FEPS

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Report on Democracy, Liberty and

Freedom in Central and Eastern Europe

by Attila gh
Professor, Corvinus University of Budapest

6th October 2012

1. The triple crisis in the New Member States: Decline in democracy, good governance and
competitiveness

You are in panic because of the crisis, but out of crisis

something better will emerge.
(The remark of Jean Monnet to his colleagues that has
recently been quoted by Jacques Delors).1
Introduction: The triple crisis of the NMS in its triple dimension
The new member states (NMS) have undergone a triple crisis in the last two decades. First, they
had a transformation crisis in the early nineties and with the EU entry they fell into the post-accession
crisis, followed immediately by the global crisis. The analysis of triple crisis requires a regional approach,
since these countries - despite many national idiosyncrasies - have followed the same pattern of regional
development. Instead of the somewhat vague, although often used term of Central and Eastern Europe,
in this Report I will use the term of new member states, dealing with the seven NMS from Poland to
Slovenia.2
The triple crisis can be described in its triple dimension, i.e. in its socio-economic, socio-political
and socio-cultural aspects. These three subsequent crises (the triple crisis) in the New Member States
have produced their heavy social price, which has been responsible for the recent drastic decline or
backsliding of the new democracies. In the late eighties and early nineties the NMS populations reacted
to the collapse of the authoritarian rule with a revolution of high expectations, so under the label of
democracy they expected a Western welfare state overnight, thus after Twenty Years their
disappointment has been tragic. This Report tries to give a well documented answer on why and how the
situation of the deep malaise in NMS has emerged, arguing at the same time that it has also been a
series of creative crises that may bring a better future.
The Horizon Scanning of the triple crisis in its triple dimension or in its three aspects is the
following: There have been three subsequent socio-economic crises, first the transformation recession,
followed by the controversial EU economic integration/adaptation and later by the poor global
competitiveness. These stages have appeared in political dimension as socio-economic exclusion of the
1
See the interview with Jacques Delors on 11 September 2012 in the Notre Europe Institute
(http://www.notre-europe.eu/en/about-us/authors/auteur/463/,p.4).
2
This Report on the new member states (NMS) consists of two main parts. The first part discusses the
triple crisis in its triple dimension as a theoretical overview, and the second part gives a large explanation on, and
the empirical documentation of, the NMS developments. This overview of the triple crisis is valid to a great extent
to all New Member States, yet for both practical and theoretical reasons it deals only with seven NMS (NMS-7)
Bulgaria (BG), Czech Republic (CZ), Hungary (HU), Poland (PL), Romania (RO), Slovenia (SI) and Slovakia (SK)
and not with the three Baltic States. No doubt that all NMS perform rubato, i.e. in a rather different way. But the
punctuated or dotted development of these states has been common with the same historical turning points, thus
they have shared historical experiences.

large part of population, leading to a weak participatory politics in the new EU member states and finally,
at present, to a socio-political deconsolidation in the Golden Age of Populism. The socio-cultural changes
have taken place accordingly, from the enthusiasm of Return to Europe the NMS populations were
sinking into the hate-love of cognitive dissonance with Europe and the global crisis has produced several
kinds of euroscepticism. In this vicious circle the socio-political participation crisis, the EU adjustment
crisis and the global competitiveness crisis have been organically interwoven and closely followed each
other. Thus, the triple crisis structures the historical process with its strongly interrelated socioeconomic, socio-political and socio-cultural forms (the multilevel and multidimensional development
settings see in Horizon Scanning Tables I-II).3
Nowadays, the history of the past twenty years is changing rapidly and radically before our eyes.
Both the NMS populations and academic experts see this history in a very different way than before. As
the latest European Science Foundation (ESF) Forward Look research project on the NMS region
recommends, there is an urgent need for a conceptual breakthrough in terms of better framing the
overall context of societal developments (ESF, 2012: 12). Indeed, in this thematic rethinking of the NMS
developments a new analytical framework is needed, which takes the historical delay of NMS into
account and concentrates on their painful catching up process. Moving from the simple political history
to a much deeper and larger social history, the new analytical framework has to accommodate the social
welfare consequences of the drastic economic changes with the ensuing profound changes in politics
and popular culture. It has to be so even beyond transition phase, when Europeanization was engulfed
by the global financial and economic crisis. Altogether, special attention has to be paid to the societal
challenges, since the social decline appeared in the 2000s at least arrested but it has come back with a
vengeance in the 2010s. In fact, the relevant socio-economic cleavages have deepened, and the social
and regional inequalities have been rapidly increasing, generating relative deprivation effects that have
provoked serious political turmoil.
In the twin process of convergence-divergence, first the general convergence with the West has
to be noted as the mainstream development in NMS. It has switched, however, to the deepening
divergences in the latest years because of the divergent trajectories in the global crisis that has led to a
new East-West divide. Second, convergence has also been the main trend in the NMS region in the
Europeanization and Democratization super-project, but with many divergences in their several social
sub-systems that has resulted in different NMS country profiles as performing rubato. It has to be
noted above all that the tremendous changes in NMS have not come organically from inside but arrived
from outside as a social tsunami or imported creative crisis. The monster waves of transformation
crisis originated from the collapse of the East-West confrontation in the bipolar world, the postaccession adjustment crisis was generated by the EU entry process, and finally the competitiveness crisis
broke out due to the global fiscal crisis. Obviously, there have been only half-made, controversial
3
In this part of Report I just indicate the major economic transformations and I focus on the socioeconomic (exclusion-participation), the socio-political (governance-performance) and socio-cultural (modern
social services) developments. These cultural factors as the soft factors of competitiveness (well-being and
sustainability) are to be analyzed at length in the second part. Social-cultural factors have been mentioned in
several papers as well-being, life-satisfaction, social progress or social growth closely interwoven with social
investment, social productivity and the likes, see FES, 2012a: 7-9, or in general FES, 2011a,b and 2012a,b. It
has been systematically developed in Gill and Raiser, social responsibility and social welfare being the hallmark
of Europe as the worlds lifestyle superpower (2011: 5,18-25).

reactions of NMS to these external challenges. In the dual dynamics of the EU integration, as the new
ESF project underlines, Rather than assuming unidirectional adaptation effects in CEE in the face of EU
influences, this perspective highlights how domestic actors might use and/or abuse the constraints and
options offered by a Europeanized institutional, economic and social environment. (ESF, 2012: 5). This
Report tries to give a careful account of this duality between the use and the abuse of the historical
opportunities in NMS.
Nonetheless, despite these systemic failures in the NMS complex social history, the mainstream
Western theories have often described the NMS transformations as basically an evolutionary process,
i.e. without special regard to the increasing contrast between the formal democratization and the
missing social consolidation. The mainstream analyses and the EU documents at least until the fullblown global crisis have just presented the history of Democratization and Europeanization in NMS as a
success story, or a sunny side narrative. They have not discovered either that the social disintegration
has been the main driver behind the subsequent political crises. No doubt that it is rather difficult to
balance between the positive and negative features in the democratization with social disintegration
process, yet the marked socio-economic and political crisis phenomena in the latest developments still
require also the marked presentation of the shadowy side of the narrative. In this Report the emphasis
has been put on this negative side of the social history that has been less known so far in the Western
political and expert circles. Or, it has not yet been systematically analyzed in the academic literature,
since its interdisciplinary thematic clusters have not yet been elaborated.4
It is true that there has recently been a growing literature on what I call the Golden Age of
Populism, since the analysis of the widespread populism has also become a growth industry.
Nevertheless, it has not been emphasized enough in the academic literature that the entire process of
systemic change has been overloaded by a deep contradiction between the formal democratization and
the deep social disintegration. The populist turn in the European political science however has also
produced some exaggerations or lamentations about the other extreme view, the eternal East in NMS.
This Report tries to strike a balance between these two kinds of extreme approaches, but necessarily
focuses more on the emerging new tensions that have come to the surface as the cumulated
deformations in the Twenty Year period of controversial democratization. This is not to deny the big
achievements of Democratization and Europeanization, but to point out the controversial character of
this process, in order to be able to explain the present deep malaise in NMS.
The sad truth is that the democratic transition has not yet been properly completed, since first
the anticipatory Europeanization and later the adaptive Europeanization has remained unfinished, so
the global crisis has explored the vulnerability of these states. In a word, because there has been no
social consolidation, therefore the life-satisfaction in NMS has become extremely low after the Twenty
Years of systemic change. Thus, after two decades of the radical transformations it is necessary to launch
a serious investigation about the reasons of the triple crisis as a health check by reconstructing its
entire controversial history in a medical report. The whole controversial nature of democratization
4
In this medical report about the infantile disease of the NMS countries I try to combine and to
synthesize the rather fragmented academic literature on the socio-economic, socio-political and socio-cultural
developments. I have dealt with this topic in some former papers (see the recent papers as gh, 2010, 2011 and
2012). I have participated in the research project of the European Science Foundation on NMS (ESF Forward Look,
2012) and I rely on some findings of this project.

originates from the fact that this region has gone through these major socio-economic crises and the
social price paid for this triple crisis has been tremendous. After the first patient-passive (conflict-free)
and the second aggressive-active (conflict-full) decade, the decline/backsliding of democracy,
governance and competitiveness has reached its peak at the beginning of the third decade. As a result of
the deepening socio-economic crisis there has been a declining trust in the political institutions and in
the political elite, since most people consider that nowadays things are going into wrong direction. In
order to understand the high complexity of these twenty years history, the three main processes
producing democracy, governance and competitiveness deficits have to be outlined. This conceptual
exercise aiming at the theoretical elaboration of these three fields is meant to prepare and introduce the
detailed analysis in the empirical part of the Report.5
The social background: social cohesion turned into socio-political exclusion
The point of departure for the analysis of socio-economic transformations in the NMS countries
is that the former authoritarian regime created a rather equalized society with a high job security as well
as with relatively good health and education services. The original social cohesion as the starting
condition was based on these relatively equal public services called premature welfare state, so the
populations in the early nineties were thinking in the terms of moving towards the Western kind of
society in the same equalized way for all as a real welfare state. These Westernized patterns of social
life and public services could have been a good social potential or capacity for the emerging democratic
society. But the former world of social cohesion with the modest security and equity blew up in the early
nineties and in the unfolding new system instead of the former premature welfare state no
Westernized social model emerged. Although this former social capacity or potential was not by far a
paradise on earth, it has still become the basic point of reference for any kind of nostalgia about the
lost world of security with mediocritas simplicissima, but without the serious dangers for job security
(Pew Foundation, 2009).6
The NMS citizens perceived this stormy start with a negative turn in the first years of nineties as
a social earthquake followed by a more disastrous tsunami of the unemployment in a world of full
uncertainty. No doubt that some kind of a silent civil war began in the early nineties, with a Hobbesian
world of bellum omnium contra omnes (the war of all against all). Nevertheless, this demand for the
Westernized social model has been neglected during the twenty years of systemic change by the
governments, while the former relatively big social potential has been wasted to a great extent, although
it would have been needed above all for the further developments. Thus, nowadays this controversial
social history has proven to be the key issue in the academic circles when discovering what has gone
wrong in NMS in the last two decades.

In general, the outlines of these three main processes lead in the second part of the Report to the
democracy, governance and sustainability deficit. On economic developments see e.g. Ambrosetti (2011), and
Gill and Raiser at length in the Golden Growth (2011).
6
First I explore the social history as a general social background of the triple crisis as a whole, then I
outline the decline of democracy, good governance and global competitiveness in separate chapters, following the
real historical sequence.

It is not by chance that the latest big project of the ESF Forward Look on NMS has put the
questions of social cohesion and social trust into the fore and has recommended the research on these
issues as the most urgent and relevant task for the experts: The degree of socio-economic
transformation that post-communist Europe has undergone over the last 20 years has been astounding,
including not only privatisation, but other forms of extensive capital and resource distribution. Yet what
has been the effect of this change on social cohesion and harmony? Beyond the past discussions of
winners and losers from transformations, scholars need to begin to study how these differences may
(or may not) be reproducing themselves across generations. (...) The second aspect of social cohesion
concerns social trust. Old stresses in CEE (..) have eased, and new relationships based on autonomous
opportunity and choice have emerged. Yet, generalised social trust across the regions remains low,
which undermines societys ability to stand for democracy (ESF, 2012: 6).7
No doubt that the new bright democratic society had a brutal, stormy start with a deepening
social paradox of more freedom and less security. The NMS citizens have been put for the coming
decades into a roller-coaster with its ups and downs in the standard of living as well as in the increasingdecreasing social mobility. In the early nineties people were thrown suddenly into the realm of
uncertainty without a social safety net. In addition, all related interest organizations were marginalized
or ruined with a reference that they belonged to the former regime as a transmission belts between the
people and the authoritarian state. They belonged, indeed, but in this new brave world there was no
effective new organization instead to articulate, express and represent the interests of the absolute and
relative losers. Hence, the national-social populism has gained salience throughout the history of
systemic change. There is no space here to characterize the three stages of socio-economic
transformations in details, but the short description of the first stage already demonstrates the
controversial social history of the entire systemic change.8
In the first stage, the transformation recession resulted already in large-scale impoverishment
and increasing social inequality. In the initial period of economic transformations some millions of jobs
were lost across all the NMS countries. The first generation of losers was composed of those affected by
the mass unemployment in the early nineties due to the privatization combined with the end of the old
fashioned industrial society. Simply said, as a result of economic exclusion (large unemployment) and
social fragmentation (marginalization of social strata), there was a huge contrast already in the first
decade between the disempowerment of the losers and the empowerment of the winners. The absolute
losers in the early 1990s were those low skilled people who lost their jobs in the early nineties and could
not come back to the world of labour because those low skilled working places, they had been employed
in, disappeared for ever. The relative losers in the nineties were the workers of traditional industries and
7
I have described this exclusion dilemma several times (see e.g. gh, 2012a). I cannot deal here with
many important issues of socio-economic transformations, including the populations in change as the outmigration and in-migration, old-native and new-immigrant minorities, population shifts, or in general the
migration studies (see ESF, 2012: 6,48). The ESF Report has a sub-chapter on the economic and social
security and it concludes with a warning that the citizens still feel frustrated and dissatisfied (ESF, 2012: 42).
8
Just to indicate briefly that in the second period with the EU entry there was an increasing contrast or
growing social gap between the relative winners and the relative losers. Finally, in the third period even the ensuing
larger middle class of relative winners has been declassified and fragmented. The global crisis has finally led to the
decomposition of middle class and to the emergence of an intergenerational underclass. In this present vicious
circle the new social gap has produced the poor competiveness in the global arena, and vice versa.

