Michael Bernhard

Communism has proven to be a profoundly but not perfectly homogenizing force across a highly heterogeneous set of countries. This article offers a minimalist definition of communist regimes as those where a party-state claims a tripartite monopoly over politics, the economy, and society. After tracing the conceptual history of communism in comparative politics and reviewing the global trajectories of communist regimes throughout their Cold War heyday, we argue that variation in how the three monopolies have been executed and enforced offers the most helpful lens for studying how communist regimes have differed both from their non-communist counterparts and from each other. In their historical trajectories, communist regimes have varied based on: (1) incomplete convergence in regime origins, (2) increasing divergence in regime evolutions, and (3) chronic informality in regime practices. Understanding how the communist world has varied is inextricably tied to understanding when it has varied.

Comparative politics has moved on from communism too quickly. Even as authoritarianism takes center stage in the subfield, the most important authoritarian regime type of the 20 ^th century has faded into a footnote. Proceeding in a similar spirit but with less sweeping ambition than the “Varieties of Capitalism” and “Varieties of Democracy” projects, this special issue and wider research agenda considers how communist regimes have differed both from other authoritarian regimes and from each other. Even while sharing certain ideological and institutional features that made them analytically distinctive, communist regimes historically emerged and evolved in very different contexts and in very different ways. Assembled essays on communist regimes in East Asia and Eastern Europe reveal the promise of bringing communism as a category back into our comparative conversations.

Pilietinę visuomenę tiriančioje literatūroje pripažįstama, kad ši visuomenė bet kurios tautos institucinėje istorijoje veikia labai įvairiai. Straipsnyje aptariami pilietinės visuomenės santykiai su valstybės atminties institucijomis pagal keturis skirtingus pilietinės visuomenės modelius – sukilėlių, institucionalizijos, antidemokratinį ir apsauginį. Remiantis pavyzdžiais iš režimų pasikeitimui būdingų procesų, Vidurio Europoje vykstančių nuo 1989 m., straipsnyje siekiama sukurti teoriją, padedančią suprasti šį neištirtą atminties politikos aspektą. Tyrimas atskleidžia, jog pilietinės visuomenės modeliai ir valstybės santykiai su jos atminties institucijomis yra glaudžiai susiję su esamos valdžios pobūdžiu. Šiandienos realybėje egzistuojanti demagogija, prisidengianti tautos balsu, kelia pavojų demokratijai, provokuoja politinių pažiūrų poliarizaciją. Toks pasaulis kelia grėsmę valstybės atminties institucijų darbuotojų profesiniam sąžiningumui. Politinis spaudimas pirmiausia yra pavojingas jų gebėjimui tvarkyti nacionalinės praeities artefaktus pagal profesinius ir meritokratinius kriterijus. Bibliotekų, archyvų ir universitetų politizavimas skatina nežinojimą, o ne žinias. Saugiausia aplinka valstybinėms atminties institucijoms yra tolerantiška ir pliuralistinė kultūra, kurioje jos gali be išankstinio nusistatymo dirbti ir būti naudingos visiems. Kai Vengrijoje ir Lenkijoje į valdžią atėjusios neliberalios vienpartinės populistinės jėgos pradėjo ardyti horizontalios atskaitomybės mechanizmus, jų valstybinėms atminties institucijomss kyla grėsmė tapti atminties karo dalyvių, siekiančių politinės naudos iš jų darbo aspektų kritikos, taikiniu.

Party system institutionalization (PSI) is regarded as a critical underpinning of democracies, but its role in non‐democratic systems has been understudied. In this paper, we evaluate whether the concept has meaningful and perhaps unique implications for the durability of competitive authoritarian regimes. We argue that a modified version of electoral volatility – the most common measure of PSI in democracies – conveys useful information about PSI in competitive authoritarian contexts by signalling the ability of the ruling party to manage the opposition. To this end, we construct an original data set that disaggregates electoral volatility into ruling party seat change and opposition party seat volatility and further divides opposition party volatility into Type‐A and Type‐B volatility. We find robust results that democratization becomes more likely when decreases in the ruling party's seat share coincide with an increase in opposition party Type‐B volatility. This paper demonstrates that the concept of PSI has utility for understanding regime dynamics in competitive authoritarian contexts.

Still the Age of Populism? investigates current conceptions of populism and its relevance across the globe. Using contextualized case studies, cross-national comparisons, and theoretical interventions, this volume addresses key conceptual debates in comparative politics and political sociology. This essential volume brings together scholars from different traditions in political sociology, political science and cultural studies, and comparativists and area experts working on Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, and the US. Chapters in the book employ innovative theoretical approaches to study aspects of populism in global comparative perspective whilst regional case studies, including Brazil, Venezuela, Germany, and the US, are utilised to explore populism in geographically specific contexts. In doing so, the volume addresses the key issues for those seeking to understand contemporary populism. What are the advantages and limits of the category of populism to understand contemporary debates on democratization and processes of democratic erosion? Under what structural, institutional, and cultural conditions does populism emerge? Is populism the nemesis of democracy, its shadow, or a path to move beyond “liberal democracy” towards “real democracy”? What lessons does the history of past populist moment hold for our understanding of contemporary populist governance? Under what conditions have populists in office led to political polarization and democratic erosion? What comes after populism, and how do societies deal with its legacies? Still the Age of Populism? will be of interest to a broad audience of students and scholars of political sociology and comparative politics.

The title of this edited volume is inspired by Phillipe Schmitter’s (1974) classical piece, “Still the Century of Corporatism?” Whereas Schmitter asked whether the organic statism of interwar fascists like Mihail Manoilescu had reemerged in new forms of interest articulation both in democratic and bureaucratic authoritarianism in new and unexpected ways, the environment in which we pose this question, is one where populism has already become a verbal and discursive specter used by pundits, politicians, and scholars. For neoliberals, before their economic doctrines became hegemonic, populism was synonymous with fiscal irresponsibility which posed a threat to sound economic rationality. Its excoriation displaced Keynesianism and served as a justification for privatization of state property and the reduction of the welfare state. Populism is currently linked with the problem of democratic backsliding. Politicians and pundits warn citizens about the danger of demagogues who dupe them into voting on the basis of emotional appeals rather than a careful consideration of their interests. Voters, oblivious to these warnings, continue to turn out and vote for such populists in both fledgling and established democracies.

When one opens an article or a book about populism, a high percentage of them start with a lament that despite its widespread use, there is no consensus over what populism is, that it is conceptually imprecise, and difficult to define. What usually follows is a discussion of several different influential conceptual works. This often begins with Laclau’s notion of populism as a countermovement to the failure of democratic representation under neo-liberal capitalism (2005). After dancing around Laclau’s controversial arguments about populism, popular sovereignty, and what constitutes democracy, many turn to the more analytical contributions of Weyland (2001) or Mudde and Kaltwasser (2013). These days, in political science at least, the modal author often adopts the widely cited minimal ideational definition formulated by the latter: A thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic camps, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people. (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013, 6)

This issue marks the last of our six years as the editorial team of Perspectives on Politics. It has been both a richly rewarding and exhausting journey, as well as a labor of love. As with all journeys, some of what we encountered along the way was foreseeable, but much of it was not. For example, we knew that Donald Trump’s presidency would be consequential and in many ways unprecedented when we assumed the helm in June 2017, but not that he would become the first president to be impeached twice, or the first to attempt to overturn presidential election results and violently prevent the peaceful transfer of power, thereby threatening the republic’s very foundations. We had no idea what COVID-19 was, or that it would go on to kill more than one million people in the United States alone. Nor could we foresee that the murder of George Floyd would spark the greatest wave of protest in the United States since the 1960s. Nor yet again did we know that more than seventy-five years after the end of World War II, there would be a major European land war between two former Soviet Republics. Yet we felt compelled to respond to each of these world historical moments as they unfolded in real time, while also attempting to modernize and innovate with respect to the journal’s publication procedures and to stay true to its substantive mission.