Communist and Post-Communist Studies 39 (2006) 305e329 www.elsevier.com/locate/postcomstud

Democracy or autocracy on the march? The colored revolutions as normal dynamics of patronal presidentialism Henry E. Hale* George Washington University, Department of Political Science, Old Main 413M, 1922 F Street NW, Washington, DC 20052, USA Available online 4 August 2006

Abstract What impact have Eurasia’s 2003e2005 ‘‘colored revolutions’’ had on the state of democracy and autocracy in the region? The logic of patronal presidentialism, a set of institutions common to post-Soviet countries, suggests that the revolutions are at root succession struggles more than democratic breakthroughs generated by civic activists and foreign democratizing activity. This helps explain why Georgia is experiencing a new retreat from ideal-type democracy while only Ukraine, whose revolution weakened the patronal presidency, has sustained high political contestation after its revolution. This means that autocratic leaders clamping down on non-governmental organizations, free media, and their foreign supporters may have learned the wrong lessons, perhaps making their countries more susceptible to violent revolution than they were before. Ó 2006 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Hybrid regimes; Demonstration effects; Democratization; Eurasia; Ukraine; Central Asia

* Tel.: þ1 202 994 4810. E-mail address: [email protected] 0967-067X/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2006.06.006

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What impact have the Eurasian ‘‘colored revolutions’’ of 2003e2005 had on the state of democracy in the post-communist region? Three views have become widespread. First, the 2003 ‘‘Rose Revolution’’ in Georgia, the 2004 ‘‘Orange Revolution’’ in Ukraine, and the 2005 ‘‘Tulip Revolution’’ in Kyrgyzstan have been widely interpreted as breakthroughs of popular democracy in these countries, instances where citizens retook control of corrupt states from autocratizing leaders (Bunce, 2006; Karatnycky, 2005; McFaul, 2005; Silitski, 2005a). Second, many of these same thinkers have argued that the colored revolutions represent ‘‘democracy on the march’’ in the region, that each successful revolution has helped inspire or otherwise promote revolutionary behavior in other countries (Beissinger, in press; Bunce, 2006; Karatnycky, 2005; Silitski, 2005a; Weir, 2005; Wilson, 2005a; Kuzio, unpublished). Third, some authors have also noted an opposing effect. Autocratic rulers have also learned from seeing how their neighbors have been overthrown and have accordingly reduced democratic prospects there through harsh crackdowns (Carothers, 2006; Herde, 2005; Silitski, 2005b). In combination, the most common expectation seems to be one of regime-type polarization in the region: The revolutionary countries are on the fast-track to democracy while the non-revolutionary countries are going steadily in the opposite direction. The present paper presents a different view that might at first seem paradoxical: (1) the colored revolutions represent more continuity than change in these countries’ politics; (2) the prospects for revolution are not greatly enhanced by the learning of democracy advocates; and (3) the efforts by autocrats to prevent democracy may in fact be making revolution more likely in their countries. The key is to understand the dynamics of a set of political institutions that have been in place in most Eurasian countries in the 1990s and 2000s: patronal presidentialism. These institutions are marked by regular and reasonably predictable oscillations between periods of tight political closure and periods of (sometimes sudden) political opening, including the phenomena typically called the ‘‘colored revolutions.’’ The opening is only likely to last, resulting in true democratization, if it involves a change in the fundamental institutions of patronal presidentialism. But this has not been the case in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, both of which now show few signs of true democratic progress. Only in Ukraine did a ‘‘colored revolution’’ result in a major institutional change, and only there have we seen a dramatic move toward democracy. As for the non-revolutionary states, both pro-democracy activists and incumbent autocrats have learned, but they have not generally learned the right lessons due to a widespread misinterpretation of the actual sources and meaning of the colored revolutions. Most interestingly, the mistaken learning of autocrats may actually be weakening them: by ruthlessly crushing non-governmental organizations smacking of independence and by attempting to cut their societies off from foreign contacts, they may inadvertently be undermining one of the critical sources of strength for a patronal president, making revolution more rather than less likely (and, unfortunately, also more likely to involve violence). These findings have at least two major implications for comparative political science. First, they reveal the crucial importance of institutional design in hybrid regimes in determining whether these regimes remain in the limbo of hybridity or

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eventually move toward democracy or autocracy. Second, they show that theories of political learning must be careful not to assume that learners are learning the right lessons: just as generals sometimes ‘‘fight the last war’’ and reap military disaster, so can activists and leaders misunderstand dramatic political events and take responsive action that therefore either fails to have a significant effect or actually backfires.

Understanding the colored revolutions1 Most of the former Soviet states are governed by institutions that might be called ‘‘patronal presidentialism.’’ Power resides overwhelmingly in a directly elected presidency and, crucially, this power involves not only formal but immense informal authority based on pervasive patroneclient relationships and machine politics (Fish, 2005; Hough, 2001; Wilson, 2005b). The general importance of informal networks and authority is a holdover from the Soviet period, although the particular nature of the political machines and patronage politics is largely a product of the postcommunist transition itselfdespecially privatization policies and transformations in center-periphery relations (Derlugian, 2005a,b; Hale, 2003; Schatz, 2004; Way, 2004). Of course, not all communist legacies are the same as the Soviet legacy, which has been usefully described as a legacy of patrimonial communism (Kitschelt et al., 1999). The universe of cases considered here thus includes those countries identified by Kitschelt et al. (1999) as having patrimonial communist legacies and assessed by Fish (2001) to have a presidential form of government.2 While related dynamics may be identifiable in countries that are not fully patronal presidential as defined here, such as Serbia or Slovakia, they are left for treatment elsewhere since other factors may be involved there due to institutional differences.3 Patronal presidentialism and autocracy While the vast power available to patronal presidents can be used for the betterment of society, it can also be a tremendously effective weapon with which to beat down or co-opt a (potential) opposition. Since this weapon penetrates deep into society, almost anyone with something to lose in society can lose it to the president. Big businesses (led by ‘‘oligarchs’’) can have their licenses revoked or their leaders prosecuted for tax evasion. Elected officials can be disqualified from races by corrupt courts or find their opponents exceptionally well-funded. Regional political machines can be starved of government largesse. Many of these ‘‘elites’’ can simply be bought, paid off with secret accounts or suitcases full of cash. They can also be 1 For an elaboration of the theory summarized here and analysis of the entire set of patronal presidential countries in post-Soviet Eurasia, see Hale (2005). 2 Moldova abandoned its presidential system for a parliamentary one since Fish’s (2001) piece went to press. 3 The mere fact that two revolutions appear similar and are frequently treated as similar does not mean they are actually or fully part of the same phenomenon.

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blackmailed with material collected by government security agencies, a tactic starkly revealed in Ukraine by the release of taped presidential conversations (Darden, 2001). In theory, regional bosses or business leaders can gang up and dislodge a president. But the president has a tremendous advantage in any such struggle since he or she can play on the diverse interests of such elites so as to divide and conquer them. Patronal presidents like Russia’s Boris Yeltsin and Ukraine’s Leonid Kuchma, for example, were famous for balancing key groups of supporters against each other, and current Russian president Vladimir Putin has long done the same with informal Kremlin ‘‘groups,’’ such as those sometimes referred to as the Siloviki and the ‘‘St. Petersburg lawyers.’’ When a patronal president is firmly entrenched in his or her office, therefore, those who have a significant financial or political stake in society are likely to avoid anything resembling a challenge to the regime. This means that the president’s ideological opponents will have a very hard time attracting any kind of material support, be it in the form of financing or television airtime. At such times, a country with patronal presidential institutions will very much resemble a classic autocratic regime. This is the Ukraine of 1999 (D’Anieri, 2001; Kuzio, 2005b), the Russia of 2004 (Fish, 2005), and the Uzbekistan of the last 15 years (Jones Luong, 2002). Patronal presidentialism, succession, and ‘‘democratic breakthroughs’’ Whenever a patronal president is widely perceived to be on his or her way out, however, the situation changes dramatically. Not all former Soviet countries have encountered such situations: Since the mid-1990s, the presidents of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have all subverted any original constitutional term limits, indicated their desire to remain in office, and remained healthy enough so that few have expected them to willingly depart the political scene anytime soon. Yet there have arisen times in other post-Soviet countries where many of society’s stakeholders have come to suspect that a patronal president may not run for reelection. In Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia, the incumbents Boris Yeltsin, Askar Akaev, and Eduard Shevardnadze made clear prior to presidential (or prepresidential parliamentary) elections that they would bow to constitutional term limits and not run again for office. Patronal presidents can also become incapacitated by illness, as did Azerbaijani president Heidar Aliev (and Yeltsin), generating widespread expectations that they will retire or die. Others can simply decide not to run for reelection in the face of deep unpopularity, as did Kuchma when he kept his name off of the 2004 presidential election ballot after being publicly linked earlier in his term to the murder of a journalist and other misdeeds. A president’s ability to maintain elite confidence can also be shaken by military defeat, as with the NATO victory over Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia in 1999. When expectations of a president’s departure become widespread for any such reasons, the incumbent becomes a kind of ‘‘lame duck,’’ someone who is increasingly seen as irrelevant to the political future and hence increasingly powerless to maintain the unity of his or her team since he or she won’t be around after the election to

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punish those who ‘‘defect.’’ As Yeltsin was on his way out in Russia in 1998e1999, for example, many of the same governors and oligarchs who had ensured his reelection in 1996 now boldly backed a popular former prime minister (Yevgeny Primakov) whom Yeltsin himself had sacked in 1999 and who was calling for the prosecution of key Yeltsin allies (Hale, 2006). As Kuchma was exiting Ukraine’s presidency in 2004, most Western Ukrainian elites and some businesses that had backed him in 1999 opted to support Viktor Yushchenko, the most popular opponent of his regime (Arel, 2005; D’Anieri, 2005a; Way, 2005b). While an outgoing president may attempt to anoint a political heir and to engineer his or her victory in the next presidential election, as Yeltsin did in 1999 by ushering Putin into office, this does not always solve the problem. For one thing, regional and business leaders generally have very diverse interests and are typically divided into rival groups. While all rally around the president when the president is firmly in control, they simultaneously compete with each other for presidential favor and the resource distribution this entails. The problem for an outgoing president is that only one person (and hence only one group’s representative) can be selected as the heir. The heir’s rivals then have reason to fear that they will be shut out of the heir’s future administration or, perhaps, worsedstripped of their assets, forced into exile, or jailed. When Kuchma tapped former Donetsk regional governor Viktor Yanukovych as his successor, therefore, representatives of Western Ukrainian regions and business rivals to the mighty oligarchic Donetsk ‘‘clan’’ were alarmed that his victory could mean the crushing of their interests, whether or not they supported him in the election. At the same time, pro-presidential rivals in such situations are certainly prone to speculate about the riches they could obtain should they defect from the outgoing president’s chosen team and win, claiming presidential spoils for themselves. Thus, whenever elites come widely to suspect that a patronal president may leave office, this has the potential of opening up a Pandora’s box of political struggle. Since the stakes are extremely highdthe patronal presidency itselfdthese battles can be extraordinarily fierce, involving all manner of tactics reminiscent of the most inspired and nefarious manipulations of a Boss Tweed. In Russia in 1999, oligarch-run television (notably the pro-Putin ORT and RTR and the pro-Primakov NTV) squared off in a battle of innuendo and potential slander while regional political machines took sides to quash their opponents and promote their chosen allies (Hale, 2006). In Ukraine in 2004, the contest involved starkly obvious fraud and even an assassination attempt (Kuzio, 2005a; Way, 2005a; Wilson, 2005a). These struggles are not entirely elite affairs. Since public opinion is one resource in battle, these elite contests frequently open up political space for mass involvement, including huge street protests when passions run high. In Ukraine, the maidan (public square) saw unprecedented mass turnout, and street protests also played major roles in Georgia, as opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili stormed the parliament building, and in Kyrgyzstan, as anti-Akaev forces drove the incumbent out of the country. While the crowds can sometimes be unruly, such periods of political competition can make a country that once looked highly authoritarian resemble a democracy much more closely than it did before, especially if the opposition wins. Hence

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the tendency to hail the Orange, Rose, and Tulip Revolutions as democratic breakthroughs. What, then, can we infer about the causes of the colored revolutions? First, we see that the colored revolutions of 2003e2005 appeared only in those countries where presidents were lame ducks when the next round of parliamentary and presidential elections were drawing near.4 Shevardnadze had said as early as 2002 that he would not seek a new term as president of Georgia, undermining his own ability to hold ranks during the 2003 parliamentary election that was widely seen as a test of strength before a new presidential election (RFE/RL Newsline, 2002, Apr. 11). Akaev, on February 27, 2005das he was casting his ballot in the parliamentary elections that his team had tried to engineer and that ultimately sparked the Tulip Revolutiondstated that he would not run for reelection in the presidential elections slated for later that year (Marat, 2005; Rhodes, 2005; TOL, 2005 and RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Feb. 28). On his part Kuchma, despite securing a controversial Constitutional Court ruling that he had the right to another term in the office, did not advance his own candidacy for this office, instead endorsing a would-be successor (Vydrin and Rozhkova, 2005, 193e194, 200, 220, 257). There have been only two other lame-duck patronal presidents in office leading into a presidential election between the late 1990s and early 2006: Azerbaijan’s Heidar Aliev and Russia’s Boris Yeltsin. Both leaders fell gravely ill and ultimately did not seek to include their names on the ballot. Yet both succeeded in installing a successor where the others failed. Why was this the case? This brings us to two additional factors: public opinion and elite strategy. The case of Azerbaijan illustrates these factors’ roles nicely. Aliev, widely revered in Azerbaijan as its consummate patron, was simply more popular than Kuchma, Akaev, or Shevardnadze (all dismally unpopular) and thus was able to lend some of this authority to his successor through his endorsement. Moreover, Aliev kept his own candidacy alive until the final two weeks of the campaign, minimizing the time available for potential defectors to coordinate and organize. Also very important, however, is that Aliev’s successor was . Aliev. That is, the successor was Heidar Aliev’s own son, Ilham Aliev. By keeping the leadership of the country in the family and by grooming his son effectively, the elder Aliev cleverly avoided the ‘‘succession trap,’’ the need to choose the successor from among the several competing elite groups that were all part of the presidential team. The younger Aliev was thus better positioned to assure other, rival elite groups that he would maintain his father’s coalition, reducing the elite fears of post-election exclusion that typically led some to defect prior to the election in the hope of shaping their own fates (Hale, 2005). Ilham Aliev, as the outgoing patron’s son, was also a natural focal point for elite coordination on the succession, making coordination around a different candidate from within the elite less likely. Thus while Azerbaijan did experience some political contestation during the elder Aliev’s lame-duck phase, he was the only lame-duck

4 That is, here we are only focusing on the period 2003e2005. On the whole post-communist period see Hale (2005).

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president to successfully usher a political heir into office during the ‘‘revolutionary’’ period of 2003e2005. The factors of popular support and leader strategy also help explain why the incumbent team in Russia survived its period of great political contestation in 1999e2000, with Yeltsin successfully handing off power to Putin. While Yeltsin was highly unpopular, he managed to choose an heir (Putin) who quickly became extremely popular through his decisive military response to several terrorist apartment bombings in Moscow and other cities in the last few months of 1999 (Hale, 2006). Yeltsin sealed Putin’s advantage by resigning the presidency, allowing Putin to become acting president before presidential elections that were then called ahead of schedule. With Putin light years ahead of his strongest rival (Primakov) in all presidential polls and holding the reins of incumbency, key governors and oligarchs backed away from all rivals and rallied around Putin, who then waltzed to his first election victory.

Effects of the colored revolutions on regime type in Eurasia If the colored revolutions primarily reflect elite divisions brought about by a lameduck syndrome and unpopular patronal presidents, what effects have they had on the kinds of political regimes extant in post-Soviet Eurasia? Here it is important to divide these countries into two categories since the effects of the colored revolutions are different in each category. First, we consider the revolutions’ impacts on the countries that actually experienced the revolutions: Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine. Second, we turn to the non-revolutionary countries, examining how their democratic prospects have been affected by revolutionary events in their neighbors. In each case, we find that the logic outlined above leads us to some interesting conclusions. For one thing, it appears that analysts may have exaggerated the degree to which the colored revolutions actually represent democratic turning points for the countries in which they occurred; only Ukraine shows signs of making a true democratic breakthrough (though this could still be subverted). In the (so-far) nonrevolutionary countries, we see a process of ‘‘learning’’ by both opposition and pro-government elites. But this ‘‘learning’’ is frequently based on mistaken interpretations of what caused the revolutions. The most consequential mistakes appear to be made by the most authoritarian governments, who may actually be increasing the likelihood of their own revolutionary overthrow. These mistakes also mean, however, that any ensuing revolutions are likely to be of the more anarchic and even violent variety rather than the more orderly and peaceful transfers of power that occurred in Ukraine and Georgia. Direct impacts: the revolutionary countries (Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine) While the post-revolutionary leaders in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan may yet prove to have the strength and personal commitment necessary to advance their countries toward democracy (McFaul, 2002), there is strong reason to believe that any effort to forge a true democratic breakthrough will face an uphill battle so

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long as the institutions of patronal presidentialism remain intact. Once one side has won the political struggle and assumed the patronal presidency, even if the outcome was decided democratically, society’s elites have great incentive once again to start rallying around the new president so as to avoid falling out of favor. This is because of the great power a patronal president has to influence the fates of these stakeholders, be it actively (through repression or rewards for loyalty) or passively (through overlooking corruption charges or ignoring pleas for resource transfers). Even well intentioned presidents can find themselves resorting to machine tactics in an effort to overcome ‘‘stubborn,’’ ‘‘obsolete,’’ ‘‘corrupt,’’ ‘‘unpatriotic,’’ ‘‘proRussian,’’ or ‘‘illegitimate’’ opposition to what they may actually see as necessary democratic or market reforms. The temptation facing patronal presidents, then, is often to impose reforms from above through the existing concentration of power rather than to build the broad-based coalitions that other kinds of institutions may necessitate. The result, ironically, can be a return to authoritarian-style politics that had been the target of a new leader’s criticism prior to assuming office. Indeed, we should not forget that the ‘‘decrepit autocrats’’ who were displaced in the Rose and Orange Revolutions were once seen as enlightened heroes of liberalism endeavoring to rid their countries of corruption and autocratic methods: Eduard Shevardnadze, Gorbachev’s erstwhile champion of a pro-Western foreign policy, and Askar Akaev, formerly regarded as Central Asia’s lone democratically-inclined leader, one who stood out as a scientist rather than a career Communist Party official or state bureaucrat. The early signs of this elite reconsolidation are most evident in Georgia, beginning with Mikheil Saakashvili’s stunning 96% victory in the January 2004 presidential elections that immediately followed the Rose Revolution. The OSCE’s final report noted that while these elections were an improvement over the most recent elections under Shevardnadze, it also found an ‘‘ongoing lack of distinction between State administration and political party structures’’ and an ‘‘ongoing tendency to misuse State administrative resources’’ (OSCE, 2004, 1e2). Saakashvili has taken on some important tasks that do appear to be for the good of society, including efforts to combat corruption in police structures and to bring black-market trade into the tax system. But as with other democrats who have found themselves in control of patronal presidential systems, he strongly appears to have decided that the necessary reforms are best promoted by the decisive actions of the chief executive rather than by sharing power and relying on compromises with key opposition forces. Thus Fairbanks (2004) reports that Saakashvili has effectively replaced ‘‘superpresidential’’ institutions with even more highly concentrated ‘‘hyperpresidential’’ ones. For example, one reform gave the president the right to name all nine Constitutional Court justices, whereas previously the Parliament and the Supreme Court had the right to appoint three each, with the president also appointing three (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Jan. 19). In his 2005 state-of-the-nation address, he even went so far as to suggest that parties opposing his pro-Western stance should be banned (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Feb. 11). As Saakashvili’s own popularity has begun to decline, there is evidence that forces close to him have been increasingly attempting to

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influence mass media, as the independent Human Rights Watch’s 2006 report indicated (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Jul. 11; 2006, Jan. 19).5 Indeed, as Derlugian (2004) argues, the Rose Revolution did not wipe away the patroneclient relationships at the heart of Georgia’s political economy, and Saakashvili appears to be finding it easier to work within the framework of patronal presidentialism than to attempt to change Georgia’s political system wholesale. While we cannot rule out that he is following a democratization strategy that may yet pay off in the longer run, it now appears more likely that he is following the path of his predecessor (also once known as a ‘‘democrat’’) as Georgia’s patronal presidential system moves from a phase of contestation to a new phase of consolidation. If Georgia shows the clearest signs of new elite consolidation in a cyclic phase of autocratization, Ukraine appears to illustrate a way a country might genuinely escape the cycles and make a true democratic breakthrough. Ironically, this is not because the strongest advocate of democracy, Yushchenko, won the presidency in a ‘‘democratic revolution.’’ Instead, the result of Ukraine’s 2004 power struggle was a stalemate that was resolved only when Yushchenko agreed in December 2004 to weaken the presidency that he aspired to inherit (Christensen et al., 2005). The constitutional reform that was the linchpin to this deal transferred some key presidential powers to the parliament, most importantly the right to name the prime minister, starting in 2006. While these reforms did not fully come into effect until Ukraine’s new parliament was elected on March 26, 2006, they generated crucial perceptions of ‘‘security in opposition’’ among elites who were considering backing parties and politicians of whom the president did not approve. Yushchenko’s personality, be it weakness or adherence to democratic values, surely contributed to these perceptions. Indeed, because the constitutional reform gained force only in 2006, he effectively wielded Kuchma’s superpresidential powers for about a year yet did not use them like Kuchma did. Yet with a clear time limit set on his wielding these powers, elites knew that any blandishments or punishments he was likely to mete out could be changed as soon as the parliament gained its new powers. Thus in January 2006, Yanukovych’s party (the Party of Regions) teamed up with Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc (which broke with Yushchenko in 2005 as the ‘‘orange coalition’’ began to fragment) in the old Rada to force the resignation of Yushchenko’s government, which was led by Yury Yekhanurov. The message was clearly sent that the president’s opposition expected to control significant political resources in the future and that the days of Ukraine’s presidential domination were over (RFE/RL Newsline, 2006, Jan. 11). Leading opposition politicians accordingly made strong public assertions that the prime minister, to be chosen by the new parliament, would have at least as much independent power as the president (Izvestiia, 2005, Sep. 23, UKL 363). In fact, one of Tymoshenko’s strategies in the 2006 Rada campaign was to tell voters that the election was really about

5

On his decline in popularity, see RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Apr. 5.

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who would be prime minister.6 Yanukovych, for his part, predicted in January 2006 that the Party of Regions would win the Rada elections, that he would then become prime minister again, and that ‘‘the orange horror won’t last long’’ (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Jan. 21). Thus while the first elections after Georgia’s Rose Revolution involved little serious opposition, Ukraine’s post-revolutionary elections were intensely competitive and highly praised by international observers. For one thing, the ‘‘third’’ round of the presidential elections in 2004, after the constitutional deal had been reached, was quite competitive, with Orange Revolution loser Yanukovych winning as much as 44% of the vote. The 2006 elections for the Ukrainian Rada is an even starker example: Yanukovych’s party won the largest number of seats and Tymoshenko’s bloc finished second, with the pro-presidential Our Ukraine coming in a distant third. The OSCE’s preliminary report assessed the election as free and fair, noting a major turnaround since the Kuchma era (OSCE, 2006). Of course, as D’Anieri (2005b) has pointed out, not just any reduction in presidential powers will be a net plus for democracy. Power needs to be divided in such a way that conflicting preferences of different branches are resolved in a peaceful and orderly manner. Appropriate checks and balances also need to accompany the division of power. Without these features, a country risks either institutional stalemate and breakdown or the ultimate usurpation of power by one branch or other. It is not yet clear whether Ukraine’s political reform possesses these features (Christensen et al., 2005). For one thing, the new division of powers is untried; only with the newly elected parliament will it become clear what the real balance of forces is and whether the transfer of formal powers to the parliament (and prime minister) will be enough to overcome the president’s formidable informal authority. It is even possible that the reforms will be altered or even reversed in the months or years ahead. Presidents themselves, even ones professing democratic credentials, rarely like to give up any of their own power and tend to do so only under duress. Thus when Ukrainian President Kuchma was seen to be weak and his team vulnerable, he began supporting constitutional reform that would divide state authority, but the opposition, sensing the opportunity to win the presidency and push Kuchma’s team out for good, rejected it. Only the Orange Revolution’s stalemate led Yushchenko to accept such a reform as the price of obtaining the presidency peacefully, and he has since criticized the change, proposed amendments that would strengthen the hand of the president, and said that a referendum should be held on the matter (RFE/ RL Newsline, 2006, Jan. 18, Feb. 13). It is also possible that the reforms could be overturned by the judiciary. As the legal scholar Futey (2005) has noted, there are still technical grounds on which a Ukrainian court could plausibly strike down the reforms.7 6 For example, a roadside Tymoshenko billboard in Lviv observed by the author on March 10, 2006, called March 26 the day that the country’s prime minister would be chosen. 7 For example, the Constitution stipulates that an amendment rejected by the parliament cannot be reconsidered for a whole year, but key components of the December 2004 reform had in fact been rejected by the parliament just eight months earlier.

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If Ukraine reflects post-revolutionary democratization via revolutionary stalemate, and if Georgia demonstrates renewed elite consolidation after one side unambiguously wins the revolutionary struggle, Kyrgyzstan represents an interesting case in between. Here there was also an elite stalemate, but it occurred after the revolution was won. Unlike Georgia and Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan had no single figure who was widely seen as the primary leader of opposition forces prior to the revolution. Instead, a variety of leaders competed for this role and elites had not coordinated their efforts around any single leader (McGlinchey, 2005). Thus the Tulip Revolution began not in the center, but in the provinces. And more specifically, it began in the southern provinces: Kyrgyzstan’s elite groups (both ‘‘clans’’ and regional interests) have long cleaved along North-South lines, lines shaped by a major geographic divide defined by mountains and inflected by the greater Russian influence in the North as opposed to a stronger Uzbek presence in the South. Akaev, the incumbent, had a primarily northern power base, meaning that the South had a particular interest in his overthrow. But Akaev also had opponents among rival northern interests as well. Thus after demonstrations overwhelmed some of the Akaev regime’s representatives in the South, they moved north to the capital of Bishkek, where northerners also joined the fray, ultimately toppling Akaev. But while the northern and southern opposition agreed on this outcome, they differed sharply on who should rule post-revolutionary Kyrgyzstan. Immediately after the revolution, the Supreme Court recognized the old parliament (rather than the controversial newly elected one) as temporarily retaining its authority, and this old parliament then hastily named the most prominent southern opposition leader, former prime minister Kurmanbek Bakiev, to the post of acting president in an effort to resolve the situation (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Mar. 25). The most prominent northern opponent to Akaev, former vice-president Feliks Kulov, had been in jail and was freed only after the revolution had been won. In the run-up to the early presidential elections that followed, public opinion polls showed that Bakiev and Kulov were running neck-and-neck, with Bakiev enjoying only a slight lead (RFE/ RL Newsline, 2005, Jun. 10). Fearing a North-South clash that could turn violent and that neither side was sure it would win, Kulov and Bakiev reached an accord that Bakiev said ‘‘allowed for the consolidation of political forces representing the South and the North of our country’’ (Gazeta.Kg, 2005, Jun. 28, 21:06). Specifically, Kulov agreed to cede the presidency to Bakiev in return for Bakiev’s promise to support a constitutional reform that would transfer presidential powers to the prime minister, a post promised to Kulov. Thus while this ‘‘tandem’’ won the presidential election with nearly 90% of the vote, Kyrgyzstan emerged from its revolution with at least some elite expectations that the patronal presidential system might not last. Kyrgyzstan’s ‘‘reform,’’ however, is much less promising for democracy than is Ukraine’s. For one thing, the Kyrgyzstan reform was not officially codified, remaining essentially a gentleman’s agreement that provides little in the way of a guarantee that elite opposition will not in the end be punished as it was under Akaev (Gazeta.Kg, 2005, Jun. 30, 19:59). While Bakiev has so far honored his agreement to share power with Kulov, little progress has been made in actually formulating the constitutional amendments that would institutionalize the promised division of power and

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thus give elites more security in opposition and more political career opportunities independent of the president. Moreover, while Bakiev denies that he aims to renege on the deal, his statements in late 2005 and early 2006 indicate an intention to ensure that Kyrgyzstan retains a presidential form of government with a strong president (Kabar, 2006, Feb. 9, 19:17). According to at least one report (Pritchin, 2006) his administration is preparing a new draft constitution that would ensure this. By early 2006, Bakiev was reportedly already setting plans in motion for a referendum on Kyrgyzstan’s constitutional future, giving voters a choice between a presidential, a parliamentary, or a mixed system (RFE/RL Newsline, 2006, Jan. 6). Kulov, for his part, has warned that a referendum could complicate the political situation and expressed concern regarding how it would be worded (Kabar, 2006, Feb. 7, 16:53). Thus while Kyrgyzstan’s political arena is now somewhat more competitive than it was under Akaev, this competition appears to have taken on a more lawless and covert character, with multiple assassinations of politicians-cum-businessmen and frequent mutual accusations among top officials of conspiracy and influence-peddling. Indeed, while competing interests (and not just North and South) each perceive that they have at least one patron in power (Kulov or Bakiev), they also fear the longer-run consequences of going into outright opposition to the BakievKulov ‘‘tandem.’’ Thus parties that are the most critical of the tandem once again find themselves hard pressed to recruit donors or elite patrons, as was indicated early on by Bakiev’s 89% victory in the post-revolutionary presidential election. Kyrgyzstan thus looks a lot more like an ‘‘unstable Georgia’’ than a Ukraine right now in that it appears to be on the way to a new phase of elite consolidation with the associated constriction of the democratic space. But if Bakiev does follow through on constitutional reforms that institutionalize a well-balanced division of power, Kyrgyzstan’s longer-run democratic fortunes could brighten. Indirect impacts: the activization of both democrats and autocrats Observers have tended to note two very different effects of the colored revolutions on countries that have (or had) not experienced them. This first has gotten most of the attention and might be labeled the democracy-on-the-march perspective. Policymakers, journalists, and scholars alike have observed a certain contagion effect across countries in the postcommunist world (Beissinger, in press; Bunce, 2006; Karatnycky, 2005; Weir, 2005; Wilson, 2005a; Kuzio, unpublished). Karatnycky (2005) and Kuzio (unpublished) describe in detail how youth groups and other civic activists in Georgia learned from those involved in the 2000 ouster of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, and youth in Ukraine interacted with and borrowed strategies from both groups. Kyrgyzstan, in turn, clearly borrowed from all of these preceding events, right down to youth groups with snappy mobilizing names (Kel-Keld‘‘Come on! Come on!’’dreminiscent of Georgia’s Kmara!d‘‘Enough!’’ and Ukraine’s Pora!d ‘‘It’s Time!’’), a symbolic color (yellow, echoing Ukraine’s orange), and election monitoring techniques (TOL, 2005). The groups also used similar strategies in mobilizing around elections, which Tucker (2005) suggests serve as excellent pretexts for mobilizing popular outrage against corruption.

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Karatnycky (2005) observes that civic activists from other post-Soviet countries have also been studying the successful revolutions. For example, would-be revolutionaries from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus all visited Ukraine during the Orange Revolution in part to learn for their own countries. The Belarusians agreed on the color ‘‘denim’’ (Wallander, 2006). Russian pro-democracy youth groups sprung up with pithy names meaning ‘‘Defense,’’ ‘‘We,’’ and ‘‘Voice,’’ with some having close ties to the revolutionary Ukrainian and Georgian groups (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Apr. 4; 2005, Sep. 12). Among Kazakhs, at least one youth group was reported to have based itself in Kyrgyzstan, seen as a safe haven for preparing democratic advance in the face of an expectation that Kazakhstan’s December 2005 presidential vote would prove unfair and unfree (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Dec. 14). Antiincumbent Azerbaijani parties attempted to join forces for the November 2005 parliamentary elections there and warned of revolution should falsification occur (Kerimov, 2005), even adopting the color orange (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Jun. 17), while youth groups popped up with names meaning ‘‘No!’’ and ‘‘It’s Time!’’ (RFE/ RL Newsline, 2005, May 11, May 20). Opposition Armenian groups, in turn, threatened mass unrest over the fraud they expected in that country’s late 2005 governmentsponsored referendum on constitutional reform, hoping to stage a colored revolution of their own. They also gained hope of success from Kyrgyzstan, with one Armenian party leader asserting that it took only about 3000 people to topple Akaev (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Dec. 20). It is surely also no coincidence that the anti-incumbent uprising in Andijon, Uzbekistan, took place in May 2005, shortly after Kyrgyzstan had provided an example of a successful revolution begun in the periphery of a Central Asian state. Indeed, not long before that, demonstrators had waved orange banners in the capital city of Tashkent (Weir, 2005). Explicitly ‘‘revolutionary’’ activity has been less visible in Tajikistan and the highly repressive Turkmenistan, but the fact that it has been so prevalent elsewhere certainly testifies to a significant demonstration effect among civic activists and opposition party leaders. Karatnycky (2005), for one, predicts that some of these other activists will likely succeed over time by virtue of this process of learning and inspiration. Bunce (2006) implies a similar expectation. Beissinger (in press) has even argued that the colored revolutions have taken on ‘‘modular’’ status, that the power of example has become so strong that revolutions have started to occur in even countries where local conditions are not generally conducive to them, as in Kyrgyzstan. From this perspective, then, the colored revolutions have produced a net positive effect on Eurasian democracy. Many analysts have also cited Western support as a key factor promoting this contagion effect. While there is heated debate over just how directly Western (especially American) government agencies and NGOs supported the revolutionary activists (Corwin, 2005b; Kara-Murza, 2005; Traynor, 2004; Wilson, 2005a), their indirect and moral support appears incontrovertible. Western governments, Western NGOs, and local democracy advocates alike have come to see such support as very useful in promoting the cause of democracy. Some Azerbaijani activists, after their revolutionary effort failed following the November 2005 parliamentary elections, even blamed their failure on the low level of Western support they received

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(RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Dec. 6). There are thus many grounds upon which the case is made that democracy is on the march. Silitski (2005b), Herde (2005), Carothers (2006), however, have noted an important opposing learning and contagion effect across Eurasia. Not only are civic activists learning how to defeat authoritarian governments, but authoritarian governments are learning how to defeat civic activists. Almost all of the region’s leading authoritarians have drawn virtually the same conclusions that most of the civic activists and their Western supporters have drawn. That is, the factors primarily responsible for the colored revolutions have been: civic activists, typically trained or supported in some way by successful revolutionaries from Georgia, Ukraine, and possibly Serbia; Western support for these activists and for opposition parties; and the room for mobilization given to opposition parties and candidates in competitive elections.8 Accordingly, these authoritarians have focused most of their efforts on cracking down on the opportunities for domestic non-governmental organizations and political parties to influence the political process as well as on cutting these groups off from Western support. In the run-up to its March 19, 2006, presidential election, the Belarusian government established strict new regulations on political activity, further tightened the already limited scope allowed for independent media, cracked down hard on unsanctioned gatherings, established severe legal punishments for post-election revolutionary activity, and greatly restricted the ability of foreign entities to meet with and provide even technical support for organizations suspected of disloyalty to Lukashenka.9 Likewise, in Uzbekistan, Karimov has systematically harassed, suppressed, or forced out Western media and international organizations with broad mandates to support democracy and civil society, from Soros to the Eurasia Foundation to the BBC (Alibekov, 2005; RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Mar. 21, May 31, Oct. 27). Kazakhstan’s government, ahead of its late 2005 presidential race, moved to get the extradition of Kazakh youth group activists based in Kyrgyzstan and banned a leading political party that sent a delegation to Ukraine to learn from the Orange Revolution (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Dec. 14; Weir, 2005). Azerbaijan’s leadership has also stood out for taking a particularly hard line against civic groups, frequently employing violence during pro-democracy rallies and harassing opposition (especially youth) leaders prior to the November 2005 parliamentary contest (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, May 23, May 20, Aug. 8, Sep. 26, Oct. 11, Nov. 29). Similar restrictions in the space open to genuine political competition can be observed in Tajikistan (where media have been increasingly constrained and where one prominent opposition party leader was jailed after being abducted in Moscow) and Armenia (where civil rights have been restricted and opposition activists harassed).10 Of course, there was little space for opposition activists to begin with in Turkmenistan. 8 For examples of public leadership statements from various non-revolutionary countries, see Polit.Ru, 2005, May 12, 18:19; RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Aug. 26, Jun. 21; 2006, Jan. 30, 2006. 9 On the latter, see RFE/RL Newsline, Aug. 18, 2005. For an excellent discussion of Lukashenka’s crackdown and the setbacks for democracy, see Silitski (2005b). 10 On Tajikistan, see RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Apr. 20, May 2, May 19. On Armenia, see RFE/RL Newsline, 2006, Jan. 20.

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The country that has gotten the most attention for its democratic deficiencies in the last few years, however, has been Russia. While Vladimir Putin’s moves away from the democratic ideal clearly have a variety of roots that precede the wave of colored revolutions (Fish, 2005; Hale, 2006; Wilson, 2005b), it is clear that the ousters of these autocrats have inspired his supporters to take a number of steps to prevent this possibility from occurring in Moscow, thereby contributing to Russia’s ‘‘backsliding.’’ One major move has been to harass or squelch non-governmental organizations that are not considered reliably pro-state, a trend that has accelerated since the colored revolutions began. Moreover, Putin’s team has expressed particular concern about the foreign financing of such NGOs, with the Russian President averring that ‘‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’’ (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Jul. 21).11 Accordingly, in 2006, Putin signed into law tough new measures that facilitate state supervision of civic activist groups, particularly those that receive foreign funding (RFE/RL Newsline, Dec. 22, 2005.) One particularly interesting development in Russia has been the appearance of a host of ‘‘anti-revolutionary’’ youth groups, with snappy names directed not against Putin but against ‘‘subversive,’’ ‘‘orange’’ elements. These include groups like Nashi (‘‘Ours’’), the ‘‘oprichniki,’’ and the somewhat less evocative Civic Transition, some of which have been sponsored by the Kremlin or forces linked to it (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Feb. 25, Apr. 20, Aug. 3; Polit.Ru, 2005, Aug. 2, 15:13). There is also some evidence that soccer hooligans have been mobilized covertly for the purpose of combating the Kremlin’s young opposition (Corwin, 2005a). Perhaps most frequently cited as evidence of Russian backsliding, however, have been Putin’s changes in Russia’s political system, notably the elimination of direct elections for Russia’s regional governors and the ending of district elections to the Duma (replacing the mixed system with a wholly proportional-representation system) (Fish, 2005). One of the most fateful conclusions these patronal presidents and their advisors appear to have drawn, however, is that the revolutions could have been prevented had only the incumbent presidents been tougher, more resolute in using force to crush public protests in the bud. For his part, Putin, speaking after the Tulip Revolution, called the colored revolutions ‘‘the results of the weakness of the previous government and the accumulation of social and economic problems’’ (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Mar. 25). Gleb Pavlovsky, a Kremlin strategist known in part for consulting with CIS state leaders in (reportedly) the Kremlin’s interest,12 openly declared: ‘‘If anyone challenges an election, as happened in the other post-Soviet states, then force will be used against them, because not using force against criminal elements means the government is not fulfilling its duty’’ (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Mar. 29). Some of the CIS’s other antirevolutionary leaders have voiced similar points of view by way of warning their own activists not to attempt revolution at home.

11 See also the statement by one of Putin’s top aides for political strategy, Vladislav Surkov, (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Jun. 21). 12 For example, reportedly advising Kuchma’s effort to elect Yanukovych in Ukraine (Wilson, 2005b).

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Armenia’s leadership has avoided open threats of violence, but its defense minister appeared to imply a warning to young Armenian would-be revolutionaries when he branded the colored revolutions state coups and said that ‘‘to be a coup participant means to be a state criminal’’ (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Jul. 26). Kazakhstan’s Nazarbaev was somewhat less subtle, echoing Putin in pointing not only to social and economic problems as causes of Kyrgyzstan’s revolution, but also its ‘‘weakness . enabling rioters and thugs to act as they please’’ (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Mar. 25). Other leaders threatened violence by warning that an attempted revolution would mean civil war. Tajikistan’s President Imomali Rakhmonov thus declared that revolution in Tajikistan is not possible because ‘‘the people of Tajikistan already understand what civil war and instability are’’ (Polit.Ru, 2005, Jun. 4, 12:49). Belarusian President Lukashenka also warned that any substantial unrest following the March 2006 presidential election would be put down with force if need be (The Washington Post, 2006, Mar. 20, p. A8). That such warnings could be far from hollow was tragically illustrated in Uzbekistan in 2005. Witnessing the instability in neighboring Kyrgyzstan during its revolution, Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov sought to let would-be revolutionaries in his country know that they would not succeed there: ‘‘We have the necessary force for that,’’ he averred (Weir, 2005). His security agencies then proceeded to kill hundreds in the city of Andijon after an anti-incumbent uprising, which Karimov blamed on Muslim radicals backed by Western forces intent on regime change. Some incumbent presidents appear to have seen Karimov’s strategy as a success in contrast to the ‘‘failure’’ in Kyrgyzstan. Giragosian (2005) thus argues that Azerbaijan’s leaders have taken the Andijon page from Karimov’s repressive handbook in their own demonstrative (albeit more measured) use of violence in the run-up to that country’s November 2005 parliamentary elections. This suggests that the authoritarians are not only learning what not to do by watching the revolutionary countries, but are also learning authoritarian techniques from each other. Overall, then, the ‘‘contagion’’ effect indeed seems to be a double-edged sword. The successful colored revolutions have certainly emboldened and educated antiincumbent activists. But at the same time, they have struck fear into the hearts of the more authoritarian leaders. The authoritarians, inferring the same basic model of revolutionary causality as the revolutionaries, have thus concluded that the way to prevent such revolutions is to clamp down even further on whatever liberties had previously existed in their countries and to demonstrate unequivocal ruthlessness in suppressing anti-incumbent forces. But are these the right lessons? And what are the implications for regime change in the region? These crucial questions are addressed in the section that follows.

Learning what? the consequences of drawing the wrong lessons Combining the conclusions of the previous two sections of this paper, we reach an interesting finding: The revolutions are actually triggered primarily by splits in the elite brought about by a lame-duck syndrome and unpopular leadership under

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patronal presidential institutions, but those advocating or opposing new revolutions have generally been reacting as if the revolutions are caused primarily by something else: civic activists, western support for these activists, and regime softness vis-a`-vis the opposition. This means that we cannot assume that the ‘‘lesson-learning’’ will have the effects intended by the learners because the learning has in fact missed the most important factors that are at work. The effects of this mistaken learning must be analyzed, not assumed, and the contagion process may turn out to be more complicated than is typically recognized in accounts that stress its importance. The effects of the lessons drawn by democracy advocates If we first turn to what the democracy advocates are learning, it would appear that their actions are still likely to work in the intended direction: Support for and activization of civic groups is unlikely to hurt the prospects for democracy and may hasten its development. But we must remember that the civic groups have only come to play prominent roles when division among a country’s powerful elites has opened up space for them to do so. Indeed, if the prior strength of ‘‘civil society’’ were the chief determinant of revolution, then Freedom House ratings would suggest that Armenia should have been the leading revolutionary country during the colored revolution period (Freedom House, 2005). Yet Armenia’s opposition repeatedly failed to topple President Kocharian despite mobilizing against both unfair elections and an unfair referendum (Welt, 2004). Thus while contagion among civic activists clearly matters, its effects are likely to be strongly influenced by whether or not a lame-duck syndrome is induced in a given country by other factors such as term limits, presidential illness, major scandals that decimate a leader’s public support, or perhaps the most intense and targeted kind of international pressure. Thus while the evidence given above clearly suggests that activists in virtually all post-Soviet countries were emboldened by and learned from earlier colored revolutions, it also shows that they only succeeded where leaders had already become lame ducks for other reasons. One important role that the civic activists do appear to be playing, however, is helping to make revolutionary transfers of power peaceful rather than chaotic and violent. For one thing, while there is no clear correlation between revolution and Freedom House’s civil society ratings prior to the revolutionary period, it is true that Kyrgyzstan’s was the only revolution to involve significant violence and its civil society rating was weaker than the scores of Ukraine and Georgia. Moreover, leaders of civic groups that were at the forefront of the Georgian and Ukrainian protest movements had undergone training in nonviolent methods and were able to help impress upon protesters the importance of maintaining order so long as the regime did not attack first (Chabalowski, 2005). In contrast, the people who took to the street in Kyrgyzstan’s revolution were mobilized more directly by regional and clan elites coming primarily from southern regions who were certainly not well versed in the methods and ideas of nonviolent protest (Cornell and Swanstrom, 2005). While certain elite forces other than NGOs also played crucial roles in securing nonviolent outcomes in places like Ukraine and Georgia (Chabalowski, 2005; Hale, 2005), it does make sense that strong, peace-oriented civil society organizations

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could have a major effect in maintaining order and discipline in the ranks during mass protests. At least, this is a possibility that should be considered. The Effects of ‘‘Lessons’’ Drawn By Anti-Revolutionaries In light of the above discussion, it starts to become evident that the conclusions reached by the most prominent anti-revolutionary leaders may represent grave mistakes from almost anyone’s point of view, including their own. If the revolutions resulted primarily from elite defections induced by a lame-duck syndrome combined with leadership unpopularity, then crackdowns on democracy are likely not only to be ineffective, but may damage these patronal presidents’ popularity, thereby making revolution more likely whenever they enter a lame-duck period. And since the strength of civic groups does appear to impact whether a revolution is violent or not, dictators’ attempts to crush civic groups may not only fail to stave off a revolution but also increase the likelihood that the ensuing revolution involves violence. To demonstrate the validity of these claims, it is necessary to return to our analysis of exactly how the mighty fall, dispelling two myths that underpin the lessons the authoritarian leaders appear to have drawn from the colored revolutions. The first of these myths is that constraining democracy and cutting off Western support for democratic institutions reduces the chances that there will be a revolution in a given country, a myth that is widely believed, as discussed above. If one looks at how the colored revolutions actually took place in light of the logic of patronal presidentialism, one sees that the opposite may sooner be the case. For one thing, one can refer back to the aforementioned finding that greater ‘‘civil society strength’’ does not necessarily lead to a revolution in the face of unfair elections; Armenia, indeed, had the strongest Freedom House civil society rating among Eurasia’s patronal presidential countries yet remained a non-revolutionary country throughout 2003e2005 (Freedom House, 2005). If it is elite divisions that are the source of the political competition that generates a change in leadership, there is little reason to believe that cracking down on civil society will make elites any less able or willing to compete once their patrons become lame ducks. If anything, this will just mean that elites will rely more on their own structures (business organization, administrative hierarchies, clans, regional political machines) to mobilize the population. Since these are less likely to be skilled in and motivated to pursue nonviolent strategies, the main thing that weakening NGOs accomplishes may be to increase the likelihood that any political struggle that goes outside the electoral framework will be chaotic and involve bloodshed. Moreover, to the extent that people value freedom of expression in society, obviously excessive crackdowns are likely to weaken support for the regime, which will in turn make it more likely that average people will turn out in support of regime change. Additionally, while Russia has moved to eliminate gubernatorial elections, provincial governors were not freely elected but directly presidentially appointed in each of the revolutionary countries, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine. In fact, some of these presidentially appointed governors (most dramatically in Western Ukraine) actually defected to the side of the revolution during the revolutionary process. This reinforces

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the critical point made above and elsewhere by the author (Hale, 2005). The incentives for elites to defect from an unpopular lame-duck president are strong at crucial moments regardless of whether these elites are formally dependent on the president for their fortunes. Once the president is seen to be largely irrelevant for the political future, even presidentially appointed officials within a regime can be quick to betray such a patron in hopes of salvaging a political career or at least avoiding prosecution under the next leader (Olson, 1990). Hence we see some votes of near 90% for Yushchenko in certain Ukrainian regions even in the first round of the 2004 presidential elections despite Kuchma’s control over the appointed governors. In fact, one might be so bold as to posit that competitive gubernatorial elections might serve to increase people’s support for the political system as a whole by giving them a local figure whom they view as representing their interests, thereby making them less likely to see the need for a revolutionary change. Indeed, Russian polls have found that despite the machine politics and dirty campaigns that people deplored in the country’s old gubernatorial elections, they generally tended to like the governors that these elections produced. For example, Yuri Levada’s reputable polling agency VTsIOM found in 2002 that half of all Russian citizens trusted their governors, more than the share that mistrusted them. This figure is particularly striking given the cynicism so pervasive in Russia regarding politicians (RFE/RL Newsline, 2002, Aug. 7). Another Russian strategy for preventing revolutionary activity appears to be to draw big business (the oligarchs) closer to the state, pressuring them and tightening their ties to the central authorities so as to keep them from backing opposition forces and revolutionaries. But here, too, we see that Ukraine’s oligarchs were much more tightly tied to the state than Russia’s had been prior to the arrest of the ambitious Yukos magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Yet some of them nevertheless found ways of channeling at least some support to the opposition candidate, Yushchenko. While only a few backed Yushchenko openly, a large number provided at least a modicum of backing for both sides in efforts to hedge their bets. As perhaps the ultimate evidence that the strength of ties to the old team cannot be relied upon to squelch incentives for defection, reports are that among the bet-hedging oligarchs in Ukraine was none other than Kuchma’s own son-in-law, Viktor Pinchuk (Pogrebinsky, 2005). Surely, one could not accuse Kyrgyzstan’s big business elites of having great autonomy from Akaev’s state. Overall, once a patronal president becomes a lame duck, business tycoons who are aggressive, financially creative, and politically astute (as most are, having reached the pinnacle of such a system) will find ways to do what they think is best for their own fortunes regardless of what the outgoing patron tells them to do and regardless of what they may say in public. In sum, we come to suspect that the antirevolutionary wave of autocratization witnessed in many Eurasian countries is not only likely to be ineffective in staving off the reemergence of political contestation there, but may actually increase the likelihood that this contestation will result in the ouster of incumbent teams by reducing their popular support. Indeed, as Tucker (2005) has very effectively illustrated, the central concern of the protesting masses in all of the colored revolutions was their heated opposition to corruption and frauddthat is, the absence of true democracy and the attempt to subvert the popular will through the falsification or manipulation