the public employees who kept their jobs with drastically diminishing wages and salaries. The winners
were the new, smaller and bigger entrepreneurs, giving about one third of society.
In the late 2000s the realization came that the drastic changes in the early nineties were in fact
the decisive factors that determined the social structure for a long time. Although the income gap
increased in the nineties and decreased in the 2000s in this social roller-coaster, it turned out that this
new underclass did not disappear but it still grew in size and the ensuing social gap increased more and
more. A new poverty emerged with many urban and rural poverty islands where the multigenerational
unemployment became the rule, since the next generation under these family circumstances inherited a
socio-cultural deficit and the young were brought up as virtual unemployed people. The multifaceted
process of the marginalization of low skilled people produced a big social underclass below the normal
society embracing altogether 10-15 per cent of population.
This was a new kind of the social exclusion, not cyclical as mostly in the Western societies where
the transition from the industrial society to service society took place in a much longer period. In fact,
the NMS still experienced a decade of "social patience" with "empowered winners" and disempowered,
"patient losers". The long march through the vale of tears (with the term of Ralph Dahrendorf) in this
initial period did not result yet in significant social upheavals and big political disorder. Nonetheless, the
social discontent loomed large during the first, difficult decade of democratic transition, and this mass
disillusionment in the social construction of democracy came back later with a vengeance as a very
important destabilizing political factor.
Hence, the satisfaction with representative democracy has been very low from the very
beginning. The economic transformationsadaptations as transition costs earlier and accession costs
later have resulted in mass economic demobilization, and widespread social exclusion followed from
that. In such a way, there has been no incentive for the proper political mobilization into the new
democratic institutional framework. It is better to term this permanent situation as a deep dissatisfaction
and frustration that has generated an infantile disease of new democracy. The mass dissatisfaction with
the new democratic order and market economy has triggered more and more a demand for populist
sloganeering and provided a fertile ground for national and social populisms. The destabilization effects
have appeared in separate social sectors, and step by step they have been cumulated into the
deconsolidation process concerning the foundation of the democratic system. Thus, after a decade of
social destabilization caused by the socio-economic demobilization, the next decade arrived with an
increasing political deconsolidation caused by the populist remobilization of the relative or absolute
losers. The social paradox has appeared of necessity also as the political participation paradox, resulting
in the representation paradox, and they will be analyzed somewhat more at length in the next political
chapter.
The decline in democratization as the participatory crisis
The political and party systems in NMS have emerged under the pressure of external and
internal adaptation and they have undergone the process of external Europeanization and internal
Democratization. The governments and party systems have been shaken by this dual pressure, having to
face the European Unions convergence criteria from outside and the high expectation from the NMS
6

populations for a normal standard of living and Westernized public services from inside. Thus, the NMS
political and party systems have to withstand a series of dual pressures from inside and outside. The
general framework of the external adaptation pressure has been Europeanization challenge. This
challenge, however, has been so strong, so overwhelming that this external adaptation pressure has
dominated the domestic processes. When addressing the vital questions of political transformation,
there are three key issues to be discussed: (1) external-internal Europeanization of political system with
special regard to the party system, (2) the party types and identities, and (3) the party mobilizationdemobilization process, leading to the participatory crisis, described here as the participatory paradox
and representative paradox.9
First, the contrast of the external and internal Europeanization goes through the entire history of
the NMS political system as a whole. In this Report I focus on the parties and party systems, since so far
little attention has been paid to the transformation of NMS parties within the European party system,
although the relationships between the national parties and the EU level parties have been discussed
since the early days. The external adaptation pressure on NMS also includes the emergence and
functioning of its party systems. What is more, Europeanization has appeared more strongly in
particization, including the transnational elite socialization, than in any other fields of political
transformations. Finding the EU partners has been the only route to legitimacy and guarantee for
survival of the NMS parties. The dominant view about the influence of the EU upon the national party
systems has been one of limited impact. But this is defective because it ignores the vital distinction
between the external and internal Europeanization of the NMS parties, although Europeanization has
been very direct or hard on one side, while very indirect or soft on the other.10
External Europeanization is an elite-based process through which contacts have been established
with Western parties and party internationals, including membership in the international party
organizations. As a result, the parties have shaped a Western-type of image or outlook for themselves
(international party). By comparison the internal Europeanization would be a process reaching and
transforming the membership, the constituency of the NMS parties and their relationship to the civil
society through which the internal party organizations and popular beliefs could change accordingly.
Fundamentally, internal Europeanization as a mass-based process is the transformation of such basic
party features as membership and organization to approximate more closely to the Western-type parties
in their internal structures, including the relationship to the party constituency and to civil society as a
whole (domestic party).
So far external Europeanization has only scratched the surface of the NMS parties.
Europeanization has appeared only through the established official contacts and the informal meetings
of very few party leaders with their western European counterparts. The bulk of party membership and
the population at large have not been informed very much on the discussions of the EU Left and Right,
international Social Democracy or Christian Democracy, and so on. The reason is simple, namely the
9

I have analyzed here the decline of good governance first of all from the party-political side, while in the
second part I will discuss it also from the policy-performance side.
10
I rely here on my former party papers, first of all gh, 2010b. In these papers I have given a large
overview of the academic literature that I do not reproduce here. There has been, however, a growth industry in
political science on the populism, see e.g. Bugaric, 2008, Meseznikov et al, 2008, Btora et al, 2009, DeeganKrause and Haughton, 2009, Plattner, 2010 and Pappas, 2012.

problems and concerns are so different that most of the population are unable to decode recent
Western discourse e.g. about the third way and the like, since NMS societies remain preoccupied with
their domestic difficulties and cannot escape from the trap of materialist needs. The global crisis with the
growing economic difficulties has even deepened the gap between the international and domestic party
as well as between the Western and Eastern public discourses.
External Europeanization has also proceeded in the two anticipatory and adaptive stages that
showed also its limited, but nevertheless permanent impact on the side of internal Europeanization. The
first stage was a general democratization, while the second was a specific, EU-type democratization
with partial integration. In fact, these initial stages of European integration produced a deepening split
between the external and the internal Europeanization of the NMS parties, with a growing contrast
between their international and domestic activities. All these arguments point in the same direction, the
NMS parties have not yet been completely prepared for assuming the rights and duties of membership in
the EU-level parties.
Given the low degree of their external Europeanization and the large contrast with the internal
side, the NMS parties have been lagging behind in both international policy co-operation and strategymaking. This is only thin Europeanization, instead of a thick one. A similar situation occurred in the
case of the Mediterranean new member states, but there are still big differences. When the
Mediterranean states entered, the EU still worked at a much lower level of policy complexity than now.
Therefore, nowadays the main political actors face greatly increased demands both for policy
coordination and more strategic thinking, what is an almost unbearable burden for the NMS parties and
governments. In addition, the Western European sister parties offered then very active assistance to the
Spanish and Portuguese parties, and, notwithstanding significant assistance from Western political
foundations like Germanys Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Konrad Adenauer Foundation, nothing of
comparable size happened in the case of the NMS parties.
Thus, the central thesis of this party analysis is that the early process of the NMS party systems
has now come to an end, and a new period has begun with a general crisis of the parties and party
systems. The general crisis of the NMS party systems after just twenty years can be characterized as the
socio-political senility of parties and party leaderships that has been aggravated by the unsettling
effects of the EU membership. The NMS parties have been programmed for transition and accession and
both goals have been attained. The original program has lost its relevance, and new issued have
emerged. These parties, however, have no new programs and no new messages to offer for the NMS
citizens in the current period. The party elites in general have become, at least socio-politically, old,
tired and extremely unpopular.
Second, the external-internal Europeanization duality leads to the issue of NMS blurred party
identities. Above all, the evolution of the party landscape in the EU can be summarised as a long process
of change from the party systems of industrial society based on materialist values and class cleavages to
those of post-industrial service society based on post-materialist values and culturally oriented social
cleavages. However, the NMS party systems have been stuck in a half-way between the old and new
worlds, and this has to be taken into consideration when they are to be classified according to the LeftRight coordinates. Better to say, taking account of the Europeanization and nation-centrism (or
8

traditionalism) controversy it is necessary add the Nation-Europe coordinates, and these two axes give
four combinations in this matrix.
This typology generates four basic types of parties: Europeanized Left and Europeanized Right,
and Nation-centric Left and Nation-centric Right. Actually, the particular NMS development crisis has
distorted these types: the Europeanized Right and Nation-centric Left has been largely missing, whereas
both the Europeanized Left and the Nation-centric Right suffer painfully from the above mentioned
infantile disease of young democracies. The Left in NMS is more supportive of closer EU integration but
has been frustrated by the permanent failure to come closer to the model of Social Europe, which in
turn has led to its leftist credentials being questioned by friends and foes alike. The centre-left suffers
from the trap of materialist needs and the crisis of crisis management, whereas the centre-right from the
burden of the increasing Europeanization. Accordingly, the NMS Right is much more populist and
eurosceptic than the right wing parties in the older member states of the EU. It favours the idea of an EU
of nation states much more than its major sister parties in the West.
Finally, it is difficult to find a really pro-European centre-right party in NMS as the Europeanized
Right. The clear cases of both hard and soft party-based euroscepticism on the Right could be observed
as early as the late 1990s. The real turning point came in the second half of the decade when the soft
party-based euroscepticism appeared in its explicit form among the governing right-wing parties.
Similarly, it is impossible to find and to identify a centre-left party with a marked, full-blown Westernized
leftist program as the Europeanized Left. What we see then are blurred and uncertain identities on both
Left and Right. Hence, turning to the domestic idiosyncrasies of the new member states, there is a big
and increasing divide between the pro-European and anti-European forces, and in most cases the NMS
Left is much more pro-European than the NMS Right.
Third, the blurred party identities have basically come from the socio-economic developments
described above. The formal-legal democratization in NMS has opened up the space for the political
participation, but people have not taken this opportunity, and the level of participation, including the
electoral participation, has been very low. The hard fact is that the social exclusion leads to political
exclusion, in several ways. The infantile disease means that social deficit in NMS has been turned into
political deficit as the weakness of democracy, including that of governance, and finally the weakness of
governance has produced that of sustainability of the socio-economic developments in these twenty
years.
The NMS participation paradox is that the NMS parties initiated a change from mass mobilization
to political demobilization in the early 1990s in their drive to become the monopolistic political actors
that I have termed over-particization. The effects of the widespread social exclusion have accelerated
and deepened by the parties conscious efforts at political demobilization, intended to turn them into
the only or main political actors in society. At the same time parties have been fighting for the electoral
remobilization of population, rather unsuccessfully. The demobilization of the masses in the early 1990s
was to some extent also a conscious process, by parties and politicians eager to become the main actors,
later on the only actors in politics, excluding even the interest organizations. But it was much more an
unintended result of economic and social marginalization. The effect by the late 1990s was an
unstructured political market with a low membership density for the parties, accompanied with growing
national-social populism.
9

It has often been mentioned that the organizational linkages of parties with society are weak,
which has also been conceptualized as a weakness of civil society. Indeed, the NMS parties are elitist and
top-down organizations, live on states subsidies and have a high level of centralization. It is also true that
they have a high number of party employees in their headquarters compared to the size of membership.
Both the actions for political demobilization in general and political remobilization for elections in
particular have their origins in the basic weakness of parties. First, the main specifics of the NMS parties
are, indeed, that they have been small size mass parties. The NMS populations have not joined parties
in great numbers, in contrast to earlier experience in the West, and so the NMS parties have a head
but they do not have a body. The memberships of the NMS parliamentary parties are very small
compared to the Western parties. This means party membership is tiny compared to the size of the
voters of that given party. The social base of the NMS parties has been very weak, and further erosion of
the party memberships has taken place since the beginning of the global crisis. Secondly, they can be
classified, therefore, as an office-seeking cadre party, since the small membership is just enough to
provide the political elite. Third, their structuring principle has been based much more on the cultural
than social cleavages, since cultural traditions and camps matter (Kulturkampf). Finally, there has
been a bigger divide between Left and Right than in the West, and which has almost completely
excluded compromises, coalition-making and the reaching of a national consensus between them. All in
all, the NMS parties are not yet ready for the multi-actor democracy, where social and territorial actors
are expected to play a larger role due to decentralisation to the regional level.11
The decline in good governance as the general crisis in the weak states
In the contrast of external and internal Europeanization, and due to the ensuing splendid
isolation from the West, the party performance in NMS has led to the performance crisis of the parties,
including their national parliaments and governments. Although the long and painful learning process for
the party elites has somewhat accelerated in the EU, they are not by far able to be contemporary of
the EU events and perspectives. In general, the NMS states have built up a European facade according to
the logic of the external Europeanization but without the whole building, without the proper structure of
the Europeanized institutions behind, like the Palace of the Winds in Rajasthan, India.
This situation has produced weak states (ESF, 2012: 47) with missing political leadership. The
NMS states cannot cope with the increasing complexity of public policies on one side and with the
pressure of the powerful business groups on the other. Due to the lack of political leadership, the NMS
states, governments and parties have been flying blind. Thus, the dilettante politicians and voluntarist
politicians are the extreme ideal types of the chief political actors. It is enough to summarize the issue
here that the NMS governments are indeed short lived on average hardly more than one year and
based on fragile party coalitions. In this short life-time it is impossible for the government to think in
strategic terms, so politics defeats policy, and governments show up very low performance. Indeed, in
11

The parties have experimented with new ways of making contact with members or society at large.
For instance, the Hungarian Socialist Party organized seven party congresses in the 2002-2006 parliamentary
cycle, between May 2002 and June 2005. The intra-party democracy, mobilization of membership and the
contact with the civil society organizations have been among the biggest problems of the NMS parties.

