[Note for bibliographic reference: Melberg, Hans O. (1996), How to measure degrees
of democracy and causal importance? The case of Czechoslovakia, http://www.oocities.org/hmelberg/papers/961220.htm]
How to measure degrees of democracy and causal importance?
The case of Czechoslovakia
by Hans O. Melberg
I was recently made aware that my knowledge of Czechoslovakia around 1938 and 1948 left
much to be desired. This is a small effort to rectify the situation. First, I present a
factual overview. Second, I discuss the causes of the collapse in 1938. Third, I question
whether it is true that Czechoslovakia remained democratic in the inter-war period. My
arguments are, in short, that external reasons (read: Munich) were the key to the collapse
in 1938 and that Czechoslovakia deserves the label democratic even in the troubled
inter-war area.
1. A brief review of the facts: 1918-1993
Before World War I Czechoslovakia did not exist. The Czech lands were a part of Austria,
while Slovakia was ruled by Hungary, which - in turn - was a part of Austria-Hungary.
After the defeat of Austria-Hungary in World War I, the Czechs and the Slovaks formed
Czechoslovakia. The Czechs did so on October 28 (1918), when the Prague National Committee
declared the independence of the Czechoslovak state. The Slovaks followed suit on October
30 when the Slovak National Council adopted a resolution that declared the right of
self-determination for Slovaks and endorsed the principle of Czechoslovak unity. (source:
Jozef Komornik, Comenius University, Bratislava). The basis for the unity of the Czech
lands and Slovakia was the Pittsburgh agreement from May 1918 which in turn was based on
an agreement between the Czech Alliance and the Slovak League (of America) in Cleveland in
1915. These agreements promised the Slovaks great autonomy (their own parliament and other
political institutions) within a federate state.
The promise of autonomy was not respected and the first Czechoslovak provisional
constitution (November 13, 1918, formally adopted in 1920) vested all power in a
unicameral National Assembly. Only 40 of the 256 deputies represented Slovakia and they
were chosen arbitrarily unlike the Czechs whose representatives were chosen according to
the election of 1911. Later the representatives were elected and the Slovak proportion
raised to 54 and all the representatives were elected.
Between 1918 and 1938 Czechoslovakia faced two main difficulties. First, external
pressure resulting from the international situation. Second, internal conflicts as a
result of the asymmetric relationship between Slovaks and Czechs in the new state. After
Hitler came to power in 1933, Germany turned increasingly revisionistic. This was a
problem for Czechoslovakia because the Germans made claims on Czech land, or to be precise
- the Sudetenland with its largely German population. The internal difficulties are
exemplified by the rise of the Slovak National Party in led by Andrej Hlinka who demanded
that the Pittsburgh promise of autonomy should be respected.
In 1938, after the Munich agreement (30. September) - reluctantly accepted by the Czech
president E. Benes - Czechoslovakia lost Sudetenland. Slovak politicians started to look
to Germany for support, and on March 14 (1939) the Slovak Diet declared Slovakian
independence. Hitler then took control over The Czech lands, (March 15, 1939) while
Slovakia remained - in theory - an independent state under the leadership of Tiso. In
return for their nominal independence Slovakia had to give Hungary some of its land -
Ruthenia - which was mainly populated by Hungarians. Czechoslovakia no longer existed.
It became increasingly apparent that the Germans were going to loose World War II and
the question was now which armies were going to liberate which countries. Unfortunately
for the Czechoslovakian state, they were liberated by the Red Army and not Allied troops.
However, the Communist did not gain power immediately. After the elections to the
Constituent Assembly 26. May 1946 the Communist - led by Gottwald - gained 38%. But the
Communists did not intend to rule in a coalition government. With the usual Salami tactics
applied by Communists everywhere they first dealt with the Slovak Democratic Party in
November 1947 and then, in February 1948, the democratic parties in the Czech lands were
eliminated.
The formal structure of the new state was embodied in the new constitution of May 1948.
