The Moore Thesis: Whats Left after 1989?

Michael Bernhard
Ehrlich Professor of Political Science
University of Florida
bernhard@ufl.edu



This paper reconsiders Barrington Moores work on the historical
emergence of democracy n the light of the democratization of Soviet-type
regimes. It evaluates the impact of Moores major critics -- Skocpol;
Rueschemeyer, Stevens, and Stevens; Therborn; and Luebbert -- on the
continuing relevance of his work. This is considered both in terms of the
so-called Moore thesis -- No bourgeoisie, no democracy -- and the more
elaborate concomitant variation formulation of the relationship between
bourgeois strength and democracy. The paper concludes that the Moore
thesis remained valid in skeleton form until the events of 1989. It then
proceeds to a discussion of the collapse of state socialism and its
replacement by liberal democracy in parts of Eastern and Central Europe.
It tries to make sense of how democracy emerged in a region in which the
bourgeoisie had been eliminated and what this means for the continued
relevance of the Moore thesis in Europe.



Barrington Moores The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy continues
to have an enduring impact in both sociology and political science more than forty years
after its publication.
1
It was central to several earlier literatures on phenomena as diverse
as revolution, peasant politics, and the breakdown of democracy.
2
The contemporary

1
Moore 1966.
2
See the Foreword Edward Friedman and James Scott (1993) wrote for a
reissue edition of the book for a good synopsis of its early impact. A representative
sample of the well-known works it helped to shape would include: Skocpol1979, Scott
1976, Paige 1975, ODonnell1979.
2
staying power of the book is due to the continuing importance of issues of regime and
regime change in the social sciences.
3

The main dependent variable in Social Origins is the political systems adopted by
modern states -- liberal democracy, fascist dictatorship, and communist dictatorship. The
rise of all three is tied to revolutionary paths out of traditional society bourgeois
revolution, revolution from above, and peasant revolution. In its parsimonious
structural explanation of the path that several major nations took to modernity, it has
strongly contributed to recent debates on structure and agency in the current literature on
democratization.
Despite the fact that the argument contained in the book is more complex, Social
Origins is often summarized by one of the many propositions offered by Moore: No
bourgeois, no democracy.
4
Dubbed the Moore thesis, this formulation is a statement
of necessary condition -- absent the presence of a bourgeoisie, democracy will not
emerge. The book, however, outlines a far more substantial argument concerning the
emergence of modern regimes. This argument, structured according to a logic of
concomitant variation, holds that variations in the strength of the bourgeoisie opens
different paths to modernity via different revolutionary means for overcoming the
residual power of feudal structures.
This article begins with summary of the concomitant variation version of Moores
thesis. It will then review several critical rejoinders to it and consider the ramifications of
these critiques for the Moore thesis as necessary condition and in its full-blown version.

3
Mahoney 2003.
4
Moore 1966 :418.
3
Finally, the paper will consider what recent cases of democratization in Eastern Europe
mean for both versions given that democratization in this region was accomplished absent
a bourgeoisie. My purpose here is to understand the temporal limitations of Moore and
how democratization was possible with no bourgeoisie.
Moores Argument
The central dependent variable in Social Origins is the regime form taken by
several of the worlds major powers in their path from traditional to modern society.
Moore draws his inference from the experience of eight countries -- Great Britain,
France, the United States, China, Japan, India, Russia and Germany.
5
He defends his
case selection on the basis that it includes the worlds most innovative and powerful
countries whose paths to modernity shaped those taken by less significant countries.
6

The dependent variable itself is trichotomous. The regime forms that emerge are
democracy, fascism, and communism. The main independent variable is the strength of
the bourgeoisie.
7
In countries in which the bourgeoisie is strong enough to substantially

5
Moore does not present casework on Germany and Russia in but knew both
cases in great detail (see Moore 1950, 1954, 1978). His account of India treats it as an
anomaly where democracy managed to emerge without (and at the cost of) modernity.
This account clearly needs updating, but this is not the place for that.
6
Moore 1966: xix.
7
This summary presents Moores argument at a high level of abstraction. At the
level of the individual cases the book contains a richer causal level that discusses whether
the relative bourgeois strength and how this affects the relationship between peasants and
lords. For those interested in discussion of Moores richer causal logic Skocpols
4
weaken the economic structures of feudalism, democracy emerges (see figure 1 below for
a visual summary of the narrative argument). However, it is not the direct action of the
bourgeoisie that is decisive in Moores theory. The strength of the bourgeoisie has a
definitive effect upon how rural upper classes and the peasantry approach politics.
Where the bourgeoisie is strong enough, the aristocracy is able to adapt itself to the
emerging structures of the market economy and competitive politics. Agricultural labor
also comes to be regulated by the market, allowing for both commercial success and
control of rural populations (although not without considerable human costs).
Figure 1 here
In Germany and Japan, the bourgeoisie was weaker than in the cases above. The
Stein-Hardenberg reforms, and both Bismarcks and the Meiji revolutions from above
focused and accelerated the pace of industrialization in these societies. Such measures
included standardization of the legal code and enhanced enforcement by the state,
reduction of internal barriers to trade, the creation of modern professional armies and
national education systems, and the promotion of a unified national identity.
8
In both
countries the landed upper classes continued to be politically dominant into the modern
era. They cemented a political alliance committed to a program of a militarism,
nationalism, and expansionism in which the bourgeoisie was a willing junior partner.
This alliance protected large estate agriculture and nascent industry with tariffs. The state
also kept wages low by thwarting the attempts of the working classes to organize.

summary of the fourteen main independent variables used in the cases is invaluable
(1994: 32).
8
Moore 1966 :438-9.
5
Democracy ultimately failed in these cases because of the upper class inability to defend
its interests without dictatorial enforcement of a labor repressive accumulation. The
result was fascism.
In countries like Russia and China, where the bourgeoisie was even weaker,
modernity was achieved even later under a communist dictatorship that emerged
following a peasant-based revolution. In these societies both conventional modernization
and revolution from above failed. Attempts at reform had the effect of undermining
traditional modes of peasant control and replacing them with ineffective forms of state
control. Such failures both undermined the power of the rural ruling classes and
exacerbated peasant grievances against landlords, creating a peasantry with revolutionary
potential.
State and Class
One of the earliest critical discussions of Moore was offered in 1973 by Theda
Skocpol. The main thrust of her criticism was that Moore ignored the role of the state
and its connection to the power of landed elites. She articulated this critique through
commentary on several of Moores cases.
9

In the case of England, Skocpol argues that the initial effect of the revolution was
to diminish prospects for industrialization and democratization because it promoted
cooperation between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie out of fear of radicalism. The
contribution of the English revolution in the long run was to weaken the trend toward a
centralized, bureaucratic absolutist state, which meant that the nobility did not have the

9
Skocpol 1994.
6
power of a modern state or a standing army at its disposal to stave off challenges to its
power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
10

In her discussion of Germany and Japan, Skocpol confirms the centrality of
revolution from above led by officials drawn from the upper classes. However, in Japan
she contends that the state bureaucracy, staffed by a service cadre of landless samurai,
was independent of traditional land owners and modernized against their will and
interests. She argues that this bureaucratic autonomy from landed interests made the
Meiji agenda of modernization possible.
11

