STAGE 5: FROM ALTERNATIVE POLITICS TO ALTERNATIVE REGIMES

In the eighteen months that followed these seminal events, the political evolution of the three republics would further confirm these emerging trends. While Lithuania under the Sajudis leadership of the parliamentary chairman Vytautas Landsbergis and the prime minister Kazimiera Prunskiene plunged headlong into decoupling the republic from the Soviet system, in Latvia and Estonia the governments of Ivars Godmanis as well as Edgar Savisaar were continually watched by the Congress movement, which was wary that these (in their minds still transitional, albeit relatively freely elected) administrations might adopt some kind of more permanent set of policies or change. In the Congresses’ opinion, the main task of these governments was still only to mediate an end to the Soviet occupation as well as maintain an eye over the most basic administrative functions. Similarly, the Congresses demanded that absolutely no decisions on citizenship be made until independence was achieved; moreover, they insisted that only a new post-independence parliament elected uniquely by citizens of the pre-war republic and their descendants should have the ultimate right to decide the citizenship question. This reflected the Congresses’ legal restorationist belief that only then would the status quo ante be fully honored.
In this context, Estonian and Latvian politics were essentially frozen for another 18 months, while in Lithuania the leadership of the Sajudis movement was accepted as an incumbent, political administration. To be sure, there were the occasional challenges to individual ministers as well as to government decisions. But on the whole, politics in Lithuania became more consolidated. In December 1990, the Lithuanian Communist Party transformed itself into the Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party, and thereafter became an increasingly strident opposition force to Vytautas Landsbergis. In January 1991 (amid the attempted Soviet crackdown), Prime Minister Prunskiene was forced to resign and was eventually replaced by Gediminas Vagnorius, a young economist from Lithuania’s second-largest city, Kaunas. This development strengthened the hand of Landsbergis, since Vagnorius was a protégé of the parliamentary chairman. This also meant that politics became further polarized around Sajudis and the former communists. After August 1991 and the restoration of independence, the tug-of-war continued as Landsbergis attempted to establish presidential powers for himself through a hastily called referendum in May 1992. When this ballot failed, it was agreed that an entirely new constitution should be drawn up. Nonetheless, the key “nationalist vs. communist” dichotomy remained at the center stage of the country’s politics.
By contrast, in Estonia and Latvia politics remained more transitory, as Estonia, for example, decided at the moment of independence that it would convene a special Constitutional Assembly, which would draft a new basic law for the country.^[1] This underscored the fact that the government of Edgar Savisaar could not count on being a “founding government” for the newly restored state, however much Savisaar saw himself in that role. His cabinet would still be a caretaker administration until the Constitution was adopted and the new political system instituted. Indeed, in January 1992, when Savisaar attempted to acquire exceptional powers of decree in order to deal with severe economic shortages, the Estonian parliament definitively imposed its view that politics was still only transitional by ousting Savisaar in a vote of no-confidence. An explicitly temporary and more technocratic government led by the former transport minister Tiit Vähi, was then installed.
In Latvia, parliamentarians decided to revert back to the country’s 1922 Constitution. While this move provided a certain degree of institutional clarity and therefore might have better promoted an evolution of party politics, it did not really have this effect so long as the old Supreme Council continued to exist. Thus, the government of Ivars Godmanis continued to remain in limbo until consensus was achieved about electing a proper Saeima, or parliament, as stated in the pre-war constitution. This agreement took some time as restorationist deputies in the Supreme Council demanded that the entire population of the country be re-registered according to citizenship (pre-war citizens and their descendants vs. Soviet-era immigrants and their descendants) so that only citizens would be allowed to vote in the new election. This registration process, however, lasted all the way into mid-1993.
