Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:28:34.396Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Adapting or Freezing? Ideological Reactions of Communist Regimes to a Post-Communist World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2018

Alexander Dukalskis  and
Johannes Gerschewski
Alexander Dukalskis*
Affiliation:
Alexander Dukalskis, School of Politics & International Relations, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Johannes Gerschewski
Affiliation:
Johannes Gerschewski, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article studies the ideological reactions of communist regimes to the advent of a post-communist world. It examines two cases of reformed communist regimes (China and Vietnam) with two relatively unreformed cases (North Korea and Cuba) to understand different legitimation strategies employed during and after the downfall of the Soviet Union. Theoretically, the article compares two ideal-type approaches to ideology in autocratic regimes. The first approach emphasizes semantic ‘freezing’ over time. The consistency and coherence of ideology is underlined. The second approach argues that the success of an ideology lies in its ability to be a dynamic, adaptive force that can react with changing circumstances. Four parameters help to distinguish the freeze-frame end from the adaptation pole: (1) the autonomy over semantic changes, (2) the timing, (3) the velocity and (4) the distance that an ideology moves. Using qualitative case-based analysis that is enriched with quantitative text analysis of communist party documents, this article compares these contending conceptions of ideology with each other in the four cases. Sharing similar starting conditions in the 1970s, the article shows how China and Vietnam harnessed a flexible legitimation strategy while North Korea and Cuba adopted a comparatively rigid legitimation approach.