10

NMS there have been very few cases where governments have been re-elected. The party systems - that
have been based on the unstable parties and volatile voters have produced fragile, short-lived
governments. So to say, the governments you deserve.12
This participation deficit, from general mobilization to the party-induced demobilization, has
provoked the above mentioned general crisis of the weak states and their party systems. They have still
been much more oriented to ideology than to policy, so the governance turn - that has been demanded
for being able to deal with the EU policy universe - has caused major problems for the states and parties.
In the description of the general crisis of the NMS party systems the term crisis is justifiable on two
counts. First, the governing parties from time to time have almost completely lost their popular support
that has provoked the collapse of the party system as a whole. As an extreme case of the missing issue
congruence, i.e. the parties electoral programs have had nothing in common with their governments
programs and policies later. Second, through this NMS party crisis the vital issue of political mobilizationdemobilization has come to the fore in that way that this missing popular support as an electoral defeat
has unleashed a basic transformation in the parties and party systems, since the parties have failed to
remobilize the demobilized masses by their electoral campaigns, in the EU elections even much less than
in the national elections.13
There is a clear contrast between the MMS young democracies and their counterparts in
Western Europe, due to the drastic decline in social and political participation the NMS states have
witnessed soon after the early mobilization phase of systemic change. This contrast between East and
West created by the rise and decline of participation in such short time offers the key to understanding
the weaknesses of political representation in NMS. As a bottom line, the NMS countries have turned
their economic deficits into social deficits by imposing drastic reductions in public services such as health
care, education and social security. Social deficits have been turned into political deficit, by social
exclusion and marginalization. And finally, these have been turned into a performance or governance
deficit, by the mass dissatisfaction with the way democracy works, and therefore the participatory
revolution has yet to be completed to create a well performing state.
Here the participation and representation paradoxes meet. The governments could not
represent their countries properly, since they have not allowed their populations as a pluralized and
organized civil society to participate properly in Europeanization and Democratization process. The NMS
states have denied this opportunity of the institutional participation for their organized civil society and
have offered them in most cases only meaningless consultations. As a result, the governments have
often been accused of a lack of social sensitivity and political responsiveness. Thus, again, so far the
parties and governments have been flying blind; therefore their populations have seen changing the
governments through elections as the only means to influence the political elite. This blind alley of
democratization has usually been conceptualized as after completing the legal-formal constitutional
12
The party composition and life-time of the European governments is a very well research topic in
political science, see the basic data every year in European Journal of Political Research. I have analyzed the
weak state issue several times, especially in the context of the increasing complexity of the EU policies, see e. g.
in gh, 2010c and 2011c.
13
There was a very low turnout in NMS at the 2004 and 2009 elections to the European Parliament.
The average electoral participation in 2004 was 28 per cent in the recently joined members compared to 47 per
cent in the older members. Notably in 2004 and 2009 the participation was 27.9-28.2, 38.5-36.2, 21.2-24.5,
28.2-28.0 and 20.0-19.6 per cent in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia respectively.

11

consolidation in the NMS countries have not yet reached the representative consolidation through
the involvement of intermediary organizations as well as the social integrative consolidation through
eliminating the anti-systemic movements. Finally, they have not yet reached the attitudinal
consolidation either, which is required if citizens are to take part in political life with firm democratic
values.
In this deficit democracy the recent party crisis has been a general crisis, since it has concerned
all aspects of the NMS parties, like the weak party organization, diminishing membership and empty
program. In sum, the main reason for the general crisis of the NMS party systems is this combined
participatory and representative paradox. The absence of a new message and the lack of the new
programmes is the result of the blurred party identities and the missing new party elites. The senility of
the old party elite has come to the surface as the shortage of relevant political capacities and
management skills in the new periods of the EU membership and the global crisis. The democratic deficit
with the participation and representation paradoxes has been very marked in the NMS region, therefore
people and organized interests do not easily accept the opinions and guidance of their governments and
parties. The political parties so far have been both unable and unwilling to mobilize the NMS populations
to take an active part in the Europeanization process. They have mostly acted as a party cartel in
favour of Europeanization as an elite-driven process in the spirit of over-particization. They have been
reluctant to give up their monopolistic approach to politics and to allow a greater role for policy
channels, organized interests, territorial actors and civil society associations in the Europeanization
process. At the same time they have been unable to thematize and concretize Europeanization for their
constituencies, so this elitist approach by the parties has been one of the major reasons for turning the
Euro-phoria to the Euro-fatigue in NMS.14
Yet, a profound cleavage can also be seen between the old and the new member states
concerning the evaluation of domestic democracy versus the EU-level democracy. Namely, EU-level
democracy is appreciated more keenly in the newer members from the East and the degree of
satisfaction with the EU institutional order in the NMS democracies differs from the established old
democracies, so it has been an important pulling factor to membership. The populations of the new
member states have been open in many ways to a transfer of democracy from EU institutions and have
been much less sensitive to the EU democracy deficit because of their own national level
governance/performance deficit. Although anti-European and/or eurosceptic parties have imported or
have fabricated home-made anti-Brussels slogans, this is still less important than dissatisfaction with the
workings of democracy at home. This feeling of a democracy performance deficit at home in the NMS
states has mainly been caused by the incompetent states and unpopular parties, thus it is a product of
the corrupt weak states and the general crisis of the party systems. The claims made here are confirmed
by Johnsons (2005: 128) findings from the Eurobarometer: the new member states are more
14
Altogether, this general crisis of the NMS parties has also contributed to a crisis in theory, which I have
termed the glorious failure of transitology-consolidology and the humble success of Europeanization. It means
that theories of democratization based on the sequence of transition and consolidation have proven inadequate to
conceptualizing the actual processes in NMS, since they have been imported from Latin America and southern
Europe, and not adapted to Central Europe. In addition, it has been even more so with the over-generalized postcommunist frame of reference, since these theories have been unable to grasp the essence of the specific regional
transformations in NMS.

12

favourably disposed to European political institutions than to national ones. In large part, this is probably
driven more by negative feelings about domestic political systems and politicians than about European
institutions, about which they have insufficient knowledge and experience to make a judgement. As yet,
there are few signs of developing concerns about democratic deficits in the EU. Indeed people even
look forward to a further transfer of democracy from the EU, converting their countries from the mere
formal to the fully effective membership.
In contrast, demobilization of the people is now the biggest obstacle to further Europeanization
and Democratization in NMS. Satisfaction with democracy has two aspects: satisfaction with the
democratic character of institutions (political-procedural side) and satisfaction with the performance of
democracy or democratic governance (policy-efficiency side). These two sides can also be separated in
the West, since the formal criteria have lost some significance and the efficiency criteria have gained
more significance for the general public. Nowadays the peoples interest in politics relates more and
more to the dimensions of the performance or quality - of democracy. The most important finding in
NMS is that support for democracy in principles has been divorced from satisfaction with democracy as it
works: the overwhelming part of the population still supports democracy as a political system in general
but has become deeply disappointed with the practice of democratic regimes as their governance in
particular. A convinced democrat, rejecting all forms of non-democratic alternatives, but nonetheless be
dissatisfied with the way democracy works in his or her country.
All in all, the NMS democratization has been a party-based development but with the emergence
of much weaker parties than in the West. It is now facing further drastic transformations within the EU,
which may also be in the direction of the internal Europeanization of the NMS parties. Most probably in
the post-crisis situation there will be a post-Rokkanian world in NMS with three main cleavages: (1)
winner-loser in socio-economic policies, (2) pro-European versus anti-European relationship to the EU as
becoming the main divide in politics, and (3) materialist-postmaterialist in the cultural-symbolical policy
universe.
The decline in global competitiveness and the danger of peripherialization
The global crisis has discovered many weaknesses of NMS from the past twenty year period. It
has demonstrated the controversial nature of the democratization cum Europeanization process that has
not been a success story in the socio-economic respect of social cohesion, nor in the political-policy
respect of democracy and good governance. Although The return to Europe - overcoming the WestEast divide has been a European prevailing perspective on transformation in Central and Eastern
Europe. However, it has produced finally the deepening Core-Periphery Divide in the EU as a new redivide of Europe (ESF, 2012: 6). The global crisis has shaken the EU in general, but even more the new
member states, since they have still been without a meaningful social consolidation and political
participation. There has been a common understanding that the new member states have been mostly
hit by the several waves of global crisis, since its negative impact has been worst on the weaker member
states: The crisis disproportionately hit the peripheral countries of eastern and southern Europe
(Watt, 2012: 55). At a closer look, Within the European integration, the convergence models of old and
new cohesion countries have common characteristics - namely modernisation built on bringing in foreign
13

capital parallel to low levels of domestic savings and resulting external and/or internal indebtedness
they have made this region particularly vulnerable during the crisis. (Farkas, 2012: 67).15
The global crisis broke out in the post-accession period when the NMS countries were still
fighting with the EU adjustment crisis, since they have not reached the effective membership as being
able to withstand the competitive pressure within the EU. Thus, they had a minimal shock absorbing
capacity or resilience using the term of Dennis Meadows. And the European Convergence Machine
has not worked either (Gill and Raiser, 2011: 82). Thus, the global crisis has aggravated the ongoing
adjustment crisis in NMS, and the cruel stress test has evidenced their poor competitiveness as well as
their vulnerability to the radical changes within the EU and in the world system. The cumulated social
problems have become more and more the main obstacle both to the economic competitiveness and
the democratic performance. Hence For the countries of Central Europe and the Baltic states, the
principal challenge remains the growing pressure on living standards and economic stability stemming
from the global economic downturn. (FH, 2011b: 7).
The Democracy Index 2008 of The Economist already pointed out that this negative trend
appeared in NMS right after the start of global crisis: A common explanation for the emergence of
political difficulties in east central Europe is that the EU accession process had previously held together
these countries factious party political systems, as mainstream parties united behind the reforms that
were needed to gain EU membership. But once accession was achieved, and politics reverted to natural
antagonistic patterns, the underlying fragility of east-central European political systems was exposed.
There are a number of possible reasons for this fragility. Most important is that although democratic
forms are in place in the region, the substance of democracy including a political culture based on trust
and healthy levels of political participation is absent. This is manifested in low levels of political
participation beyond voting (and even turnout at elections is low in some countries) and very low levels
of public confidence in state institutions. A key underlying factor is that transition has resulted in a large
stratum of discontented voters, who feel that they have lost out during the transition, and who as a
result often favour parties that would challenge the status quo. (EIU, 2008: 9).16
Thus, the global crisis has demonstrated not only the economic, but also the political and social
weaknesses of NMS. The formal-legal democracy is only an empty shell with the shallowness of
democratic culture, since it has produced fragile democratic institutions and governments: Democracy
is more than the sum of its institutions. A democratic political culture is also crucial for its legitimacy,
smooth functioning and ultimately the sustainability of democracy. (EIU, 2008: 16). This is an acute
danger, since in fragile democracies if subjected to intense socio-economic stress, backsliding in
democracy is possible. (...) Serious recessions typically threaten democracy via increased social unrest.
(EIU, 2008: 13). The 2011 EIU Report has described the setbacks to democracy in NMS in depth, and it
has concluded that Democracy is also eroded across east-central Europe. This latest Report has
15
The assessment of the OECD Economic Survey on the impact of global crisis about Hungary (March
2012) is valid also for the other NMS countries. It has specified that The global economic slowdown and the
heightened financial market stress have pushed an already fragile and highly indebted economy towards recession.
But controversial domestic policies have also contributed to uncertainty (OECD, 2012e: 1).
16
The new Democratic Challenge in the global crisis has been formulated in the academic literature
from both political and policy sides as the Challenges to future democratization in democratic states (Denk and
Silander, 2012) and the Governance Matters in the global crisis (Kenny, 2010). Obviously, the NMS countries
are more vulnerable in both ways than the developed member states.

14

emphasized that the global crisis has reinforced a pre-existing mood of disappointment with the
experience and results of the 20 year transition (...) A number of post-crisis surveys and reports point to
a further decline in life satisfaction, support for markets and democracy and trust in institutions (...) it
seems to reflect the exhaustion of contemporary political systems and a general unfocused disillusion,
apathy and disengagement. (EIU, 2011: 20). The global crisis has caused the largest decline in its
average score in NMS inter-regionally in democracy terms (EIU, 2010: 22).
The social impact of global crisis has arrived in the following itinerary: In the first wave of the
crisis, the most heavily affected groups in our societies were the lower middle classes. (...) The second
phase of the crisis, however, is affecting the traditionally poor because government-led austerity
programs typically mean sharp reduction in social, educational, and healthcare schemes. (...) The third
negatively affected social group is young people who are fresh out of school and without a chance to get
a job. (Bajnai, 2012: 77-78). Whereas there was a growing contrast between the relative winners and
the relative losers in the first years of the EU membership, since both strata increased, in the global crisis
even the former relative winners have lost their advantages to a great extent. Altogether, in this stage all
former losers have been joined by a new generation of losers, who have been composed of both relative
and absolute losers. As to the relative losers, there has been erosion of middle class, reaching first the
less educated lower middle class, but later involving the more educated middle class layers as well.
Hence, the most marked sign of the recent social crisis is the decomposition and declassification of the
emerging middle classes. In sum, it looked like in the 2000s that there was some economic and political
consolidation, with some understanding and acceptance that the full social consolidation was still
missing. As a result of the long term destabilization and deconsolidation processes, however, in the
2010s it has become clear that the overall socio-political deconsolidation has prevailed, thus the long
expected consolidation has remained elusive.17
The social crisis in the third generation of losers has produced a widespread, but double faced
remobilization of people. On one side there has been a recent upsurge of social and national populisms.
The hard core of this anti-democratic and anti-EU social resistance may mostly be found among the
absolute losers in the younger generations. The absolute losers have reacted to the social exclusion with
anger and violence that has led to the decrease of law and order situation and to the several types of
hard euroscepticism in the extreme right populist movements. Nonetheless, the new political turn has
culminated in the populism from above by the NMS governments. Thus, after a long period of the
demobilization and partial remobilization, this new period of the large scale social and national populist
remobilization has proved to be even more damaging for the democratization in NMS that ever before.
However, on the other side, there has also been a democratic remobilization from among the strata of
middle class positions. Although many relative losers have fallen in a deep apathy, a large part of them
has become more active in the public life. The relative losers have a much bigger mobilization and
representation capacity than the absolute losers, so in the third period of the socio-political history the
civic organizations have reappeared as active players on the political scene, and democratic mass
movements have also been organized.
17
The latest Bertelsmann Report concludes on the NMS region that democratic consolidation remains
elusive (Bertelsmann, 2012b: 58-61).