Ultimately Skocpols criticism of Moore centers on an underappreciation of the
role of the state in late developing countries. Early modernizers have a decided
advantage in interstate struggles, and responding to such to international pressure is
critical to understanding political developments in Germany and Japan. Both used
centralized state power to create a modern military capable of defending their territory as
well as the interests of their ruling classes. In contrast, Englands early modernization
and insular geography helped to promote democracy. Its nobility was able to adapt to
commercial farming on the basis of local power rather than state coercion.
Does Moore really underplay the state to the extent to which Skocpol charges?
With regard to the effect that international competition has in pressuring states to
modernize, Skocpol acknowledges that Moore looks at bourgeois revolution, revolution
from above, and communism as successive stages for achieving modernity. And within
the cases Moore does talk about how foreign pressure motivates reform. Where the

10
Ibid :38-9.
11
Ibid :42-3.
7
criticism is more telling is in the internal effects of the state. She is right to point out that
Moore does not systematize this dimension in the same way that he does class relations
and that in many of his cases the discussion of the choices made would be enriched or
improved by more systematic comparisons of the state, its organization, and its role in
modernization.
In this regard Moore probably overstates the causal effects of direct class-based
political action and underestimates the impact of the development of autonomous state
power within societies. While all this is a useful corrective, it by no means invalidates
his thesis in its necessary condition form. Even in those cases where Skocpol contests
Moores causal logic, democracy did not emerge in the absence of a bourgeoisie. And in
terms of the Moores more elaborate argument, Skocpols criticism leads to question as to
why the level of bourgeois strength translates into the different paths, but not the basic
disposition of the cases or whether the class power and interests are integral to the
outcomes in question.
Bourgeois Revolution and Democracy
Goran Therborns work on the rise of democracy and its relationship to capitalism
also challenges Moore. Therborn acknowledges Social Origins as a precursor to his own
work, but disagrees on the significance of bourgeois revolutions with regard to the timing
of the establishment of democracy:
[N]one of the great bourgeois revolutions established bourgeois
democracy. It is not only true of the early Dutch and English
revolutions [T]he democratic constitution produced by the French
Revolution remained a dead letter from beginning to end of its brief
8
existence. The American Republic was established by white propertied
gentlemen, and the only blacks enfranchised by the Civil War were male
northerners.
12

Therborn reminds us that bourgeois revolution and the emergence of capitalism
has been associated with forms of rule that fall short of democracy.
13
To remedy this
defect in our understanding he explores what led to the creation of democracy in sixteen
core capitalist countries. By examining the causal patterns in this sample, he
differentiates five different paths to democracy: 1) through defeat in war, 2) through
national mobilization, 3) as a by-product of national mobilization, 4) through the
independence of petit bourgeois social forces, and 5) through a divided, but unthreatened,
ruling class.
In his discussion of these paths, Therborn shows that capitalism and democracy
did not emerge in harmony, but in contradiction to each other. Even though Moore
shows that bourgeois ascendance opens the path to democracy, Therborn finds no case in
which a united bourgeoisie pushed for democracy on the basis of its interests. In cases
where the bourgeoisie was divided on democracy and lower classes did pose a significant
threat to the ruling classes, democracy emerged in an evolutionary fashion. In most other
cases a range of other class actors, sometimes in league with the bourgeoisie and just as
often facing its opposition, provided the impetus for democracy. Here Therborn notes the
consistent pressure of working class parties for parliamentary democracy, but also
acknowledges that their strength alone was never sufficient to install democracy. In the

12
Therborn 1977 :17.
13
Ibid :10-11.
9
late nineteenth and twentieth centuries he demonstrates the pro-democratic orientation of
lesser agrarian proprietors, artisans and the petite bourgeoisie, which stands in contrast to
the decidedly authoritarian preferences of large landowners, as well as the mercantile and
industrial bourgeoisie.
14

Therborn reminds us that the bourgeoisie does not have a record of support for
democracy. But this works to augment and enrich Moores work, not to contradict it.
Bourgeois reticence toward full democracy would really only rebut Moore had he argued
in terms of a sufficient condition: if bourgeoisie, then democracy. And of course,
Moores discussion of the non-democratic paths to modernity openly acknowledges the
existence of an authoritarian bourgeoisie.
The concomitant variation form of the thesis does not predict a democratic
bourgeoisie. It only argues that where the bourgeoisie was strongest historically, it paved
the way for democracy to emerge. Therborns reconstruction of the latter stages of those
causal paths does not contradict what Moore says about his main cases. Among those
cases in which splits in the bourgeois ruling coalition are central to the expansion of
franchise for Therborn, we find Moores three cases of bourgeois revolution and liberal
democracy (US, UK, France). Second, in terms of the states that took the fascist path to
modernity in Moore (Germany, Japan), Therborn does not so much contradict Moore, but
provide a much needed update of his account. He shows that their ability to switch to a
pattern of democratic modernity came only with catastrophic defeats in war that
undermined the socio-economic patterns that promoted fascism in the first place.

14
Ibid :20-26.
10
Therborns greatest contribution is to our understanding of the paths to democracy
among highly developed capitalist countries. His consideration of what transpired in the
period between the revolutions that opened the path to democratic development in the
West and the actual installation of democratic regimes in the early twentieth century
shows that democracy does not emerge in tandem with capitalism, but through
contradictions in that process. Another important innovation is Therborns introduction
of the distinction between the middle classes and the bourgeoisie. It helps us to
understand an important aspect of where the popular backing for democracy originates as
the process comes to fruition.
Enter the Middle Classes
Another work relevant to a reassessment of Moore is Gregory Luebberts
Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy.
15
The subject of his investigation is regime
type in interwar Western Europe. The dependent variable is trichotomous as in the title
of the book. Luebbert poses a challenge to Moore in exploring a non-liberal path to
democracy.
Luebberts main argument is summarized in Figure two below. Its starting point
is whether nineteenth century liberalism was able to integrate the working class into the
political system. This led to rule by what Luebbert calls lib-labism, a coalition of
traditional liberal parties and the organized labor movement. Liberal democracy proved
durable in the interwar era only in those countries where this had been successfully
accomplished in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century. Because of this early
incorporation of the working class, the labor movement tended to be less well organized

