Reading Tocqueville in Postcommunist democracies

The collapse of Marxist dictatorships across Eastern Europe in 1989 set the stage for a process of democratization that has followed a pattern memorably described by Shakespeare’s Jacques: «And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour we rot» [As You Like It, Act.2, sc.7, 27-28]. The “ripening” phase lasted until the former Soviet satellites’ protracted entry in the European Union (EU) was completed in 2007, and during it postcommunist transformations were marked by acute socio-economic crises and also by steady democratic progress. The “rotting” phase began in several, if not all, East European countries almost immediately after that, and has been characterized by relative socio-economic stability (even the financial crisis of 2008-9, serious though it was, caused much less suffering than the massive dislocations of the 1990s) – and also by democratic regress. Can Alexis de Tocqueville’s insights help us make sense of this peculiar pattern? The answer the article gives to this question is “yes.”