15

Instead of a conclusion about the NMS decline

The twin phenomena of convergence and divergence between the EU and the NMS countries
have appeared in the global crisis from a new side, since in this period the clusters of socio-cultural
patterns in modern services have become decisive in the recent, extended meaning of competitiveness
that I will discuss it in the second part of this Report. The convergence and divergence between/among
the different domestic sectors in the NMS countries have also suffered from the split between the
external and internal Europeanization. In some policy fields belonging to the external Europeanization
the convergence can be noticed with the Core Europe, but in those policy fields that belong to the
member states competences, the divergence from the mainstream has increased. The bad news is that
those drivers that are responsible for the good competitiveness have been hardly created or have been
largely missing in NMS. The good news is that the new Europeanized social strata are on the move in
NMS and for them Europeanization and Democratization have been more closely interwoven than ever
before.
The NMS ruling political elites and their house experts have usually denied the simple fact that
after the financial and economic crisis their country has also reached the stage of the deep social crisis
and the open political crisis. Instead, they have mostly referred to the global crisis as a pretext by saying
that we are OK, we have done a good job, but just the world is in a bad crisis around us. The Siena
frescos of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the Allegory of Good Government and the Allegory of Bad Government with the Effects of Good/Bad Government on Town and Country have presented the chief actors of
Justice and Tyranny. These frescos as symbols have become very timely for the NMS because this
pictorial encyclopaedia is still a serious message from the 14th century to the 21st century about the
contrast between the well-governed and the ill-governed polities. It is a pity that the NMS elites have not
yet received, or they have not yet been able and ready to understand this very important message. Thus,
the second part of this Report starts with a motto from the Transparency International, since it has also
formulated my wishful thinking about the better government.18

18
The figures of the Peace-Fortitude-Prudence/Magnanimity-Temperance-Justice have been presented on
these frescos from one side and those of the Avarice-Pride-Vainglory/Cruelty-Treason-Fraud/Frenzy-DivisivenessWar from the other side. It is not so difficult to find the similarity between these symbolical figures of bad
governance and the recent negative political heroes in NMS.

16

2. Controversial developments in the democracy, liberty, governance and sustainability in NMS

(1990-2012)
Leaders must heed the demands for
better government.
(Transparency International, 2011 Report)
The Triple Crisis and the Democracy Debate
Parallel with the triple crisis in the NMS, three democracy debates have taken place in the
international political science. These debates are very helpful to understand the NMS developments,
since the redefinitions of democracy mirror the radical shift of attention from the narrow political to
the complex and broader social history of democratizations. The first democracy debate took place in
the nineties by describing the sharp regional differentiations in the democratization process in a rather
optimistic mood. The transition period supposedly leads to democratic consolidation in the pre-accession
states and brings about the homogenization of the new social system as a whole, while in the
controversial Eastern type of democratization only semi-democratic systems emerge. Thus, the main
divide was between the new democracies in the making, where the present stage was supposed to be
only transitory as in the NMS on one side and the special regional-local forms of half-democracies, where
the reverse wave produced new, semi-authoritarian regimes as in Eastern Europe (EE) on the other
(see gh, 1998a,b).19
The main focus in the first debate was still on the legal-formal institutionalization of democracy,
whereas in the second debate the focus shifted to a more complex analysis of democracies with many
social and political indicators. In the 2000s the evolutionary development in NMS was questioned step by
step in many fields. Democratic consolidation was obviously disturbed and delayed in NMS, so deficit
democracies of various kinds emerged versus the defect democracies in EE. The heterogeneity and
asyncronity of economic, social and political transformations served as the best conceptual framework in
NMS for the 2000s, while the hybridity of democracy and dictatorship as an analytical device was used to
explain the new situation in EE. The famous Dahrendorf paradox applies here that the three spheres of
polity, economy and society in the new democracies have not been transformed in parallel or
synchronous way, but they have been asynchronous transformations following, and even disturbing,
each other.20

19
This is the second, empirical part of the Report on NMS. Denk and Silander (2012: 26) have described
these three democracy debates as organized subsequently around three main themes of transition, consolidation
and quality of government. I have outlined these three debates accordingly, i.e. mentioning only the main themes
and key publications. During the three debates both the number of countries and the socio-political indicators have
been very much extended. See also the recurring crisis patterns (e.g. the analysis of crisis of democracy) from
the previous crisis wave in the seventies (Crozier et al, 1975).
20
There has recently been a very large literature on the stages of democracy debate, see first of all the
Nordic efforts on the list of References, e.g. Charron and Lapuente, 2009, Linde, 2009 and 2012, and Moeller and
Skaaning, 2010. Actually, these Nordic efforts have bridged the second and the third stage of debate.

17

Thus, after the quick political and economic systemic change the social systemic change was
delayed in the 1990s and it failed to meet the expectations by far in the 2000s. This failure generated a
widespread public discontent, and its repercussions undermined the support for democracy to a great
extent. Although the second generation theories still maintained the vital distinction between the
embedded or deficit democracies in NMS and the (semi-) authoritarian regimes or defect
democracies in EE (Merkel, 2004), nonetheless, the weakening of democracy in NMS was discussed
already in the larger context of the backsliding of the democracy in rather pessimistic mood
(Greskovits, 2007 and Rupnik, 2007). Actually, however, the real Visegrad malaise began in 2008-2009
with the sharp drop in the public opinion about the economic situation of their country.21
The third democracy debate since the late 2000s has gone parallel with the global crisis.
Although it was not provoked by the global crisis but its further development has been deeply influenced
by the crisis. In this debate the Quality of Democracy and/or Quality of Government (QoG) has come
to the fore. It has been in fact synonymous with Sustainable Democracy in the largest possible
conceptual framework of democracy theory. The global rankings of countries with the new headline
indicators have gone well beyond the region of new democracies. The third debate has embraced all
states, and it has been basically about the quality of democracy, indeed, with a high complexity of
several indicators and assessed by many international ranking institutions. Due to the protracted global
crisis this new approach has been combined with the evaluation of global competitiveness in the
individual member states by many EU agencies, including Eurostat.22
In this much larger conceptual and geographic framework the third debate has still expressed
the shared specific experiences of the NMS within the EU and at the same time this debate has
discovered their basic weaknesses. In this part of the Report the overview of the global indicator system
has been focused on the NMS-7, i.e. the different databases are presented from the side of the special
NMS profiles with a short reference only to their evolution and general significance. It is important to
note that the national political elites, as usual, have not been able and ready to face the realities. They
have tried to exaggerate the financial-economic impact of global crisis on their country and to bagatelle
its social and political consequences. The political elites have presented a historical-symbolical national
discourse that hovers about the reality, while their professionals have tended to elaborate a technocratic
view on the small and separate details of the crisis instead of facing the systematic overview of the
general crisis.23

21
The Budapest-based TRKI Institute, the partner in the OECD and WEF reports, has published the
results of public opinion surveys on the Visegrad Four malaise in the framework of CEORG, Central European
Opinion Research Group cooperation. Between 2009 and 2012 the percentage of those who considered the
countrys economic situation as good has been below ten per cent in CZ, SK and HU (in that order), and it has been
around twenty per cent in PL (see TRKI, 2012).
22
The EU has played a pioneering role in the change of paradigms. The European Development Days
on 16-17 October 2012 have focused on the topic of Supporting and Inclusive and Sustainable Growth. This
program has been organized in partnership with WB. The World Bank Managing Director Caroline Anstey has
contributed with a presentation titled as A More Effective World Partnership for a More Resilient World
(www.worldbank.org/eu). I will deal later at length with the emergence of the various indicators and with the
role of the EU agencies in this process.
23
Democratic Challenge has arrived at the EU and its member states, and there has been a debate how
to regain confidence in democracy in the EU, see e.g. the contribution of Council of Europe (Bauman, et al,
2012). In many countries mass demonstrations have protested against the modern-day capitalism and the

18

The democracy debate and the evolving democracy indicators

The three stages of democracy debate have shown marked progress with increasing
sophistication and complexity of databases. This trend has been the biggest growth industry in political
science and/or many other related social sciences. Obviously, it can be seen in economics as the
extension of the classical databases from economic growth to sustainable competitiveness, and in legal
studies from the constitutional law and basic human rights to the effective economic and social rights.
However, the biggest extension has lately come in sociology in the form of social indicators and in the
public opinion surveys as the social capital, life satisfaction, well-being and identity data. The real
revolution of measurement is the sustainability study, which is still a nascent research field but it has
turned upside down the entire system of databases focusing on GDP and the likes. From this
overwhelming abundance of richness of ranking institutions/agencies I concentrate on the most
important and most influential data collections.24
Reviewing shortly the history of democracy measurement, it is clear that in the seventies and
eighties there were already comparative data on Human Rights. In the late eighties World Bank and
OECD began to develop indicators on democracy and (good) governance. In the nineties there was
already a shift from the simplest socio-economic databases to the new socio-political complexity in the
Holy Trinity of Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (see Landman, 2003), and all the three profiles
have become much more sophisticated. By the late 2000s the tripartite system of Democracy Indicators
(DI), the Liberty Indicators (LI) and the Performance Indicators (PI) was ready. Nonetheless, even this
complex system has not been enough for a complete measurement of the globalized societies, thus in
the late 2000s a new paradigm came to the fore. Social and environmental sustainability has represented
the new paradigm also for the EU, with social progress and social cohesion. These latest databases offer
an opportunity for presenting the new Sustainability Indicators (SY).
Accordingly, I introduce the new triple databases to describe and to assess the NMS
developments: (1) for the Democracy Index (DI) the recently aggregated data of the Economist
Intelligence Unit (EIU), the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI); (2) for the Liberty Index (LI) the
renewed traditional data of the Freedom in the World (FIW) and the Nations in Transit (NIT) from
Freedom House in the contrast of formal-legal and effective human rights, and the Transparency
International complex, national integrity data; (3) for the Performance Index (PI) - focusing on
governance indicators - the World Bank and the OECD aggregate databases, in addition to Global
Competitiveness Index (WEF) and World Competitiveness Yearbook (IMD). Actually, all the three kinds of
austerity measures that necessitates the reconsidering the relationship between democracy and capitalism
(Stratulat and Dhret, 2012).
24
Since 1990 about 150 databases and country rankings have been created, even more than dozen of
them at the global level. The detailed description of the international ranking institutions would need a separate
analysis, see e.g. Berger-Schmidt (2000); and Landman (2003) with a very long list of references. For the
overview of the recent various data banks, see Democracy Barometer (2011) Data Sources and other indices, in
Democracy barometer at a glance, http://www.democracybarometer.org/links_en.html, see also its Concept,
http://www.democracybarometer.org/concept_en.html#Ken. Altogether, there are 6,545 public policy institutes
in 182 countries, out of them 1,485 in the EU. Most of them have dealt with governance related matters see
e.g. among them the Oxford Council on Good Governance (Think Tanks, 2012, http://thinktanks.fpri.org/oxfordcouncil-good-governance).

19

the ranking agencies have tried to produce a complex approach from their different angles. Beyond
these three profiles that has been developed into complexity, (4) the Sustainability Index (SY) has
entered in the latest stage. In a new effort the ranking/benchmarking institutions have tried to integrate
the sustainability to their complex systems. Actually, for NMS this recent stage the SY indicator with their
underlying philosophy is the most important measurement because these databases have been the most
characteristic in exploring the weaknesses of NMS in the protracted global crisis and in demonstrating
the growing gap between the developed old member states and the new member states in the SY
terms.25
In the 2000s the post-accession crisis as an EU accommodation crisis already demonstrated the
weaknesses of NMS that has become more evident due to the global crisis. The previous destabilization
and deconsolidation processes from the 2000s have been deepened and accelerated by the global crisis.
The NMS countries were already lagging behind in the former terms and demands of the democracy
theory. As a result of the global crisis, this situation has even worsened in the present stage when these
higher and more sophisticated demands of Quality of Democracy or Sustainable Democracy have come
to the fore. They have not been shaken only by the economic crisis, but even more by its social effects.
The period between 2008 and 2012 has been lost years even for the successful states (Poland and
Slovakia), since their economic development has been small compared normal years and on the other
fields the decline has been felt. But it has been a quasi recession period for the other NMS due to their
poor competitiveness. Altogether, this period has been a serious backsliding or general crisis for the
NMS-7, in different ways but eroding the perspectives for sustainable democracy in all countries of the
region.26
These three Headline Indicators democracy, human rights and governance - are indivisible and
interdependent. Any concept of democracy would be hollow - or an empty shell - without human
rights and governance, and vice versa. Yet, these concepts and their databases are somewhat diverging
and sometimes even conflicting. The conceptual clarity of these Headline Indicators has often been
questioned, in fact, they have been essentially contested concepts and they have generated
controversial narratives in academic and political circles. Their key components are rather different,
since they reflect the value systems of various traditions, mostly the diverging US and EU ideas in the
promotion of democracy across the world. There is a paradoxical situation because these international
ranking institutions have basically converging data but also differing sometimes conflicting
approaches that question to some extent the reliability of their data. Although these datasets as a

25

Beyond these chief actors, it is important to mention some others, e.g. the International IDEA,
Democracy Barometer, Polity Project (PP) and Heritage Foundation (IEF, Index of Economic Freedom) that have
been usually integrated into other databases, as the FIW have integrated the PP and IEF efforts.
26
The NMS-7 countries have performed in a rather different way, since they have followed very different
economic cycles in their economic catching up process. See the recent situation on the website of The Economist
(e.g. on Hungary, http://country.eiu.com/Hungary) Their special competitiveness problems have been discussed in
the Ambrosetti Foundation Report and the EBRD Reports, or the latest World Economic Outlook Database of IMF
(2012). The global crisis starting in 2008 - has differentiated their economic growth even more. The seven
countries form three groups. In 2012 HU is with 5 per cent below the 2007 level; BG, CZ, RO and SI are only with
2-3 per cent above the 2007 level; and PL and SK are above by 19.3 and 13.5 per cent respectively (Bruegel,
2012).

