Book Reviews

Authoritarianism, Elections, and Democracy

world of political behavior. It isnt the nal word, but it is an important early step.
Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States: Divergent Paths Toward a New Europe. By Mieczysaw Boduszynski. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. 360p. $60.00. Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Postcommunist World. Edited by Valerie Bunce, Michael McFaul, and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 360p. $92.00 cloth, $31.99 paper. Serbias Antibureaucratic Revolution: Milosevic, the Fall of Communism and Nationalist Mobilization. By Nebojsa Vladisavljevic. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 240p. $89.00.
doi:10.1017/S1537592712001764

If my claim is accepted, then it is not clear what we have in a bounded-rationality explanation. In particular, while we may stipulate that the bounded-rationality approach accommodates some phenomena better than the canonical approachsay, turnout, as the authors actually demonstrate persuasively in Chapter 4we do not know whether it is as good as the canonical approach in other contexts. A genuine generalization would outperform the canonical approach in some settings and perform as well as the canonical approach in all other settingsthe generalization would weakly dominate the canonical version. But we do not have that here, and this is troubling. I am not yet prepared to accept a bounded-rationality explanation for, say, turnout phenomena, but use canonical rationality, that is, noncooperative game theory, to play poker. As a philosophy of science matter, this seems comparable to the conict between thermodynamics and mechanics in physics or micro- and macrophenomena in economics. Despite my distress, I nevertheless describe this book as a tour de force for several reasons. First, while the rst several chapters stitch together well-known elements of the bounded-rationality approach, stitching together is no mean feat. Indeed, the book does a tremendous service for future developments in providing a carefully worked out mathematical representation of bounded-rationality arguments, replete with theorems, some of which are novel and rich. Second, the applications are works of art as well as works of science. These chapters cover party competition, turnout, voter choice, two-party elections, and multiparty elections. Each such application derives clearly from the theoretical results of the rst two chapters. Each incorporates existing theoretical and empirical literature persuasively and elegantly. And each leaves the reader persuaded but also inspired to push beyond what the authors have provideda gift that keeps on giving. Third, the methodological pluralism displayed in these pages provides the different parts of the elephant that differently motivated readers can touch and relate to. There are theorems and proofs for the Teutonically inclined. There are connections to political science and economic empirical literatures for those who want to cut to the chase and explore the substantive payoffs of the approach. There are fascinating simulations for those interested in drawing conclusions in complex settings where analytical methods fail. I think this pluralism is an important selling point for the authors, one that they frame in a way to impress readers like me. (For those in attack mode, on the other hand, they leave plenty of hostages to take.) This is not a book that needs to be on the shelf of every student of elections or political behavior. It does need to be confronted and digested by every graduate student who hopes to make his or her scholarly name in this eld, because it provides a way to unify the higgledy-piggledy
1008 Perspectives on Politics

Florian Bieber, Karl-Franzens-Universitt Graz

At rst glance, it would seem absurd to argue that not enough scholarly literature has dealt with Yugoslavia and its dissolution: According to WorldCat, some 177 scholarly books have been published since 1991, with the Dissolution of Yugoslavia as a keyword, not to mention thousands of academic articles covering this topic. Much of comparative politics, however, has long ignored Yugoslavia, its dissolution, and the successor states. If considered, it has been treated as a case of ethnic conict and war. But studies that contextualize the post-Yugoslavia space in terms of the transformation from authoritarianism to democracy have been relatively few. This Yugoslav exceptionalism appears already engrained in the different socialist models that the country pursued after its rift with Stalin in 1948. Scholars of socialist Eastern Europe often treated Yugoslavia as a separate case, distinct from the other communist regimes. With a limited consumer society, freedom to travel since the 1960s, and close ties to the West, Yugoslavia did not t the paradigm of an isolated totalitarianism system. When the state collapsed just two years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the violence that ensued again appeared to set Yugoslavia and the countries that emerged from it apart from the remainder of Eastern Europe. These three books, which in part or exclusively discuss the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav space from the perspective of comparative politics, offer a valuable impetus to reconsider the lens through which the region is examined. Each challenges Yugoslav exceptionalism from a different perspective, and makes a substantial contribution to the analysis of variations in the process of democratization in Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia in particular. Methodologically diverse, each emphasizes the need to bring the Yugoslav experience with democratization and social movements into a larger comparative context, and each contends that ignoring the countries that emerged from the Yugoslav federation means missing a key part of

