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Civil society in new democracies: the logic of collective action

Grzegorz Ekiert, Harvard University Jan Kubik, Rutgers University

Jason Wittenberg, University of California, Berkeley

Preliminary draft (September 1, 2010). Not for citation or attribution. Comments welcome.

Paper prepared for session 44-5: Civil Society in New Democracies: Cross-Regional Comparisons, APSA Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, September 2-5, 2010.1

1 Our special thanks to Terence Teo at Rutgers and the research assistants of Prof. Wittenberg at Berkeley. Without their indefatigable work this paper would not have been produced.

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1. Introduction Contemporary studies of democratization, democratic consolidation and performance of democracy have all suggested that there is an intimate connection between the strength of civil society and the health of democratic institutions. Most scholars agree that the strong, active and assertive civil society is a fundamental precondition for successful consolidation of democracy and for a well functioning democratic system (Shils 1991; Gellner 1994; Putnam 1994, 2000; Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995; Diamond 1999; Schmitter 1997; Skocpol 2003; Bermeo and Nord, eds. 2000; Bernhard and Karakoc 2007).2 Without a system of associations standing between the family, market and the state, individuals are less effective in articulating their common interests and society remains more vulnerable to populism and authoritarian reversals. In the last two decades billions of dollars have been spent on various efforts aimed at strengthening civil society in newly democratized countries. Yet, despite the consensus on the desirability of civil society, there is still much disagreement on how it is to be defined and measured, how it evolves over time, what dimensions of democracy it shapes, and how the mechanisms by which it affects the quality of democracy work. While really existing civil societies (Alexander 2006) differ in many important ways, the protagonists in the civil society argument rarely made any effort to adopt a more nuanced notion of civil society and explore whether different types of civil society may have different impact on the ways in which new democracies are institutionalized and how they perform. In contrast to many political theorists (see, for example, Seligman 1992, Cohen and Arato 1992, Hall 1995, Keane 1998, Rosenblum and Post 2002) we assume that there is no universally beneficial Civil Society, but rather that there exist historically shaped different forms or types of real civil societies. Ultimately, we propose to explain the concrete political outcomes that different forms of civil societies produce and their impact on the functioning of specific institutional domains in new democratic regimes. In this paper, however, we do not explore such issues; we focus merely on reporting the preliminary findings of our four-country study focused on contentious behavior of civil society actors and present the results of our first attempts to test several theories that may explain diverging patterns of contention. Our research project3 records civil society’s structure, its activities and their evolution in four countries belonging to the Third Wave of democratization - Hungary, Poland, South Korea and Taiwan. While these countries are in different regions and have contrasting authoritarian legacies, they are all cases of successful consolidation of democracy. Our research covers a nearly twenty-year period in each case (from the democratic breakthrough in 1987 for East Asia and 1989 for East Central Europe until 2004). In contrast to those who focus exclusively on unidimensional and narrow measures of civil

2 A related literature on the relationship between social capital and democracy offers a similar conclusion (Paxton 1997, Letki and Evans 2005) 3 This is a collaborative project that involves a number of scholars from several countries. In addition to the authors of this paper he members of the research team include: Yun-Han Chu, Bela Greskovits, Sunhyuk Kim, Michal Wenzel, and Chin-en Wu.

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society density,4 we employ a more realistic and empirically sensitive notion of civil society and carefully study its behavior. Using the method of event analysis, we collected data not only on civil society density, but on a variety of civil society actors: who they are, what their objectives are, and how they pursue their goals. A uniform methodology was employed in all four countries to ensure maximum comparability of the information collected. Event analysis, the project’s principal method, is explicitly designed to capture the dynamism of civil society’s actions and their effects on other domains of the polity. Finally, and most importantly, to avoid the exclusive reliance on single case study evidence or expert opinions, we collected detailed, quantifiable information in four new democracies across two regions. Ultimately, this project contributes to the study of factors that cause the emergence, reproduction, and persistence of different civil society forms. It establishes whether different civil societies generate or support specific forms of democracy and whether universal democratic institutions can accommodate various types and degrees of civil society. It shows what kind of influence various types of civil society have on public attitudes toward democracy, and under what conditions active civil society supports or undermines new democratic institutions. In sum, due to its reliance on disciplined comparisons and innovative methodology, the project advances the study of democratic consolidation, civil society, and contentious politics. This paper, however, provides only a preliminary report on cross-country differences and evolution (fluctuations) of magnitude (intensity) and selected features of contentious behavior by civil society actors in our four countries. We focus more specifically on explaining the sources of such variation and persistence in styles and civil society action across time. 2. Behavior of civil society as a research problem Our approach builds theoretically upon the rich tradition of research on civil society, but it offers a more systematic conceptualization, explicit comparative research design, and innovative methodology than earlier studies. We employ a realistic and empirically sensitive notion of civil society. Following Diamond (1999, 221), we define it as “the realm of organized social life that is open, voluntary, self-generating, at least partially self-supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules.... it involves citizens acting collectively in a public sphere to express their interests, passions, preferences, and ideas, to exchange information, to achieve collective goals, to make demands on the state, to improve the structure and functioning of the state, and to hold state officials accountable.” In contrast to many existing analyses based on a small number of indicators and/or on cross-national public opinion surveys (Howard 2003; Bernhard and Karakoc 2007, Norris