20

quantitative analysis are not always marked, deep and nuanced enough for providing a solid qualitative
analysis, altogether, they still mostly do it.27
The data provided by the international ranking agencies on the recent period give a good
foundation to assess the decline of democracy, liberty, governance and sustainability in the NMS region.
No doubt, these datasets are very helpful and reliable enough to outline the main changes in NMS and to
draw up the perspectives for the next years in the particular case of the NMS region.
1. Democracy Index DI
The Economist (EIU): Democracy in retreat or democracy deficit
The Democracy Index of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EUI) is the most recent database that
has been generated very markedly by the democracy under stress. EIU might be considered as a
reaction to both the sharpening global situation of democracy and to the weaknesses of the previous
efforts in evaluating the progress-regress of democracy worldwide. EIU was published first in The
Economists The World in 2007 measuring the state of democracy in December 2006. The second edition
covered the situation in 2008, the third in 2010 and the fourth in 2011. It has dealt with 167 countries in
the recent years presenting some kind of crisis studies of democracy.
EIU has evaluated the long term trends: There has been a decline in democracy across the
world in recent years. The decades-long global trend in democratisation has come to a halt in what Larry
Diamond (2008) called a democratic recession. The dominant pattern globally over the past five years
has been backsliding on previously attained progress in democratisation. The global financial crisis that
started in 2008 accentuated some existing negative trends in political development. (EIU, 2011: 2-3).
The terms of the democratic recession and the democracy under stress appeared first in 2008 (EIU, 2008:
8,12) with strong reference to the NMS. In the 2010 edition the terms were changed to the democracy in
retreat and the democracy in decline, with an even closer reference to the reversals in or erosion of
democracy and rising disenchantment in NMS (EIU, 2010: 1-2). The global backsliding in democracy has
been evident, and the turbulent year in 2011 has also generated the erosion of democracy in Europe
that has culminated in NMS: A political malaise in east-central Europe has led to disappointment and
questioning of the strength of the regions democratic transition. (...) Democracy is also being eroded
across east-central Europe. (EIU, 2011: 3, 20).
Discussing the topic of defining and measuring democracy, EIU noted in 2011 that There is no
consensus on how to measure democracy, definitions of democracy are contested and there is an
ongoing lively debate on the subject. The issue is not only of academic interest. (...) Although the terms
of freedom and democracy are often used interchangeably, the two are not synonymous. Democracy
can be seen as a set of practices and principles (...) there is a question of how far the definition may need
to be widened. (EIU, 2006: 1, and 2011: 27). EIU calls the generally used Freedom House approach a
27

The conceptual debates have been going on from the very beginning by all ranking institutions with
direct references to the other databases. The Landman Report (2003) prepared for the European Commission
has provided a very detailed analysis of these conceptual problems and the converging-diverging results of the
international ranking institutions.

21

thin concept because it has been based on the abstract human rights and procedural democracy. It
wants to elaborate a thick concept that includes also how substantive democracy is or its quality. It
emphasizes also that rule by majority is not necessarily democratic. In a democracy majority rule must
be combined with guarantees of individual human rights and the rights of minorities. This concept does
not include the levels of economic and social well being, since the dominant tradition is that a variety
of social and economic outcomes can be consistent with political democracy (EIU, 2011: 28-29).
Altogether, the EUI thick concept has revitalized the democracy measurement and it has been
particularly useful to assess the decline of democracy in NMS.28
EIU been built on the sixty indicators in five categories: (1) electoral process and pluralism, (2)
civil liberties, (3) the functioning of government, (4) political participation and (5) political culture. Using
the points between 10 and 1, it has classified (1) full democracies (8-10), (2) flawed democracies (6-7.9),
(3) hybrid regimes (4-5.9) and (4) authoritarian regimes (below 4). Based on these categories it can be
documented that first, the new member states under study have developed a democracy deficit, since
they have accomplished a rather good democratic transition in the terms of procedural democracy but
they have not yet completed this process in those of substantive democracy: Much of eastern Europe
illustrates the difference between formal and substantive democracy. The new EU members from the
region have pretty much equal levels of political freedoms and civil liberties as the old developed EU, but
lag significantly in political participation and political culture a reflection of widespread anomie and
weaknesses of democratic development. (EIU, 2006: 6-7 and repeatedly 2011: 20). In fact, the first two
above categories (1-2) belong to the formal-procedural, or legal-constitutional dimension of democracy
and the other three categories (3-5) to the social-substantial dimension, or to performance-policy
dimension.
The EUI data indicate that first of all, in the last decade the backsliding or decline of democracy
in NMS has taken place. While in 2006 two countries (CZ and SI) belonged to the full democracies and
the other five countries (BG, HU, PL, RO and SK) were flawed democracies, in 2010 and 2011 already only
CZ has remained full democracy, the three other countries BG, HU and SI have further declined even
within the flawed democracies (Table 1). Second, there has been a big contrast between the procedural
and substantive democracy, and the decline in the NMS has taken place mostly in the field of socialsubstantive or performance democracy that has also eroded procedural democracy to some extent
(Table 2). Third, the EIU figures have been able to point out the general decline in performance
democracy in the participation and political culture terms but they could not specify it convincingly in the
category of functioning of the government (Tables 3-4). Altogether, the EIU database has markedly
shown the decline of democracy, liberty and governance in NMS in the DI, LI and PI terms.
Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI): The challenge of complexity
The BTI of the Bertelsmann Foundation provides the most complex DI-LI-PI index among the
various databases, since it has elaborated the thickest concept of democracy. Previously the
28
The EIU indices have been very helpful pointing out the recent trend of decline of democracy with the
thick concept of substantive democracy. However, following the Anglo-Saxon tradition it does not move from the
DI-LI-PI complexity to the sustainability (SY) indicators.

22

measurement of democracy and good governance has mostly belonged to the separate databases with
different conceptual frameworks. This divergence originated basically from the political science as legalinstitutional approach and the economics as competitiveness and (economic) performance approach.
The conceptual innovation of BTI is that by embracing also the traditional field of human rights (LI), it
synthesises these two (DI and PI) approaches. It even goes beyond by integrating the social indicators
and sustainability factors (SY) as well, although some ranking agencies have recently provided a more
detailed picture on the SY dimension globally. In fact, BTI offers some kind of aggregate DILIPI+SY index,
thus it represents the whole complexity of the very recent database developments. In particular, the BTI
has been the deepest and more detailed assessment of the NMS decline in the last years. The EUI
database has demonstrated mostly the democracy deficit in NMS, the BTI complex data have provided
largely documented evidence also about the governance/performance deficit in NMS and it has opened
the way to the analysis of the sustainability deficit that will be discussed below at length.29
All in all, BTI has not only discovered the divergences between the procedural and substantive
democracy (like the EIU) but also those between the economic and political transformations, in both
ways or vice versa. In addition, it has contrasted them as the complex transformations with the
performance of that given country in general and with that of the government in particular. BTI has been
a very multifaceted report, consisting of two major parts, the Status Index (SI) and the Management
Index (MI). Both the SI and the MI indices are composed of several main indices. This sophisticated
system of indicators enables BTI to discover the gap between the SI and the MI indices as the difference
between the actual economic-political situation and the steering capability to manage these political and
economic transformations. Not only that the SI index offers differentiated approach through many
indicators, but also the MI index provides indicators on Steering Capability (SC), Resource Efficiency (RE),
Consensus-Building (CB), International Cooperation (IC), Management Performance (MP) and Level of
Difficulty (LD) that give a common score for Transformation Management (TM) as the overall MI index.30
Thus, BTI is a very complex system of the social status and the management performance,
ranking in 128 transformation countries. Since 2003 Bertelsmann Foundation has published BTI in
2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012. The Foundation has also produced in cooperation with the OECD the
Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI - 2009, 2011) following the new paradigm of sustainable
development. In both ways, in BTI and SGI, the Bertelsmann Foundation has taken a big step towards the
sustainability concept and its measurement. In addition, as a direct reaction to the global crisis, it has
provided an evaluation of global crisis effects in 14 countries (Managing the Crisis, 2010).31

29

In this Report, according to the EU standards, Slovenia has been indicated as SI. At the same time in
BTI one of the aggregate indicators is also abbreviated as SI. In order to avoid confusion, I will mention the SI
index.
30
SI index is an aggregate of Political Transformation (PT) and Economic Transformation (ET), in both
cases separating and documenting the formal-legal and the effective-substantial transformations. PT is built on the
Stateness (ST), Political Participation (PP), Rule of Law (RL), Stability of Democratic Institutions (SD) and Political
and Social Integration (PS). In the same way, ET consists of the Level of Socioeconomic Development (LS),
Organization of Market and Competition (OM), Currency and Price Stability (CP), Private Property (PP), Welfare
Regime (WR), Economic Performance (EP) and Sustainability (SY). MI on its part contains the factors of Steering
Capability (SC), Resource Efficiency (RE), Consensus Building (CB), International Cooperation (IC) and Level of
Difficulty (LD).
31
The rapid development in complexity and taking the first steps towards SY is very clear in BTI. 2003
was just a pilot year, and in the BTI 2012 many indices deal directly with the SY measurement, namely in the SI

23

In the case of the seven NMS BTI provides a nuanced picture about the decline of democracy and
good governance since 2003, even more in the scores than in the rankings. CZ and SI are the best
performers, in turn, BG and RO are the worst performers, while HU, PL and SK has developed average
reactions to the crisis (Tables 5-6). Not only the economic and political transformations have their own
itineraries (Tables 7-8) but also the several segments of political transformations with a large gap
between the rule of law and the social-political integration scores (Tables 9-11). The most important
finding is the gap between the status and the performance, between the SI and the MI indices, even at
the very beginning. Despite their higher level of socio-political development (SI index), the NMS
countries have performed worse in the MI index than the other transformation countries, including
those, which have been less developed with a lower SI index. This gap has been growing between the SI
and the MI indices, especially as to the crisis management in NMS (see the contrast in the Table 5). This
contrast in the 2012 rankings is very big also in the case of former best performers (CZ: 1-18, SI: 3-18),
since they have equally underperformed in the crisis management. The SI-MI twin index show that the
new best performers in the crisis are PL (6-13) and SK (7-12), while BG (17-20) and RO (19-23) have done
relatively well in crisis management, and HU (11-48) has been by far the worst case. The MI index
rankings in most NMS countries have declined between 2010 and 2012 due to their worsening
performance, e.g. BG (14-20), CZ (9-18), HU (20-48) and SK (8-12). SI has maintained its former low level
of crisis management (18-18), whereas RO (25-23) slightly and PL (19-13) significantly has improved its
position.
In general, for the NMS region as a whole, BTI gives the key the understanding why fragile
governments have emerged in NMS, since the issue congruence has usually been missing between the
electoral programs - promising miracles overnight in the elections - and the actual government policies.
The result is the thriving populism and the decreasing trust in political elites. This is the constant theme
of the last twenty years, while all NMS countries have been sitting on the roller-coaster with its ups
and downs. The NMS countries have been fighting with the same difficulties but because of the different
timing of their crisis cycles, thus the best performer of today in the region may become the worst
performer of tomorrow.32
2. Liberty (Human Rights) Index LI
Freedom House: the US approach to the promotion of human rights
The classical database of LI is the Freedom in the World (FIW) index as the best-known
measure of democracy elaborated by the Freedom House. FIW has been published by the Freedom
House since 1941 as the research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights.
Since 1973 the country reports and rankings of Freedom in the World have been edited in annual
political and social integration index, and in MI by the consensus-building indicator. Yet, it is a new field for the
Bertelsmann Foundation as well, to be further developed.
32
The NMS countries have gone through an uneven development concerning both the timing and the
sectors of their development. Some of them have better performed in particular policy fields, some others in
other fields, but their low PI and SY indicators are very painfully close and common. For instance, the new
tensions in Poland, see Arresting the slide?, The Economist, 17 October 2012.

24

reports. FIW has been focusing on the basic standards of human rights, and its central concept is
freedom, i.e. the freedom of the individual from any kind of state intervention. The main reference of
FIW is the process of human rights becoming international law. The Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR) is a declaration adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. In 1966 the General
Assembly completed the International Bill of Human Rights with the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in
1976 this Bill took on the force of international law. It is still important to note that despite this reference
to the Bill, FIW has only dealt with the civil, political and cultural rights and it has mostly neglected the
economic and social rights. In the special reports of FIW particular attention has been paid to the
freedom of the press. It has particular importance for NMS nowadays, since in the FIW database the
latest figures on the independent media indicate best the decline of democracy. The basic human rights
have become again vulnerable in NMS and in can also be observed in the worsening situation of the
judiciary, since both the independence of the media and that of the judiciary have been weakened in this
crisis period since the beginning in 2008-2009.33
Although this narrow concept of negative freedom has lately been heavily criticized, the FIW
data have still remained the most quoted resources not only on the freedom, but also on the
democracy in the world. Many analysts have found that the FIW data have a systemic bias to the
formal-legal rights, rather than to effective rights, i.e. emphasizing the abstract liberties rather than the
exercise of human rights. The Landman Report (2003: 14-23) has given an overall presentation of dual
character of the Freedom House databases and its evolution. It notes that far greater progress has been
made on developing indicators to measure civil and political rights than has been made on measuring
economic, social and cultural rights. This reflects the general tendency during the early human rights
monitoring to favour civil and political rights at the costs of economic, social and cultural rights. (2003:
20). All in all, this kind of measuring democracy is based on a conceptual stretching from the abstract
individual liberty to the effective political democracy (Gianonne, 2010: 68-69).34
Since 2002, as a reaction to the new wave of democratization after the collapse of the bipolar
world, the Freedom House has also edited the Nations in Transit (NIT) series on the post-communist
countries (new EU member states, West Balkan states and post-Soviet states). FIW distinguishes
between free (F), partly free (PF) and not free (NF) countries that was elaborated in the Cold War
situation, but this FIW status has not been sensitive enough in the post-Cold War situation. Namely, BG
was only partly free in 1990; RO non-free in 1990 and partially free in 1991-1995, in addition, SK was only
partially free in 1993 and in 1996-1997. This FIW classification does not give relevant information about
the actual complex process of democratization. In NIT there are consolidated democracies (1.00-2.99),
semi-consolidated democracies (3.00-3.99), and according to this system five NMS countries - CZ, HU, PL,
33
According to the NIT 2012 (Table 4) since 2009 the scores for the independent media have
decreased, they are worse or much worse than in 2003 in all NMS countries. The NIT Table 5 shows almost the
same for the judiciary, since usually there was an improvement until 2008-2009, but followed by a decline until
2012.
34
In the evaluations of Freedom House databases in general there has been a direct reference to the
US foreign policy priorities as well as to its narrow definition based on electoral democracy (mentioning also
other US-based projects like the Polity Project). The Heritage Foundation has published since 1995 the Index of
Economic Freedom based on the aggregation of ten economic factors, in close cooperation with the Freedom
House.

