They divided the sky: elite factionalism factors during contentious politics in GDR, 1989

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They divided the sky: elite factionalism factors during contentious politics in GDR, 1989 year

Ivan Gomza

Kyiv School of Economics

Denys Tereshchenko

National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”

Abstract

This paper aims to break into a “black box” of inner authoritarian elite mechanics by elucidating the rationales for elite behavior under the pressure of mass discontent during the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 in the GDR. A game-theoretic model is applied and statistically tested in order to explore causal links between elite members' office types and their biological and institutional age on the one hand and defection on the other. The data corroborate three out of four initial hypotheses, namely that (1) party functionaries and (2) persons holding repression-related offices are most prone to defect, and that (3) both inner and outer party circle officials offer equal support to demands for liberalization. One hypothesis was only partly validated: there is an only partial causal relation between age and proneness to defect.

Key words: authoritarian regime, contentious politics, elite factionalism, game theory modeling, single-party regime, winning coalition.

Introduction

Kuran (1997) has pertinently opined that revolutions seem impossible ex ante and inevitable ex post. This observation is especially relevant to the German Democratic Republic (hereafter: GDR) case. Since the upheaval of 1953, the GDR regime was fairly stable: the communist ideology had no viable alternative because nationalism was discredited and liberalism uprooted; the populace enjoyed material well-being and remained loyal; a tiny opposition was being constantly monitored by the secret police, the infamous Stasi, and thus effectively contained. The implosion of 1989 came as a shock. Because it occurred prior to the Soviet demise, no one was prepared to foresee a collapse of an entrenched single-party regime under duress of mass contentious politics without even trying a Chinese option (repression of contenders). As Madarasz summarized, “the existence of the GDR for forty years in relative stability and its rapid collapse in 1989 pose a major problem for which neither historians nor sociologists nor politicians nor the media have yet found a convincing explanation” (2003: 1).

The absence of explanation, however, is not for lack of trying. The GDR spectacular demise invited many scholars to study the case intensively (see: Ross 2012) for a detailed discussion). One standard argumentation puts the evolution of international developments, first and foremost Gorbachev's rejection of the Brezhnev doctrine, as a major factor that precipitated the end of the regime. This structuralist explanation, although established as a conventional interpretation (Enquete-Kommission 1995: 1983), virtually ignores that the Soviet disengagement provided only opportunities to challenge the regime but not the contenders. In other words, it became important to explain both the origins and motives of actors who challenged the regime in 1989. Consequently, the research program advanced in the mid-1990s by scholars at the “Zentrum fьr Zeithistorische Forschung” (see: Kaiser (1997) and Lindenberger (1999) detailed the everyday life and perceptions, including the growing disillusionment with the regime, of the populace. Kopstein (1997) and Grix (2000) suggested that the regime collapsed when the social contract between the people who traded economic prosperity for loyalty and the regime went void due to economic hardships in the 1980s. Following this line of inquiry, scholars were increasingly focusing on contentious politics to explain the dynamics of the GDR demise. Pollack (1997) and Pfaff (2006) studied informal networks of dissent that eventually gave impetus to the anti-regime opposition. Opp and Gern, in a similar vein, posited that personal networks were the most important contexts for mobilizing citizens, for they made possible a “spontaneous coordination model” (1993: 675), that is, cooperation between strangers advantageous for contenders during the fateful events of 1989. Finally, Madarasz observed that four societal groups, “young people, women, writers, and Christians were favoured by the regime [...] they enjoyed some political leeway based on the regime's conviction that this social group represented the future of the socialist society” (2003: 2). In a blatant illustration of regime's miscalculation, precisely these four privileged groups formed the backbone of political opposition.