15
Luebbert 1991.
11
and less radical compared to cases where the working class was excluded. During the
interwar era democracy persisted as labor continued to be effectively regulated by the
market, as in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and France.
(Figure 2)
Where nineteenth century liberal regimes excluded the working class, labor
movements tended to be unified and better organized. Under such circumstances the
market alone was insufficient to regulate the relationship between labor and capital. Two
types of regimes emerged in response to this: fascism and social democracy. These two
outcomes were based on different coalitions of social forces. The key variable for
alliance formation was whether the labor movement attempted to organize rural labor.
Where they did, it threatened the interests of family farmers who then entered into an
alliance with the urban middle classes against the socialists, resulting in fascism. Where
they did not, family farmers allied with the working class and the result was social
democracy.
Luebberts argument builds on Moore in certain ways and challenges him in
others. Those cases where the bourgeois impulse is strongest in the Moorean sense seem
to correspond to the pattern of lib-labism that allowed for the working class to be
peacefully incorporated into the polity. Where the work seems to radically challenge
Moore is in its contention that both fascism and social democracy grow out of the failure
of liberalism. The implication here is that at least some of these countries may have had
a bourgeoisie of medium strength yet managed to find a path to democracy without a
detour into fascism.
12
Another unique aspect of Luebberts argument is the centrality of middle class
actors to regime outcomes. The urban middle class is presented as a threat to democracy.
The decisive choice between fascism and social democracy was made by the rural middle
class, family farmers, which can support either of the two alternatives. In this set of
outcomes Luebbert posits that the upper classes were not significant actors. It does seem
plausible to argue that social democracy was imposed on the upper classes, but does this
really make them irrelevant? It seems, however, more difficult to see how the upper
classes are irrelevant to fascism.
Luebbert attempts to make such a case for Spain, Italy and Germany. However in
this discussion, he mischaracterizes the kind of support necessary for fascist dictatorship.
Before the Junkers foolishly handed Hitler the keys to the state, the Nazis never won
more than a weak plurality in contested elections. Franco came to power via civil war
and Mussolini by putsch. If the urban and rural middle classes were strong enough to put
these dictators into power, why would they not just create right of center, liberal
governments as in England, France, and Switzerland? While a substantial level of
popular support is essential for fascism, majority support is by no means essential to take
power. And clearly, the support of the rural elite and big bourgeoisie, even if initially
highly contingent and offered cynically, made it possible. Can one imagine fascism in a
case where the upper classes did not support it or try to use it for ulterior reasons?
But even more so, if the rural upper classes in the fascist cases are irrelevant as
Luebbert asserts, this still may not be fatal for Moore. The question remains as to why
the rural middle classes would be threatened by organized labor in the rural sector. And
here one would have to examine whether a tradition of labor repressive agriculture was
13
something that benefited the rural middle classes in these countries. And conversely, did
interwar social democracies, only low and Scandinavian countries in Luebberts account,
lack a labor repressive tradition in agriculture which made social democracy more
feasible there?
Rueschemeyer, Stevens, and Stevens present evidence precisely of this nature.
By the late nineteenth century they argue that the rural upper classes in Scandinavia,
Belgium, and the Netherlands were weak. In all authoritarian cases they find rural upper
classes that were still uniformly strong (Spain, Austria), regionally strong (Germany and
Italy), and all still ideologically influential.
16
If this is the case, Luebberts finding does
not invalidate Moores account of fascism. Luebbert turns up something unanticipated
by Moore: a social-democratic path to democracy for a number of cases which had
bourgeoisies of medium-high strength. Depending on where one places the Scandinavian
and Benelux cases in terms of bourgeois strength, one could see this as a variation in the
path to democratic modernity, or a unique social-democratic path to modernity
overlooked by Moore.
Europe Bound?
Rueschemeyer, Stevens, and Stevens (henceforth RSS) in Capitalist Development
and Democracy examine the emergence of democracy in Western Europe, the British
settler colonies, the Caribbean, and South America.
17
Their work extends the geographic
scope of a Moore-like analysis and explicitly seeks to improve upon his framework by
more fully integrating the autonomous state and the impact of the world system into the

16
Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992: 92-95, 100-101.
17
Ibid.
14
global expansion of democracy. Though their work strongly confirms and extends
aspects of Moore, they criticize his account of the role of specific social classes and raise
important questions about his treatment of fascism.
Like Therborn and Luebbert, RSS present a more dynamic picture of the class
alliances in different historical paths to democracy. Like Therborn they point out how the
organized working class was indispensible to democratization in many cases, but they
temper their analysis where working-class authoritarianism promoted dictatorship. They
also discuss the ambiguous relationship of the bourgeoisie towards democracy, finding
that its strongest contribution comes in those cases where it pushed for parliamentary
government. Like Therborn, they find its commitment to universal suffrage weak.
18

RSS also pay a great deal of attention to the modern middle classes as a key actor
in the struggle for democracy. In the European context, like Therborn and Luebbert, they
show how the struggle for democracy often entailed alliances between working and
middle class groups. In Latin America, because of the relative weakness of the working
class in the context of dependent development, middle class and professional groups
played an even stronger role in the expansion of suffrage. However, RSS also find no
evidence of a universal middle class commitment to democracy. In many cases urban
and rural middle class groups abandoned struggles for lower class enfranchisement or
supported authoritarian political movements in pursuit of economic advantage.
19

RSS also question the causal sequence in Moores account of the fascist path.
They incorporate revisionist accounts of German history which judge the bourgeoisie to

18
Ibid: 140-2.
19
Ibid :181-186.
15
be the stronger partner in the reactionary alliance with the aristocracy.
20
This challenges
the specifics of Moores German case, and his theory generally, in that this would
represent a case of the bourgeoisie as the moving force in a reactionary revolution from
above.
21

Instead of discarding Moores notion of a reactionary class alliance, RSS use
Kurths insights on late industrialization to argue for its continued relevance, even as the
bourgeoisie had begun to overtake the landed elite in strength. Relatively late-
industrializers in Europe, like Germany, modernized in the age of heavy industry in
contrast to England, France, and Belgium who industrialized on the basis of light
industry. The greater capital intensity of heavy industry tied the German bourgeoisie to
the monarchical state and its program of railroad building, military build-up, and overseas
expansion, thus justifying the extension of its alliance with landed interests.
22

In expanding their analysis to encompass Italy and Spain in Europe and Latin
America, RSS also encounter cases that took a reactionary path despite labor practices
that are not repressive in Moores sense. Here the impulse of the landed elite towards
authoritarian solutions was a product of the market regulation of rural labor and the
introduction of democracy. In these cases democracy allowed forces sympathetic to rural
labor to capture the local state and intervene to its advantage in ways that threatened

20
Blackbourn and Eley 1984; Calleo 1978.
21
Bermans work (2001) presents Germany on an evolutionary trajectory toward
democracy and would see the ascendance of the German bourgeoisie as a move in that
direction.
22
Kurth 1979 : 82-3, 147.
16
landed interests dependent on hired labor, increasing their support for dictatorship.
23
RSS
thus reconceptualize Moores theory, showing that labor intensive agriculture
dependent on hired labor can also promote authoritarian revolutions from above,
especially where democracy threatens to raise the wage rate.
24

Like the works discussed earlier, RSS improve upon Moore. Their theoretical
framework takes account of the autonomous state as an important factor and the impact
of the global political economy on many developing countries, thus making the kind of
comparative historical approach that Moore championed applicable to a larger number of
cases. They also improve upon Moores framework for understanding the reactionary
path to modernity by incorporating Kurths insights on late industrialization and their
own concept of labor intensive agriculture. Like both Therborn and Luebbert, RSS push
the comparative historical study of democracy beyond the revolutionary junctures at
which Moores analysis ends and in doing so enrich understanding of the role of a range
of different twentieth century class actors.
As I argued earlier such analysis enriches the Moorean tradition, but does not
undermine the Moore thesis in either its necessary condition or concomitant variation
forms. That both the working and middle classes are key actors in pushing for
democracy, or that the bourgeoisie itself lacks a fully democratic orientation, does not
mean that its actions are indispensible to democracy. Where its actions subverted the
agrarian social order, something that Moore, Skocpol, Therborn, and RSS all agree is the
most daunting barrier to the emergence of democracy, democracy emerged earlier. The

