The Soviet empire, established after the second World
War, reached its peak at the end of the 1940s and the beginning
the 1950s. The secession of Tito's Yugoslavia seemed largely
compensated by the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February
1948 and especially by the establishment of a communist regime in
China in the following year.
To begin with, all communist regimes were
dominated by inflexible party dictatorships which introduced
collectivized, planned and steered economic systems. Western
researchers have called systems of this type "mobilization
systems".They proved suitable for under-developed countries (not
only communist ones) possessing vast natural resources and cheap
labour.
During the first years, yearly economic growth in the
communist countries was about 10% or more, a fact which created
an illusion of socialism being superior to capitalism because the
growth of Western economies did not exceed some 2 - 4%. However,
it soon became evident that, beyond a certain level of
development, "mobilization" could no longer assure a satisfactory
level of growth. Instead, it became necessary to rely on
increasing productivity and this purpose could only be achieved
by introducing individual stimuli rather than collectivist
slogans.
But this change - a certain liberalization of economy -
automatically resulted in demands for a liberalization of the
political system, i. e. for a loosening of Party control. The
communist leaders found themselves caught in a dilemma, either to
give priority to economic growth at the price of a successive
weakening of their power, or to go on keeping their power
positons intact at the price of economic stagnation and decay.
The whole history of communism since the death of Stalin in 1953
was a vacillation between these two lines of policy. Communist
political systems were becoming more and more incongruent with
the changing economic and social conditions. As always, the
economic system - the basis of the living standards and quality
of life of the population - has proved more important than the
political system and eventually it enforced a radical change in
this system.
In the history of mankind, we could discover many
more examples of this type. The pattern is always the same: above
a certain (relatively high) level of socio- economic development,
economy becomes more important than military power, the appeal of
collectivist propaganda (nationalist, religious, socialist,
racial, ethnic ... ) diminishes, and the importance of individual
self-interest increases.
After a period of an approximative congruence between the social, economic and political systems of
a given society, social and economic changes tend to proceed
faster than a corresponding adaptation of the political system.
In other words: the political system lags behind. This is, of
course, natural. The elites who owe their power positions and
prerogatives to the political system in question are reluctant to
change the system in a way necessarily unfavourable to
themselves. Therefore, for a certain period of time, the
political system remains basically intact while changes are
taking place in the social and economic spheres.
However, such a situation inevitably engenders an increasing gap and tension
between the ruling elite and the population of the country in
question, a tension which, sooner or later, will result in the
collapse of the political system and the establishment of a new
one, better adapted to the changed social and economic situation.
The speed of the process depends on the level of development of
the respective society and on the international situation, in
particular on:
1. the level of education arousing political
awareness and the perception of opportunities for
change,
2. the degree of technical progress achieved
(information and communication technology),
3. the degree of satisfaction of the basic
material needs of large groups of the population,
4. outside pressures.
At a low level of development, the speed of
the process of adaptation of the political system to the
socioeconomic system is slow. In the second century B. C., the
Gracchus brothers made an attempt to adapt Rome's political
system to the changing socioeconomic situation (proletarization
of peasants). The attempt failed owing to opposition from the
ruling elite. The incongruence between the political and the
socioeconomic system of ancient Rome was thus preserved and
continued to grow and thus the political system survived for more
than five more centuries.
Similarly, the first attempts at limiting the
power of kings took place already in the 13th and 14th centuries
(Magna Charta 1215 in England and La Grande Ordonnance 1357 in
France). As early as during the reign of Louis XIV, signs of
social criticism appeared in France (Molière, La
Bruyère), although it took more than another century
before the feudal system was abolished by the Great
Revolution.
By contrast, the disintegration of the Soviet
empire proceeded much more rapidly. The attempts to make the
communist political systems more congruent with the respective
socioeconomic systems began in the early 1960s in East Germany
and culminated in the "Prague Spring" of 1968. The occupation of
Czechoslovakia can be compared to the strengthening of oligarchic
power in Rome by the assassination of the Gracchi. But, owing to
the much higher stage of socioeconomic development of the 20th
century, the suppression of reforms in the Soviet empire gave the
communist oligarchies a respite of no more than 20
years.
After having thus established a conceptual
framework for analysis, let us now try to find out whether
party-based parliamentarism is still congruent with the rapidly
changing socioeconomic situation in Western countries. If not,
and if it is to be presumed that the above described trends are
still at work, the conclusion must be that the now existing
western party systems do not represent a definitive stage of
political development of western societies, but that, sooner or
later, they will be replaced by systems better adapted to the
changed socio-economic conditions. What, then, is the difference
between the situation of the mid-1990s and that of only ten years
ago?
The fall of world communism at the turn of the
1980s and 1990s was a turning-point, not only in the development
of the socialist countries, but also of the Western countries. In
the period 1945 - 1990, the world seemed constantly menaced by
the spectre of a global nuclear war. This threat over-shadowed
all other problems - economic, environmental, as well as those
pertaining to the sphere of internal politics. Consequently,
military force was a top priority. Even in the West, movements
opposing the political system, or certain aspects of it, were
quite successfully kept in their places by stressing the
necessity to rally round political leaderships which passed for
bulwarks of democracy and freedom. In other words, outside
pressure - the perpetual conflict with the communist world -
smothered conflicts and tensions arising within western
societies.