A picture of heroic citizenry challenging the regime, however, conflicts with another strain of research, namely the one convincingly emphasizing the oppressive nature of the GDR. Even when deprived of Soviet support, the regime had a formidable repressive apparatus. Stasi alone had numerous detention centers, separate armed forces, and one of the densest internal surveillance networks (BStU 2019). In addition, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (hereafter: SED) machinery controlled public opinion through propaganda and spoils distribution. All in all, as the concept of durchherrschte Gesellschaft (Kaelble, Kocka & Zwahr 1994) -- literally “overgoverned society” -- implies, there was an all-encompassing bureaucratic apparatus that produced a “dictatorship of social structures” (Bauernkдmper 2005) in the GDR. Even if, as Glaeser observed, in its last years “the party state was unable to understand and therefore to create the conditions for the possibility to come to terms with the phenomenon of political dissidence” (2010: 28), the system itself had enough resources to at least try to contain and actively repress the contentious actors in 1989.

In this paper, we aim to reconcile the conflicting interpretations of the GDR collapse. To bridge the gap, it is necessary to account not only for the repressive capacity of the regime or the contentious actions by contenders but also for the political will to use coercive apparatus to actively muddle the dissent. This crucial component was, in fact, lacking in 1989. In order to explain why it was lacking, a shift from contentious actors, their tactics and strategies is required. In particular, we argue that elite factionalism and the defection of the winning coalition members critically diminish the political will of incumbents to use force against the contenders. The cracks in the previously united winning coalition, in turn, are provoked by pre-existing cleavages between its individual members. In this study, we build a model which elucidates the internal structure of the GDR winning coalition and grasps the logic of political defection in regimes challenged by contentious politics. We believe that our analysis will contribute to a better understanding of the GDR implosion and the nature of authoritarian breakdown in general.

Theoretical premises

revolution doctrine elite

Elite factionalism has long been established as one of the predominant factors of authoritarian breakdown. In his seminal paper, Dix suggests that division within the dictatorial ruling elite is a necessary precondition for regime's loss of legitimacy and the consequent narrowing of its social base (1982), which constitutes the general path for the downfall of a dictatorship. In particular, he emphasizes that when the political opposition poses a formidable challenge, a faction within the ruling elite becomes eager to negotiate some “exit guarantees”. In other words, it seeks an agreement with the contenders not to be persecuted or penalized by subtraction of accumulated economic assets should regime collapse in exchange for abandoning the dictator (ibid.: 569). Thus, exit guarantees are a necessary condition for defection, whereas defection is required for an authoritarian breakdown. “Round tables” in Eastern European socialist states at the end of the 1980s exemplify the path predicted by Dix.

Elite factionalism became a centerpiece of the strategic theory of democratization developed by O'Donnell and Schmitter to the extent that they claim that “there is no transition whose beginning is not the consequence -- direct or indirect -- of important divisions within the authoritarian regime itself, principally along the fluctuating cleavage between hard-liners and soft-liners” (1986: 19). More specifically, O'Donnell and Schmitter argue that mass contentious politics provokes a split among the elites into two camps. One camp considers the preservation of authoritarian status quo “possible and desirable” thus advocating hardline strategies in dealing with the contenders, whereas another faction, commonly referred to as “soft-liners”, considers the regime's liberalization to be a viable survival strategy (1986: 15).

Despite the alternative explanations of authoritarian breakdown (see: Wintrobe 1998, Collier & Mahoney 1999, Rueschemeyer, Huber & Stephens 2005, Svolik 2012, Acemoglu & Robinson 2012, Svolik 2012, Boix 2013, Boix & Svolik 2013, Haggard & Kaufman 2016), most of the authors acknowledge that elite factionalism is a crucial (albeit not the unique) factor of the process in question. For instance, Svolik speculates that any authoritarian regime faces two essential difficulties: the problem of authoritarian control and the problem of authoritarian power-sharing, the latter being a particular “authoritarian leadership dynamics [due to which] an overwhelming majority of dictators

Lose power to those inside the gates of the presidential palace rather than to the masses outside” (2012: 5).

A so-called “institutional turn in comparative authoritarianism” (Pepinsky 2014) gave a particular twist to the issue of factionalism. Most scholars admit that the regime's institutional framework can either hinder or accelerate elite defection. In particular, single-party regimes, concisely defined by Brooker as those where “the party and its leaders effectively operate a de facto monopoly over the entire country” (2000: 44), are believed to be the most efficient in preventing elite factionalism. Initially introduced by Geddes (1999), the idea that this regime type is on average more stable and resilient due to a combination of patronage, propaganda, power-sharing, collegial decision-making, elite cohesion, and mutual checks imposed on the dictator and the elites, was later elaborated by Smith (2005), Gandhi & Przeworski (2007), Hadenius & Teorell (2007), Kitschelt & Wilkinson (2007), Wright (2008), Malesky, Abrami, & Zheng (2011), Geddes, Wright, & Frantz (2018).

Its resilience notwithstanding, the single-party regime is not immune to instability and collapse. As Greene reminds, dominant parties eventually lose despite rigged electoral systems, patronage networks, and all-encompassing ideologies if contenders manage to appeal to higher values and mobilize citizens undeterred by high costs (2007: 139-172). Sustained mass mobilization has grave implications for the regime: Przeworski (1991: 64), Geddes (1999: 24-25), and Ulfelder (2005: 314) concur that as mass mobilization in the streets intensifies, the risks of repressions as well as co-optation costs for elites rise so high that they eventually become unbearable. At this point the narration of elite factionalism and that of single-party collapse cross: a split within party elites is likely when a fraction deems repressions too costly while the career prospects under a new regime or even under democracy appear more and more alluring. In fact, elite softliners tend to be prominent in their public recognition of the regime deficiencies and concessions to the civil society, so that contentious actors eventually enjoy lessening costs, "both real and anticipated, associated with individual expression and collective action" (O'Donnell & Schmitter 1986: 7). Likewise, Stepan surmises that soft-liners advocate “less censorship of the media, somewhat greater room for the organization of autonomous working-class activities, reintroduction of some legal safeguards... for individuals, the releasing of most political prisoners, the return of political exiles, possibly measures for improving the distribution of income, and. the toleration of political opposition' (1988: 6). Przeworski calls these policies the essential measures aimed at the opening of a political regime usually taken in order to widen the base of support for the liberal elite faction (1991: 57).

One might conclude that typically resilient single-party regimes are of utmost vulnerability when their elite lose their high level of cohesion. In such circumstances, a fraction of soft-liners is likely to advocate liberalization and even regime opening, which sets the regime on the road to possible democratization. However, although there is a general consensus regarding the role of elite factionalism in authoritarian breakdown, both the origins and the dynamics of the process remain undertheorized.

A promising way to conceptualize elite factionalism in autocracies is to combine authoritarian regime studies with selectorate theory. First outlined by Paterson (1967) to describe party politics, the theory had been successfully adopted to analyze political process in the USSR and its satellites (Hodnett 1975; Stern 1978; Hauslohner 1981; Roeder 1993), but it has achieved general acclaim and universality due to groundbreaking efforts by Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2005). The selectorate theory speculates that each polity consists of four sets of individuals “built-in” into each other like a nesting doll: populace, selectorate, winning coalition, and leaders (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005: 37). Populace is the population who inhabits a given polity with or without any political rights. Individuals who play a formal role in the process of choosing a leader by giving a vote constitute the selectorate (ibid.: 42). Winning coalition is created by the selectorate members whose support and resource investments are vital to the regime's survival (ibid.: 51). At the regime pinnacle is the leader, a person who constructed a current winning coalition and whose rule embodies the regime per se. Leaders struggle to maintain their winning coalition through the distribution of both private and public goods (ibid.: 29, 3839). These vary both in substance (i.e. in what is distributed) and in the way they are distributed. Public goods are impersonal and provided through public policies, whereas private goods are received personally by a small number of individuals closest to the leadership (ibid.: 29).

The selectorate theory predicts that leaders prefer not to depend on too many actors, thus they tend to minimize the winning coalition size as much as possible till it reaches its minimum-size equilibrium. The relations of individual actors within the winning coalition and the winning coalition to selectorate ratio are two principal factors of the regime's political survival. In a nutshell, if a regime has a small winning coalition and a large selectorate, it is valuable to belong to the winning coalition since most of private goods are distributed there. Furthermore, since the selectorate members (derogatorily called “interchangeable” by Bueno de Mesquita) are abundant, in case of individual defection from the winning coalition there are plenty of actors eager to assume this place. In other words, the selectorate theory predicts that defection is endemic in two regime types: either (1) with big winning coalitions and small selectorate or (2) where private goods distributed among the winning coalition members are perceived as not of a great value.