In short, it was based on asymmetric federalism in which Slovakia, unlike The Czech lands,
had its own parliament (the Slovak National Council) and its own Party organization.
However, as always with Communist states the constitution is not a very good guide to the de
facto power structures. The reason being that the power of the Party transcends the
formal horizontal or vertical divisions of power. Whoever controlled the party controlled
the state and the country.
The communists continued to control Czechoslovakia until the velvet revolution of 1989,
with one important exception - the Prague Spring of 1968. The sad story of the events in
1968 are well known and I will not repeat the story here. What is more interesting,
however, is the new structure of the state after the new constitution in 1969. This
constitution created a Czech National Council and a bi-cameral federal assembly in which
the upper house (the House of Nations) was itself divided into two equal-size Czech and
Slovak sections. The constitution also implied that one fifth of the delegates to the
upper house could block constitutional change, a provision that became important after
1989.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Communists lost power after a series of
large and peaceful demonstrations. The fall of the Communists also signalled the rise of
tension between the Slovaks and the Czechs since the Party had been the glue that kept the
two together. To make a long story short, the two separated on January 1, 1993. Once
again, Czechoslovakia no longer existed.
2. The Collapse in 1938
To clarify the causes of the 1938 collapse it is useful to make a distinction between
external and internal causes.
The external cause is the pressure put on the Czechoslovakia by Germany, both in terms
of their active support for Slovakian independence and the Sudeten-question. The internal
cause is the dispute between the Slovaks and the Czechs over the distribution of power
within Czechoslovakia. The crucial question in determining the causal significance of
these factors is this: Would Czechoslovakia have disintegrated if there had been no
outside pressures? If so, internal causes should be given more importance than external.
A note of caution is appropriate here. Even a positive answer to the counterfactual
question above need not imply that the actual collapse is best explained by
internal causes. Consider the following example. A man who is going to die of cancer is
shot a few days before he was going to die anyway. Now, it is true that he would die from
cancer anyway, but this does not mean that the shot was not important in causing him to
die. Hence, the counterfactual method of establishing causal significance is problematic.
Be that as it may I shall continue my discussion.
I tend to agree with Joseph F. Zacek who argues that "it is doubtful that the
state would have been dismembered on 1938-39 without the inference from without of Germany
and Hungary" (p. 195: Nationalism in Eastern Europe edited by P. F. Sugar and
I. J. Lederer). I shall give two arguments. First, the Slovakian separatism was encouraged
by Germany and this indicates that it would not have been as extreme without outside
influence. The declaration of independence itself came after German pressure in which the
Slovaks were given the choice of either declaring independence or be invaded like
Czechoslovakia. Second, even if Slovakian separatism had developed independently of the
Germans, the Czechs could have suppressed this under normal circumstances. They tried to
do so in 1938-39, but the German attack meant that they could not maintain the pressure.
Once again, it was the outside which prevented the unity of Czechoslovakia.
It should be noted that I am not expressing a moral preference for or against the unity
of Czechoslovakia in the above argument. Even if it was outside pressure which prevented
the unity, this does not imply that unity was the "morally best" outcome.
3. Was inter-war Czechoslovakia democratic?
Democracy is a question of degrees i.e. it is a question of being more or less democratic,
not whether one is democratic or not. The task is then to develop some way of measuring
whether a country is democratic. I will not try to develop such a theory, but I will try
to elaborate on some of the elements which should be included.
First of all there has to be elections. However, even the Soviet Union had elections
but normally do not think of that regime as democratic. Hence, there are additional
demands. For example, the elections have to be real in the sense that there has to be at
least two candidates. Moreover, there has to be universal suffrage.
An additional demand is that the voters are allowed access to uncensored information.
For example, the recent election of Boris Yeltsin was to some extent unfair because the
main source of information - television - was biased towards supporting Yeltsin.
A third demand is that access to finance must be reasonably equal. Once again, the
recent election of Boris Yeltsin in Russia exemplifies this. There is little doubt that
Yeltsin used more money that the legal spending limit and that he controlled much more
resources than, say, Lebed. In this way the playing field was unequal and the result is as
unfair as when you make a handicapped person compete in the Olympics with non-handicapped
people.
