政体周期:前苏联地区各国的民主、专制与颜色革命

Regime Cycles:Democracy,Autocracy,and Revolution in Post-Soviet Eurasia

对前苏联地区各国的政体变更的研究,常常陷于追逐该地区发生的各种政治事件中。这些研究经常假定政体变更,如果不是简单的不稳定,则意味要么是朝向民主体制要么是朝向专制制度变化。本文提出政体"周期"的理论(类似于经济周期),认为政体变更可能是循环性的,而不是简单的用进步、倒退或毫无规则等概念来定义。事实上,前苏联地区各国中,政体周期的现象非常常见。一些国家已经从专制制度向更加民主的制度转变,然后又回到更加专制的制度。随着最近发生的"颜色革命",这些国家又向更加民主的方向转变。本文提出一个政治精英集体行动的制度主义逻辑,集中关注"大佬总统制"在其中的作用,十分有助于我们理解这种政体周期的规律。这一概念也有助于解释为什么2003年到2005年之间,乌克兰、格鲁吉亚、吉尔吉斯斯坦等国发生了"颜色革命",而俄罗斯、阿塞拜疆和乌兹别克斯坦等国则未发生。

Research on regime change has often wound up chasing events in the post-Soviet world because it has frequently assumed that regime change, if not simple instability, implies a trajectory toward a regime-type endpoint like democracy or autocracy. A supplemental approach recognizes that regime change can be cyclic, not just progressive, regressive, or random. In fact, regime cycles are much of what we see in the postcommunist world, where some states have oscillated from autocracy toward greater democracy, then back toward more autocracy, and, with recent ＂colored revolutions＂, toward greater democracy again. An institutional logic of elite collective action, focusing on the effects of patronal presidentialism, is shown to be useful in understanding such cyclic dynamics, explaining why ＂revolutions＂ occurred between 2003 and 2005 in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan but not in countries like Russia, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan.