Making Democracy Matter: Addressing State-Society Engagement in Measuring the Progress of Post-Communist Transition.

Recent research has focused attention on the diversity and complexity of civil-social life in Russia and post-communist Europe, undermining normative and 'communist-legacy' explanations of the weakness of civil society in that region, and underlining the need for theory-building that is both generalizable and sensitive to the specifics of each individual case. This paper attempts to take another step in that direction, exploring how the ways in which elites in semi-authoritarian regimes compete for power - and the social meaning of the power they are competing for - shape the development of civil society. Examining elements of civil society, the paper presents evidence from extensive field research of key variations in the relationship between civic activism and power and argues that these variations can be traced back to crucial differences in the competitive incentives political elites in each context. Specifically, the prospects for civil society appear better when elites - even closed, corrupt and authoritarian elites - are forced to engage one way or another with society at large. The paper will argue that elite-led state-society engagement, regardless of its nature, is essential to building the framework on which citizens construct notions of justice and right, while disengagement and elite autonomy significantly impede the development of civic identities. Indeed, the evidence in comparative perspective suggests that civil society may do better when it is repressed than when it is simply ignored. This, then, points to the disengaged nature of the contemporary Russian regime, rather than its authoritarianism, as a major explanatory factor in the weakness of civil society in that country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]