the puzzle of how and why some countries became consolidated democracies and some did not. Nebjosa Vladis avljevic looks only at a short period during the process of dissolution, namely, the period of mass mobilization in Yugoslavia between 1986 and 1989, while Mieczysaw Boduszynski focuses on the 1990s in great detail (the 2000s more cursorily) to explain the variation in the democratization of the Yugoslav successor states. The volume edited by Valerie Bunce, Michael McFaul, and Kathryn StonerWeiss focuses on the second democratic breakthroughs, beginning with Romania and Bulgaria in 199697 and ending with the revolution in Kyrgystan in 2005. The three books seek to answer the question of why some countries in postcommunist Europe failed or were at least signicantly delayed in establishing a democratic system of government. And while some of the authors focus on the revolutions or other instances of social mobilization and consider why and how these can lead to democratic breakthroughs, others explore the long-term processes that ensue after revolutionary moments and result in either the consolidation of a democratic system or reversals and the emergence of a hybrid regime. In Serbias Antibureaucratic Revolution, Vladisavljevic argues that the popular mobilization that took place in the late 1980s in Yugoslavia, especially among Serbs, was not the result of elite manipulation for the advancement of their own nationalist agenda. He challenges a widely held view that Slobodan Milosevic used mass rallies in an effort to bolster his position in Serbia and Yugoslavia and to undermine political opponents. The author does not deny that elite manipulation mattered at a later stage during the protests, but argues that initially, the protests constituted a genuine social movement driven by grassroots grievances. The protests of Kosovo Serbs against the discrimination they experienced in Kosovo coincided with a dramatic increase in strikes throughout Yugoslavia and in other social protestsby 1988 there were nearly 2,000 strikes with close to 400,000 participants in Yugoslavia (p. 112). These strikes were motivated by high ination and shrinking living standards. The modest consumer society Yugoslavia had become by the 1970s came under threat through bulging debt and the inefciencies of the complicated self-management system. Austerity measures of the government further motivated workers to take to the streets. These grievances did not differ from those in other communist countries with one key variation. In Poland, the economic crisis compounded the ideological crisis, and workers who joined Solidarity demanded not just improved working conditions or better wages but also a change of the political system. In contrast, in Yugoslavia the protesting workers, as Vladisavljevic argues convinc ingly, perceived the institutions of the regime and state as essentially legitimate and ultimately their own (p. 119). As a consequence, democratization was not at the fore-

front of these social movements in Yugoslavia, and communist elites had a greater ability to capture the protests and to retain power than in Central Europe. Eventually, the social and nationalist protests in Serbia and Montenegro effectively fused, to the point where, as one observer noted, the participants came as workers and went home as Serbs (Slavoljub Djukic, Izmedju slave i anateme. Pol iticka biograja Slobodana Milosevica, 1994, 106). Vladisavljevic makes a very convincing case about the limited involvement of Milosevic in the origins of the Kosovo Serb social movement and thus shifts the research focus on the dissolution of Yugoslavia away from an often elite-centered view. Yet his own research, ironically, often focuses on the elites of these social movements, and we hear few voices of the ordinary Serbs who participated in these protests about what motivated them. As such, the reader is still left wondering why ordinary citizens participated and, more importantly, why they shifted their goals and demands, especially from social to national issues. Of course, such a reconstruction might be impossible methodologically. But the authors own argument points toward the importance of knowing more about this. While Vladisavljevics study centers on social move ments, Boduszynski focuses on parties and on how regimes in the successor states adopted different trajectories after the fall of socialism. He argues that during the 1990s, only Slovenia built a substantive democracy, while the other successor states (he does not discuss Bosnia and Herzegovina or Montenegro as separate cases) developed some form of hybrid regime, some closer to authoritarianism (Serbias Populist Authoritarianism) and others closer to a democratic system (Macedonias Illegitimate Democracy). One can challenge the view that Serbia was a full authoriatrian system in the 1990s, as regular elections were held and independent media were able to operate with limitations. The populist features of the regime decreased as its authoritarianism increased during the 1990s and it took on sultanistic traits. This does not, however, undermine the argument of Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States that the successors displayed a great variety of political regimes. Boduszynski singles out two variables to explain the different outcomes, namely, the reproduction of economic disparaties over time (p. 252) and the local response to the international norm transfer through the European Union and other international actors. He thus combines path dependency with external agency. The emphasis on historical legacies is a useful contribution and challenges the literature on democratization that downplays historical conditions preceding the democratization process. Thus, the early phase of democratization might constitute a critical juncture at which to shape the institutions and constitution, but countries do not begin with a level playing eld. Boduszynski, however, does not fall into the trap of historical determinism, and
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Book Reviews