25

SI and SK - belong to the consolidated, and the two other NMS countries - BG and RO - to the semiconsolidated democracies, which is closer to the reality than the FIW approach. However, the whole
system of the FIW-NIT database is not sensitive enough to closely indicate the NMS controversial
developments.35
No doubt that the NIT has been combined with two innovations. First, splitting governance into
national governance and local governance, and second, differentiating between the political rights (PR)
and the civil liberties (CL) indicators. Accordingly, NIT has elaborated the scores on (1) electoral process,
(2) civil society, (3) independent media, (4) national democratic governance, (5) local democratic
governance, (6) judicial framework and independence and (7) corruption. Similarly, in the latest FIW
survey editions there are seven subcategories that compose the assessments of what constitute political
rights and civil liberties. The first three scores stand for PR and the second four scores for CL. These
subcategories, drawn from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, represent the fundamental
components of freedom, which in their wording include an individual's ability to (1) participate freely in
the political process; (2) vote freely in legitimate elections; (3) have representatives that are accountable
to them; (4) exercise freedoms of expression and belief; (5) be able to freely assemble and associate; (6)
have access to an established and equitable system of rule of law; (7) enjoy social and economic
freedoms, including equal access to economic opportunities and the right to hold private property.
Nevertheless, despite these modifications the FIW-NIT data have still been rather monotonous
and they do not reflect properly the changes within and among the NMS countries (Tables 13-16). There
are but two messages from the NIT data: first, the indicators are worst on the top (state) and they are
the best below (civic organizations), suggesting that national governments have underperformed, but
their civil society and/or local governments have been doing still better; second, on the top the best is
electoral process and the worst is corruption. The main strength of NIT is to document the weakness of
the independent media. I have opened up these Tables for more marked information by selecting the
first and second best, or the first and second worst dimensions. The basic information is that the best
and the worst is everywhere the electoral process and the corruption, while the second best dimensions
are the civil society and local governments, versus the second worst dimensions of the independent
media and national governments (Tables 17-19).
The FIW 2011 Report with the title The Authoritarian Challenge to Democracy) indicated that
democracy had some deterioration in the past five years, namely The indicators that have suffered the
most significant setbacks indicate a broad category called functioning of government (...) Another area of
special concern is freedom of expression (FIW, 2011b: 4). No doubt that the FIW-NIT data have
identified the global backsliding of democracy but they have been too general and too formalistic to
specify this pattern for the individual countries, or even for the regions. Thus, the recent global summary
has also remained at the level of overgeneralization: The continued pattern of global backsliding
35
There has been a long debate around the Anglo-Saxon, or American concept of liberal democracy,
which identifies democracy with the abstract individual freedom. This debate has reopened by the call of some
American analysts who have reacted to the recent global decline of democracy with the slogan more liberalism,
less democracy, since (participatory) democracy with its excesses allegedly has brought danger for liberalism.
In a smoother version these authors have returned to the slogan of classical liberalism: liberalism first,
democracy later. Christopher Hobson has discussed this issue at length and he has pointed out that this
reduced version of democracy is a blind alley, even if the challenges of global expansion of democracy have
produced many setbacks and reversals (Hobson, 2012: 451).

26

especially in such critical areas as press freedom, the rule of law, and the rights of civil society is a
sobering reminder that the institutions that anchor democratic governance cannot be achieved by
protests alone. (FIW, 2012a: 1).
Altogether, FIW has a global orientation and in its global efforts it is not deep and specific
enough for the NMS region, even in the NIT more detailed database. FIW was invented in the Cold War
situation and it is still much better for ranking and scoring partially free and non-free countries than the
specific developments of new democracies as free countries. Since 2002 the NIT general democracy
scores have changed (Table 12), but they still do not give proper nuanced information on the real
changes in democracy, including the decline of democracy in the last years, although they may provide
some information on special fields like the media. In 2012 FIW notes the global backsliding of
democracies more markedly than ever before and it observes also in the NMS the FIW-NIT data still
do not reflect and notify enough these deep negative changes. The 2012 NIT Report Fragile Frontier
notes that In addition to Hungary, five of the regions EU member states (..) have experienced net
declines over the past five years in the category of independent media. Other categories that have
featured erosion during this period are electoral process, civil society, and national democratic
governance. (NIT 2012: 1). The point is obviously that the FIW-NIT database is obsessed with the idea of
electoral democracy and the media freedom. These are very important issues, indeed, but the
complexity of the decline in NMS cannot be grasped by this thin conceptual framework.36
Transparency International: The V4 Integrity System Failure
The Berlin-based Transparency International (TI) has been the leading institute in analysing and
measuring corruption worldwide. TI introduced its Corruption Perception Index in 1993, and it has
published CPI since 1995 annually, monitoring the public sector corruption. TI has nowadays a worldwide
network with more than hundred offices (chapters) in the individual countries, and it has lately
developed CPI significantly. Nowadays CPI collects and compares data from a large area of activities,
including press freedom and efficiency of judiciary system. In the last analysis CPI gives a clear picture on
the performance of public sector as a whole because high corruption means low performance in the
entire political and societal framework. Among others, the correlation between corruption and
competitiveness is very close, indeed, but the corruption related total systemic failure is even more
endemic. In fact, the TI database with the strong theoretical framework behind is so robust and
comprehensive that it may also be taken for a Performance Index.
TI has lately focused on the growing corruption in NMS, especially in the Visegrad Four (V4)
countries, where corruption has become of the public sectors most serious disease. As the TI data
suggest, the EU membership has had so far no deep positive impact on the CPI of the NMS region. Quite
to the contrary, CPI has deteriorated in NMS, most probably due to the effects of global crisis (Table 21).
The increasing corruption has induced a vicious circle in which the competitiveness has declined and as a
36
Both 2012 Reports FIW and NIT have emphasized the decline of democracies worldwide, but
without specification for the individual countries and regions. Thus, there is a direct parallel in these Reports
between Hungary and Ukraine, without a deeper analysis of their special cases, just because they have been
illustrations for the big drop in scores. It has been mentioned in the 2012 FIW Report (p. 4) that the number of
electoral democracies has increased by two and stands at 117, which is rather meaningless information.

27

consequence, all other features of the quality of democracy have faded away, above all the social capital
or the trust in political institutions and political elites. The public outcry at corruption has recently
increased in NMS to that extent that it has provoked major political scandals and public demonstrations.
In general, the TI analyses and databases have been much deeper, detailed and relevant for NMS than
those of Freedom House. Actually, the recent motto of Transparency International from its 2011
Corruption Perception Index (CPI) Report is very relevant globally, but especially in the NMS region:
Leaders
must
heed
the
demands
for
better
government.
37
(http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/).
TI national offices - its chapters - have elaborated very comprehensive, detailed and reliable
national integrity studies. The latest overview on the Visegrad Four in July 2012 is particularly
important for the assessment of the internal crisis situation in NMS. It is very characteristic that the title
of the press release about the latest Visegrad Report emphasizes that the institutions failing to stop
corruption in Visegrad countries. The Report visualizes the national integrity system as a building that
relies on 13 pillars, representing various institutions and/or social spheres. The idea is to demonstrate
the contribution of these pillars to the stability of this building seen from the angle of the corruption
risks. The Visegrad Report based on the four country studies offers the V4 level summary, in such a
way the Report discusses both their common and particular features. There is a stress on the
commonalities, since also according to the Eurobarometer surveys 87 per cent of the V4 citizens consider
corruption as a major problem of their country. Basically, the Report underlines the similarities between
the Visegrad countries and treats them as a region by giving them common scores about the 13 pillars
(Table 22).38
The V4 Report underlines that there are serious problems behind both the regional scores and
the national scores. In this respect, the best case (Poland) and the worst case (Hungary) in the region are
but the opposite sides of the same coin in the V4 region. Therefore, at this closer look even the Polish
success case does not appear so nice. The corruption risks are highest in the business sector as the
press release summarizes: Business related corruption risks are especially high in Hungary and Poland
but they show different patterns. While in Hungary economic actors can capture the state, in Poland
state captures the business. Powerful Hungarian business groups are able to extract public money from
the system through intentionally designed and professionally managed corrupt networks. In Poland top
level public officials extort bribes from prosperous businesses. (V4 Report, 2012: 2).
The general result of the latest V4 survey is that the corruption risks have grown in these
countries with shortening pillars. The Ombudsman and the State Audit Office are the last resorts, the
strongest pillars in the disintegrating checks and balances system, whereas political parties, law
37
It is enough to mention for the recent big corruption scandals the cases of Gorilla (SK, January
2012), Kzgp (HU, April 2012), David Rath (CZ, Governor of Central Bohemia, May 2012) and Amber Gold (PL,
Summer 2012) scandals. TI analyses sometimes use FH data but their philosophy is the opposite, since TI has
been emphasizing the deep contrast between formal-legal regulations and effective legal rules.
38
The V4 Report points out that the concept and the term of Central Eastern Europe (CEE) or the
often used Central and Eastern Europe - has become meaningless, since the clustering the V4 against the other
regions is completely legitimate. Obviously, SI is part of this region without being part of V4 official
organization. The main argument of the Report is that the V4 democracy scores are closest to the West in the
East (V4 Report, 2012: 10). In the Table XXII Hungary is the worst case scenario with a range of 72-44 points,
compared to V4 average (74-47), in which the parties (43) and business (44) perform worst.

28

enforcement, public administration and business are hopelessly weak pillars as to the corruption risks.
The main message of the Report is the contrast between scores for legal frameworks and those for
practices. The prevalence of legal formalism, in which rules are implemented narrowly without much
consideration paid to the original intent of the legislation or to broader dimensions (societal, ethical)
considerably lowers overall scores in national integrity systems across the region. (V4 Report, 2012: 57).
All problems originate in the NMS region from the fact that the imported institutions in the
Democratization cum Europeanization process did not work properly even before the global crisis, and
the global crisis has triggered a backslide in the last 5 years. Thus, the anti-corruption policies have
turned out to be short-lived (V4 Report, 2012: 11-12).39
3. Performance Index - PI
The missing governance turn in NMS: the self-inflicted wounds
Governance is a broad concept that embraces all factors and dimensions through which societies
are governed. Governance is basically a performance issue that emerged from the contrast between the
procedural-formal institutional arrangements and their effective workings with proper socio-economic
and political outcomes. First of all, governance is a complex, both horizontal and vertical socio-political
system based on partnership and cooperation of various actors, since it goes beyond the narrow
understanding of government as a vertically organized polity. Originally, (good) governance as a leading
idea indicated that improving economic performance presupposes certain socio-political arrangements,
or by optimising these socio-political factors the economic performance can be increased. In the same
way, originally the move of improving the governance was conceptualized as an action of public
governance, but the governance concept was extended later to the private institutions as corporate
governance, too. Both above dimensions have been extended more and more, from improving economy
to all actions, and from improving public institutions to all actors. The developed countries reached this
governance turn in the nineties and good governance has become the mainstream conceptual
framework both in the actual policy developments and in the academic discussions (see Bevir, 2011 and
Levi-Faur, 2012).
Actually, it is rather difficult to distinguish the definition of good governance from its roots in the
three fields of democratic theory: democracy, human rights and rule of law. The usual definitions are
seemingly tautological by mentioning these criteria above or their special aspects as participation or
accountability and the likes. However, this long list in the definitions highlights the particular needs for
these aspects as consensus oriented, transparency or openness, political stability, regulatory quality,
control of corruption, etc. Namely it suggests the model of the more the better for good governance:
the more transparency the better governance, or the more control of corruption the better
governance, and so on. But finally, three aspects stand out which are very relevant for the good
governance. The first is the development pyramid in which according to the level of development in the
39
In fact, these corruption networks in NMS are semi-mafia-type organizations as shadow institutions and
mechanisms that necessitate further studies about the fusion of politics and business in the V4 region. The Report
indicates that all sins originate in the party financing, especially for electoral campaigns.

29

given country or region different aspects of governance are the most important factor: (1) at basic level
the lack of violence and the stability of political institutions, (2) at a more advanced level the anticorruption measures, the accountability and the responsivity of political institutions, and (3) at the
highest level the transparency-openness, the voice and participation of all societal actors and the policy
coherence with synergy. The second important issue for god governance is the effectiveness itself, as
overcoming the above mentioned contrast between the formal-legal arrangements and the actual socioeconomic outcomes. The third important issue can be grasped in the quality of democracy type of
indices suggesting better performance of democracy, human rights and rule of law by increasing the
consensus orientation and cooperation, indicating that equitable and inclusive democracies perform
better.40
The NMS countries are still before these governance turn, since it has only appeared there in the
thin academic discussions but not in the real political life. As I have pointed out above, in the NMS
countries politics defeats policy because the NMS governments have been held hostage by their short
term perspectives and by flying blind without policy perspectives and strategic visions. These selfinflicted wounds caused by the over-centralized states and their governments have produced low
performance in global crisis. Given the fact that the governance turn has not yet reached the NMS, thus
the governance measures as performance indicators (PI) are the best indices to discover their main
weaknesses or to describe their special lagging behind situation in the EU competitiveness. The missing
governance turn indicates that in NMS no turn has taken place in participation either, since the good
governance system presupposes both an effective democracy in the participatory terms and a wellworking democracy in the performance terms.
The main players in good governance: WB and OECD
The leading international financial agencies suggested the principle of good governance long
time ago as one of their basic conditionalities for the less developed countries. However, since the
nineties the idea of good governance has become the vital requirement for the developed countries as
well. WB and OECD have been the main players in this process of propagating good governance that has
also been taken by the EU. WB had first used the term of (good) governance in the respect of how
governance influenced economic performance. OECD has finally identified six principal elements of
good governance: (1) accountability, (2) transparency, (3) efficiency and effectiveness, (4)
responsiveness, (5) forward vision and (6) rule of law. After this initial phase, it has become clear that
good governance has been an even more complex process, in which e.g. public sector management has
also played an important role, or at the time of global crisis forward vision or strategic thinking has
proved to be a central piece in the OECD conceptual framework. In such a way good governance has
turned to be some kind of equivalent for the performance indicator as OECD has directly formulated it.
40

See the basic analyses of good governance as a summary of the academic literature in Bevir (2011)
and Levi-Faur (2012). All institutions rely on the Holy Trinity of Democracy, Human Rights and Rule of Law, but
from this complexity they focus on those special dimensions, which are important for their particular functions,
e.g. UNCTAD on promotion of democracy and development etc. In a recent Report on economic growth and
cohesion in the EU, Benedicta Marzinotto has emphasized the importance of the institutional environment
(2012: 17) in this respect and this is weak or missing in NMS as governance deficit.