4 Standard methods include measuring density by dividing number of organizations per number of people in a given social/administrative, etc. unit. Another widely used method is to analyze actors’ declarations of participation, “reported experience of protest activism,” as Norris describes it (2006, 12). The results of the World Values Study, the Euro-barometers, the International Social Survey Program, the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, and the Global-barometer surveys and others are used (Norris 2006:3).

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2006), we collect data on a broad range of civil society actors and their behavior in each country under study. Most research on civil societies has been based on public opinion surveys (WVS – most prominently), case studies, or composite “assessments” produced by expert panels.5 By contrast, our data (generated by the method of event analysis) offers valuable insights into both civil society behavior and the normative orientation of its actors.6 While existing studies have focused almost exclusively on declared membership in pre-defined number of voluntary associations, our data collection protocol allows us to gather information on actual actions of civil society actors. It identifies specific actors and registers forms of action and their fluctuations over an extended period of time. Our data remedies also the problem noted by Bernhard and Karakoc (2007) that studies of civil society have tended to focus on apolitical aspects of associational life such as membership in voluntary organizations or volunteering to the exclusion of active political behavior. The narrowness of empirical measures used in existing studies is especially troubling given the emerging consensus that civil society is a multidimensional and interactive phenomenon (Bermeo and Nord, eds. 2000; Merkel, Anheier 2004). Specific dimensions or sectors of civil society in various countries may exhibit different levels of development and different qualities and thus their impact on democratization (or the improvement of democracy’s quality) may vary considerably. Accordingly, only multiple data and multiple methodologies can generate substantive knowledge about civil society and way in which it shapes political outcomes. Really existing civil societies differ along at least four crucial dimensions:

• Quality of public space7 • (Dominant) form of civil society, its composition and organization • (Dominant) pattern of civil society’s interaction with other institutional domains and

actors of the polity • (Dominant) normative orientation of civil society actors

First, the quality of public space varies. The provision of fundamental liberties, rights and guaranties of unconstrained action for civil society actors differs among countries with the most fundamental contrast being between democracies and authoritarian and hybrid regimes. There are also different conditions for negotiating possible social arrangements and participation in collective choice even in well-established democracies (Jenkins and Klandermans, eds. 1995). Fundamentally, one could distinguish between complete civil

5 Expert panels are, for example, used by Civicus, an organization that produces comprehensive assessment of civil societies in the expanding set of countries. 6 The main data collection strategy dictated that in each country, a team of coders, led and supervised by the country coordinator, conducted a systematic analysis of two daily newspapers, recording both quantitative and qualitative information about all reported actions of civil society organizations and the State’s responses to them. 7 Habermas 1962, Calhoun 1992.

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societies where extensive guaranties of rights to assembly, expression and political participation are fully secured and incomplete civil society where such rights are formally and informally restricted. Second, there are differences in the organizational infrastructure of civil society, including its density, patterns of organization, dominant actors, and sectoral composition. Such differences may result from historical trajectories of civil society development or from strategies of civil society building and support for various types of organizations. In principle, we could distinguish between pluralist and corporatist civil societies and between societies with continuous and discontinuous patterns of civil society development. Third, the relations of civil society organizations with other actors and the state can take different forms. In some countries civil society actors are prone to challenge authorities and employ contentious forms of behavior. In other there is extensive cooperation between the state and civil society and the level of political contention is lower. Accordingly, one can distinguish between contentious and accommodating civil society (Tilly 1989, Ekiert and Kubik 1999). Finally, the normative orientation of civil society organizations matters and we can distinguish, most prominently, between left-wing and right-wing options. In addition to such partisan distinctions, we should also pay attention to the difference between organizations that do not shy away from radicalism and those that are committed to he broadly conceived system of liberal values. Accordingly, one could also distinguish between liberal and illiberal civil societies. While the behavior of civil society actors includes various types of action, contentious action that challenges the authorities and other actors of the public sphere is the most important and consequential behavior of civil society organizations. Contention is a highly visible mode of action that shapes public opinion, dynamics of political conflicts, and requires public responses by the authorities and other actors. It is often the most effective strategy of interest articulation and defense, identity formation and negotiation of social boundaries (Gamson 1990). It generates new organizations and reformulates public discourses and repertoires of action (Tilly 1978; Tarrow 1998; McAdam, McCarthy, Zald, eds. 1996; Mayer and Tarrow, eds. 1998; della Porta and Diani 1999). While contention has been studied extensively by sociologists and political scientists, such studies have been usually segmented not only by the discipline but also by the actor (social movements, trade unions, extremist political parties, ethnic movements, etc.) or type (revolutions, strikes, riots, etc.). Our approach focuses on all actors within civil society who resort to contention behavior in promotion and defense of their interests and identities. Similarly, in the field of civil society/third sector studies a lot of research have focused on lobbying, voluntary activities and charitable giving, while contention as a main strategy of civil society actors has been largely neglected. Our research shows that contention is a crucial and important dimension of civil society behavior and its use by civil society actors has far-reaching political consequences for both democratic and non-democratic polities. Looking at four specific cases of successful transition to democracy,

