Europe’s dictators

Although Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has been labeled as Europe’s last dictator, authoritarian governments and dictatorial tendencies are certainly not limited to Minsk. After the fall of communism various models of non-democratic centralism have been pursued. Some have survived while others are waiting in the wings for the opportune occasion to seize and preserve the levers of power.

Authoritarians can no longer rely on social revolutions, systemic collapses, coup d’etats, or national liberation movements to capture state institutions. In the modern world, they cannot simply prohibit all competing political parties and contenders for office or outlaw general elections without provoking international ostracism and more determined domestic resistance. And dictators can no longer fully isolate their countries from the rest of the world, especially not within Europe. They need a veneer of legitimacy.

Instead of the traditional methods of gaining and maintaining power, a plethora of means have been devised with various ideological and practical justifications applied by differing governments. Two issues in particular have been regularly exploited by actual or aspiring dictators: ethnic nationalism and social justice. And underpinning them is the determination to hang on to power regardless of elections and institutions.

Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman were the prime examples of the ethno-nationalist option during the 1990s. Each claimed that they were defending the independence and integrity of their newly founded states or protecting their nations from expulsion or extinction. During war time citizens often overlook domestic dictatorial tendencies, as they are fixated on the bigger prize of national independence.

The sense of restoring national pride and protecting the country from unwanted foreign influences has continued in various guises even among several democratically elected governments. In some cases, this has led to charges of creeping authoritarianism where the governing party with a huge electoral majority feels emboldened to pursue constitutional changes and other measures that are evidently intended to cement their power.

Hungary’s Viktor Orban is a current case in point, although similar charges were leveled against Polands Lech Kaczynski and the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Klaus. However, one does need to distinguish between populist, ultra-conservative, or illiberal policies that have wide appeal but can discriminate against ethnic, religious, or sexual minorities and more durable anti-democratic measures designed principally to preserve the current office holders in power. In some cases, both objectives may be pursued simultaneously.

The question of social justice has been a major concern in post-communist countries. Sectors of the population can be mobilized against the alleged ravages of capitalism that include growing economic disparities and the ostentatious wealth of new entrepreneurs. Lukashenka has successfully exploited the anti-corruption and anti-oligarch campaign to disqualify political contenders while pledging continuing state protection for the Belarusian masses.

Dictatorships also span a spectrum of state controls, from the soft to the hard variety. The soft leaders may manipulate elections at the margins to ensure their continuity of rule. Other forms of political manipulation include using law enforcement and the judiciary to subdue opponents, censorship and political interference in the media, and interpenetration between government and business. All these phenomena are evident in Ukraine.

The harder dictatorial cases are exemplified by Russia where the entire electoral process and the most important media are closely controlled, where parliament rubber stamps government decisions, and where the opposition is only allowed to operate to create the appearance of democratic pluralism. Moreover, Russia is engaged in a campaign of state terrorism across the North Caucasus that has crossed the boundary between political dictatorship and outright tyranny.

In case the European Union becomes too complacent in looking eastward, the threat of a nationalist and populist resurgence also threatens the older democracies. Given the uncertainties of economic stability in the south European countries, new radical movements will come to the forefront. Although they may not win national elections outright in Greece, Portugal, Spain, or other countries experiencing deep social turmoil, they will gain fresh recruits and play a more visible role whether inside or outside government. If the EU splinters between the richer and poorer states, then traditional politics will also fracture. This will create space for an assortment of militant groups espousing re-nationalization and protectionism. Such programs will diminish the role of democratic institutions or transform them to serve the goals of the new ruling stratum. In such a fluid and potentially dangerous environment, consoling oneself with the platitude that Europe has only one dictatorship left to overcome is naive and ignorant at best, and self-destructive at worst.

Janusz Bugajski is a Senior Associate in the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C.