30

Thus, the governance concept has become the most important driver for the global development and,
consequently, also for measuring the performance of the young NMS democracies.
Given their original orientation towards increasing economic performance, the mainstream data
bases have been created by the leading international economic-financial organizations, WB and OECD.
The pioneering role in the field of inventing, introducing and aggregating complex performance
databases belongs to WB and OECD, since the simple economic performance data in GDP terms has
turned out to be only one factor from among the wide spectrum of economic, social and political
performance data for WB and OECD. They took the initiative of aggregating the data from various fields
on competitiveness in the late eighties, so they have had a leading role not only in the improving of data
processing, but also in the extension of the data collection into the soft areas of social indicators. First
of all, they have introduced the governance issue and have elaborated it to the greatest details that have
been used by the other ranking agencies as well.
The World Governance Indicator (WGI) project of WB has evolved in several directions over the
past decades. The first round of indicators appeared in 1996 based on 13 data sources covering only 173
countries. WB began to publish WGI annual comparative data in 1996 as the Governance Matters project
combined with Country Data Reports. It has recently edited its database composed of the 35 separate
data sources covering 212 countries. The WGI from the WB is an aggregate, policy-relevant indicator,
exploring six dimensions of governance: (1) Voice and Accountability, (2) Political Stability and Absence
of Violence, (3) Government Effectiveness, (4) Regulatory Quality, (5) Rule of Law and (6) Control of
Corruption (Table 23). The other regular publication, the Doing Business is closest to the original,
narrower profile of WB, although it is still very much governance-related (Table 24).41
OECD since it foundation in 1961 has always developed a clear profile of integrating a great
number of databases but it has also been initiating new research profiles in governance, social and lately
sustainability indicators. In 1996 the OECDs Ministerial Meeting on Public Management viewed
governance as a central term, arguing that the governments had no monopoly on public authority and
resources, and they had to govern effectively in concert with other actors. Accordingly, OECD organized
its Public Governance Directorate (GOV) and adjusted its activities to the age of governance. Thus, a
decade ago it recast its Public Management (PUMA) Service and its GOV unit to meet the new trends.
The good governance has been a perennial OECD concern, but it has also included an intensive
treatment of the governments, extending the analysis of the effectiveness and efficiency to public sector
in all respects. The key issue has been building government capacities for strategic foresight and risk
management to mitigate future crisis and to adapt to changing conditions. In the day to day business of
governments the regulatory function is also very important, with its main instrument offered by OECD,
the Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA).
In 2008-2009 OECD embarked on a thoroughgoing reform, parallel with the other big
international agencies. Due to the global crisis, OED has re-examined its place among other institutions
of global governance. It has established the Centre for Cooperation with Non-Members in an intensive
contact with the G7/8 and G20 organizations. For its internal workings, it became more and more clear
41
WGI has usually been published in October each year. The former was published in October 2011
about 2010. The latest WGI Report about 2011 was published on 14 September 2012.

31

that there was an increasing gap between what official statistics said about economic performance and
how people perceive their own living conditions. Accordingly, OECD has made three basic changes: (1)
Economic resources program has discussed more the limits of GDP and has extended its investigations in
the Society at Glance and Growing Unequal? Reports; (2) Government at a Glance program aims to
measure how well governments function, with the Quality of Life program that has taken the lead in
developing data on many aspects of living conditions, including how good the quality of the environment
is (Key Environmental Indicators) to assist for better social policies; and (3) Sustainability program has
been very initiative in developing better measures for the key indicators of sustainability, including the
new stress on social capital that has also featured prominently in the past OECD work (the 2011 Report
on Well-being of Nations).42
First, the OECD elaborated the Social Indicators (SOIs) in the framework of the Directorate for
Employment, Labour and Social Affairs. OECD has published SOIs biannually since 2001, so there have
been 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2011 editions of Society at a Glance. The definition of Social
Indicator is that this index is the direct and valid statistical measure which monitors levels and changes
over time in a fundamental social concern. There are both objective and subjective social indicators
(SOIs). The objective SOIs represent social facts independently of personal evaluations like the GDP-GNI
data, unemployment rate etc. Subjective SOIs based on the individuals perception and evaluation of
social conditions as measured by the public opinion surveys. While the American approach uses primarily
the subjective SOIs, the European approach combines both, and so does OECD. It has applied the
combined approach that has been later taken by the EU as well. The 2011 OECD Report (Divided We
Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising) has emphasized that there has been a rapidly growing inequality in
the OECD countries due to the global crisis.43
Second, under the pressure of global crisis OECD has paid particular attention to the
governments, too. OECD has maintained the main idea that governments have no monopoly in
governing society and its governance model with a multi-actor approach has still dominated during the
global crisis. But in 2009 OECD realized that the governments had a special responsibility in crisis
management, therefore it has specified this good government role in a special report, Government at a
Glance requesting an Open and Responsive Government. This new project prepares special reports on
governments performance biannually. The first Report in 2009 concentrated on public finances and its
consolidation, the second Report - released in 2011 with country notes was already extended from
30 to 58 performance indicators. Government at a Glance Reports comprise three kinds of indicators:
core, periodic and special features. The core indicators reflect compliance with core public values, the
period indicators are more transitory, and finally, special indicators are topical at the given time.

42
These reforms steps have been connected with the beyond the GDP program in the Measuring and
Fostering Well-Being and Progress project, as I will return to it later, see endnote 33.
43
Actually, the SOIs are (1) General Context Indicators, (2) Self-sufficiency Indicators, (3) Equity
Indicators, (4) Health Indicators and (5) Social Cohesion Indicators, see also Wikiprogress, 2012. The gender
equity is an important part of the basic human rights. The Social Watch Gender Equity Index (GEI, Table 20)
has pointed out that in NMS the education (99-100) and economic activity (75-82) figures are high, but the
overall GEI is modest, it is between 72 and 76, because the empowerment is very low, it is only between 39 and
47. Social Watch is an international-global network of citizens organization representing the views from bottomup. It first General Assembly was in Rome (2000) and the latest in Manila (2011).

32

Finally, third, since its foundation in 1961 the main aim of OECD has been to design better
policies for better lives. This aim has been accomplished closest by creating the Better Life Initiative
with a very complex Better Life Index (BLI) based on 11 topics. Actually, OECD reacts to the widespread
demand for measuring the well-being of societies with the BLI. These key indicators cover both the
material living conditions (housing, income, jobs) and quality of life (community, education,
environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety and work-life balance). By this Initiative OECD
serves the function of collecting the most important data into one dataset, but it does not provide
ranking, most probable because of the high complexity of these topics and the difficulty of their
aggregation. Given the recent start, OECD has not yet offered a time scale either, but it will continue this
exercise, hence BLI will be continuously complemented by the indicators describing sustainability over
time.44
First, in the above order, the highest tensions in NMS can be discovered in plain social terms,
since they have been lagging behind the OECD average in social terms. The special reports on the five
Central European OECD members have specified this issue in the NMS concerned (OECD, 2012d-g). As it
has been mentioned in the first part of this Report, the NMS countries inherited a rather well developed
and well balanced social potential from the former regime. The OECD Social Report has collected the
data for the 17 main social indicators, and they have shown a decline. All in all, the NMS countries have
become less developed and much less balanced than before, and are much less developed than the
OECD average. The social indicators in NMS have reached in very few cases the level of developed OECD
member states (Table 25). The NMS countries have still been in higher deciles only in these inherited
fields of education and relative equality, and in the other fields their performance has been much lower
than the OECD average (Table 26).
Second, in the age of governance it is rather obvious that the six principal elements of good
governance: (1) accountability, (2) transparency, (3) efficiency and effectiveness, (4) responsiveness, (5)
forward vision and (6) rule of law have not yet been working in NMS. The accountability and rule of law
in their formal terms have been closest to the mark, whereas transparency and forward vision have been
the farthest from it, but serious problems have also come to the surface in the case of efficiencyeffectiveness and responsiveness. Namely, it is easy to prove for instance that this government function
of strategic planning has been painfully missing in NMS as it has been drastically demonstrated by the
global crisis. Similarly, although this regulatory function with RIA formally exists in NMS, but it has not
yet been turned into the effective practice. The five NMS OECD members governments get an
assessment accordingly (see OECD, 2012,d-h).45
Third, concerning the OECD design better policies for better lives or the recent Better Life
Initiative with a very complex Better Life Index (BLI) based on 11 topics from the material living
44
It seems so that the main turning point in OECD activities towards the SY paradigm was its 3rd World
Forum in Pusan (Korea) on 27-30 October 2009. I try to summarize this turning point very briefly, which has
been mentioned elsewhere in this paper as the new change of paradigm towards SY. The new program was
named also as Going for Progress or Measuring the Progress of Societies, which showed markedly the new
direction. On Measuring Progress and Well-Being see FES (2011a,b) and on Social Growth as a Model of a
Progressive Economic Policy FES (2012).
45
These country notes provide detailed data on the central government activities and efficiency of the
public sector. The country data in the databases have usually been presented in the form of Spider Charts as
well.

33

conditions to quality of life, it is better to discuss the issue of well-being later, since the BLI data are
partly taken from the OECD database, and partly from the other ranking institutions, more specialized in
these new fields. For sure, these data are very well indicative for the rather bad situation in NMS in
political participation, social capital and trust, and pro-social behaviour (Table 26). These are
consequences of the above discussed social situation and government performance, and they will be
even more visible by the overview of the databases of the institutions, where they have been taken from
by the OECD. Altogether, the OECD assessment is that the five NMS countries concerned have suffered
from the social, political and life-satisfaction problems. Therefore, in fact, the NMS countries are not yet
full or effective members of OECD.46
The competitiveness and the beyond the GDP program: WEF and IMD
The measuring and ranking the (economic) competitiveness of the individual countries has been
characteristically the main profile of special agencies, although they have also expanded their
measurement step by step to the political and social factors beyond the basic economic data. Among the
great number of ranking agencies, World Economic Forum (WEF) and International Institute of
Management Development (IMD) provide the most prestigious and most reliable databases worldwide
on the competitiveness in its largest possible meaning. As in the case of the other ranking institutions,
WEF and IMD has made a parallel exercise, namely they have tried to improve their own narrower
profile in competitiveness data on one side and they have extended their field of interest in data
collection to the neighbouring areas to reach more precise composite data on the other. In this effort,
actually, they have also elaborated the democracy and human rights profiles, so from this
performance or governance side they have also produced a complex DI,LI,PI - approach.
As an introduction to the competitiveness ranking business, the International Institute of
Management Development (IMD, Lausanne) has to be mentioned briefly. Since 1989 it has issued the
World Competitiveness Yearbook that covers the 59 most developed countries in 2012. This
measurement of competitiveness embraces the relatively developed states. Hence the NMS countries
occupy the places mostly in the lower third in the competitiveness ranking. Although IMD does not
provide large data publicly, it is still clear that the NMS countries produced a downward turn in 2009 as a
result of the global crisis. In addition, the NMS government efficiency scores tend to be lower in most
NMS cases than the overall scores, and this situation has been discussed by IMD as the government
efficiency gap. So these IMD data are good introduction to the competitiveness study in NMS (Table
27).47
This performance deficit turned to competitiveness deficit of NMS has been displayed much
more by the World Economic Forum database (WEF, Geneva-Davos). This Institute issued Growth
46
Czech Republic joined OECD in 1995, Hungary and Poland in 1996, Slovak Republic in 2000, and
Slovenia in 2010 Bulgaria and Romania are eager to join, they still stand in queue. OECD at present has 34
members.
47
This measurement of competitiveness has been based on the four factors of economic performance,
government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure, each consisting of five-five - altogether twenty subfactors with 246 criteria. Economic performance embraces employment and infrastructure health and environment,
and education. Government efficiency in IMD contains public finance, fiscal policy, institutional framework, business
legislation and societal framework.