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we discovered that there are important differences in civil society behavior, structure and normative orientations both across the countries and overtime. In the next section we will briefly report on difference and similarities in civil society behavior in our four cases. 3. Contentious behavior of civil societies in new democracies: the basic finding. 3.1 The magnitude of protest in the four countries. Limited by the size of a conference paper, we will present only selected results of our study. The reader should also remember that what we show here is still preliminary as the process of double-checking of our massive database is still underway. We begin our presentation of data with the simplest measure of protest magnitude: raw count of protest events in each country (Table 1). Table 1: Contentious events recorded in the database. Poland, Hungary, South Korea, and

Taiwan (1987-2004).

Country 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Total

Poland 296 258 290 295 250 169 163 299 219 302 170 319 140 221 158 144 3693

Hungary 118 127 189 112 148 45 151 105 147 147 65 171 184 154 130 238 2231

Korea 308 1222 932 577 228 208 246 222 231 374 273 389 454 288 198 355 354 256 7115

Taiwan 184 388 310 286 378 225 422 319 234 243 317 201 417 1185 1068 1084 651 518 8430

The number of contentious events recorded in our database is considerably higher in Korea and Taiwan than in Poland and Hungary. In part, this is the result of two additional years of data in these two cases. It seems however, that the level of contention based on simple count of events is higher in East Asia than it is in East Central Europe. While the number of contentious events in South Korea and Taiwan is relatively similar, the difference between Poland and Hungary is striking. By the raw number of recorded events Hungary is the least contentious case in our four-country sample. We should also note that there is considerable variation in the number of contentious events across time in each country. It is however pre-mature to talk about distinct protest cycles in each case. While there are peak years of protest in each case, the distribution of protest across the entire period in each country does not show any distinct cyclical pattern. The number of events per year is a crude yet useful measure of protest magnitude. It tells us how many times mobilization for protest is successful. But in order to obtain a fuller picture of contention a given country other, more sensitive measures need to be employed as well. It is, for example, important to include in calculations the number of participants and the duration of protest events. Both vary over time and space. Mindful of this, we

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have attempted to construct indexes of magnitude in which both the number of participants and duration are taken into account. Wittenberg will talk briefly about methodological problems associated with the construction of such indexes. Here we present very preliminary results of one of our efforts (Table 2 and Graph 1).

Graph 1

Graph 1 shows our proxy for protest magnitude called “protest days,” which we define as the sum of all days of protest occurring in a year. It includes all events recorded in our database, without the category of letter writing. Protest magnitude measured this way produces quite a different picture than the plain count of events. Polish protest appears to be most intense and, at the same time, volatile. Koreans seem to be also quite contentious; their protest is particularly intense during the first few years of democratic transformations and around 2004. The most striking difference produced by adjusted numbers concerns Taiwan. Although by a raw number of events Taiwan looks quite contentious, when this number is adjusted by duration of events the magnitude of contention drops to a level much lower than in Poland and South Korea.

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Another composite index of magnitude is a log of the product of two partial indicators: number of participants and duration (number of protest days) (Graph 2).

Graph 2: Person-days of protest

Yet another composite index (Graph 3) also shows the logarithm of the product of number of participants and duration, but this time the events for which our coders recorded more than 10,000 participants are removed from the calculation, as we simply do not know how many people actually participated. When the largest events are removed from the picture does not change much. However, the largest events are the most important events when one studies contention. They require extensive mobilization efforts and commitments of a large number of participants to the cause. They cannot just be dismissed as outliers.

