In their case study of the success story of Estonia after the Soviet break-up, Neil Abrams and M. Steven Fish present a perceptive account in their analysis of relationships between post-Communist regime dynamics and the quality of governance.71 They observe that the end of the Communist regime and Estonian independence opened a window of opportunity for a radical restructuring and large-scale cadre renewal not only among ruling groups but also within the apparatus of the state as a whole. The changes in Estonia’s elite were more radical than those in other Baltic countries,72 and rejecting the use of a “good Soviet Union” as a role model served as a driver for structural reforms. The impact of the sizeable Russian-speaking minority (who shared a more positive perception of a Soviet Union as a paradise lost)73 on politics and policy-making in Estonia was severely constrained after the Soviet collapse.74 It is hard to say whether such a deliberate exclusion played a positive role in building barriers against making bad governance. Policy changes in Estonia involved borrowing and implementing best practices of state governance from advanced Western countries (and its Nordic neighbours in particular), paved the way for successful market economic reforms, and helped overcome bad governance. Moreover, after the Soviet collapse Estonia successfully used certain advantages of its relative backwardness75 in terms of infrastructure and institutions, and effectively used advanced technological solutions such as digitalization, alongside deregulation, to improve the quality of governance.76 Thus, one might argue that the positive impact of democratization on the quality of governance was achieved not only through elite competition, but also as a mechanism for restructuring the state apparatus by means of elite circulation and the breakdown of previous power hierarchies.77 This was a solution that preemptively diminished the pernicious effects of bad governance.
As long as major political changes are postponed, combatting bad governance may turn into an increasingly difficult task requiring extraordinary efforts of political leaders in terms of overhauling previous elites and restructuring the state apparatus. The experience of Georgia is telling in this respect. The 1990s featured devastating political decay, aggravated by severe economic troubles, elite turmoil, and the loss of two breakaway territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.78 The overthrow of the highly corrupt and unpopular regime during the Rose Revolution in 2003 provided a chance to launch large-scale policy reforms. The new leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, brought a number of new people, including young professionals, into key positions in the state apparatus and contributed to implementing several structural changes in major policy areas, ranging from the economy to education and police.79 Some of these reforms, aimed at deregulating the economy and transparency of services,80 resulted in major improvements, such as reducing red tape and petty corruption, and an increase in government effectiveness. These advancements were used by Saakashvili to promote Georgian policy reforms (and of himself) in the eyes of his domestic audience and international donors and present his achievements as a success story.81 However, as Ketevan Bolkvazde correctly points out, even this example demonstrates the limits of the effects of elite changes: Saakashvili and his entourage pursued those policy changes that they expected to increase their own power. It is no wonder that administrative reforms in Georgia soon reached a saturation point. When the new self-interested elites under Saakashvili faced challenges from their political opponents, further policy changes were curtailed.82 In the end, in 2012 Saakashvili lost the election, having been accused of numerous wrongdoings (including large-scale illegal police violence) during his election campaign, and soon after fled the country due to the threat of criminal prosecution. Still, the results of policy reforms under Saakashvili were not reversed in full, and some policy changes continued after his departure, though their pace and scope slowed down to a certain degree.83 Improving the quality of governance in Georgia was partial; however, without major elite changes and a certain political will from the leadership, even this relatively modest advancement could not be realistic for Russia.
But if post-Communist elites become entrenched, then regime changes, though often seen as democratic breakthroughs, do not always undermine bad governance, and indeed may even aggravate its pathologies. The case of Ukraine may serve as a prime example of this paradox. During the entire post-Soviet period, this country exemplified “pluralism by default” due to a configuration of elites driven by embedded regionalism and unavoidable competition between interest groups.84 President Yanukovych’s attempt to impose his political monopoly and grab the most possible rents greatly contributed to his overthrow in 2014.85 Setting aside the subsequent chain of events, which involved the annexation of Crimea and a bloody conflict in Donbass, the “revolution of dignity” of 2014 resulted in the emergence of a competitive “neopatrimonial democracy” in Ukraine.86 However, democratic elections as such have not improved the poor quality of governance by default. Rather, state capture from inside by Yanukovych and his cronies was replaced by state capture from outside by competing oligarchs.87 The new Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, was a wealthy oligarch himself, and his political career was largely opportunistic. More important, despite the call to purge former representatives of Yanukovych’s regime, little elite turnover was visible, especially in the state apparatus. In particular, structural and personnel changes in Ukrainian courts,88 and in several law enforcement agencies, were delayed indefinitely. The belief that post-Yanukovych Ukraine had merely replaced one group of crooks and thieves with another, while bad governance remained nearly the same, was not a wild exaggeration. In July 2019, Poroshenko lost his presidential re-election bid to a new leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, a former stand-up comedian, who became widely known after starring in the TV series Servant of the People, where he played the role of a school history teacher who was elected president of Ukraine. In a sense, the TV dream came true, as over three quarters of Ukrainian voters endorsed Zelensky during the run-off, and his newly established party bearing the name “Servant of the People” soon acquired a parliamentary majority after the new elections. There was certainly a popular demand for major elite changes, but the new government and the presidential administration were largely unsuccessful and conflict-ridden, and soon replaced by new nominees who have also failed to demonstrate a strong performance. The pace of reforms remains slow and does not affect the core of bad governance.
In a similar vein, Scott Radnitz, in his analysis of regime changes in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010, argues that elite-driven mass mobilization preserves the predatory and rent-seeking nature of governance, even in cases where it results in replacing ruling groups.89 Politicizing the governing economy and the state and incentives for bureaucrats’ loyalty at the expense of their effectiveness are typical for a number of competitive democracies in almost the same way as for electoral authoritarian regimes. In short, the political competition of elites, which lies at the heart of democratization, is not a panacea for overcoming bad governance, at least in the short term. In certain circumstances, such competition à la pluralism by default, may only aggravate corruption and unrule of law,90 and the chain of weak and ineffective governments may become hostages of competing cliques of elites and oligarchs.91 From this viewpoint, one might argue that democratization should be perceived as a necessary yet insufficient condition for improving the quality of governance. At minimum, major elite changes and a deep reshuffling of the entire state apparatus, alongside long-standing and systematic efforts to improve the quality of governance driven by the political will of domestic actors, and thorough oversight by the international community are key ingredients to combatting bad governance in post-Communist countries and beyond. Without all of these ingredients, these countries may experience major setbacks in the quality of governance, as the experience of Hungary, described above, demonstrated.