The culmination of the differing evolutionary paths between Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia came in 1992/1993 as the three countries headed toward their first post-independence elections. In the former case, the battle lines had essentially been drawn long ago: Vytautas Landsbergis and his Sajudis movement against Algirdas Brazauskas and his revamped Democratic Labor Party. While it is true that by this time a number of additional parties had been set up and that together they offered a third option to the polarized political environment^[2], the Lithuanian electorate itself remained cleaved between the rival Landsbergis and Brazauskas camps. As a consequence, the result of the October-November 1992 Lithuanian elections was a relatively clean pendulum swing from Sajudis to the LDLP. Once again, most observers of the election were perplexed at how the former communists could return to power so rapidly. Yet, the answer lay in large part in the more complete transition achieved in 1990. Because voters had already passed through their first cycle of partisan administration, they were ready in 1992 for a return to the opposition. By contrast, the respective elections of October 1992 and June 1993 in Estonia and Latvia represented much more of a founding moment. In both countries, entirely new parties and coalitions emerged and the results of the voting turned out to be much less predictable.^[3] The victory of a right-of-center coalition led by the young historian Mart Laar in Estonia and that of the centrist Latvia’s Way party in Latvia (led by Valdis Birkavs) constituted the true ground zero of politics, from which real evolution would now begin.
Lastly, it is worth positing the argument that the divergence in the paths of transition among the Baltic states had a notable (although perhaps only indirect) impact on the actual constitutional-institutional regimes of the three states, given the fact that Lithuania ultimately adopted a semi-presidential form of government, while Estonia and Latvia adhered to a staunchly parliamentary model. To be sure, one could cite historical arguments why such a split emerged; for example, the fact that during the pre-war era parliamentarism broke down much faster in Lithuania (in 1926), while in Estonia and Latvia these regimes lasted until 1934. Likewise, one could go back even deeper into national political culture and claim that semi-presidentialism made much more sense in Lithuania given its medieval history of statehood and its own nobility. By contrast, Estonia and Latvia had been subject to enserfment by a German nobility that lasted all the way into the 19th century. The history of single-person rule in these two societies had been much shorter.^[4]
Yet, it is also evident that the path of democratic transition, which emerged in each republic, provided important facilitating conditions for the emergence of semi-presidentialism and parliamentarism. By virtue of the fact that the essential political struggle in Estonia and Latvia was over the Congresses’ demand that politics not be institutionalized too rapidly, the situation was set for a more consensus-based and hence parliamentary political system. Because the Congresses were fighting for a more drawn-out transition, they contributed to an emerging understanding that multiple-actor, diversified politics would be the essence of each country’s political system.^[5] One might even say that the Congresses reinforced a kind of elective affinity for parliamentarism. By contrast, in Lithuania, where the political transition had been much starker, the inclination toward a more cut-and-dry presidential system was also more logical. In May 1992, Vytautas Landsbergis was clearly motivated by this more dichotomous political atmosphere when he attempted to institutionalize a presidential system through a single referendum. Although the vote (as was noted above) failed, it did so only because of an insufficient turnout. Among those who actually participated, the approval rate was nearly 70%. From here on out, the choice for some kind of presidential system had been made.
Likewise, one can see stronger majoritarian tendencies in Lithuania’s electoral system. While 70 of the seats in the Lithuanian Seimas are elected via national party lists based on proportional vote shares, 71 seats are elected in single-member districts. What’s more, if during the first two post-independence elections these SMD contests were held based on two rounds of voting, in the October 2000 ballot this system was changed to a first-past-the-post system, making it even more majoritarian. These provisions again differ from Estonia and Latvia, which have opted for generally proportional electoral formulas. Indeed, Latvia is the strongest adherent to this model, while Estonia features a more complicated triple-tier system of seat allocation.^[6]