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Graph 3: person-days of protest (without events with more than 10,000 participants)

Those preliminary attempts to produce a general picture of contention magnitude in the four countries we study seem to confirm one of our earliest hypotheses that contention played a more pronounced role in the post-authoritarian/post-post-totalitarian politics in Poland and South Korea than in Hungary and Taiwan. In Table 2 we report an average number of protest days per year in each country. Polish and South Korean higher contentiousness is clearly confirmed. Both countries had periods of intense contention and even in less contentious years the intensity of protest was higher. The validity of this generalization needs to be tested further, but we are inclined to call the tenor of civil society activity in first two countries contentious, while in the later two it is more accommodating. It is important to remember, however, that this generalization may hold only for the first 15 or so years of transformations. The recent events in Hungary (which we are beginning to study) indicate that the Hungarian civil society may be becoming quite contentious.

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Table 2: protest days: Poland, Hungary, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Category 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Average number of

protest days per year

Total

Poland 1000 1021 2007 2082 3755 632 887 4958 3259 6320 848 847 209 499 966 153 1840.2 29443

Hungary 317 311 506 280 1185 575 99 76 150 95 80 91 52 76 72 115 255 4080

Korea 809 2651 1583 1007 350 304 2299 260 376 525 616 770 388 406 20 690 513 6443 1111.7 20010

Taiwan 2832 502 341 272 118 107 1505 350 232 406 332 193 472 1421 1070 1302 1165 543 731.3 13163

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We return to protest magnitude in section 4 where it is treated as a depended variable. In that section we offer preliminary results of our attempts to explain variation in protest magnitude. We test hypotheses derived from four major theories. But now, we are turning to a brief presentation of some other basic findings of our study. 3.2. Actors, strategies, demands and targets of contention Although the general distinction between contentious and accommodating civil societies seems to be confirmed by the preliminary analysis, there are striking differences among our cases in various dimensions of contention. As explained above, our method allows us to collect systematic data on several key dimensions of contentious politics. In this section we present the preliminary findings of our study concerning the major socio-economic characteristics of civil society actors involved in contentious events, strategies of contention they employ, organizational vehicles they use, type of claims they made, and targets they choose. The general tenor of politics in a given country is to a large extent determined by the dominant strategies employed by political and social actors, particularly by those who resort to contentious behavior in defense of their interests. Violence and disruptive actions such as strikes or demonstration attract more attention of the media and have more direct impact on public attitudes and behavior of local and national authorities. Our study shows remarkable differences in the contention repertoire employed by the civil society actors in the four countries (Table 2).

Table 2: Strategies of contention

Category Poland Hungary Korea Taiwan

Strike 616 133 392 150

17.37% 6.11% 6.96% 1.70%

Occupation of Public Buildings 281 17 251 35

7.92% 0.78% 4.46% 0.40%

Demonstration/march/blockade 1610 901 3245 3154

45.39% 41.39% 57.63% 35.74%

Violent Action 224 31 273 242

6.32% 1.42% 4.85% 2.74%

Open letters 816 1095 1470 5245

23.01% 50.30% 26.11% 59.43%

Total 3547 2177 5631 8826

100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%

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As expected (Ekiert and Kubik 1999), strikes were the dominant protest strategy in Poland.8 Also our hypothesis about the contrast between the contentious tenor of civil society activities in Poland and South Korea and accommodating in Hungary and Taiwan finds some additional confirmation. Observe the frequency of violent actions and non-disruptive strategies such as letter writing. Civil society actors in Poland and South Korea more frequently employ the former strategies, while the latter simply dominate the protest repertoire in Hungary and Taiwan. This finding confirms the hypothesis and thus legitimizes our intention to begin a systematic study of the source of these differences, most likely in a historical-institutionalist manner. This finding is further confirmed when we look at the distribution of violent, non-violent, and non-disruptive contentious events in each country (Table 3). All types of contentious strategies recorded in our database are included in these three categories.

Table 3: Three general types of contention strategies

General types of protest strategies (Number and Percentage of Total)

Category Poland Hungary Korea Taiwan

Violent 224 31 273 242 5.22% 1.08% 3.96% 1.75% Nonviolent 1696 1069 3929 4049 39.55% 37.33% 56.98% 29.31% Nondisruptive 2368 1764 2694 9523 55.22% 61.59% 39.07% 68.94% Total 4288 2864 6896 13814 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%

Again, non-disruptive protest strategies are clearly dominant in Hungary and Taiwan and less frequently used in Poland and South Korea. Students of civil society behavior and protest politics who are interested in the question “Who protests?” routinely rely on the data collected through survey research (such as the WVS or EVS) and thus collect information on age, gender, education, income, etc. of the people who self-declare participation in protest actions (Norris 2006). Our method does not allow collecting such information about individual characteristics of protest participants, but instead we can provide information on the socio-vocational categories to 8 On the emergence and persistence of this form of protest in Poland see Ekiert and Kubik 1999.

