Thesis A: Regime Type Depends on the Separation of Spheres of Social Action

The stubborn-structures argument consists of four theses. Thesis A provides a general frame of interpretation for regime development, including the evolution of post-com-munist regimes that the remaining three theses concern.

Thesis A. The level of separation of spheres of social action makes certain regime types feasible, while others, unfeasible in a country. The separation of spheres manifests as the norms of the actors who populate the regime, which in turn presupposes a level of separation for normal functioning. Those regimes are feasible which presume the same level of separation as its ac-tors. In contrast, those regimes are unfeasible which presume a different level of separation than its actors. Should an unfeasible regime be established, it will (a) either be weak and prone to degenerate into a more feasible type or (b) have to institute specific (effective) mechanisms to avoid degeneration.

The separation of spheres of social action has been men-tioned in the Introduction, and we are going to provide a  more formal definition of it, as well as of the spheres themselves in Chapter 3 [à 3.2]. Indeed, the separation of spheres can be understood on two levels: (a) the level of actors and (b) the level of formal institutions. On both lev-els, “social action” is understood by the work of Offe, who distinguished three types of social action: political, market, and communal (see Box 1.1).² “Sphere of social action” re-fers to the community of actors who engage in the given type of action. However, the two levels differ in the manifestation of separation. On the level of actors, the “level of separa-tion” of spheres means the actors’ informal understand-ing of their roles, actions and motives beunderstand-ing confined to certain spheres. In this case, we can speak about “separation of spheres of social action” if there are no overlaps between the roles of actors of different spheres. Separation does not imply an individual does not engage in more than one type of social action. What it implies is that, while an individual ful-fills different social roles, his actions and motives in one role do not influence his actions and motives in the other role.

To take an example, an executive head engages in political action as a politician, but he can also engage in communal action in his family. But if the spheres of social action are separated, that means that his sense of belonging and famil-iar reciprocity does not guide his political actions. Similarly,

2 Also, see Offe, “Civil Society and Social Order.” For other authors using the same or a similar distinction, see Goodin, “Democratic Accountability”; Philp, “Defining Political Corruption.”

Box 1.1. The three types of social action.

“[P]olitical action is embedded in a state structure and framed within features such as the acquisition and use of legitimate authority, accountability, hi-erarchy, and the use of rule-bound power for giving orders and extracting resources. Its intrinsic standard of goodness is legality. Market action is recognized by the contract-based pursuit of acquisitive interests within the framework of legal rules that specify, among other things such as property rights, the uni-verse of items that can be ‘for sale,’ and which cannot.

Its standard of goodness is success or profitability. Fi-nally, communal action is defined by a sense of recip-rocal obligation among persons who share significant markers of identity and cultural belonging, that is, belonging to the same family, religious group, local-ity, and so on. The standard of goodness of communal action is shared values and shared notions of virtue.”

– Claus Offe, “Political Corruption: Conceptual and Practical Issues,” in Building a Trustworthy State in Post-Socialist Transition, ed. János Kornai and Susan Rose-Ackerman (Palgrave Macmillan US, 2004), 78.

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an economic actor can be an entrepreneur as well as a personal friend of a politician, but neither one’s actions in their primary sphere are influenced by their communal relation-ship if the spheres of social action are separated. The politician remains a politician only if the focus of his actions and his interests are confined to the political sphere (getting more political power, more votes etc.), while the entrepreneur remains an entrepreneur only if the focus of his actions and his interests are confined to the economic sphere (profitability, outcompeting rival entrepreneurs etc.).

On the level of institutions, however, separation of spheres refers to the formally assigned roles of each sphere’s actors being separated, as well as the various guarantees, rules and control mechansims that maintain that separation. A feudal state, for instance, typically maintains a collusion of spheres: the lord is both a political and an economic ac-tor, whereas their communal network (i.e., family) also plays an important role in the court in general and in hereditary lineage in particular. A communist state is characterized by a merger of spheres, where the party state subjugates economic and communal spheres to political action. In contrast, the formal institutions of liberal democracy are based on the separation of spheres, instituting various control mechanisms to keep political actors from taking their economic and communal interests into account in decision-making.³