23
Rueschemeyer et al.: 146.
24
Ibid :163-5.
17
explanation of this produced by RSS is more encompassing and at a higher level of
generality than that provided by Moore. Here they build on Therborns insight that
democracy is an inadvertent product of capitalist development, and further refine his
account of the roles of a larger number of classes. For RSS, democracy emerges as the
balance of power between classes in civil society shifts in favor of democratic actors.
This builds off Moores work to provide a framework to make sense of the specific
trajectories of regime evolution that follow bourgeois revolutions and revolutions from
above.
Whither the Moore Thesis after 1989?
If we reduce the Moore thesis to the statement of necessary condition (no
bourgeoisie, no democracy) and the three causal sequences based on bourgeois strength
and regime outcome (strong democracy, medium fascism, and weak peasant
revolution), his critics largely leave this framework intact. The major responses outlined
are nevertheless powerful social science that forces us to modify, reconceptualize, or
rethink the causal logic of the three paths outlined in detail by Moore. Skocpol points out
the need to more explicitly theorize the effects of an autonomous state and the impact of
the world system on the paths chosen by specific countries. RSS soundly demonstrate
that these concerns can be systematically integrated into an account of the rise of
democracy that is consistent with Moores main arguments.
Both Therborn and RSS lament the lack of attention that Moore places on
working class strivings for enfranchisement and the rather mixed record of the
bourgeoisie in struggles for full-blown democracy in many countries. And indeed Moore
does not present a full picture of the final stages of any of his paths. He concentrates on
18
their origins, true to the title of the book. Both Therborn and RSS fill in this part of the
story, giving us a fuller appreciation of how both the democratic and reactionary paths to
modernity worked in Europe, and in the case of the latter the Americas.
Luebbert, RSS, and Therborn also put an important emphasis on the middle
classes as a potentially democratic actor. And Luebbert, in elucidating the social
democratic path to democracy in the interwar era, shows how smaller nations without the
burdens of great power competition have the potential to take a non-liberal path to
democracy on the basis of middle class/working class coalitions without a detour into
fascism. All three, however, caution us not to see the middle classes as a universally
democratic, pointing to numerous examples in both Europe and Latin America where
they became bulwarks of dictatorship.
By clarifying the reactionary path to modernity, RSS make two important
refinements to Moores original theory. The first contribution concerns the growing
power of the bourgeoisie once the path of revolution from above is taken. Under such
conditions the bourgeoisie eventually grows stronger than the agrarian elite, and this begs
for an explanation as to why it continues on the reactionary path. Here Kurths work on
late industrialization shows that the bourgeoisie continues to require the assistance of the
state due to the saturation of the domestic markets demands for the heavy industrial
products it produces. The second has to do with the concept of labor repressive
agriculture. Here RSS show that there are labor intensive forms of agriculture whose
regulation by a democratic state could pose severe problems for a landed elite operating
on the market.
19
One limitation of these critical responses to Moore is that they are concentrated
on those countries that have taken either the liberal democratic or the reactionary path to
modernity. There is almost no consideration of the countries who have taken the path of
peasant revolution to modernity. There is little discussion about the other half of Europe,
let alone China, except for Skocpols consideration of revolution. Her coverage of these
cases ends with the attainment of modernity through the consolidation of revolutionary
regimes in the USSR and China.
25
Therborn limits his discussion to the advanced
countries and Luebbert considers Eastern Europe outside the scope of his theory.
26
State
socialism only makes an appearance in RSS in their discussion of Moore and in passing
references to 1989 in their conclusion.
27

But what of 1989, 1991, and the collapse of state socialism that grew out of
Russias peasant revolution and its replacement, at least in some places, with democracy.
The post-revolutionary consolidation of power by Stalin created a form of modernity
quite different from liberal democracy, social democracy, and fascism. It industrialized
without the market, created its own unique class structure, system of rule, and social
system. Bureaucracy replaced the market to an extent not imagined by either the fascists
or social democrats. Like fascism it replaced civil society with a society administered
and mobilized by the state and forsook democracy for the political monopoly of its core
leadership. All this brought a massive transformation of the social structure of Russia
and those societies in which its unique brand of modernity was transplanted. Societies

25
Skocpol 1979.
26
Luebbert :99.
27
Rueschemeyer et al. :23-24, 294-6.
20
that had been hovering between capitalist modernity and feudal traditionalism were
rapidly modernized in a way that avoided capitalist methods. In that process the weak
bourgeoisie of the region was demolished.
Thus in 1989 we witnessed for the first time the emergence of democracy without
a bourgeoisie -- no bourgeoisie, democracy. If we confront this development in terms
of an end to Moores relevance in understanding regime change in Europe in the late
twentieth century, two questions immediately present themselves. How could democracy
emerge in the absence of a bourgeoisie? And, following Moores critics, which social
force or forces were instrumental in the process of democratization?
How is that in the other Europe, the areas in which the bourgeois impulse was
weakest, where traditional dictatorship was still a viable form of rule in the interwar era,
some countries could make a relatively rapid and peaceful transition to democracy?
28

One major reason for this was that the imposition of Soviet-type systems abolished many
of the socio-economic features that presented barriers to democratization in these
countries. As Bernhard has argued in a different context, the partition of Germany after
the Second World War relieved West German politicians of the Junker problem, making
democratization in what would become the Federal Republic much simpler than during
Weimar.
29
Forty years later the East Elbian estates that had been at the center of

28
Not all areas into which Soviet-type systems were introduced had a weak
bourgeoisie, e.g. the Czechlands.
29
Bernhard 2001.
21
Germanys problems had been reduced to inconsequential state farms scattered across
East Germany, Poland, and Russia.
30

Postcommunism and the Agrarian Question
As in postwar Germany, communist parties in the entire Soviet bloc presided over
the dismantling of estate-based commercial agriculture. This had the effect of destroying
the landed elites that presented the greatest barrier to democracy. They also destroyed
the independent small-holding peasantry, forcing it into either state or collective farms
under the direct control of the party state.
31
Soviet-type regimes thus solved the landlord-
peasant problem, though democracy was not on the agenda. When change came in 1989
there were no longer any landlords to worry about, just a fairly uniform, demoralized
peasantry concentrated on large collective farms.
The agrarian problem which continued to nag at those countries that took the
fascist path to modernity no longer seems relevant in this part of Europe. Given the level
of democratic success in many countries, it seems that the postcommunist rural sector
poses no generalized insuperable barriers to democracy. However, this is not to say that
the picture is fully positive, especially in countries with conventional neo-authoritarian or
competitive authoritarian systems. Particularly as we move out of Europe into Central
Asia the agrarian sector may present some problems.

30
Gerschenkron 1989.
31
In both Poland and Yugoslavia collectivization was not fully successful. In
both countries there remained a substantial group of smallholders, who were also
dependent on the state.
22
Some observers have noted how following the collapse of Soviet rule, the rural
population has increased and moved toward subsistence agriculture in unreformed
collective farms in a number of authoritarian post-communist states.
32
Kurtz and Barnes
have found that a larger rural population correlates with lower levels of democracy.
33

And Collins points to the persistence of structures of traditional society, such as clans, as
an important factor in the false start for democracy in Central Asia.
34
In as much as these
structures are embedded in the patterns of the rural economy, this constitutes one factor,
among many, making democratization in this part of the world more difficult.
The pattern of a burgeoning, little-reformed, subsistence-based rural sector
contrasts strongly with the pattern in Central Europe and the Baltic countries where the
peasantry has shrunk, agricultural production is increasingly commercialized, and
competition from more advanced neighbors has forced farmers to adapt or go out of
business.
35
At this stage the rural question does not seem the definitive one, in terms of
the fate democracy in European post-communist societies. Rather it seems more likely
that the patterns we see in the rural areas are more reflective of the status of reform in any
given society. They seem more a consequence of change rather than a central
determinant of its trajectory.
To sum up the findings of this section in the agrarian sector, the Soviet pattern
of rule played the same role that bourgeois revolution did in earlier historical contexts. It