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which they belong and on the specific sectors of the economy where they are employed. Such information, in turn, allows us to make inferences about the sectoral composition of those civil society actors who engage in contentious actions. Our study shows most interesting differences among the four countries. Let’s begin with the socio-vocational categories (Table 4).

Table 4: Socio-vocational categories of participants in contentious events

Category Poland Hungary Korea Taiwan

Workers 308 41 395 521

14.08% 4.31% 11.32% 16.23%

Farmers 263 137 252 690

12.02% 14.39% 7.22% 21.50%

Service sector 173 34 171 244

7.91% 3.57% 4.90% 7.60%

Public state sector 1078 588 1598 1350

49.27% 61.76% 45.81% 42.06%

Youth 366 152 1072 405

16.73% 15.97% 30.73% 12.62%

Total 2188 952 3488 3210

100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%

In all four countries employees of the public state sector are by far the most contentious social category. They participated in almost 62% of all recorded protest events in Hungary, 49% in Poland, 46% in South Korea, and 42% in Taiwan. This is not surprising. These are relatively affluent developed societies with comprehensive welfare systems and therefore with strong public sector trade unions and professional organizations. In our further studies we will focus on this sector as it turns out that teachers and health care system employees (doctors, nurses) seem to be a particularly active segment of the organized public in all four countries Industrial workers turn out to be very active in Taiwan, Poland, and South Korea. Much less so in Hungary. We do not know yet how to explain this pattern. Finally, we want to note the very high level of activism among the Korean youth and among farmers in Taiwan.

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Data on organizations (Table 5) involved in protest politics is not only intrinsically interesting; it also allows us to formulate hypotheses concerning the differential impact of civil society sectors on various dimensions of the socio-political systems.

Table 5: Organizations sponsoring or leading protest

Organizations Sponsoring or Leading Protest Actions (Number and Percentage of Total)

Category Poland Hungary Korea Taiwan None 415 460 764 4468 31.70% 33.85% 17.53% 71.28% Political parties 206 135 152 304 15.74% 9.93% 3.49% 4.85% Labor unions 255 360 1555 528 19.48% 26.49% 35.67% 8.42% Peasant/farmer organizations 44 40 134 220 3.36% 2.94% 3.07% 3.51% Youth 114 83 465 174 8.71% 6.11% 10.67% 2.78% Transnational 21 16 33 4 1.60% 1.18% 0.76% 0.06% Social/political movements 254 265 1256 570 19.40% 19.50% 28.81% 9.09% Total 1309 1359 3443 6268 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%

It is not clear how to treat the finding that so many contentious events do not seem to have organizations associated with them. Most likely, the press reports that constitute the base of our studies did not provide such information, although many protest actions, particularly in Taiwan, might have been spontaneously organized by community groups that were not “formally” set up. This indicates an interesting distinction between societies in which the majority of contentious events are organized and sponsored by formally established actors of civil society and societies where organizations play less important role. Hungary, Poland and South Korea belong to the former category and Taiwan to the latter. We would claim that Taiwan represents the case of familial contention in which individuals, families and local communities are the main actors in contentious politics.

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Moreover, this kind of contention seems to be associated with specific types of demands and targets of contentious actions. The demands usually concern economic issues and local authorities are the main addressee of such demands. The most striking finding is the domination of trade unions among protest organizers in all four countries. It seems that traditional (modern) organizations of civil society are still very important in shaping contentious behavior in these new democracies. Despite extensive integration of these countries into global structures and networks, the role of transnational civil society organizations is insignificant. Contention is still local and national. Moreover, in the literature on East Central Europe there is an ongoing debate on the weakness of civil society (Howard 2003; Bernhard 1993, 1996; Bernhard and Karakoc 2007; Ekiert and Kubik 1999; Sissenich 2007; Ost 2005). Ekiert and Fao (2010) offer a fresh set of insights into this issue. Here we just want to note that while the civil society may be weak in some sense, organized labor seems to be its strongest component (except for Taiwan), at least when it comes to organizations engaging the state and the political system in a contentious manner. Another interesting finding is that in Poland – with its unique tradition of labor organizing via Solidarity and the “old regime” unions – labor unions are not the only or the most dominant organizer of protest. On the other hand, in no other country political parties play such a prominent role in contentious politics. This confirms an expert opinion that the Polish party system was for a long time poorly institutionalized, a finding confirmed by both high electoral volatility and exceptionally low electoral turnouts. The powerful role of youth organizations and social movements as protest organizers in South Korea and their relatively important role in Poland and Hungary points to “modernization” of their respective civil societies. In Taiwan neither “classical” civil society organizations such as trade unions nor “modern” or “post-modern” organizations such as single-issue movements are very important. This difference seems to reflect the familial contention pattern noted above and will be investigated in our future work. An analysis of protest demands constitutes a useful way of looking at the concerns of civil society actors and the general types of issues that they address through contentious action. We begin with presenting a simple division into two broad categories of demands; political and economic.