The problem with the classical selectorate theory is that it reduces complexities to abstractions. (See Gallagher & Hanson (2015) and Cao & Ward (2015) for a wider critique.) In particular, it presents actors both within the winning coalition and the selectorate as “people without qualities”, namely as interchangeable arithmetical machines that only calculate benefits, whereas in reality they are individuals with different expertise, values, emotions, and propensities to misjudge.

We believe that professional background and personal biographies constitute important variables that differentiate individual members of the winning coalition and, consequently, play an important role in their decision whether to defect. In addition, we contend that no defection decision is taken in a sort of political vacuum; rather, general political climate and particular events like political scandals, economic crises, and - crucial for this paper--mass contentious politics strongly influence this decision. Therefore, we believe that a complex motivation structure proper to each winning coalition member affects his or her choice whether to support liberalization.

To summarize, elite factionalism is a universally observed factor of authoritarian breakdown detected in Middle East (Hinnebusch 2006), Sub-Saharan Africa (Morency-Laflamme 2015), and Soviet satellite states (Thomson 2016). Elite factionalism is contingent upon significant re-arrangements in elite motivation structures.

Triggers for such changes are manifold. In Mexico, for instance, it was provoked by the regime's inner decision to open up and change the electoral law (de Sierra 2011), in Indonesia, this was due to a sweeping economic crisis (Eklцf 2003: 284-289), in numerous settings rigged elections and public outcry forced some elite members to reconsider the costs of regime support (Kuntz & Thompson 2009). In the socialist states in the late 1980s, prolonged organized activity of social movements and non-violent contentious politics was instrumental in changing calculations of the party elite (Ulfelfder 2005: 323).

The central unresolved question is whether there are some features of both professional and personal nature which make some individual elite members more prone to defect.

Since the question is rather broad and the quest for personal details is bound to yield idiosyncratic results, we limit our research focus on (1) shared characteristics (e.g. age and field of expertise) of winning coalition members and (2) instances of defection under specific although universally observed circumstances, namely the challenge to the regime from the contentious politics.

The gdr case: history and context

The GDR offers a uniquely insightful case in several respects. Firstly, the GDR regime undoubtfully represented a single-party authoritarian type. That is manifested by the fact that the number of all party and organization members in the East German Parliament, Volkskammer, with the prevalence of SED representatives, were fixed (see Neugebauer 1974: 390; Schroeder 2013, 213-215; Zimmerman 1988: 250). Besides, albeit other parties were allowed, the state's socialist priorities, as well as the "leading role" of SED in East-German society, were enshrined in the Constitution (Verfassung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik 1974, see Preamble, art. 1, art. 2, art. 6, art. 9, art. 10). The Volkskammer was rather a rubber-stamp parliament whose functions were restricted to a limited discussion and unanimous voting. Leaders of the former opposition to SED were effectively co-opted within the legislature. Since the GDR was a single-party autocracy, we assume that it possessed basic features usually ascribed to this regime type, namely elite cohesion, prominent resilience, and - rather paradoxically - vulnerability to mass discontent. Consequently, the GDR case lends itself to study the motivational structure of elite defection.

We focused on the period of flagrant instability in GDR history, the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. Albeit the demonstrations in some East German cities famously thrived from the early October of 1989, the first publicly visible cracks within the regime's winning coalition began to surface by the 18th of October, when the long-reigning General

Secretary of SED Erich Honecker was forced to resign, the new leader Egon Krenz was inaugurated, and “the turning point” (die Wende in German) seeking some liberalization was proclaimed (Major 2010: 246-248). From this point on, a protracted process of elite factionalism took off. One by one, major party leaders but also importantly less weighty Central Committee (hereafter: CC or CC SED) members embraced or disavowed the new party policies up until the entire Politburo was forced to resign on November 8 and the new government was constituted on November 18. Therefore, this paper focuses on the time period between October 18th through November 18th of 1989, for it was during this month that the most intense factionalism occurred until the winning coalition eventually reshuffled under external (popular) pressure.