32
Pomfret 2003, Simonia 2003, Mikhalev and Heinrich 2003.
33
Kurtz and Barnes 2002.
34
Collins 2004.
35
McCauley 2003, Grniak 2003, Veernk 2003.
23
obliterated the agrarian barriers to democracy before democracy itself emerged. In an
irony of history, Leninist commissars functioned as an accidental and surrogate
bourgeoisie for these societies in terms of eliminating anti-democratic landed elites. In
that sense one can say that in constructing an anti-democratic, radically anti-capitalist
(and anti-feudal) form of modernity, the commissars made it possible for democracy to
emerge later without a bourgeoisie. This is not unlike Moores view of England, where a
violent past contributed to the peaceful evolution of democracy.
Actors in the Postcommunist Context
In examining a region where democracy emerged in the absence of a bourgeoisie,
one critical question that immediately presents itself is which actors pressed
democratization. We confront an instance in which a highly undemocratic type of regime
created the conditions of its own undoing. To understand which actors were responsible,
one must begin by discussing the economic organization of Soviet-type regimes and their
class structure. Soviet-type regimes were able to modernize rapidly by using methods of
teleological redistribution.
36
In bringing the economy under control of the state the
leaders of Soviet-type regimes were able to generate forced savings, effectively deploy
and exploit labor resources, and industrialize rapidly. Critical here is an elite that
controlled production and reallocated the societal surplus in pursuit of transformational
goals. In the USSR Stalin also instituted a revolution from above which placed priority
on heavy and military industry that solved the problems posed by the hostile external
environment in a way that his predecessors could not.
37
This new model of economy,

36
Konrd and Szelnyi 1979, Verdery 1991.
37
Skocpol 1979
24
which was transplanted across the communist world, also brought along with it a new
social structure.
Not only was there the transformation of the agrarian sector described above, but
two substantial largely urban classes were also created. Where capitalism and the
bourgeoisie had been weak, the commissariat constructed a working class. Instead of
making the revolution, the Eastern European proletariat was made by it. Industrialization
also produced a large urban white-collar class. Its education and the possession of skills
in short supply endowed this class with a higher economic position and status. At its
lower reaches among secretaries, clerks, and low-level functionaries of the state, it tended
to blend into the proletariat. Like the new middle classes in capitalist societies, it was a
professional and service class, but one that served in the party-state apparatus rather than
a more diverse set of employers as in the west.
At the pinnacle was a social group which Konrd and Szelnyi (K&S) have
characterized as intellectuals. Writing from the perspective of the 1970s they described
the intellectuals as though they were a ruling class or at least one in statu nascendi. This
class, as will become apparent later, is not coterminous with the intelligentsia as a social
phenomenon, but includes it as but one subgroup. K&S do not define intellectuals in
terms of their level of education or their vocational position, but in terms of the
justification of their social position. Here they refer to claims of superior knowledge that
justified their role in teleological redistribution.
38

Konrd and Szelnyi enumerate three different strata of intellectuals. The first,
economists and technocrats, actually carries out the work of rational redistribution.

38
Konrd and Szelnyi 1979 :28-29.
25
The second, the administrative and police bureaucracy, guarantees the undisturbed
functioning of the redistributive process. The third is composed of the the ideological,
scientific, and artistic intelligentsia, which produces perpetuates, and disseminates the
culture of rational redistribution.
39
I will use the term intelligentsia to talk about the
group as a whole. This is distinct from prewar sense of this term in Eastern Europe
which applies to a narrower group that shares a specific critical ethos. Stipulating the
meaning of the term to that specified by K&S is the best compromise available given the
more narrow semantic and value-laden choices available in English. I will also refer to
the three strata identified by K&S as the administrative, technocratic, and cultural
intelligentsia.
One striking characteristic of the collapse of Soviet-type systems in Europe was
that the impetus for change was urban. In this regard the countryside lagged far behind
the cities. In all countries where democracy was created, critically oriented members of
the intelligentsia were the leading element or a major partner in the process of change.
None of the three broad strata of intellectuals were devoted to democratic change as a
group, but those who began to advocate democracy and undertake oppositional activity
on its behalf were drawn overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, from the cultural stratum.
For purposes of clarity, I will specify this activist group as the oppositional intelligentsia.
Poland is the only country in which the working class played a central role in

39
Ibid :147-8.
26
oppositional politics, though there were other countries where workers played significant
but lesser roles in the process of change.
40

Among intellectuals there were strong political divisions with oppositional
elements pushing for radical changes, others advocating more limited reforms, and a third
group defending the status quo. As noted above the cultural intelligentsia contained the
greatest concentration of oppositionists and reform-minded individuals. It was often
elements from this stratum that played a leading role in organizing insurgent civil society
groups to contest state power or were the most vocal advocates of state-sponsored
liberalization of the system. The technocratic stratum tended to favor moderate reforms
that would have rationalized the economy in ways that would have increased their
autonomy from the ruling elite, though without cutting themselves off from state
subsidies. Of all the parts of the intelligentsia, it was the administrative component
(especially the security apparatus) that was the most resistant to change. There were,
however, individuals and groups from this stratum as well who played important roles in
the process of change, particularly where splits emerged over early reform efforts.
41


40
A general strike by workers in Czechoslovakia during an impasse in
negotiations was a key event in the Velvet Revolution. There was some independent
organization of workers in the USSR (e.g. the coal miners beginning in 1989), but clearly
nationality trumped class in the USSR (Beissinger 2002).
41
If one just takes the example of the Soviet Union/Russia, Gorbachev, Yeltsin,
and Putin were all strong advocates of reform. The passage of time has made clear that
for none of them was reform synonymous with democracy.
27
What seemed to motivate most intellectual actors in this process was not
democratization per se but the removal of political constraints on the exercise of what
Eyal, Szelnyi, and Townsley conceptualize as their cultural capital.
42
However, rather
than seeing them as a late twentieth century Bildungsburgertum, with a shared set of
capitalist commitments like Eyal et al., I think their position is better captured by analogy
to the intellectuals discussed by Kurzman. Their class interests, while not completely
identified with democracy, were better pursued via democracy than the alternatives.
43

The push to democracy developed out of the desire of cultural and technocratic
intellectuals to reduce the scope of political control over the realms of knowledge and
production exercised by the administrative stratum. For the cultural intelligentsia, the
political power of the party-state bureaucracy interfered in the pursuit and expression of
knowledge. For the economic intelligentsia, the issue was encroachment of the party-
state bureaucracy in the organization of production. And, of course, some members of
administrative stratum supported these efforts as a means to restore the vitality of system,
which was clearly on the wane.
The motivating issue was thus not the creation of capitalism but the termination of
the political encroachments of the party apparatus into the realms of knowledge and
production. And as in Kurzmans accounts these interests became embedded in the
struggle for democracy as intellectuals began to make claims not on their own behalf but
on behalf of the nation as a whole, as they had in many areas just prior to World War I.
44


42
Eyal, Szelnyi, and Townsley 1998.
43
Kurzman 2008: chapter 2.
44
Kurzman 41-2.
28
This began as an assertion of the prerogatives of independent civil society against
comprehensive etatization and calls for reform of an economy which was broadly
perceived as technologically backward and deficient in meeting consumer expectations.
By the late 1980s as the system both liberalized and continued to stagnate economically,
demands for outright democratization and economic rationalization using the market as a
means emerged more broadly.
Thus these intellectuals neither conformed to the free-floating stratum described
by Mannheim, nor as the kind of Gramsician organic intellectuals who advocate the
interests of other classes.
45
Transformations in the nature of capitalism in the late
twentieth century also made it less of a threat to intellectuals in Soviet-type systems.
Here both the expansion of the role of knowledge in the success and attainment of well-
compensated positions, as well as globalization of the world economy, enhanced the
value of education and international perspective. Because of their education, experience
with the outside world, and knowledge of foreign languages, intellectuals had less to fear
from the market than they did in earlier phases of capitalism.
Eyal et al. foreground capitalism as the motivating force in their analysis. They
even argue that the discourse of civil society functioned as a kind of ideology for the
emergence of a monetarist model of capitalism.
46
I differ with them in seeing the
centrality of the political and here the issue was breaking the monopoly of power of the
party-state bureaucracy. At the point of regime transition in all post-Soviet systems
(1989-91), as the era of the party-state control came to an end, more competitive politics

