TRANSITIONS AND NON-TRANSITIONS FROM COMMUNISM: Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. By Steven Saxonberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xi, 350 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$100.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-02388-8.
WHY COMMUNISM DID NOT COLLAPSE: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe. Edited by Martin K. Dimitrov. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xiv, 375 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$34.99, paper. ISBN 978-1-107-65113-5.
The fragments that seemingly confirm the decline of communism are visible everywhere in the twenty-first century: the Wall reduced to a memorial in the centre of Berlin in Germany; a Lenin statue decapitated in the southern district of Orenburg, Russia; empty spots in Albania where Enver Hoxa’s statues used to stand over the hills of his hometown of Gjirokastër and Skanderbeg Square in the capital Tirana; and the sense of anachronistic quaintness draping the street signs in central Maputo, Mozambique adorned with familiar names from the pantheon of socialist state leaders in the 1970s such as Kim Il-Sung. These, however, deflect attention from a rather obvious fact: there remain communist or socialist states in the post-Cold War age, even if in different forms than Marx or Lenin might have envisaged.
The two books reviewed here, as indicated by their titles, ask a common and cogent question: what explains the collapse or transition from communism in some nation-states, while others retained communism in some form? Steven Saxonberg’s single-authored book focuses on, as the subtitle indicates, “regime survival” in China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam, while Martin Dimitrov’s edited volume deals with “regime resilience” in Asia and Europe via comparative analyses of several collapsed Eastern European communist states and the extant communist states of China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam. Both start with the position that cases of survival and collapse can be fruitfully compared to provide more robust insights into the reasons behind these divergent outcomes, and both argue persuasively that additional variables to just the use of systematic repression must be taken into account when analyzing the causes of these divergent outcomes.
The books are structured along thematic lines rather than by country cases. Saxonberg’s nine chapters include an introduction followed by a chapter that outlines regime typology based on hegemony and ideological legitimacy, then a chapter that analyzes the role of nationalism in fuelling personalistic regimes in China, Vietnam and North Korea, among others. Chapter 4 examines how opposition within states is affected by changes in the type of regime, while the following chapter, focusing on East European cases, outlines the notion of “revolutionary potential”: the extent of frustrated rising expectations and the ease with which oppositional groups can disseminate their messages to the larger society. Chapter 6 overviews negotiated transitions from authoritarianism that were not racked by violence, and chapter 7 explains two cases of communist, one-party rule survival—China and Vietnam—via a focus on their respective variations on state capitalism and ends with a prediction of negotiated transition for these countries in the future. The following chapter explores non-transitions in maturing and patrimonial communisms through a comparative analysis of North Korea and Cuba. The ninth and final chapter is a conclusion that sums up the findings and takes a brief tour of future prospects for the remaining communist states (other than Laos).
Dimitrov’s volume has eleven chapters—an introduction and nine body chapters—organized around four types of adaptation: economic; ideological; those caused from international sources; and institutional adaptations that increase inclusivity or accountability. A conclusion sums up the findings and looks ahead. Most of the chapters are explicitly comparative, while some focus on one case with some added comparative references. Thomas Bernstein compares resilience and collapse in China and the Soviet Union in the first body chapter by looking at liberalization, scale of reform, sequencing and leadership. After comparing China, North Korea and the Soviet Union in his chapter, Vladimir Tismaneanu argues that some “communist regimes disappeared because they lost their hierocratic credentials” (98). In chapter 4, Charles Armstrong explains the importance of ideology in North Korea’s regime survival, while in the next, Valerie Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik outline three diffusion models for transition—demonstration effects, similar conditions and spread of transnational networks. Mark Kramer then examines the dynamics of diffusion of transitions and the impact on regime survival in the Soviet Bloc in chapter 6, while in chapter 7 Mary Gallagher and Jonathan Hanson apply selectorate theory to authoritarian survival and resilience to conclude that the composition of the winning coalition matters as much as its size. Incremental reforms as significant contributors to regime durability in China are the focus of Kellee Tsai’s analysis in the next chapter. Chapter 9 is a comparison of the substantive differences between vertical and horizontal institutions of accountability in China and Vietnam by Regina Abrami, Edmund Malesky and Yu Zheng. The final body chapter, “Vertical Accountability in Communist Regimes” by Dimitrov, draws on an impressive range of Bulgarian and Chinese sources to compare the role of citizen complaints in eroding vertical accountability in the two countries up to 1989, and why one regime collapsed while the other survived.
A closer look at case selection criteria and geographic coverage reveals a few differences. Both start with the position that despite the unity within diversity or diversity within the unity that the assemblage of communist states present, it is emphatically useful to compare countries that transitioned (whether through peaceful or violent processes) away from communism with those that did not. But Saxonberg aspires to cover a sampling of communist countries from around the world, while the Dimitrov volume limits itself to Asia and Europe.