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Table 6: Demands

Types of Demands

(Number and Percentage of Total)

Category Poland Hungary Korea Taiwan Economic 1875 1477 1179 2051 21.73% 64.30% 27.48% 63.11% Political 5247 804 2945 1185 60.81% 35.00% 68.63% 36.46% Other 1506 16 167 14 17.45% 0.70% 3.89% 0.43% Total 8628 2297 4291 3250 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%

Table 6 shows another interesting contrast between the two pairs: Poland/South Korea versus Hungary/Taiwan. Contentious politics in the former countries is dominated by political demands while the majority of demands in Hungary and Taiwan concern economic issues. In addition, only in Poland we observe a significant number of demands concerning identity politics. This is related, most likely, to the public presence of the Catholic Church and the salience of religious concerns in public debates, such as abortion or gay rights. Interestingly, the dominance of political and identity-related demands correlates with the contentious style of civil society behavior and dominance of economic demands tends to coexist with the style we label accommodating. Targets of contentious politics are strikingly different in the four countries. In Poland, Hungary and Korea between 45% and 70% of protest actions were directed at the offices of the central government (president, parliament and government). In Taiwan only some 20% of actions are directed at the national-level political institutions. This focus on local governments correlates positively both with the pattern of familial contention and the generally accommodating tenor of civil society actions.

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Table 7: Targets of protest

Targets of Protest Actions (Number and Percentage of Total)

Category Poland Hungary Korea Taiwan President 153 42 404 190 8.10% 3.38% 8.19% 3.31% Parliament 242 192 490 438 12.81% 15.47% 9.94% 7.63% Government 465 389 2550 560 24.62% 31.35% 51.72% 9.76% Local government 362 280 363 3565 19.16% 22.56% 7.36% 62.13% Management 585 265 989 63 30.97% 21.35% 20.06% 1.10% Domestic and foreign owners 82 73 134 922 4.34% 5.88% 2.72% 16.07% Total 1889 1241 4930 5738 100.00% 100.00% 100.00% 100.00%

There is much more information about difference and similarities between our four cases. We have no space in this paper to report all the details and dimensions of variation. Our presentation was designed to highlight the most striking findings of the four-country study. In the following section we propose a preliminary discussion of how to account for the variation we observe and what are the most likely factors shaping the specific nature of contentious politics we observe in the fours cases. 4. How to explain the patterns of variance in our dataset? Each dimension of protest calls for a slightly different explanatory strategy. For example, while explaining patterns of variation in contention repertoires one certainly wants to rely on the insights of historical institutionalism. Accounting for variation in protest organizations, it is prudent to consult the organization theory and – somewhat related to it – resource mobilization theory. The study of frames and discourses of contention certainly benefits from a robust theory of culture and cultural causation. But it is not as clear which theoretical orientation should one turn to in order to explain variation in the arguably most interesting dependent variable: the magnitude of protest. What explains the

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fact that in specific times and places civil society actors resort more often to contentious action than in other times and places? In the graphs presented below we use the count of protest days as a proxy of protest magnitude. It is computed yearly as a sum of all days of protest recorded in our database. We have identified four broad theoretical orientations that can be employed in our explanatory efforts and in this paper we offer a very preliminary analysis of the fit between specific theoretical predictions derived from each orientation and the observed variation in protest magnitude. Each of these broad theoretical traditions offers a specific set of hypothesis on how to explain variation in protest magnitude. Let’s introduce them briefly:

1. Contention is shaped by structural factors, including economic growth, unemployment, and inflation. The expectation is that hard times produce more contention. 2. Contention is shaped by the type of welfare regime and/or socio-economic inequalities. The expectation is that more generous welfare provisions and lower inequalities produce less contention. 3. Contention is shaped by electoral cycles. The expectation is that election periods produce the intensification of both contention and partisanship. 4. Patterns of contention (changes in protest magnitude) are to a large degree determined by the patterns of interaction between incumbents (the regime) and challengers (civil society) as these two types of political actors engage in everyday politics, formulate and criticize policy proposals, react to natural disasters or to international events or actions of other domestic actors, etc. In brief, incumbents or polity members and civil society challengers try to react to, participate in, or even provoke events. This is what we call episodic politics. Actors react to each other’s actions as they try to solve problems, protest their interests, react to “crises,” and advance their own agendas. The accumulated results of episodes of contention reside in collective memory, form traditions of contention, and serve as cultural templates – particularly influential in forming repertoires of contention – for future rounds of political and distributional conflicts and struggles.