The “regime” combines the level of actors and formal institutions, in addition to informal institutions that emerges in interaction of the two levels. In general, we can say that a regime is none other but the institutionalized set of fundamental formal and informal rules that structure the actors’ interactions in general, and with respect to the political power center in particular [à 2.2.1]. This is what we mean by “populate” in Thesis A, expressing that it is the actors who operate the regime’s institutions, whereas the regime, in turn, puts the actors in an institutional structure. The separation of spheres in this context manifests as the de facto autonomy of market and communal spheres from the political sphere, and vice versa, the de facto autonomy of politics from the two other spheres. Indeed, that “institutions” mean the rules of interaction between actors implies that every institution prescribes a certain level of “autonomy,” which is an attribute of interaction referring to the freedom one actor has from the other. In other words, actor A can be regarded “autonomous” vis-à-vis actor B if the structure of institutions prescribe a relationship where A’s actions are not subordinated to B’s motives. Similarly, a sphere—

say, the economic sphere—is autonomous if its actors are not forced to follow actors of another sphere—say, the political sphere. However, this forcing can be both formal and informal—hence we speak about “de facto” autonomy, instead of “de jure,” which would refer only to the formal institutional setup [à 2.2.2.2]. Thus, if the spheres of social action are separated, actors of different spheres may form relations (within institutional limits) but they retain the option of free exit, meaning the other party cannot coerce them to continue the relation [à 5.3.1].

Since regimes are composed of institutions that define the rules of interactions be-tween actors, it follows that every regime presupposes a certain level of separation of spheres of social action. This is true if we focus on the regime as a whole and also if we

3 Each setting—especially liberal democracy and communist dictatorship—will be analyzed abundantly in following chapters.

1.2. Thesis A: Regime Type Depends on the Separation of Spheres of Social Action • 33 focus only on its formal institutions. For the latter also define rules of interactions, and

therefore also presuppose a certain level of separation. However, as the regime is popu-lated by the actors, they will try to operate it by their own informal understanding of the separation of spheres. Although formal institutions presume a certain level of separa-tion, the actors who operate them will not want to follow the formally prescribed rules of interaction between spheres if their own informal understanding is different. The result is what Thesis A claims: the regime will degenerate into a regime type that is feasible, mean-ing one that harmonizes with the actors’ motives.

Indeed, this is the same problem that Huntington already realized in Political Order in Changing Societies. He explained that corruption in modernizing societies often comes from the fact that “according to the traditional codes in many societies, an official had the responsibility and obligation to provide rewards and employment to members of his family.

No distinction existed between obligation to the state and obligation to the family.”⁴ In this case, an actor’s family obligations—from which there is no free exit [à 5.3.6]—influenced their actions in the political sphere, constituting its collusion with the communal sphere.

In essence, Thesis A points out the potential discrepancy between the goals of the actors and the goals of the formal institutions. Let us take the example of liberal democ-racy, the model which was sought in the region after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The goal of the formal institutions of liberal democracy is the separation of spheres. If the goals of the actors dominantly match this, that is, if the informal understanding of most of the actors is to separate the spheres of social action, liberal democracy can stably function.

However, if the actors dominantly represent a collusion or merger of the spheres of so-cial action, then liberal democracy will fail, and the regime will degenerate to a system where the formally established democratic institutions are operated by the actors’ infor-mal understanding, actions and networks [à 2.2.2.2]. Indeed, this is what produces the

“hybrid” character that hybridology wants to reflect on—but it is unable to do so properly, using categories that presuppose the separation of the spheres of social action. It is impos-sible to describe the hybrid character authentically if one’s concepts presume that the very phenomenon that causes hybridity is non-existent.

The level of separation of spheres of social action causes a kind of “path depen-dence” to regime development. However, as the end of Thesis A suggests, this should not be understood deterministically. There is also a chance of “path creation,” that is, to insti-tute regimes that are not dominantly supported by the actors who populate it.⁵ Indeed, communist dictatorship in the Baltic states, as well as the Soviet satellite states in Central Europe can be seen as path creation in this sense (see below). Among more recent exam-ples, we can mention Georgia, where the political elite attempted to separate the spheres of social action in a series of state-curtailing reforms after the Rose Revolution [à 7.3.4.5], or the Czech Republic, where the ruling party has attempted the opposite, to create a collusion of the spheres of social action [à 7.3.3.3]. Hungary and the sphere-colluding reforms of Viktor Orbán since 2010 is another likely example of path creation [à 7.3.3.4], although

4 Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, 60.

5 On the concept of path creation, see Garud and Karnøe, Path Dependence and Creation. For an interpretation in the social sciences, see McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality.

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some scholars argue that not only the leading political elite but the Hungarian people as well support the lack of separation of spheres of social action.⁶

The essence of path creation is that it is not an organic process, diverting a country from a path it would most likely follow based on its actors. Consequently, it may happen only under very special, irregular circumstances. Before the collapse of the Soviet empire, this was none other but foreign invasion, when a merger of spheres of social action was instituted by overt oppression. After the collapse, path creation usually happened when, due to the combination of many unique factors, a political elite came to power that had a markedly different view of separation of spheres than the majority. Yet such cases differ in terms of longevity and the capacity to consolidate their regime, avoiding its degeneration to a type that fits the actors’ motives better.

1.3. Thesis B: The Separation of Spheres Followed