The GDR case is illustrative because its elites were, reportedly, the most coherent among former socialist countries (Fulbrook 2015: 260). Indeed, unlike in Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia, party elites in GDR never manifested any serious inner splits prior to the October of 1989. Still, as notices Madarasz (2003: 21) citing Hans Modrow (the GDR's last socialist prime minister), the GDR had neither homogeneous nor monolithic elites with consensual political views. Beneficially for our study, the lack of clear-cut splits before mass protests commenced sets the stage for accurate observation on how contentious politics alone (though coupled with the withdrawal of guarantees of protection from the USSR) catalyzed regime's collapse.

Moreover, the regime's power structure is of the utmost significance. It was rather the Council of Ministers, an East-German government, packed only with obedient functionaries and technocrats, that had concentrated most power among the state institutions. Of course, this Council tended to replicate the decisions approved by the SED Central Committee and its Politburo not least because these organs shared most of their leaders (Meyer 1991: 46). These leaders, in turn, shared not only power that came with their offices but also a range of privileges offered by the state. SED party leadership was thus the regime's true winning coalition. Consequently, there were both clearly identifiable and well-institutionalized selectorate and winning coalition under the GDR, which renders the task of tracing liberalization support patterns more feasible. Indeed, we do not have to account for, for instance, the hidden economic interests that might be represented in other cases by oligarchs and interest groups.

The challenge of a robust and clear winning coalition delineation arises. For the purpose of analysis, we consider (1) members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany who (2) were also members of its Central Committee or (3) of its Politburo and who (4) participated in the most important decision-making processes within the regime as players who constitute the GDR winning coalition. We ascribe the primordial role to the Central Committee because without its decision no party member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany could assume any important governmental position.

Concerning the inner hierarchy distinctions (between what we for analytical purpose call inner and outer circles of winning coalition), Meyer (1991: 76) opines how the “political Leading core” could be discerned. He claims that the Fьhrungskern (German for "leading core") was composed of nearly fifty people, all chiefs of the central party organs plus members of Politburo, secretaries of CC SED, and first secretaries of Bezirke (major

East-German administrative units). As suggested by Meyer (1991) and Thieme (2015), these actors usually combined several offices both within the party and in the state institutions. Their outstanding position indeed mattered: as shown by Fulbrook (2015: 185), they enjoyed considerable privileges such as "freedom to travel to the West, access to Western currency (and hence hard currency shops), preferential treatment for the purchase of new cars..." or the ownership of "private hunting lodges with relatively luxurious facilities." These privileges were reserved for party members and could be scaled along party hierarchy levels. Obviously, highly concentrated power came alongside combined chief offices and economic privileges. As of 1989, almost half of Politburo members (11 out of 21) were also members of CC Secretariat, five were first secretaries of Bezirksleitungen, one (Horst Sindermann) presided over the GDR parliament, the Volkskammer, four presided over the most powerful executive organ, the Council of Ministers, and one, party chief Erich Honecker, was also the head of the National Defense Council and of the State Council of the GDR (Meyer 1991: 7).

Noteworthy, even the CC members who did not belong to the Fьhrungskern cohort appeared to be astonished when the information on the privileges of their comrades was disclosed in November 1989 (Hertle & Gerd-Rьdiger 1997: 464, 477), which implies that the distribution of both the power and goods within the CC was not equal and a distinction between Central Committee's inner and outer circles has to be accounted for.

It is significant that the GDR regime displays all the features outlined in the previous theorizations on elite defection, thus inviting for a case-study to better understand elite defection. Both the high initial elite cohesion levels and the outstanding position of technocrats in the government coupled with the visible inequalities in power and privileges within the winning coalition lay the ground for us to further theorize on the possible cleavage patterns the regime may “crack” along when exposed to the pressure of contentious politics.

Relying on the speculations of prior researchers and on our own assumptions regarding the inner SED party divisions, we introduce a game-theoretic model to analyze political behavior of top SED party members based on the information about their positions, office types and levels within the party hierarchy.

Data and methods