Our data still require extensive cleaning so at this point we cannot test systematically the four theories using the entire dataset. In this paper we are going only to look at the Polish case and one or two examples from other countries to see whether the data we have can tell us something about the plausibility of various theoretical claims. 4.1 Macro-economic factors and the magnitude of protest.

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Graph 4: Poland: GDP growth rate and the index of protest magnitude (protest days).

In Graph 4 we track changes in Poland’s GDP growth and fluctuation of protest magnitude (the number of protest days). The data seem to suggest that there is no simple relation between the fluctuation of economic growth and the variation in the level of contention. While the Hungarian and Korean cases provide some conformation for the hypothesis that protest magnitude correlates positively with the rate of GDP growth (when the latter declines, the former increases), the Polish case blows the hypothesis out of the water. The increases in protest magnitude seem to be unrelated to the fluctuation in the GDP growth rate. This relation, however, requires more investigation. Research on strikes suggests an inverse relation: economic growth invites more distributive struggles and tends to provoke increases the number of labor actions. At least a part of Poland’s trajectory suggests such a possibility. Nevertheless, it seems that there is no good fit between simple measures of economic growth and protest magnitude. While looking for a more nuanced hypothesis linking a “socio-economic” variable with our protest magnitude, we turned to the index of misery. The index that is simply a sum of the rate of inflation and the rate of unemployment (here compounded yearly) approximates the well being of the population more closely than the rate of GDP growth.

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To test a hypothesis – indebted to the relative deprivation theory – that protest’s magnitude correlates negatively with people’s well-being we computed indexes of misery for all four countries and superimposed graphs representing them on graphs representing protest magnitude. The Hungarian pattern (not illustrated here) actually seems to be confirming a “macro” theory (for example in its relative deprivation version) that the magnitude of protest is positively correlated with the well being of the population: the lower the latter, the higher the former. A similar pattern does not seem to exist in other countries of our sample. See, for example, the South Korean pattern (Graph 5).

Graph 5: Korea: index of misery and protest days (as an index of protest magnitude)

There is no clear fit between protest magnitude and the index of misery in South Korea. Right after the breakthrough in 1987 the magnitude of protest intensifies, but the well-being of the society declines only later, in 1990. Even more spectacular is the lack of any clear relation between the index of misery and the 2004 spike of protest magnitude. At that time Korean society was already enjoying a relatively high living standard. Similarly in Poland (Graph 6) there is no obvious relation between the index of misery and magnitude of protest. The periods of intense contention, for example in 1993 and 1998,

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coincide with either drops in the index of misery (1993) or happen during the time when the societal well-being stabilizes at a relatively high level (1998-) (Graph 6).

Graph 6: Poland: index of misery and protest days (as an index of protest magnitude).

4.2. Electoral cycles and fluctuations of protest magnitude. Another hypothesis links variations in protest magnitude (again “pdays”) with the fluctuations of the electoral cycle. It assumes that the magnitude of protest rises (or falls) around the time of elections. Let’s inspect of data to see if this hypothesis is corroborated (for the sake of brevity only Poland will be examined) (Graph 7).

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Graph 7: Poland: protest magnitude and the electoral cycle

The parliamentary election of 1993 when the Solidarity union forced out of power a Solidarity government was preceded by the intensification of protest politics, an extraordinary process analyzed in great detail in Ekiert and Kubik 1999. But, the fluctuation in the magnitude of contention does not seem to correlate in any systematic fashion with the subsequent electoral cycles: sometimes contention increased before the elections, sometimes after. Sometimes there is no clear change in the magnitude of contention around the time of elections. It has been sometimes argued that the variation in “objective” economic factors (GDP rate or the changes in the misery index) or the electoral cycles should not be expected to correlate with the variation in the magnitude of contention. Rather, contention should be more clearly correlated with such “subjective” factors as people’s assessment of their “situation” or their views about the “general situation” in the country. Therefore, the final

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illustration we offer uses the public opinion data from Poland on the “subjective” assessment of the “current situation” in the country (Graph 8). Graph 8: Poland: index of protest magnitude, assessment of the “current” situation in the

country, and the index of misery.