Even if all these criteria are satisfied, the country need not qualify for the label
democratic. Maybe the core meaning of democracy is that there should be some relationship
between the opinions of the people and the policies that are followed - that policies
should be responsive to the opinions of the majority. All the other criteria - free and
fair elections - may simply be instruments to ensure this responsiveness. It is on this
account one may try to criticise Czechoslovakia. The argument would then be that the
elections did not affect the policies of the government. As evidence of this one may cite
the fact that from 1920 to 1938 the Agrarian Party was a member of all the coalition
governments. Moreover, the presidents - T. Masaryk and E. Benes - enjoyed more power than
the constitution prescribed. In short, the elections did not significantly change the
composition of the people who made policy or the policies that were followed. This seems
undemocratic.
While I agree that this is undemocratic, I am unsure exactly how important it is. Even
in Norway many decisions were made in non-democratic ways - as is evident from the phrase
used by the Prime Minister - Einar Gerhardsen - when he announced a decision at some
meeting. The phrase was : "Some of us have talked and decided that ..." The
meeting then usually went on to unanimously agree on what "some of them" had
talked about. Moreover, the "some" often included people who were not elected to
make policy - for example, trade-union leaders. Despite the undemocratic nature of this
way of making decisions, we do not argue that Norway in the 1950s was an undemocratic
country. After all, the people who were in government were elected and people were free to
elect other politicians if they wanted.
Based on the arguments above I am still reluctant to accept the argument that
Czechoslovakia was undemocratic in the inter-war period. They had relatively free and fair
elections and the policies pursued was responsive to the opinions of the people. Of
course, this does not imply that I believe that Czechoslovakia was a perfect example of a
democracy. As always it is a question of degrees and my point is that Czechoslovakia did
not go below that threshold which deserves the label "an undemocratic regime."
This threshold is difficult to quantify, but one indication is given by the regimes which
we agree are, or were, undemocratic - the Soviet Union, South Africa, Belarus, Kazakstan
and many other countries. At least in my opinion Czechoslovakia in the inter-war period
does not belong to this list. (Since I am still no expert on the issue this conclusion is
not held firmly. It will be revised if I receive new information making this necessary).
In conclusion
To assess causal significance to external or internal factors require counterfactual
comparisons which in turn require a theory of society which we do not have. This leads me
to conclude that these evaluations are at worst completely impossible and at best weakly
significant in some cases. In the case of Czechoslovakia I tend to agree that it would not
have collapsed if we eliminate external factors, but I do not believe this with great
confidence.
To assess the degree of democracy in a country requires facts and a discussion of the
term democracy. This is, ultimately, a partly normative exercise in which we use our
intuitions about what democracy is. In addition to our intuitions, we need facts about the
country in question. Both factors lead me to believe that Czechoslovakia was democratic in
the inter-war period, or - weaker - at least not undemocratic. It is a fact that they had
real elections and it is my intuition that they do not fit on the list of other clearly
undemocratic regimes.
An informal note on sources
I have relied heavily on the following sources:
Constitutional history:
Elster, Jon (1995), Transition, constitution-making and separation in Czechoslovakia, European
Journal of Sociology/Archives Europennes de Sociologie 36 (1):105-134 (Also available
on The Jon Elster Page at http://www.oocities.org/hmelberg/elster.htm)
General historical overview:
Some chapter in Carol Skalnik Leff's National Conflict in Czechoslovakia (Princeton
University Press), a long e-mail by Jozef Komornik (Comenius University, Bratislava) on
the history of Slovakia (available on the Net). Joseph F. Zacek's chapter in P. F. Sugar
and J. Lederer's book Nationalism in Eastern Europe.
[Note for bibliographic reference: Melberg, Hans O. (1996), How to measure degrees of
democracy and causal importance? The case of Czechoslovakia, http://www.oocities.org/hmelberg/papers/961220.htm]