STAGE 6: ALTERNATIVE PARTY-POLITICAL CYCLES

The head start that Lithuania gained by having more quickly completed its transition continued to affect the country’s party politics through the rest of the 1990s, since after the LDLP’s electoral victory in 1992 the pendulum swung back in 1996 to the rightist Sajudis bloc, now renamed the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Conservatives.^[7] The polarization between the former communists and the nationalist right seemed so enduring that a veritable two-party system or at least a bipolar political system appeared to be in the making. To be sure, the return of the right in 1996 was less impressive than the LDLP’s victory in 1992, since participation in the second election declined considerably (under 60%). Many voters, who were dissatisfied with the LDLP’s four years of rule, appeared to prefer abstention rather than actually vote for the right. Still, the Homeland Union’s new parliamentary majority (in coalition with the Christian Democrats) was enough to keep the party in power for the next four years. What’s more, once again centrist forces became the losers when Lithuanian voters again forsook them.
In Estonia, a consolidation of the party politics began to take shape with the next parliamentary elections in early 1995, when a number of parties re-grouped and merged; however, the result was a relatively clear tri-polar political landscape. On the right, the nationalist Fatherland party merged with the Estonian National Independence Party in order to form the Fatherland Union. Likewise, their government coalition partners, the Moderates, consolidated their ranks by becoming a formal party. Finally, from among these two forces, but also drawing on a few independent politicians, a third force emerged: the staunchly pro-market Reform Party. In the center of the political divide, a strong alliance emerged between the Coalition Party and a number of rural parties, which became known by its Estonian acronym KMÜ. On the left, the remnants of the Popular Front had become consolidated as the Center Party, still under the leadership of Edgar Savisaar.^[8] To be sure, the party spectrum included a few smaller parties (including a coalition of Russian parties); however, in comparison to 1992, the political picture had become considerably more streamlined as well as continuous. Moreover, the victory of the KMÜ coalition during the March 1995 elections represented essentially a rejection of the 1992-1995 right-of-center government, or, in other words, the end of Estonia’s first real cycle of partisan party politics.
In Latvia, there was also the potential for a stabilization of party politics in fall 1995 after the Latvia’s Way party had more-or-less successfully completed its 2 years in power and parliamentary elections loomed. The misfortune of the Latvian case, however, was that Latvia’s Way was essentially a centrist party. Although the party had sought to govern the country as best it could, its popularity fell victim to a major bank failure in May 1995, which cast a pall over the country’s economic development. In this situation, disgruntled voters had little option but to turn for alternatives to the more partisan ends of the political spectrum or follow newly emerging populist parties. In contrast to Estonia and Lithuania, where the first party-political cycles had been led by rightist forces and whose logical consequence was that voters looking for a change would shift easily to the left, in Latvia the party system was thrown into yet one more cycle of flux as the populist parties carried the day in the October 1995 elections. A total of nine parties gained seats in the new Saeima. Of these, three were entirely new and accounted for 41% of the seats. In Latvia, the transition to democracy in terms of stable party politics seemed set to take still one more cycle of electoral contestation.

STAGE 7: CONSOLIDATION AND RE-CONSOLIDATION

By the time Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania approached their third post-independence elections during the end of the 1990s, their institutional and party-political disparities were no longer a mere curiosity, but rather a norm. For Latvia, there was comfort in the fact that the 1922 Constitution mandated parliamentary elections every three years.^[9] This meant that the country faced another round of balloting in October 1998, which would actually prove consolidating in terms of the party system. Although the elections once again featured success among a number of new parties seeking to fill the still vacuous Latvian political space (for example, the People’s Party and the New Party), the result was a decrease in the number of elected parties to just six and the first real prospects for a stable majority coalition. Unfortunately, this potential was only partially realized, as infighting among the different parties led to three separate governments being formed within just 18 months after the elections. The only consolation was that two parties (Latvia’s Way and the Fatherland and Freedom faction) served as the backbone for all three administrations. The final government of Andris Berzins relied on these two parties, along with the People’s Party and the smaller New Party. This gave it a strong majority of 69 out of the 100-seat parliament. Moreover, all of the parties in the Saeima weathered the next two years in politics more-or-less in tact and were able to go forth to the next elections in 2002 on a fairly secure footing.
In Estonia, party politics were strengthened by the March 1999 elections, which saw only previously elected parties retake their place in parliament; no new parties entered parliament. Moreover, the right-of-center coalition between the Fatherland Union, the Moderates, and the Reform Party made a comeback by winning just over 50% of the seats. Although their main rival was now Edgar Savisaar’s Center Party (which secured over a quarter of the Riigikogu’s seats), their government (once again led by Mart Laar) became in April 2001 the longest serving administration since the restoration of independence. Estonia, too, had by all accounts stabilized its party-political system.
Only Lithuania showed signs in 2000 of losing its steady, bipolar political environment. The November elections should have returned the center-left to power, and, indeed, the Social Democratic Union (SDU), led by the former President and Communist Party chief, Algirdas Brazauskas, came out on top with the most votes and 51 seats in the 141-member legislature. Still, the SDU was initially foiled in its attempt to form a coalition when President Valdas Adamkus offered the reigns of power to Rolandas Paksas, a maverick politician, who served briefly as prime minister in 1999 under the Homeland Union before resigning the post over a privatization dispute. Following this departure, Paksas went on the market for a new political home and eventually joined the tiny Liberal Union, a move that immediately propelled the party into prominence. By the time the November 2000 elections came around, Paksas was able to bring the previously unrepresented pro-market Union to 17% in the polls and 34 seats. This was just enough for him to join up with the New Union (a completely novel formation led by the failed 1997 presidential candidate Arturas Palauskas) and two other smaller parties in order to form a bare majority. The coalition was by any measure a bit strained, but Paksas remained popular as premier. In terms of party politics, the center-left had been robbed of its return to power, but essentially by a revamping of a number of center-right political forces, though not by openly populist or extremist parties. The evolution was slightly reminiscent of the 1995 emergence of the Estonian Reform Party, which helped re-coup (through the creation of a new political entity) some of the losses suffered by the right as a result of the first Mart Laar government from 1992-1994. In the Liberal Union’s case, however, it was successful enough even to form a government.
Indeed, for Paksas this success was sufficient to propel him to the presidency in February 2003. At the same time, it resulted in a loss of control over the government, since a new coalition was eventually formed by the New Union and the Social Democrats under the former president, Algirdas Brazauskas. Over time, moreover, Paksas’s personal luster began to fade amidst tales of eccentric behavior and populist stunts. In fall 2003 a major political crisis broke out over charges that Paksas’s presidential campaign had been illegally financed by Russian business interests and that members of his administration had dangerous links to Russian mafia. These accusations prompted not only a parliamentary investigation, but also the initiation of impeachment procedures. On April 6, 2004, the Lithuanian parliament formally voted to remove Paksas from office, and thus seemingly bring the trauma to an end. But there remained a great deal to be done to bring stability and confidence back to the political system.