Adding the public assessment component does not offer any analytical leverage. There is no clear relation between the assessment of the situation in the country and fluctuations of protest magnitude. Protest magnitude has two distinctive spikes (1996 and 1998) that happened precisely during the only time when the positive assessment of the country’s general direction outweighed the negative one! Most interestingly there is a “negative” relationship among the three trends. From 1999 to 2006: (1) the index of misery stabilizes at a relative low level, (2) the negative assessment of the current situation increases and then only slowly decreases, and (3) the protest magnitude declines precipitously. The above illustration suggests that the fluctuation of protest magnitude in our four cases cannot or should not be linked to variables used most often in explaining the variation of political outcomes. This exercise seems to suggest that we need to pay more attention to contextual factors of various nature and interaction effects, and move away from

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simplistic structural variables. Verifying the idea that episodic politics drives contention requires detailed case studies. While there is no space in this paper to offer examples of such analyses, in our future work we will study the relationship between the changing magnitude of protest and contextually embedded episodic politics. 5. Conclusions: types of civil society, contentious behavior, and episodic politics The data on behavior of civil society actors we collected in four new democracies clearly shows that contention is an important aspect of the relationship between civil society and the state. A conclusion that emerges from our still preliminary analysis of the thousands of cases of contentious events we recorded is that not paying sufficient attention to what civil society actors actually do may lead to a fundamental misrepresentation of the processes taking place in the public domain. It can also distort explanatory efforts aimed at the understanding of the performance and quality of democracy. The data on patterns of contentious behavior of civil society actors we presented in this paper suggest that there are important differences among the four new democracies we study. More specifically, we identified a distinction between countries where the significant majority of contentious events was led or co-led by civil society organizations (labor unions, professional associations, social movements, political parties, etc.) and a country (Taiwan) where protest activities are the domain of actors organized in networks based on ascription (kinship, community). We call this type of contentious behavior familial contention. By contrast, contention in Hungary, Poland and South Korea seems to be driven by formal organizations of civil society. We will explore all implications of this contrast for the performance and quality of democracy in our cases and beyond. We have also established that the distinction between contentious and accommodating civil societies finds an empirical confirmation. Among our four new democracies Poland and South Korea clearly belong to the contentious category while Hungary and Taiwan to the accommodating one. Again in the future work we need to explore what consequences the presence of one or another type of civil society has for the performance and quality of democracy. In this paper we have focused narrowly on the magnitude of contention in our four cases. Accordingly, we sought to identify factors that can help to account for variation in contention magnitude both in time and space. In the last section we briefly introduced four possible explanatory strategies. Matching our data on protest magnitude with four possible explanatory leads we concluded that the best explanation of the pattern of civil society contentious behavior we observe is provided by a theory we call episodic politics. According to this theory the best explanation of variation in the magnitude of contention, at least in democratic countries, should come from a detailed reconstruction of specific patterns of interaction between the incumbents (states, governments) and challengers (unions, movements, etc.), as these two types of political actors engage in political struggles over specific policies. Such struggles are shaped by additional factors, largely beyond the control of contending parties. Such factors include events in other countries,

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global crises, natural and man made disasters, actions of other collective actors, etc. Thus a proper explanatory strategy for fluctuation of contention magnitude should involve detailed contextual case studies that take into account a large number of variables and factors. For example, the magnitude of contention in Poland peaked twice during the studied period, in 1993 and 1998. On both occasions massive mobilization of challengers (in both cases labor unions representing predominantly the public sector employees) was a result of a specific patterns of interaction with the government. In both cases the governments either refused to engage labor and other collective actors in institutionalized policy debates (1993) or were preparing massive institutional reforms that were seen as threatening by a the organized labor, particularly the unions that organize employees of the public sector (1998). In 1998, the index of misery fell down considerably compared with earlier years and the popular assessment of the country’s “current situation” was close to its highest level since the fall of state socialism. And yet, this was the year of the most intense contention in post-communist Poland. The reason was the so-called “Buzek reforms,” an ambitious program of reforms in the four fundamental policy domains of the Polish state (territorial organization of the state, pensions, public health, and education). Policy reforms, however, may not be the only mobilizing factor for civil society action. The recent wave of contention in Poland was caused by the airplane crush in which the sitting Polish President and almost a hundred of high-ranking state officials lost their lives. Debates over the proper burial procedures and commemoration of the victims, doubts over the investigation into the causes of the accident, and the hasty electoral campaign preceding a highly emotional presidential election proved to fuel a wave of contention whose intensity seems to match any eruption of protest activity related to major welfare policy reforms.