Authoritarianism, Elections, and Democracy

trajectory of political regimes: Hybrid regimes combine elements of democracy and dictatorship for a reason, and their costs with respect to political instability, weak states, and poor economic performance do not go away simply because of a change of government (p. 333). In her chapter, Milada Vachudova discusses how the European Union became effective in preventing the countries from falling back into authoritarian patterns and encouraging regime parties (once in opposition) to adapt to an EU-compatible democratic agenda (p. 97). Such was the case with the Croat Democratic Community in Croatia after 2000 and the moderate offshoot of the Serb Radical Party, the Progressive, led by Tomislav Nikolic in Serbia after 2008. This trajectory also helps to explain why the second democratic breakthroughs have fared worse in Ukraine, Georgia, or Kyrgystan, where there have been few external incentives, such as EU membership; all three have reverted to a more hybrid regime similar to the one preceeding the revolution. With a focus on social movements, economic disparties, and external actors and norms, all three books, in their own way, downplay nationalism as a factor to explain the failure and success of democratization. In the case of the Yugoslav social movements of the 1980s, the puzzle remains as to why nationalism became the dominant frame for mobilization over economic grievances. Boduszynski similarly attributes little signicance to either ethnic diversity or nationalism in explaining the variation among postYugoslav regimes, although he does note that it is not ethnic diversity as such but its politization that can negatively impact democratization (p. 12). Finally, a number of the essays in the edited volume note that weak states and ethnic tensions can serve to establish and sustain hybrid regimes. But the case studies do not explore how and why nationalism became the most salient issue or how democratic groups could circumvent the regimes rhetoric about defending national interests. In a commendable effort to shift attention from an excessive focus on ethnicity in discussing the post-Yugoslav space, the books might nonetheless be inadvertently neglecting the interrelationship among nationalism, stateness, and democratization. The ability or inability to constitute an uncontested state, often dened as a nation-state, could be considered central to explaining variation among the Yugoslav successor states and the success of second democratic breakthroughs. The nature of the state and the borders of Slovenia were never contested as in the other republics. After the end of the wars in the mid-1990s, the transition toward a more consolidated democracy also become possible in Croatia. In Serbia, the end of the Milosevic regime came at a point when all main disputes had become externalized, with Bosnia and Kosovo coming under international administration and the remaining minorities within Serbia not posing a credible threat to continued legitimacy of the regime. Furthermore, the opposition

puts less emphasis on historical legacies of rule of law or democracy than on different levels of economic development. He also attends carefully to the interelationships between international and domestic actors, suggesting that the success of international policies promoting democracy depends on local elites and their attitudes to both the content of the norms and the agency promoting them (p. 266). The author also notes that while during the 1990s the Yugoslav successor states diverged, in the 2000s there has been a great deal of convergence. Indeed, most Yugoslav successor states, together with Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania, share a number of similarities as weak states, with high levels of volatilty and political parties intent on rent seeking and capturing state resources. The annual Nation in Transit Report of Freedom House thus places most of these countries into the category of semiconsolidated democracies. Among the postcommunist countries, the Balkan democracies thus constitute one group, distinct from the Central European democracies and the hybrid regimes in the post-Soviet space. This convergence, however, raises the question of whether the focus on economic disparaties is a convincing explanation, as these structural economic differences did not change during the 1990s, and with the exception of Slovenia, the successor states no longer vary greatly in terms of democratization. The acceptance of outside norms, in particular European integration, might hold greater explanatory value, especially as integration into Western institutions became more credible after 2000 than it was in the 1990s everywhere except in Slovenia. A similar focus on external agency characterizes the volume edited by Bunce, McFaul, and Stoner-Weiss. Rather than the long-term consolidation (or lack) of democracy, Democracy and Authoritarianism in the PostcommunistWorld concerns second democratic breakthroughs, namely, critical junctures when hybrid regimes that came to power (or managed to retain power during the transition from communism to multiparty politics) after 1989 were overthrown. The authors contend that these revolutions, mostly triggered by elections (often manipulated by incumbents), form a distinct category at the end of socialist regimes during the third wave of democratization between 1989 and 1991. These authors attribute particular importance to the international context, including the norm transfer that Boduszyn ski discusses. Like Mark Beissinger (Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Diffusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolutions, Perspectives on Politics 5 [June 2007]: 25676), they also emphasize the diffusion effect of the revolutions themselves. Of course, the dynamic of diffusion has been a feature of revolutions since 1848, including in 1989, and thus does not constitute a novelty of the colored revolutions. At the same time, while focusing on these key moments, the editors also accept the need to look at the long-term
1010 Perspectives on Politics