Keywords

authoritarianismcommunismlegitimationideologyChinaNorth KoreaCubaVietnam
Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 511 - 532
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2018. Published by Government and Opposition Limited and Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aguirre, BE (2002) Social Control in Cuba. Latin American Politics and Society 44(2), 67–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Almond, GA and Powell, GB (1978) Comparative Politics: System, Process, and Policy, 2nd edn.Boston, MA: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Armstrong, CK (2013) Ideological Introversion and Regime Survival: North Korea’s ‘Our-Style Socialism’. In Dimitrov MK (ed.), Why Communism Did Not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 99–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barker, R (2001) Legitimating Identities: The Self-Presentations of Rulers and Subjects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beetham, D (1991) The Legitimation of Power. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, A (2009) The Rise and Fall of Communism. London: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Brown, A (2013) Communism. In Freeden M, Sargent LT and Stears M (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 364–384.Google Scholar
Brown, K (2012) The Communist Party of China and Ideology. China: An International Journal 10(2), 52–68.Google Scholar
Brundenius, C (2009) Revolutionary Cuba at 50: Growth with Equity Revisited. Latin American Perspectives 36(2), 31–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chwe, MSY (1999) Structure and Strategy in Collective Action. American Journal of Sociology 105(1), 128–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, K (2002) Cuba: The Process of Socialist Development. Latin American Perspectives 29(3), 40–56.Google Scholar
Communist Party of Cuba (1986) Main Report, Third Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. Havana: Editora Politica.Google Scholar
Cumings, B (1997) Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Dahl, RA (1971) Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Deutsch, KW (1973) Politische Kybernetik: Modelle und Perspektiven. Freiburg: Rombach Verlag.Google Scholar
Dimitrov, MK (2013) Why Communism Did Not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dukalskis, A (2017) The Authoritarian Public Sphere: Legitimation and Autocratic Power in North Korea, Burma, and China. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dukalskis, A and Gerschewski, J (2017) What Autocracies Say (and What Citizens Hear): Proposing Four Mechanisms of Autocratic Legitimation. Contemporary Politics 23(3), 251–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dukalskis, A and Hooker, Z (2011) Legitimating Totalitarianism: Melodrama and Mass Politics in North Korean Film. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 44(1), 53–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliot, DWP (2012) Changing Worlds: Vietnam’s Transition from Cold War to Globalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeden, M (1994) Political Concepts and Ideological Morphology. Journal of Political Philosophy 2(2), 140–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeden, M (1996) Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Freeden, M (2007) The Meaning of Ideology: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Freeden, M, Sargent, LT and Stears, M (eds) (2013) Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallie, WB (1956) Essentially Contested Concepts. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56, 167–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerring, J (1997) Ideology: A Definitional Analysis. Political Research Quarterly 50(4), 957–994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerschewski, J (2013) The Three Pillars of Stability: Legitimation, Repression, and Co-optation in Autocratic Regimes. Democratization 20(1), 13–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerschewski, J (2018) Legitimacy in Autocracies: Oxymoron or Essential Feature? Perspectives on Politics 16(3), 652–665.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gill, G (2011) Symbols and Legitimacy in Soviet Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilley, B (2009) The Right to Rule: How States Win and Lose Legitimacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grauvogel, J and von Soest, C (2014) Claims to Legitimacy Count: Why Sanctions Fail to Instigate Democratisation in Authoritarian Regimes. European Journal of Political Research 53(4), 635–653.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimmer, J and Stewart, BM (2013) Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis: Methods for Political Texts. Political Analysis 21(3), 267–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haggard, S and Noland, M (2007) Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Holbig, H (2013) Ideology after the End of Ideology: China and the Quest for Autocratic Legitimation. Democratization 20(1), 61–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jost, JT (2006) The End of the End of Ideology. American Psychologist 61(7), 651–670.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kailitz, S and Stockemer, D (2017) Regime Legitimation, Elite Cohesion and the Durability of Autocratic Regime Types. International Political Science Review 38(3), 332–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, G, Pan, J and Roberts, ME (2013) How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression. American Political Science Review 107(2), 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, K (2006) Transformations of the Concept of Ideology in the Twentieth Century. American Political Science Review 100(4), 619–626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuran, T (1997) Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levitsky, S and Way, L (2010) Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
London, J (2009) Viet Nam and the Making of Market-Leninism. Pacific Review 22(3), 375–399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malesky, E and London, J (2014) The Political Economy of Development in China and Vietnam. Annual Review of Political Science 17, 395–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard, JL and Mildenberger, M (2018) Convergence and Divergence in the Study of Ideology: A Critical Review. British Journal of Political Science 48(2), 563–589.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdams, AJ (2017) Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the Communist Party. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oh, K and Hassig, R (2000) North Korea Through the Looking Glass. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, T (1969) Politics and Social Structure. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Perez, LA (1995) Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pike, D (1992) Vietnam in 1991: The Turning Point. Asian Survey 32(1), 74–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabkin, R (1992) Cuban Socialism: Ideological Responses to the Era of Socialist Crisis. Cuban Studies 22, 27–50.Google Scholar
Roberts, ME, Stewart, BM, Tingley, D, Lucas, C, Leder-Luis, J, Gadarian, SK, Albertson, B and Rand, DG (2014) Structural Topic Models for Open-Ended Survey Responses. American Journal of Political Science 58(4), 1064–1082.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rojas, R (2007) Ideology, Culture, and Memory: Symbolic Dilemmas of the Cuban Transition. In Perez-Stable M (ed.), Looking Forward: Comparative Perspectives on Cuba’s Transition. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 262–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saxonberg, S (2013) Transitions and Non-Transitions from Communism: Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schedler, A (2013) The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seckington, I (2005) Nationalism, Ideology, and China’s ‘Fourth Generation’ Leadership. Journal of Contemporary China 14(42), 23–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shambaugh, D (2008) China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.Google Scholar
Thayer, CA (2010) Political Legitimacy in Vietnam: Challenge and Response. Politics and Policy 38(3), 423–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turnbull, CM (1999) Regionalism and Nationalism. In Tarling N (ed.), Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 257–317.Google Scholar
Vietnam Communist Party (1982) Asia & Pacific Daily Report Supplement, 9 April 1982, Folder 05, Box 01, William Duiker Collection, Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University. www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=0770105001.Google Scholar
Vietnam Communist Party (1986) Papers on the Sixth Party Congress, 15 December 1986, Folder 06, Box 01, William Duiker Collection, Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University. www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=0770106001.Google Scholar
Vietnam Communist Party (1991) East Asia. Vietnam. Seventh CPV Congress, 26 June 1991, Folder 03, Box 05, United States Department of State Collection, Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University. www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=4080503002.Google Scholar
Vietnam Communist Party (1996) Eighth National Congress: Documents. Hanoi: Gioi Publishers.Google Scholar
Vincent, A (2013) Nationalism. In Freeden M, Sargent LT and Stears M (eds), Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 452–473.Google Scholar
Vu, T (2017) Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wedeen, L (1999) Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Westad, OA (2005) The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Dukalskis and Gerschewski supplementary material

Appendix

Download Dukalskis and Gerschewski supplementary material(File)
File 350.5 KB