45
Burbank 1996, Eley 1996.
46
Eyal et al. :chapter 3.
29
emerged and elites sought to convert power resources under the old system into new
forms of power. The issue of the direction of the economy remained up in the air.
Certain countries were able to establish viable market economies while others moved
with hesitancy, protecting vested interests, and succeeded in creating only pale copies of
a market economy which functioned poorly, were rife with corruption, and prolonged
economic stagnation.
Rather the question of what sort of political and economic system that emerged
following transition is inherently political and is a product of both the contestation of
power among the intelligentsia and the extent to which advocates of change could
mobilize the forces of civil society in that struggle. Different outcomes emerged under
rather similar ideological narratives that stressed democracy and the market. While civil
society was an element in this ideology, it was a material force just as it was in other
regions and times (see RSS) and not just a legitimizing myth for extending the
Washington consensus east of the Oder-Neisse. Variation in the strength of civil society
led to different sets of outcomes. Here the role of opposition intellectuals and their
supporters at the point of transition was key.
How did the strength of civil society at the point of exit from the old regime affect
economic change and the prospects for democracy? Whereas the cultural intelligentsia
tended to support its most critical elements and push strongly for democracy, the
administrative and police strata were working hard to find ways to hold onto the levers of
power and to reconstitute the regime in a new form that preserved elements of their
power. At this stage, where the technocratic stratum lined up politically was decisive. In
situations where the opposition was able to mobilize strongly and demonstrate the
30
weakness of regime incumbents, the intelligentsia abandoned efforts to save the regime
and began to adapt to competitive politics. This is what tipped the balance between the
countries that embraced reform quickly and decisively and those who did not. In those
countries in which there were well-established oppositional civil society organizations
(Poland, Hungary, the Baltics, Slovenia) or a combination of more modest oppositional
organization and large demonstrations in support of democratization (Czechoslovakia and
the DDR) the economic stratum was prepared to defect from the administrative and
police stratums defense of the status quo. Where civil society was weaker, elements of
the elite were able to paint themselves as newly reborn nationalists, keep the allegiance of
the economic stratum, and slow down (Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia), derail (Ukraine,
Moldova, Albania, most of the former Yugoslavia), or ultimately defeat democratic
reform (Russia, Belarus, Central Asia).
Where civil society was stronger and the technocratic stratum was willing to
accommodate itself to democracy and capitalism (whether competitive or some variant of
welfare statism), there was more radical economic and political reform, greater social
mobility, and the creation of a more diverse economic elite. Where late communist
politics were more contentious across the regime/opposition divide, there emerged a
wider array of countervailing social forces which blocked the wholesale conversion of
state assets into private capital. Here is where I strongly disagree with Eyal et al. on civil
society. Where it was strongest in the final stages of communism it became a force that
prevented the concentration of property and this had critical ramifications for whether
democracy was possible in the postcommunist context.
31
In certain ways this argument is congruent with some of the literature on reform
outcomes in the region. For instance Vachudova argues that oppositional strength and
liberal reform are correlated in East Central Europe.
47
Similarly, Fish argues that in
countries in which the opposition defeated regime incumbents in founding elections,
economic reform turned out better.
48
My argument differs from these in three ways.
First, it concerns the adoption of a complex of institutions a modern liberal society
grounded in both representative democracy and a market economy. Second, unlike
Vachudova, but not Fish, it looks at the context of the whole postcommunist space.
Certain cases which might not seem as effectively positioned for liberal reform from the
perspective of Central Europe, such as Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania, fall into an
intermediate zone with somewhat better prospects than many postcommunist countries to
the east. Third, while Fishs position on electoral victory strongly correlates with the
countries that had the strongest oppositions at foundation, it also omits the distinctions
between countries which had an intermediate oppositional strength, and have moved
more slowly toward a modern liberal society (e.g. Bulgaria, Romania), as compared to
the weakest cases which have opted for neo-authoritarianism.
Where civil society was weaker, it was easier for recalcitrant elements within the
administrative intelligentsia to convince the technocratic stratum to make common cause
with them to convert their positions of power into concentrations of private property.
49

Where civil society mobilization was weak at the point of transition, advocates of

47
Vachudova 2005: Chapter 2.
48
Fish 1988.
49
Solnick 1998, Ganev 2006.
32
democratic change were unable to bring countervailing power to bear to prevent massive
concentration of property in the hands of the elite. As a result, the capitalism that
resulted was more explicitly political rather than market driven.
50
This led to
conversion of party political assets into economic ones, and a concentration of property in
the hands of a few.
The concentration of property is one of the conditions that has made it difficult, if
not impossible, to maintain democracy in some postcommunist countries. Where the
former power elite has been able to privatize huge concentrations of state property,
downward mobility across society has been more profound and the nature of
postcommunist society has been different. This is strongly reflected in levels of material
inequality. Whereas Soviet-type systems created societies that were relatively equal in
terms of monetary income, in the postcommunist era income inequality has increased and
nowhere more so than those places where parts of the old elite has been able to privatize
state assets. Whereas inequality in Central Europe and the Baltics has approached the
level of places like the UK and Canada, in many regions of the former Soviet Union and
the former Yugoslavia, it has moved to levels that resemble the most extreme cases in
Latin America.
51
This represents a major problem for creating or sustaining democracy,
especially where the antecedent authoritarianism was egalitarian.
Under such circumstances the prospects for democracy have been dim. In most
cases of this type, democratization has been slow and at best, uneven, or abortive,
resulting in the emergence of neo-authoritarian regimes. In such cases, the rhetoric of the

50
Ganev 2009.
51
Mikhalev 2003, Piirainen 2003.
33
market and democracy continue to serve as devices to legitimate dictatorship or justify
the concentration of assets and political capitalism. Dictators who do not allow political
competition nevertheless justify their rule as democratic by resort to plebiscitary
elections, while pursuing economic policies which protect the concentration of wealth in
the hands of political associates, kin, and other dependents. In some cases we even see
the emergence of competitive authoritarian regimes that simulate democracy while
denying its substance.
52
The latching onto such talismans of modernity in the guise of
justifying neo-authoritarianism and kleptocracy is nothing new in this part of the world.
53

Where capitalism emerged, the impact of the international system needs to be
taken into account. New elites, confronting the decomposition of Soviet-type systems,
looked to market models as a proven alternative to stem continued economic decline.
Where international assistance and foreign direct investment was forthcoming in post-
transition period, it was linked to the adoption of standards of democracy and open
markets. All this was abetted by the carrot and the ideology of a reentry into Europe,
which brought EU assistance to meet its economic and political standards. But unlike
some who think that the EU was force behind reform I agree completely with
Vauchudova who argues that entry into Europe did not trigger an embrace of the market
and democracy. Rather those who made the fastest progress towards liberal democracy
and market economies were brought into Europe first.
54
Over time the effect has become

52
Way 2005.
53
Stokes 1989.
54
Vachudova 2005.
34
interactive in that the success of the countries which gained entry into the EU seems to
have produced a demonstration effect (notably in the Balkans).
Table 1 looks at the political, economic, and social development of the
postcommunist states in terms of a rough sorting of the strengths of their civil societies at
the point of transition. The presentation of descriptive statistics is not meant as a strong
form of inference, but as a crude check on the plausibility of the theory. Should the
countries with stronger civil societies not exhibit a higher degree of democracy and
stronger socio-economic performance, this would certainly call the theory outlined here
into question.
[Table 1 here]
The table is composed of standard indicators used in cross-national quantitative
research. Both the indicators and where each country ranks in terms of the universe of
postcommunist countries are arrayed in the table. The means for each group for each
indicator is calculated as well. In the political dimension it relies on both Freedom House
and Polity. Freedom House is composed of two seven-point scales that measure civil and
political rights. The score reported here combines the two scales and thus runs from 2 to
14 with a lower score indicative of stronger protection of rights. The Polity score, a
twenty-one point interval scalar measure running from -10 to 10, is used to assess the
degree of democracy. Higher scores are indicative of a greater degree of democracy.
Economic performance is measured here by the year in which a country regained
its pre-transition level of GDP following post-transition recession and adjustment. The
social indicators get at distributional issues. The Gini score is the standard measure of
the distribution of income and captures the extent to which that distribution is equitable.
35
Lower scores indicate higher equality. Food supply is the mean kilocalories/person/day
distributed in each country. It is one of the standard measures of basic needs satisfaction.
The UN recommended supply for a working adult is 2400 kilocalories.
The expectation given by the theory would be that countries with more mobilized
civil societies at transition should do better in terms of all these indicators. These
expectations are strongly born out in the table. In terms of democracy we see the
strongest values accruing to the highest range of countries in terms of the civil society
sorting and then falling off in each group. The same pattern emerges with both the social
indicators with greater degrees of relative equality and basic needs satisfaction for the
high group and a drop off in the middle and lowest ranges. The only indicator that does
not conform to this pattern is economic recovery. Here we see a much faster recovery
with the high range countries, but with the low range countries nosing out the mid-range
here for a slightly faster recovery. Generally speaking these rankings are what we would
expect given the theory outlined above.
Whither the Intellectuals?
What is also striking about the post-1989 transformation of the region is that
although the intellectuals led this process they did not push a set of narrow class interests
against the existing political and economic system. In this sense they were different from
the revolutionary bourgeoisie. While reformist intellectuals originally aimed to abolish
the aspects of the status quo that impeded their interests as a class in the existing order
(specifically political control over the production of knowledge and material production),
they came to embrace liberal democracy and market capitalism as the only viable
alternative model in the wake of the collapse of Soviet-type regimes. Still they had no
36
intrinsic material interest in capitalism. They owned nothing. Instead they became the
agents of liberal democratic capitalist modernity on the basis of a set of ideal interests,
the intention to create a society that enjoyed western standards of political freedom and
economic development.
Where market and democratic reforms were successful, opposition intellectuals
put the material interests of the intelligentsia into jeopardy. To maintain an elite status
they would be forced to adapt to a new set of requirements to attain power and gain
economic security. Their one concrete advantage in this situation was the set of cultural
attributes that they retained from the old system -- specific skills, contacts, and education.
These attributes would have to be adapted to the new reality. They were no longer
intrinsic to the exercise of power and control of assets as they had been in the past. Thus
in embracing democracy and the market, opposition intellectuals were abandoning the
very mechanisms that saw to their reproduction as a privileged group.
If this picture of the motivation of intellectuals is correct, we should see
substantial downward mobility for parts of the old elite. Yet at the same time, those who
are able to adapt their skills to the new environment should remain in the elite despite the
systemic transformation in the region. The best cross-national data to date have been
assembled by Eyal et al. for Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The picture they
present is highly consistent with what we would expect from the account above. We see
substantial downward mobility. Only about forty percent of the old political elite was
successful in retaining their social position. While they are the group that has been most
successful in holding high political office, only ten percent of them have managed to do
so. Part of this group, approximately six percent, has also been able to convert some
37
aspect of their position into entrepreneurial careers. The stratum that has done best in
terms of maintaining its elite position is the economic and technocratic stratum (seventy
percent, with over half remaining high-level managers in public or private firms).
Another five percent of them became entrepreneurial capitalists. The cultural elite also
experienced strong downward mobility (only about 45% remained in elite positions, with
only 19.3% remaining part of the cultural elite).
55

Ultimately, where the oppositional intelligentsia was the social force that played
the most important role in the democratization of Soviet-type systems, they were a
peculiar historical midwife. First, they did not create a new system of economic
reproduction in which they had vested material interests. Rather if anything, they
embraced a market economy out of necessity and a certain utopian faith in the historical
record of the west. At best one could say that its interests were ideal. Second, its actions
dismantled the basis for its power as a social formation. Despite this, a portion of its
members have been able to prosper individually on the basis of skills, positional power,
and knowledge which provided advantages on the market. Some attributes of the
intellectual class were convertible into new forms of power on the market. Clearly
though, they were not the only ones capable of making the transition to the new systems.
In many regards, the white collar professionals just below them in the old hierarchy did
just as well in the postcommunist system.
56
With the dismantling of the mechanisms of
the redistributive society, intellectuals and others with relatively rare forms of knowledge

55
Eyal et al. :120.
56
Ibid. :131.
38
and/or skills were in a reasonable position to convert aspects of their position under the
old system into new forms of power and privilege.
Where postcommunist change has not produced democracy, we see a different
pattern altogether. Here we should expect to see less downward mobility among
members of the old elite and the wholesale transfer of state assets to their control. Their
ability to do this has been based on a politics in which they had few competitors once
Soviet-type regimes collapsed. Here elements of the former elite should be more firmly
entrenched in the halls of power. The expectation is that on the basis of a renewed
alliance at the moment of transition, elements of the old administrative and economic
strata should have seized control of the most lucrative state assets, converting their
political power into private ownership of formerly state-owned assets. This is precisely
the sort of configuration of power that Kryshtanovskaya and White present in their work
on the conversion of the Russian nomenklatura into a new power elite. They report that
former members of the nomenklatura constituted the bulk of the new Russian elite in the
1990s ranging from 57.1 percent of the leadership of political parties, to seventy-five
percent of the government and presidential council, to 83.1 for regional elites.
57
While
these figures are not exactly comparable to Eyal, Szelenyi, and Townsley, the differences
in magnitude begin to demonstrate why we see such a difference in outcome.
Conclusions
So what does this consideration of Moore and his critics in light of postcommunist
developments since 1989 tell us? First, 1989 represents the temporal limit of the direct
applicability of Moores thesis to development and regime form in Europe. Both the

57
Kryshtanovskaya and White 1996: 725.
39
necessary condition and concomitant variation versions of his theory hold the bourgeoisie
as central to understanding the emergence and persistence of democracy. Democracy
came to Eastern and Central Europe in the almost complete absence of a bourgeoisie and
of strong market impulses. Moore continued to be of relevance in the wake of fascism or
other forms of reactionary revolution from above because of the centrality of the
bourgeoisie and agrarian elites in understanding such outcomes. However, in the case of
countries following the path of Soviet-type systems to modernity, the existing social
structure was so transformed that the role of the bourgeoisie and the market in the
construction of modernity was negated.
Second, with that negation of the bourgeoisie, certain tasks that seem necessary to
democratization are accomplished by social forces other than the bourgeoisie. In
Moores liberal democratic path to modernity the bourgeoisie plays a role in the
transformation of the agrarian sector such that the landed elites are no longer an
insuperable barrier to democracy. They also deserve some credit for the initiation of
democracy as a regime form, despite the well-founded reservations of Moores critics.
Even if bourgeois revolution did not immediately create full-blown modern democracies
and the bourgeoisie as a social actor rarely pushed for full democratization of the political
system consistently or on its own, this does not mean that the bourgeoisie did not play a
critical role in the emergence of regimes that were representative and competitive, two
critical milestones on the march to modern mass democracy.
Third, whereas fascism in its most dynamic forms turned out to be short-lived
because of its self-destructive nature, communism was a much more stable alternative to
liberal- or social-democratic capitalist modernity. For these societies to embrace liberal
40
democracy after 1989, other social forces had to accomplish the two historical tasks of
the bourgeoisie. It was the actual installation of the Soviet system itself that finally
destroyed the barriers old agrarian orders posed for democracy. Labor repressive and
feudal forms of agriculture were replaced with a fairly uniform peasantry that either
directly worked for or was highly dependent on the state. This configuration of
agriculture has not proved to be the kind of formidable barrier to democracy that either
Moores labor repressive or RSS labor intensive forms of agriculture seem to be. It is
ironic that Stalin and the minions that he put into power unintentionally transformed the
agrarian sector so that it would no longer be a barrier to democracy in an unimagined
future.
Fourth, the social actor most responsible for initiating the path to liberal
democracy was drawn from the intelligentsia that stood at the top of the division of labor
under communism. While intellectuals have often been a force for modernity in the
societies in this part of Europe, they hardly have an unblemished historical record in
terms of a commitment to democracy. East European intellectuals, sometimes in large
numbers, were not immune to the enticements of both fascism and communism. Not all
intellectual groups in all countries embraced liberal democracy, and where they were able
to appropriate state assets to privatize their power, democracy has had less success. The
central variable here seems to be whether critical intellectuals played a major role in the
resurrection of civil society under communism. Where they had, there were stronger
barriers to the appropriation of state assets and the economic intelligentsia needed to
make common cause with oppositional radicals and reformists to successfully adapt to
economic and political liberalism. Where civil society was weak, an alliance between the
41
economic and administrative strata to convert state power into private power seems to
have thwarted or slowed strivings for democracy and a full embrace of the market.
Fifth, the role of intellectuals in successful democratization stands out as rather
different from how the bourgeoisie timidly embraced full democracy, while giving
precedence to their material interests. In leading their countries towards liberal-
democratic capitalist modernity, intellectuals undermined their claims to privileged socio-
economic status based on specialized knowledge. This does not mean that the
transformation was an unambiguous material setback for intellectuals. Where they have
been able to convert their knowledge, skills, and contacts into assets utilizable on the
market, they continue to play important roles in these societies and constitute an
important part of the new power elite.
Sixth, the consideration of social structural concerns once again confirms that
social forces that do not have democratic motivations can bring about forms of socio-
economic change that later promote democracy. Moores critics make clear that the role
of the bourgeoisie in eliminating feudal restraints on the emergence of democracy was
accomplished often when the bourgeoisie was not fully committed to it. Similarly, the
Leninist program of social transformation was profoundly anti-democratic, yet it
removed structural barriers to democracy in the agrarian sector and created new social
actors that had democratic potential. This reminds us that not all social outcomes are
purposive. The emergence of democracy, as RSS and Therborn remind us, is something
that in its deep structural causes can be epiphenomenal. Social actors that are ambivalent
to democracy or even hostile to it can create conditions that promote it unintentionally.
42
Leninist commissars had no intention of creating liberal democratic market societies, yet
the fruits of their labor facilitated it in certain ways.
43
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47
Is the bourgeoisie sufficiently
strong to pull down the down the
structures of feudal society?

Figure 1: Structure of Moores Argument Concerning Modernity and Regime-type
Can modernization be achieved
by means of revolution from
above supported by a labor
repressive alliance coalition of
the feudal aristocracy and the
bourgeoisie?

Liberal
Democracy
_______________
France
England
United States

Fascism
_______________
Germany
Japan

With failure of revolution from
above does peasant revolution
lead to consolidation of power by
a modernizing revolutionary elite?

no yes
no yes
Communism

Russia
China
Persistence of Traditionalism
_________________________
India
yes no
48

Is nineteenth century liberalism
successful in incorporating the working
class?
Figure 2: The Structure of Luebberts Arguments on Interwar Regimes
Interwar liberalism
continued market
regulation of the
relationship between labor
and capital (UK, France,
Switzerland).
Political regulation of capital-
labor relationship required.
Does the organized working
class attempt to organize the
rural poor?
yes no
Fascism on the basis
of an alliance of the
urban middle class
and family farmers
(Germany, Italy,
Spain).
Social Democracy
on the basis of an
alliance of the
working class and
the family farmers
(Belgium, Denmark,
Netherlands,
Norway, Sweden).
yes no
49

Table 1: Indicators of Aggregate Political, Economic, and Social Performance, 1989-2008
Political Economic Social
Strength of Civil Society Food
at Transition FH Rank Polity Rank Year of Rank Gini Rank Supply Rank
(mean) (mean) Recovery
a
(2008)
b
(2008)
Highest Range
Czech Republic 3.4 4 8.6 3 2000 5 0.23 1 3339 7
Estonia 3.4 5 7.6 7 2000 5 0.36 14 3060 13
Hungary 3.1 1 10.0 1 1999 3 0.26 4 3435 3
Latvia 3.6 7 8.0 4 2004 11 0.39 18 3146 11
Lithuania 3.2 2 10.0 1 2004 11 0.31 7 3415 4
Poland 3.2 3 8.8 2 1994 1 0.34 10 3381 5
Slovakia 4.1 8 7.9 5 2001 7 0.23 1 2860 17
Slovenia 3.4 6 3.4 16 1996 2 0.24 3 3351 6
mean or median 3.4 4.5 8.0 4.9 2000 5.6 0.29 7.3 3248 8.3
Middle Range
Bulgaria 4.7 9 7.7 6 2004 11 0.31 8 2815 19
Georgia 8.1 16 5.2 12 ua
c
22 0.45 22 2521 24
Moldova 7.4 14 7.2 9 2007 19 0.33 9 2948 16
Romania 6.0 10 7.3 8 2004 11 0.35 12 3493 2
Russian Federation 8.9 20 4.5 14 2007 19 0.42 20 3157 10
Ukraine 6.7 12 6.4 11 ua 22 0.28 6 3182 9
mean or median 7.0 13.5 6.4 10.0 2006 17.3 0.36 12.8 3019 13.3
Lowest Range
Albania 7.6 15 4.8 13 1999 3 0.41 19 2855 18
Armenia 8.4 17 4.1 15 2003 9 0.38 17 2240 27
Azerbaijan 10.9 24 -5.7 24 2006 17 -- -- 2603 23
Belarus 11.3 25 -3.5 22 2002 8 0.28 5 3672 1
Bosnia and Herzegovina 9.3 22 -- -- -- -- 0.45 21 2990 14
Croatia 6.3 11 2.6 17 2004 11 0.35 13 2983 15
Kazakhstan 10.8 23 -4.6 23 2003 9 -- -- 3218 8
Kyrgyzstan 9.2 21 -1.6 20 ua 22 0.38 16 3115 12
Macedonia 6.8 13 7.2 10 2007 19 0.37 15 --
Montenegro 8.7 19 0.4 18 -- -- -- -- 2691 22
Serbia 8.6 18 0.4 19 ua 22 0.35 11 2691 21
Tajikistan 12.1 26 -3.3 21 ua 22 0.47 23 2259 26
Turkmenistan 13.8 28 -8.9 25 2004 11 -- -- 2767 20
Uzbekistan 13.2 27 -9.0 26 2006 17 -- -- 2497 25
mean or median 9.8 20.6 -1.3 19.5 2004 14.2 0.38 15.6 2814 17.8
Notes:
a
Year 2009 used in calculating the mean for countries that had not recovered their pre-transition GDP levels.
b
Or last observation in series.
c
Recovery not attained by 2008.
Sources:
Freedom House 2010; TransMONEE 2010; Marshall, Gurr, and Jaggers 2010, and FAOSTAT 2010.