carefully stayed clear of the question of nationalism. Macedonia, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the other hand, remain partly contested polities, rendering the consolidation of their democratic institutions more difcult. Of course, neither ethnic diversity nor nationalism is an independent variable, which constitutes an obstacle for the consolidation of democracy without their strategic use by populists at particular junctures (as Boduszynski also notes in his book). Vladisavljevic argues that the success of authoritarian nationalism can be explained by a combination of three factors: dysfunctional institutions, nationalist mobilization, and a failure of political elites. He refers here (pp. 2089) less to the obvious responsibility of Milosevic and nationalist leaders in other parts of Yugo slavia than to the weakness of the political elites they replaced. The three books make excellent contributions to scholarly debates and will help anchor the Yugoslav experience in the framework of the comparative politics of postcommunist Europe.
Accountability and Democracy: The Pitfalls and Promise of Popular Control. By Craig T. Borowiak. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 272p. $74.00.
doi:10.1017/S1537592712001776

J. S. Maloy, Oklahoma State University

Accountability and democracy are high on the list of frequently used and abused buzzwords in global political discourse, and some clarifying attention to them is always welcome. The central proposition of Craig T. Borowiaks rst book is that our ideas about democratic accountability must be stretched beyond traditional connes to accommodate the facts and norms of politics in the twenty-rst century. Readers will nd plenty of room for dispute over the reasons for, and ramications of, this claim. The author deserves credit for going where other scholars would fear to tread. He admirably illustrates the wide range of political phenomena and social-scientic literatures that bear directly on the subject of accountability. Chapters on ancient Athens and on the debate over ratication of the US Constitution of 1787 deal with important phases in the institutional and intellectual history of democratic accountability. The nonelectoral procedures of Athens for sanctioning ofcial conduct and the Anti-Federalists recommendations for ways to make electoral procedures result in popular control are both discussed in a sympathetic vein, but the author presents these cases not to evaluate institutional designs but to avoid a narrow (p. 95) conception of his subject. The two cases suggest that robust institutions of accountability may both require and produce a robust civic culture of solidarity and participation, but both were also predicated on criteria of political membership that are restrictive by latemodern standards.

Chapters on principalagent theory and deliberative democracy address two relevant schools of social-scientic research on accountability. The formers emphasis on punishability and the latters on answerability both have a place under the authors broad umbrella, but his preference for the latter is palpable. Principalagent theory, he contends, relies on an outdated and inherently oppressive conception of state sovereignty. But deliberations transformative potential for changing minds and mitigating disagreement receives an elaborate defense (pp. 10711), with no mention of the empirical evidence that deliberative processes often do not perform this function. Borowiaks favor for deliberation is qualied by repetition of his concern about exclusions. Deliberative theory is at its best, though, when it expands the boundaries of participation to include all affected parties. Though the all affected principle is not feasible in all circumstances, it does at least represent genuinely democratic norms that ancient Greek and modern electoral varieties of democracy equally neglect. Finally, chapters on market accountability and global governance attempt to assess future prospects. Market accountability could be the kind of decentralized, nonstate, and horizontal system that the authors critique of state sovereignty requires us to seek out, but it is undone by bad information and asymmetries of power. Given that he cannot take refuge in the democratic nation-state for protection from the oligarchic ravages of global economic institutions, Borowiak turns to arguments for and against cosmopolitanism. Here, the problem is that both liberalcosmopolitan and skeptical-pluralist analyses of democratic accountability on a global scale fail to respect aspirations of self-governance and principles of freedom and equality (p. 151). Suspicious of institutions in general, the author instead advocates accountability practices that are variously described as critical, reexive, disruptive, and insurgent. If there is any weakness in the outline of the book, it is that a panoramic view can make it hard to focus. Still, two distinctive propositions stand out, raising vital theoretical issues of broad importance to political science. First, procedures of accountability are always locked into interactive relations with ideas of civic identity (who has the power to judge?) and norms of justice (by what standards do they judge?). This is an equally valuable caveat for empirical or theoretical studies: Accountability takes place on the back of settled assumptions about who participates and what standards apply but has the potential to unsettle those assumptions in the process. Second, accountability cannot be democratic within the principalagent framework of a sovereign state. Using Thomas Hobbes as a foil, Borowiak perceptively notes that sovereign power is by denition unaccountable, but then adds the normative premise that unaccountable power is by denition tyrannical (and therefore undemocratic; pp. 6, 16), leaving the
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