILLER,TATYANA KOSHECHKINAANDASEGRODELAND
Good governance is not just a matter of high politics.1Free elections should do
more than oer an often misleading choice of programmes and leadership: they
should aect the general political culture, set the tone of democratic govern-
ment, legitimate voters individually as well as collectively, turn ocials and
bureaucrats into `civil servants' and encourage government to respect individual
citizens as well as the collective decision of the whole electorate.2In their
analysis of democratic culture, Almond and Verba3drew attention to the
importance of what they called `citizen competence' and `subject competence',
both of which, they claimed, were required for a healthy functioning demo-
cracy.4In terms of perceptions, Almond and Verba distinguished between
citizen competence (per cent who say they can do something about an unjust law
on both the national and local level) and subject competence (per cent who
expect serious consideration both in a government oce and from the police).
Communist regimes were traditionally depicted as bureaucratic,in Laski' s sense
of that word rather than Weber's: `a system of government . .. so completely in
the hands of ocials that their power jeopardizes the liberties of ordinary
citizens'.5Citizens could expect neither serious consideration nor fair treatment
without some means of `interesting' the ocial in their case. Dependence upon
the use of bribes and contacts was notorious. Like the Tsarist regime before it,
parodied so well by Gogol in The GovernmentInspec tor, the Sovietregime could
reasonably be described as an `autocracy tempered by corruption'. A majority
#Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 CowleyRoad, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
This research was funded by the Overseas Development Administration under award number
R6445 to William L. Miller and TatyanaKoshechkina. Ase Grodeland is Research Assistant on the
project.
1Seweryn Bialer, Stalin's Successors: Leadership, Stability and Change in the Soviet Union
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980) pp.166 ±7 claims that `low politics' constituted `the
very substance of the Soviet system of political participation'.
2See Martin Harrop and William L. Miller, Elections and Voters: a Comparative Introduction
(London, Macmillan, 1987), ch. 9.
3Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracyin
Five Nations (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1963; repr.London: Sage, 1989), esp. ch.7.
4Wayne DiFranceisco and Zvi Gitelman, `Soviet political culture and `covert participation' in
policy implementation', American Political Science Review, 78/3 (1984), 603±21, discuss citizen
participation in the old Soviet Union in precisely these terms.
5Quoted by Ferrel Heady, `Bureaucracies', in Mary Hawkesworth and Maurice Kogan (eds),
Encyclopaedia of Government and Politics (London, Routledge, 1992), p. 305.
Political Studies (1997), XLV, 597±625
of respondents in DiFranceisco and Gitelman's survey of e
Âmigre
Âs from the old
USSR regime suggested that bribery or connections could be used to change
an unwelcome work assignment or to get a dull child into a good university
department;6and surveys of those still living in the USSR tended to corroborate
these ®ndings.7Yet it was never quite clear whether the use of bribes and
contacts re¯ected a lack of `subject competence' and the ability of ocials to
dominate citizens, or an excess of `subject competence' and the ability of citizens
to manipulate ocials. In this connection, DiFranceisco and Gitelman found
that university graduates were only a little less likely than others to suggest
bribery but far more likely than others to suggest using connections; and,
moreover, they found graduates were overwhelmingly in favour of a system of
unequal treatment ± which they could manipulate to their advantage.8Even
after the transition to democracy such aspects of the political culture may be
resistant to change.9
Or they may have changed for the worse. Since 1989 there have been several
changes in the institutional and social context which might be expected to
impact upon the behaviour of postcommunist ocials at a local level ± an
uneven mix of reform and chaos. Of the countries in our study only the former
Czechoslovakia has implemented a far reaching purge of ocials from the old
regime,10 and any improvements have been oset by the loss of more competent
ocials to better paid jobs in the growing private sector. The issue is essentially
one of `new thinking', the location of ocials in a new more democratic struc-
ture, and political climate, rather than `new people'. Local government reforms
have been characterized as a move `from democratic centralism to local demo-
cracy'.11 Before 1989, local government was simply an extended arm of central
government but with the collapse of the old regime the fundamental principle
of local governance was changed: local government was now to have an
independent existence and be based upon a democratic mandate. That should
have helped to change the political status of ordinary people from servants into
6DiFranceisco and Gitelman, `Soviet political culture', p.613.
7A. Sogomonov and A. Tolstykh, `O nashikh zabotakh' Kommunist, no.9 (1989), p. 75 put `the
wide-spread use of pull' in third place on the list of `most pressing problems facing our country
today', and in ®rst place if combined with `dependence on ocials in solving housing questions'
which probably re¯ected the use of bribes or in¯uence to get better state ¯ats.
8DiFranceisco and Gitelman, `Soviet political culture', pp.612± 4.
9See Stephen White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics(London, Macmillan, 1979), chs 2 and 5.
10 A law was passed to purge up to 140,000 alleged communist `informers' ± Keith Grime and
Vic Duke, `A Czech on privatisation', Regional Studies, 27/8 (1993), 751±7 at p. 754; and Jirina
Siklora, `Lustrationor theCzech wayof screening', East European Constitutional Review, 5/1 (1996),
57± 62 who notes at p.58 that President Havel opposed the purge law on the grounds that it
presumed guilt rather than innocence. This law wasnot adopted by the new Slovak Republic when
Czechoslovakia split up in 1992: Quentin Reed, `Transition, dysfunctionality and change in the
Czech and Slovak Republics', Crime, Law and Social Change, 22/4 (1995), 323±7 at p. 334.
11 See Andrew Coulson (ed.), Local Governmentin Eastern Europe: Establishing Democracy at the
Grassroots (Aldershot, EdwardElgar, 1995), esp. the chapters by Andrew Coulson, Kenneth Davey,
and Adrian Campbell. See also Ingemar Erlander and Mattias Gustafsson, `The re-emergence of
local self-government in Central Europe',European Journal of Political Research, 23/3 (1993), 295±
322; Robert J. Bennett (ed.), Local Government in the New Europe (London, Belhaven, 1993);
Oleksandr Boukhalov and Sergei Ivannikov, `Ukrainian local politics after independence', Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 540 (July 1995), 126±36; Theodore H.
Friedgut and Jerey W. Hahn (eds), Local Power and Post-Soviet Politics (Armonk NY, M. E.
Sharpe, 1994); and the Council of Europe's reports on the Structure and Operation of Local and
Regional Democracy for the Czech Republic (Strasbourg, Council of Europe, 1993).
598 Coping with Postcommunist Ocials
#Political Studies Association, 1997
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