Saxonberg explains the logic for including only Ethiopia from African states, why Grenada was included along with Nicaragua from Latin America, and why Laos, Cambodia, Bulgaria and Albania were excluded. According to the author’s assertion, he claims the four countries excluded were not “key” cases, but does not clarify by what criteria this conclusion was reached. If one were to select the diffusion of personalist dictatorship (“patrimonial communism” in his terminology) as a potential indicator for transition or non-transition, surely Albania could have been an important case. If genocide or systematic use of violence were isolated as key variables affecting regime resilience or likelihood for transitions, presumably Cambodia would have been a key example. Aside from relative importance, Saxonberg states that there are not many secondary sources on these specific countries. This is perhaps correct in relative terms. However, there are several major books and notable articles published in English on Cambodia, Laos, Bulgaria and Albania that could have been used. Saxonberg also notes that he does not have the language capacities to access the “original sources” in these cases (11), indirectly suggesting that he used primary source materials for the cases he did include. However, there is zero indication that he used materials in the original languages for his empirical information on countries such as China and North Korea. His final reason for excluding some cases, the lack of time, is the most persuasive: after all, he has covered a laudable number of countries by himself, especially when the original plan was for the book to be jointly authored with two others.
Dimitrov and company mark their catchment area more succinctly, ostensibly focusing on the 15 “core” communist states that were recognized by the Soviet Union, all of which had considerable communist party size and reach, economic nationalization and agricultural collectivization, and used communist ideology as a tool for indoctrination and mobilization. In contrast to Saxonberg’s grouping, the core 15 includes Laos, Bulgaria and Albania, but not Cambodia. Cambodia, instead, is categorized as part of a set of 11 countries placed under the rubric of “Communist penumbra” states that are excluded from the comparison set due to insufficient scale and scope in the analytical areas outlined above (17–19). The case for comparability of communist states pre-1989, the five surviving states, and of these five with those that collapsed 1989–1991, is also explicitly explained; but the countries that are actually analyzed do not map perfectly to the boundaries drawn in the introduction. For example, Laos makes several appearances in Dimitrov’s introduction but returns in only the most cursory of fashions in a handful of spots in the rest of the chapters. Mongolia, one of the core 15, is a central part of Mark Kramer’s chapter, but merits no significant mentions in the others. Two former Soviet republics in Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, are not flagged at all in the introduction, but are briefly analyzed in chapter 5 by Bunce and Wolchik.
In terms of the analysis, both list similar factors in explaining regime survival. In addition to violent repression, institutional reforms in political and economic fields, the adjustment of ideologies to maintain legitimacy, and reactions to social unrest via changes in accountability and inclusivity are raised in both texts. There are some differences in the list of variables: Saxonberg distinguishes more clearly between stages or types of socialist states (i.e., maturing – reforming, or freezing) and places more emphasis on the issue of timing of reforms (333). Dimitrov and company, on the other hand, note the role of spatial contiguity in explaining diffusion of revolts and transitions, and assert that continuous adaptive change has resulted in a higher likelihood of regime resilience (8).
Both works draw from existing analyses of authoritarian or autocratic regimes, but the distinctions between authoritarian regimes of the socialist ilk and those that might be categorized as non-socialist and personalist, single-party or bureaucratic authoritarian seem to move in and out of focus. There is the slippage in terms: the Dimitrov volume title explicitly refers to “communism” but several of the chapters continuously refer to “authoritarianism” and make comparisons to non-socialist or communist governments in Tunisia and Syria (211) or Africa and the Middle East (148). But more importantly, the question of whether or not the explanations for regime stability or collapse applies to all types of authoritarian states or not, or if in limited forms, based on what factors, is not examined at much depth. Dimitrov acknowledges the potential problems of generalizability (4–5, 19), but differences in types of political rule and natural resource endowments are treated briefly and in a rather cursory manner (311–312), while Saxonberg, discussing other socialist-personalist cases in his explanation of case selection criteria, does not appear to address the issue of generalizability across different sub-types. For specialists of Asian politics, for example, the potential utility, or lack thereof, of looking at single-party (or single-party dominated) governments of Singapore and Malaysia, or an absolute monarchy such as Brunei, with those of Vietnam and Laos might have been an interesting avenue of exploration, especially if the role of contiguity and demonstration effects are significant factors in generating visions of alternative forms of governance.
Even as things stand, some of the comparative insights appear to generate observations that seem to teeter close to being too general to be useful. Even if external threats have helped fuel the use of nationalism in conjunction with communist ideology in China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea (Dimitrov, 26), most specialists of these countries would point to differences in ethnic and language diversity, scale of territory, natural resource endowments, efficiency of the propaganda apparatus, and a range of other factors that would create significant differences in the relative weight that perceived external threats would have in fuelling the production of nationalist ideologies in each.
But these issues ultimately do not alter the fact that these books are paragons for the case that socialist or communist states can and should be productively analyzed as a group, regardless of regime collapse or resilience. Studies of socialist states have often been based on captivating yet isolated case studies that have created portraits without a canvas of systematic comparisons and precise causal explanations, making these two titles particularly welcome and timely. Specialists of individual socialist countries in Asia and other regions, and comparativists who focus on socialism, authoritarianism and political transitions, will all be certain to find these two formulations very useful, in fact necessary, to engage with in the future.
Hyung-Gu Lynn
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada