UM professor analyzes post-Soviet democratization

ORONO – In the decade since the states of the former Soviet Union declared their commitment to democracy, James Warhola has been a leading voice in the debate about democratization in that area of the world.

The work of Warhola, a University of Maine political science professor and the recipient of the 2002 Distinguished Maine Professor award, is featured in two recent publications.

The professor examines the late medieval and early modern political and religious ideas that shaped Russian political development in “Revisiting the Russian ‘Constrained Autocracy’: ‘Absolutism’ and Natural Rights Theories in Russia and the West,” the lead chapter in the book, “Civil Society and the Search for Justice in Russia.”

The book, edited by Christopher Marsh and Nikolas Gvosdev, was published in April by Lexington Books.

Warhola also analyzed the current trends in post-Soviet politics in “Ten Years After: Personal Rule in Post-Soviet Eurasia,” the lead article in the December 2001 issue of the journal, Analysis of Current Events.

He traveled to several Eastern European countries in July to research the development of their legislatures, and said he believes that democracy is slowly but surely making progress in the general post-Soviet region, although with much greater success in some areas than others.

“If one looks at world political history from the end of the medieval period to the contemporary era, what one typically sees in the West is the emergence of a set of innovative political ideas, followed by a gestation period. It takes a period of time for those ideas to be put into practice, and become manifest in the governance of society. How democracy develops, and under what circumstances, is still only partially understood. But I agree with those who see Russia as moving in a democratic direction,” Warhola said.

Currently, none of the post-Soviet states in Central Asia has received approval for international standards of election processes, has a legislature protected by separation of powers, has a legislature that controls the budget or has an independent judiciary. Press freedoms are limited, and interest group activity is scarce, he explained.

According to Warhola, it is the absence of a mindset favoring and expecting popular self-governance in post-Soviet Central Asia that has kept the pace of democratization relatively slow.

The absence of a democratic mindset has deep roots and is explained in “Revisiting the Russian Constrained Autocracy.”

For instance, Warhola argues that the absence of debate about natural law and natural rights in Russia in the late medieval-early modern period prevented ideas such as the right to life, liberty and to choose political leaders from developing in Russia as they did in Western Europe. Russia continued to be governed in a patrimonial style, in which the leader ruled over his subjects as a father rules over his children.

Furthermore, he said, the Russian Orthodox Church, through its ideas and practices, buttressed the autocratic political tendencies of Russian leaders. For instance, it was assumed that the civil sovereign’s authority was given by God with no countervailing forces, such as the church or community will, to challenge it.

In Western Europe, on the other hand, theologians such as Marsilius of Padua, William of Ockham and John Wycliffe argued that the civil sovereign’s authority derived from the people of the community – who themselves possessed natural, God-given rights, he said.

But the long history of patrimonialism won’t necessarily keep the post-Soviet states from becoming democracies, Warhola said.

In “Ten Years After,” he argues that the current situation – in which leaders usually win non-competitive elections by large margins – may be a stage in the development of democracies. He points out that the press and interest groups are increasing their activities and demands for freedoms, and that the Russian Orthodox Church has also declared itself in favor of democracy.

Warhola has been at UMaine since 1983, with specializations in comparative politics, political theory, Russian politics and African politics. In 1995 he was a visiting research scholar at Moscow State University and has engaged in research at the Harvard Russian Research Center, the Kennan Institute, Florida State University and the J.M. Dawson Institute for Church-State Studies at Baylor University. Last summer, he traveled to Turkey to explore the prospects for joint research and teaching.