CONCLUSION

This article began by claiming that the Baltic states no longer represent a single set of overlapping and synchronous political systems as they had during the early 1990s. Of course, positing such a claim when over ten years of rapid societal change have passed might well be viewed as spurious. In this respect, I plead guilty. Yet, an important aim of this article has been to show how many of the divergences that we see today between Estonia and Latvia, on the one hand, and Lithuania, on the other hand, were in fact caused by or at least greatly influenced by the fact that the three Baltic states chose two different paths of redemocratization. The commonalities that the three republics shared when they first began their society-led transitions in 1987 did not last into 1990, since in the meantime an alternative transition frame stressing legal restorationism had taken root in Estonia and Latvia. This divergence affected, in turn, the way in which the three republics decided to declare their independence as well as the view they took of the role of their first freely-elected governments.
Moreover, beyond this attempt to revise the interpretation of individual past events, I have also tried to argue that this difference in transition prompted a long-term variation in the cycle of party politics within each state as well as a difference in each country’s regime choice. Thus, one hypothesis that could be derived from this account is that states with a more straightforward and swift transition to opposition rule will have a greater likelihood of choosing presidential or at least majoritarian political institutions, while longer, more drawn-out transitions will create conditions more favorable for a consensus-based democracy. In turn, we know from institutional theory that presidential and majoritarian electoral systems tend to create two-party or at least bipolar party systems, while consensus democracies foster multi-party arrangements.^[10]
In many respects, therefore, my analysis resembles the work of Herbert Kitschelt in trying to identify certain path dependencies, which derive from structural political circumstances.^[11] Kitschelt argued that many of the regime institutions as well as party systems visible in Eastern Europe during the late-1990s had their origins in the type of communism practiced by each state, way before Mikhail Gorbachev came onto the scene. Reminiscent of Barrington Moore’s landmark theses regarding the origins of democracy and dictatorship^[12], Kitschelt hypothesized that personalistic communist states were more likely to adopt presidential as well as majoritarian political systems, while bureaucratic or nationalistic communist regimes would engender consensus democracy.
Yet, Kitschelt’s analysis remains relatively superficial in the case of the Baltic states. For example, for the most part he treats the Baltic states as a single whole, irrespective of the three republics’ obvious differences. As a result, this paper has sought to delve deeper into individual differences between the three states. What’s more, my investigation has pointed to political-discursive narratives of history as those that can affect party-political and institutional trajectories.^[13] Naturally, given the tremendously fast pace of change in these societies, it is unlikely that any theory of path dependency will be able to explain more than ten or perhaps fifteen years of political development. This is one reason, why it makes little sense to go beyond 2000 with the examination of institutional as well as party-political differences between the Baltic states because a number of other factors have by now begun to likewise influence these paths. These reasons include more fine-tuned institutional rules such as party regulation^[14] as well as the differential effects of economic policy on social groups and political support bases.^[15] Furthermore, European integration has had a considerable overarching affect by propelling all of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (irregardless of their one-time communist political forms) toward one specific political and economic direction.^[16] Intensive convergence around a single EU system will cause many existing differences to fade even more quickly. Still, given the fact that communism itself was such a deep-rooted system, it is not at all beyond the realm of imagination that certain political-institutional patterns are caused by certain specific nuances in historical narratives, redemocratization frames and political paths. This, I argue, was the case in the Baltic states in the years following the collapse of communism.