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of elections. Indeed, Akaev, Kuchma, and Shevardnadze had all initially been quite popular leaders, but each wound up suffering massive drops in their popularity at least partly because of the autocratic and corrupt ways in which they were seen to govern. Kuchma’s unpopularity during Ukraine’s revolutionary year is particularly striking since he was presiding over an extraordinarily robust and long-awaited period of economic growth, a fact almost completely overridden in the popular imagination by a broad detestation of his non-democratic method of rule. The second of the myths to be addressed here is that Akaev, Kuchma, and Shevardnadze could have stayed in power if they had only used force more resolutely, as Karimov, Nazarbaev, Putin, and many analysts imply or state outright. In fact, there is evidence that Akaev, Kuchma, and Shevardnadze each had planned at times to use violence to stay in power. In Ukraine, Kuchma at one point ordered ten thousand Interior Ministry troops to move into Kyiv, having decided to salvage power for his team through violence (Bosacki and Wojciechowski, 2005). Akaev, for his part, issued some contradictory messages, calling publicly for peace even as he appointed a defense minister who then spoke of the need to employ ‘‘special means and firearms’’ to restore order, all while his allies were publicly calling for Akaev to impose a state of emergency (Toursunof, 2005). Akaev personally appeared on television and warned that ‘‘we are hearing inflammatory appeals designed to draw us all into lawlessness and into the depths of civil war and ethnic confrontation’’ (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Mar. 16; Weir, 2005). There is little reason to believe these were empty threats: Both Kuchma and Akaev had employed violence against protesters before, the latter in the Aksy district in 2002 and the former in 2001 against ‘‘Ukraine Without Kuchma’’ rallies that had sprung up after Kuchma was linked by leaked tapes to the murder of a journalist. Even Shevardnadze, long considered a political dove for his role in ending the Cold War, also was reported to have sought a military crackdown to salvage his regime in the course of the Rose Revolution (Fairbanks, 2004). Why, then, was no major crackdown forthcoming in these countries? The answer takes us back to the logic of elite divisions discussed above: Key parts of the ‘‘force structures’’ in each case effectively defected to the opposition, refusing to use force to prop up the regime. In Ukraine, the security service (SBU) was the leading defector, although elements in the police and army also backed Yushchenko at crucial moments (Bosacki and Wojciechowski, 2005; Kuzio, 2005c). In Kyrgyzstan, Akaev hinted at the truth when he blamed his ouster, in part, on ‘‘collusion’’ between his security forces and the opposition (RFE/RL Newsline, 2005, Jul. 12). In Georgia, armed structures also reportedly refused the request for a crackdown on the revolutionaries (Fairbanks, 2004). Akaev, Kuchma, and Shevardnadze thus appear to have failed to use force not because they were ‘‘soft’’ leaders, but because the option was never really available to them (or likely to be successful). Nor were their regimes more ‘‘soft’’ than the others, since at least Kuchma and Akaev had deployed violence earlier against opposition forces. Instead, the key is that the military and police were divided along patterns typical of patronal presidencies with lame-duck leaders, patterns that could repeat themselves in almost any of the regimes that have so far proven to be non-revolutionary. In fact, there is evidence that the use of force to stay in power can backfire as frequently as it can reinforce an incumbent’s stay in office. Akaev’s violence against the

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Aksy protesters in 2002 surely contributed to his unpopularity, which was crucial to his fall from power. It is no coincidence that the man who rode to power in Akaev’s defeat was his former prime minister Kurmanbek Bakiev, ‘‘former’’ because he resigned in 2002 in protest against the Aksy bloodshed. And Bakiev gained a great deal of popularity precisely because of this public stand against state coercion. Moreover, Akaev’s daughter in part blames the Aksy violence for ‘‘demoralizing’’ Kyrgyzstan’s law-enforcement organs (Akaeva, 2006, 14). This is all a common phenomenon: The killing of protesters perpetrated by the USSR in Georgia in 1989, Azerbaijan in 1990, and Latvia and Lithuania in early 1991, for example, served to stoke anti-Soviet sentiment in these countries and paved the way for their ultimate secession. Of course, state violence can sometimes be seen as legitimate by the population. This is the case with Russian violence in Chechnya, which many Russians have seen as a necessary (or at least beneficial) anti-terrorist operation (Gerber and Mendelson, 2002). Thus Uzbekistan’s leadership, utilizing its nearly complete control over local mass media, has characterized the Andijon protesters as being highly threatening to Uzbekistan, representing militant Islam and Western subversion combined. While such strategies of ‘‘framing’’ crackdowns may lead people to think a given act of state repression is justified, there arises something of paradox. If people truly believe the official justifications, they may not deter democracy advocates: Democracy advocates who actually do not have any ties to or sympathy for Islamic militants will not expect to be treated like Islamic militants if they join a pro-democracy street protest and thus the deterrent effect is lost. But if people do understand the real motives of the authorities, that democracy advocates are simply being framed so as to be crushed, then the deterrent is likely to be successful in the short run but the faith of the population lost, making the incumbent authorities increasingly vulnerable whenever a lame-duck syndrome happens to emerge. Moreover, if state suppression on false pretexts becomes widespread, the falsity of pretexts will become better known as more victims are created whose families and friends spread the truth from mouth-to-mouth or through other channels that are hard for the state to control. The more serious the threat to incumbent popularity, the more far-fetched are the justifications used to legitimize the coercion. For all of these reasons, violent actions perpetrated by leaders who are not lame ducks may actually sow the seeds for their downfall once a lame-duck syndrome sets in, as is likely to happen in all patronal presidential regimes, if only when the leader dies or falls ill, though perhaps before. And indeed, if a leader goes too far in shedding the people’s blood, he or she could undermine his or her own legitimacy so sharply that the bloodshed itself starts to create the shared (and known-to-be-shared) impression among elites that the leader cannot continue to govern.

Conclusions Overall, we find that the colored revolutions have had a complex set of effects in post-Soviet Eurasia. In the revolutionary countries, whether a revolution is leading to a genuine democratic breakthrough instead of continued oscillations toward and away from autocracy is found to depend on whether the revolution also produced

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a weakening of patronal presidential power. Among the revolutionary countries, only Ukraine appears to have bucked the cyclical dynamic, transferring significant presidential power to its parliament in the wake of the Orange Revolution’s stalemate. Indeed, its 2006 parliamentary elections were highly vibrant and competitive. Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, on the other hand, still have their patronal presidential institutions intact and thus appear to be moving into a new phase of regime closure, though Kyrgyzstan still could adopt a constitutional reform that would put it on Ukraine’s path. Of course, it remains to be seen if Ukraine’s new balance of power is a functional one since the reform is not yet finalized and complete. If it proves dysfunctional, the chaos could ultimately lead to a new reform and a reconcentration of authority in the hands of a patronal president, restoring the cyclical movement of the country away from democracy and toward autocracy. In the non-revolutionary countries, we see a process of civic activists’ learning that could help make these activists marginally more likely to successfully pull off a revolution. The more significant effect, however, has been a highly repressive reaction by most of the non-revolutionary countries. Since they have largely interpreted the revolutions as reflecting the influence of civic activists, Western support, and regime softness, they have cracked down on each of these elements. Ironically, however, such a crackdown may make revolution more likely by both missing the mark and generating additional popular dissatisfaction with the incumbents that can then make the country more vulnerable to revolution when the question of presidential succession begins to loom. The bad news for democracy advocates, though, is that there is also reason to believe that by suffocating peace-oriented pro-democracy NGOs, Eurasia’s more authoritarian regimes may be laying the groundwork for any revolutions to involve violence since any popular mobilization will take place through other, less pacific channels. And unless these revolutions follow Ukraine in putting an end to patronal presidentialism, they are not likely to lead to lasting democratic breakthroughs, only changes in patrons. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Celeste Wallander and the Program for New Approaches to Russian Security, which circulated some initial musings in a policy memo (no. 373) that evolved into part of this paper. Thanks are also due to Hope Harrison, Taras Kuzio, and the editors for their input and to many others for feedback on the broader research project of which this paper is one product. Deserving of special gratitude are Sergiu Manic for his energetic research assistance and George Washington University’s Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies for financial support. References Akaeva, B., 2006. Tsvety Zla: O Tak Nazyvaemoi ‘‘Tiulpanovoi Revoliutsii’’ v Kyrgyzstane. Mezhdunarodnie Otnosheniia, Moscow. Alibekov, I., 2005. The Kyrgyz Contagion. Transitions Online (Mar. 23).

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