The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe.

By Marc Morjé Howard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 220p. $60.00 cloth, $24.00 paper.

This study seeks to accomplish two primary goals. The first is to create an “empirical baseline” for comparing the rates of membership in voluntary associations across a varied set of countries and regions as a way of measuring the relative strength of civil society. This comparison shows that postcommunist countries have particularly weak civil societies compared with postauthoritarian and long-established democracies. The second, and central, goal is to explain why civil society is weak across the postcommunist region.

To develop his empirical baseline, the author uses data from the 1995–97 World Values Survey on membership in nine different types of voluntary organizations. Marc Howard emphasizes that measuring rates of membership rather than numbers of organizations better grasps participation in civil society, as often in postcommunist countries voluntary associations exist on paper only, with few or no members. Dividing regimes into three groups, he finds the average number of organizational memberships per person is 2.39 in the eight older democracies (such as the United States and Australia), 1.82 in the ten postauthoritarian countries (such as Argentina and the Philippines), and 0.91 in the thirteen postcommunist countries (such as Bulgaria and the Czech Republic). His analysis indicates, moreover, that the most significant variable explaining levels of organizational membership is prior regime type, rather than such typical variables as socioeconomic status, political rights, and civil liberties. The author concludes that “a person's prior communist experience is associated with a decrease of .98 in her or his predicted organizational membership, an extremely large amount … especially since this takes into account the effect of other variables widely considered to have a strong influence on participation” (p. 90).

Howard's main interest is to investigate why so many postcommunist citizens are not engaged in civil society. He offers a three-part explanation based on original quantitative and qualitative research on Russia and Eastern Germany. First, he hypothesizes that “the more people mistrusted communist organizations, and the more they avoided them during the communist period, the less likely they will be to participate in voluntary organizations today” (p. 105). Measuring mistrust of communist organizations by membership level in such organizations, his quantitative data support the hypothesis for both countries. Second, the author examines the persistence of private networks that developed under communism as a means of surviving the shortage economy, and close-knit friendship circles that developed as a space of trust separate from the politicized public domain. The persistence of such networks has no demonstrated effect in Russia, most likely because dire economic conditions make reliance on friendship networks a continuing necessity. In Eastern Germany, “people whose personal networks have not persisted seem to participate in voluntary organizations at higher levels than those people whose friendship networks have stayed the same or grown” (p. 109). But the difference is not terribly significant: Organizational membership per person is a little above 0.8 for those with a low level of persistence of friendship networks and just below 0.7 for those with a high level (p. 108). Third, his data show that in both countries, postcommunist disappointment negatively impacts organizational membership. Howard concludes that the most powerful explanatory factor is mistrust of communist organizations.

In order “to provide a detailed discussion of the cognitive and experiential reasons why people do or do not participate in voluntary organizations” (p. 121), the final part of the study offers an interpretation of 60 in-depth interviews with ordinary East Germans and Russians. This chapter makes for compelling reading; and most of the qualitative data clearly support Howard's quantitative findings. However, in the examination of his most important explanatory factor—mistrust of communist organizations—most of the author's examples of individuals who are currently active, that is, belonging to two or more voluntary organizations, seem to negate his argument, rather than bolster it. Three of the five examples he offers do not support the claim that those with positive experiences with communist organizations—which he earlier contrasted to civil society organizations by clarifying that “they were neither voluntary nor autonomous, and participation in them was often forced, coerced, or undertaken for instrumental and careerist purposes” (p. 105)—would go on to be active postcommunist citizens, because they were involved mainly in dissident activities (such as publishing underground Samizdat materials and organizing a student group during the revolutionary period) that took place beyond communist state organizations, not within them.

Howard's study makes several contributions to the literature on postcommunist democracies. The author's empirical baseline allows for systematic comparison of participation levels across countries and regions, while demonstrating clearly the similarities among postcommunist countries—even those with very different developments, such as Eastern Germany and Russia. This turns our attention to the legacies of communist regimes in explaining the differences between postcommunist and postauthoritarian experiences. Moreover, he argues persuasively that neoliberal institutional “crafting” has not been successful in overcoming these legacies and motivating changes in societal behavior with regard to joining voluntary associations. Howard also offers extensive, original quantitative and qualitative data about the weakness of postcommunist civil societies. This leads me, however, to two general limitations of this otherwise clear and thorough study.

First, at least two of Howard's three explanatory factors—mistrust of communist organizations and postcommunist disappointment—seem to be long-standing and well-acknowledged explanations for the lack of participation in postcommunist civil societies. Retreat from the public sphere occurred swiftly after the heady days of the revolutionary period. Many analysts have pointed to postrevolutionary malaise and ongoing disappointment with the reality of democratic capitalism as an explanation for disinterest in participation. Similarly, the argument that forced participation and disillusionment with communist institutions have led to a more general distrust of organizations is well known.

A second limitation of Howard's analysis is one that he acknowledges but dismisses in order to “reach wider and more far-reaching conclusions about organizational membership across societies and individuals” (p. 68). With most of the data focused on aggregate membership levels, we do not find much attention to the different types of civil society associations in these postcommunist countries. And yet the author draws on civil society theories that differentiate between types of associations and their potential impact on democracy. Gardening groups and sports clubs, for example, are arguably less influential on political or economic developments than are political parties, environmental groups, or professional organizations. Hence, more attention to membership rates in different types of organizations would tell us even more about the particular weaknesses of postcommunist civil society.