34

Competitiveness Index between 2001 and 2004, and after a transition period, since 2007 it has published
every year the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI). Thus, Growth Competitiveness Index and Business
Competitiveness Index the macro and micro aspects of competitiveness - have been integrated into a
single index of GCI. By now it has expanded its coverage to 142 countries. Competitiveness has been
defined by WEF as the performance in the context of institutions and policies clustered in twelve pillars
and in three subsequent stages of development. Thus, the WEF database has been particularly rich in
various factors of governance.
Out of twelve pillars the institutions, public trust in politicians, health and primary education and
innovation stand out as particularly important for governance-performance in NMS. In detailed annual
WEF Reports the contrasts can be easily seen between/among a great number of the various
governance-related policy fields. First of all, although the GCI Table of WEF (Table 28) embraces 144
countries, the overall rankings of NMS states still converge with the IMD data. However, they show a
sharper downward turn in the NMS countries in their competitiveness due to the global crisis. This poor
competitiveness has been confirmed once again by the WEF study on the Lisbon Strategy performance in
the EU, which proves that the NMS are the worst performers in the EU27 (Table 29). The reasons for this
poor competitiveness or performance deficit are crystal clear: the new democratic institutions are
terribly weak, and the trust in political elites is even weaker, so both the objective and the subjective
preconditions for a good performance are missing in NMS (Table 30). The overall scores of
competitiveness in five NMS states out of seven are worse in 2012 than in 2009 (except for BG and PL),
and so are their general scores for health and primary education, i.e. even in BG and PL. The innovation
scores were much lower already in 2007 than the overall scores, and they worsened even more in the
following years, except only for BG because it has improved from the lowest level in the region. Thus, in
2012, these scores are the best reminders for the low competitiveness caused by the performance deficit
of NMS (Table 31).
The WEF efforts for the change of paradigms are also very remarkable. The emergence of the SY
indicators has been explained in the WEF Global Competitiveness Report (2011-2012): Given the
importance of countries longer term economic performance (...) the Forum has embarked on an effort
to integrate the concept of sustainability more fully and more explicitly into its competitiveness work.
Thus, aiming at the elaboration of Sustainable Competitiveness, WEF has begun to elaborate the
Sustainable Competitiveness Index (SCI) and it has shifted its focus from the GCI to the SCI. As a first
step, the 2011-2012 Report has devoted an entire chapter to the emergence and substance of the new
SY paradigm. This Report has offered a definition of sustainable development: Sustainable development
can be broadly defined as development that satisfies the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs (...) to meet societys economic, social and
environmental needs. WEF has structured the preparation for the SCI based reports instead of the GCI
based reports by introducing a definition of SCI and combining it with that of GCI:sustainable
competitiveness is defined as the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of

35

productivity of a country while ensuring the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
(2011-2012 WEF Report: 51,54).48
The significance of the change of paradigms can be seen here very markedly because even the
flagships of the old fleet, the leading economic competitiveness ranking institutions, WEF and IMD
have made the turn towards SY. This ongoing transition from the GCI to the SCI at WEF is at the same
time a good introduction to the deeper discussion of the SY measurement, since The literature on
sustainability and its measurement is vast and growing rapidly (2011-2012 WEF Report: 51), indeed.
4. Sustainability Development Index (SY)
The protracted global crisis and the breakthrough of the new paradigm
The new change of paradigms began in the late 2000s, but as the WEF case shows - the
beyond GDP to the sustainable development program has been completed only by 2012 both in the
international scholarship and in the big international institutions. It has been a marked shift from the big
simplicities of economic growth to the great complexities of Quality of Democracy (QD) or Sustainable
Democracy, Social Progress (SP) or Sustainable Societies, and altogether, to the Sustainability
Development Index (SY). The consolidation of democracy approach has been replaced by the sustainable
democracy approach, resilient to the tsunamis of political destabilization effects induced by the global
crisis. Sustainable social progress has been considered as the well-being of a cohesive society that
attempts to take into account also that of the future generations. Actually, the change of paradigms can
be summarized in the shift from welfare to well-being. Well-being as the new key term has three
separate, but very well interwoven aspects or layers. The first layer is the material welfare or economic
security itself that can be described with the GDP, as well as with the LI terms. The second is the
participatory democracy with its high performance or good governance that needs the DI and PI
measurement. The third is the social capital and trust, pro-social behaviour in a cohesive society, or the
general life satisfaction as happiness with a civic political culture, in the SY terms.
These subjective factors of political and social satisfaction, as the third layer, are in fact
objective, not only because they have been objectively measured and assessed, but also because they
have been and they will be more and more the decisive factors or the main drivers of the new
economic growth and sustainable social progress. This composite SY measurement has been generated
by the leading ranking/benchmarking agencies to synthesize their databases and to update them
permanently with the current developments. This effort has been basically prepared and supported by
WB and OECD, but the major turn has been accomplished by many other agencies and actors. Finally,
sustainable social progress has become the flagship of the new fleet in the EU for the EU2020 Strategy.
48
The Chapter 1.2 (The Long-Term View: Developing a Framework for Assessing Sustainable
Competitiveness) argues that GCI deals with the short-term factors and SCI with the long-term factors. In WEF
this is a process in the making, indeed, since it has just begun to re-assess all 12 pillars from this perspective.
WEF has produced a Table (The impact of sustainability on competitiveness) with country rankings but it could
not yet complete this process in all countries. As self-defence they argue that despite much work in the area of
sustainability, there is not yet a well-established body of literature on the link between productivity (which is at
the heart of competitiveness) and sustainability.

36

However, originally, the UNDP has been the icebreaker with its Human Development Index (HDI). It has
elaborated the basic indicators on the human and social development with the three key components of
longevity (life expectancy), knowledge (literacy) and decent living standards, i.e. these components
consisting of (1) average duration of life, (2) schooling and (3) standard of living in terms of GDP per
capita in PPP. UNDP has recorded these basic data since 1980, and since 1990 the Annual Reports have
been published, covering already 173 countries in 2011. The latest Report is still very informative
because it collects already all related data from similar databases beyond these basic indicators (Table
32).49
Indeed, there were many theoretical preparations for the new paradigm, but the breakthrough
has only taken place when the global crisis has turned from the economic crisis to a full-blown social
crisis and by this turn collecting the SY type databases on the human and social development has
become a growth industry. The long history of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (EU SDS) goes
back to the nineties, but the efforts to assess the human and social development took a systematized
form only at the Barcelona Summit in 2002 when both the European Commissions White Paper on
Governance and the EUs contribution to the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg were finalized. The adoption of a renewed SDS took place in 2006 as a single, coherent
strategy. In 2007 the European Commission together with the European Parliament, the OECD and Club
of Rome hosted the Beyond the GDP conference. In the following years these initiatives has been
turned into actions through the European Statistical System as well, which has established a group on
Measuring Progress, Well-being and Sustainable Development. In this spirit, the Eurostat published its
Report on Sustainable development in the EU in 2011, and the Sustainability Development Index (SDI)
has been regularly used by the EU in each member state.50
The usual evaluation of the NMS countries still puts the emphasis on the GDP per capita
economic growth in these countries that can only be a conservative estimate for the assessment of
their catching up process (Table 33) but it does not show the whole social process in the SY terms. The
same applies more or less to the employment rates, where only a slight improvement can be noticed in
the perspectives of two decades (Table 34). However, the European Union has also pioneered in
discovering the significance of Quality of Life as a soft dimension, and its agencies have been busy to
produce this new kind of databases. Eurofound published the European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) first
in 2003, then in 2007. Actually, it aggregates all other surveys and databases, since it looks at a wide
range of issues from employment and education to well-being and happiness in the 27 member states
and in some neighbour states. In the third Report, the EQLS has been extended even more, to 34
countries and to eleven issues, the results of which are to be published in late 2012. Thus, in such a
way, the EU through Eurofound and other agencies, including Eurostat, has built up a capacity to monitor
and measure Quality of Life in Europe. The further development of this database has become a
49
The WEF 2011-2012 Report (2011: 52) indicates the initiative role of HDI: most notably, in its
Human Development Report, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is increasingly integrating the
concepts of environmental sustainability and equity in its work on assessing the level of human development.
50
SY index has two main components: the social sustainability and environmental sustainability. As an
essential part of SDI, there have been two major efforts to elaborate environmental indices. The Environment
Sustainability Index (ESI) has been available since 2005, first published in Davos. The Environmental Performance
Index (EPI) with the full version covering already 149 countries in 2008 has been prepared by WEF. These
efforts have been supported and their outcomes have been used by the European Commission.

37

mainstream effort in the EU statistics. The Second EQLS Survey provided a large and detailed landscape
of the pre-crisis EU in 2007. The overview of results in the Survey indicates that Europeans are
generally satisfied and happy with life, although accepts that because of the big disparities the results
are much worse in the less developed members. Anyway, the former EQLS data already suggest that
NMS were the unhappiest members of the EU even already before the global crisis (Table 35). The
presently available EU databases demonstrate that the NMS populations see their economic situation as
extremely bad in both objective and subjective terms.51
So far EQLS has not yet produced a crisis measurement because this picture will only be
published later, although some other databases are at our disposal even now. The Eurobarometer (EB)
surveys Nos. 74-77 have covered the crisis period and they discovered the crisis perceptions in the EU27.
It can be seen from the latest figures that the NMS have been the most pessimistic member states and
they have suffered most in subjective terms as well. The public opinion surveys indicate the change
rather markedly from the V and W models of global crisis in the minds of the NMS citizens with the
pessimistic turn in 2009-2010. Most NMS citizens had been hopeful that the crisis reached its peak in
2009, but they realized in 2010-2011 that the worst in socio-economic terms was still ahead. The best
indicator in the public opinion surveys is asking about the perspectives for jobs, since unemployment is
the biggest problem in all member states, including NMS. The Eurobarometer surveys prove that the
perspectives for jobs for the NMS citizens seemed to be worse in 2012 than before. The general
evaluation of the actual economic situation worsened even more, since the large majority (80-90 per
cent) the NMS citizens considered that it was very bad (Table 36).
The sustainability development gap in NMS
Sustainability has won the day in the EU, except for the NMS countries. Although this issue has
become central in the EU thinking and planning, therefore many agencies have dealt with SY in their
databases, including the EU agencies, and it has turned to be the new lingua franca for the 21st century,
the NMS have still been more and more drifted away from this course and have been obsessed with the
old timer economic growth. It is true that the Polish EU Presidency has sponsored at the WB the
elaboration of a strategy for the EU, namely the Golden Growth Report that aims at restoring the
lustre of the European economic model but this Report has had no resonance or mobilizing effect in
NMS so far. Actually, the new complex, SY centred indicators Legatum Prosperity Index and Happy
Planet Index demonstrate that after the governance deficit a new deficit has developed in NMS that
may be properly called as sustainability development gap or simply SY gap. This new gap has emerged
because of the huge contrast between the classical-traditional and sustainability-based factors, and
consequently between their related rankings and scores in the NMS countries. As the new databases
show, there has been a sharp drop of the NMS rankings in the SY terms with very low sometimes
miserable scores behind.

51
See the deep analysis of the 2007 EQLS data with the aggregate tables in Theodoropoulou and
Fabian Zuleeg, 2009: 15,26-27.

38

Both the Legatum Prosperity Index (LPI) and the Happy Planet Index (HPI) are very complex,
sustainability based indicators that have also aggregated all data from the previous periods, at the same
time their databases have been completed by the most recent SY data. Their efforts have received
acknowledgement and endorsement from the other ranking organizations, and by the EU. The Legatum
Institute has published this wide range of data in an era of hyper-specialization that offers a unique
global assessment of the national prosperity based on both wealth and well-being (Table 37). It collects
and aggregates the relevant data from many other ranking agencies into the Legatum Prosperity Index
embracing the indicators of economic situation, entrepreneurship, governance, education, health, safety
and security, personal freedom and social capital. This complexity proves new and again that there is a
huge gap in the NMS countries between the economic capital in the narrowest meaning and the social
capital in its largest meaning. Thus, finally, there is no surprise that the NMS countries are among the
lowest in the country rankings as far as the Average Life Satisfaction (ALS) index is concerned (Tables 3841).52
The Happy Planet Index (HPI) on its part tries to be an innovative measure that shows the
ecological efficiency together with human well-being, i.e. it claims to be the first ever index to combine
environmental impact with well-being. The Introduction in the 2012 HPI Report has been written by
Angel Guria, the Secretary General of the OECD under the title New economy, new indicators,
welcoming the HPI initiatives: The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is a new measure of progress. It tells us how
well nations are doing in terms of supporting their inhabitants to live good lives now, while ensuring that
others can do the same in the future. It points the way towards sustainable well-being for all. Guria
refers to the UN Resolution (65/309 in 2011) concerning the emerging consensus around this new
economy based on the sustainable well-being. Not only the academic circles, but even the statistical
offices have reacted accordingly to this new economy by introducing the new type of SY indicators, with
the social sustainability and environmental sustainability combined. All in all, The HPI provides the
standard by which such society-wide solutions to todays challenges can be assessed. (2012 HPI Report:
4-5). Measured against this new standard, it is crystal clear that the NMS countries need a radical
reform, since in 2012 both in Happy Planet Index in general and in its ecological footprint index in
particular they are among the losers (Tables 42-43).53

52
On the Legatum Institute see the website, http://www.li.com/about/about-li. The Legatum Institute is a
London-based institution as an independent, non-partisan public policy organization. The Legatum Group was
formed in 2007 and published its annual reports in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. In the 2008 Report the economybased and environment-based indicators were still separated. The following reports have been standardized with
eight common indicators (except for the 2009 Report, which contained also a democracy indicator as the ninth
one).
53
On the Happy Planet Index (HPI) see the website, http://www.neweconomics.org/projects/happyplanet-index. HPI has been published in 2006, 2009 and 2012. The HPI reports have been produced by the New
Economics Foundation, an independent think tank in UK, active since 1986. I again refer its contact with OECD,
since I have not dealt separately with the BLI data of the OECD to avoid duplications.

39

3. Final Conclusions: More Europe at Home in the NMS region

Periculum in mora
(Danger in delay)
After Twenty Years a new start is needed in the democratization of NMS, and their fate is crucial
also for Europes future as a Cohesive Europe with sustainable society and democracy. The More
Europe at Home project for the NMS region is possible only by improving the quality of democracy
through re-inviting the public politics. Thus, the main issue is how to re-conquer the public for a
participatory, well performing and socially sustainable democracy.54
This recent period has demonstrated for the NMS region that divergence from the mainstream
EU developments has produced a decline in all respects of democracy, governance and sustainability,
thus finally it has led to a blind alley. The main lesson of these painful NMS developments is that history
does not move in straight lines, and the cycles of progress and decline may follow each other.
Obviously, due to the global crisis, the Reverse Wave in democratization has become the new global
trend with its setbacks in many countries accompanied by the controversial apologising narratives of
political elites and academic circles. The most marked case is the authoritarian backlash in the postsoviet democracies with their colour revolutions in the Eastern Neighbourhood of the EU that have
degenerated into the new types of semi-authoritarian systems or to the full smart authoritarianism.
However, the NMS have also shown serious decline in all the three stages of the democratization
process, culminating in the backsliding period since 2008 that has still remained the dominant trend in
the early 2010s. No doubt that although in a great number of policy fields significant progress has been
made in NMS, yet nowadays the setbacks have dominated. Nonetheless, there has been no alarm signal
so far in the NMS countries because of their increasing sustainability deficit.55
The new SY paradigm has still to be taken very seriously into consideration in order to see the
deep impact of global crisis on NMS in their catching up exercise. It has turned out that NMS have been
lagging behind not only in economic and political terms, but even more in the new, more sophisticated
SY or social progress terms, first of all in social capital and happiness, or in the well-being. Therefore, this
SY measurement is even more important for NMS than for the older member states, because it helps to
discover and analyze their controversial situation, namely the much bigger and ever increasing - gap
between their old timer socio-economic development and the new demands for the well-being type of
development with modern social services. The NMS have been unable to generate the proper extended
reproduction of their society with its various functions to reach the level of sustainability of social
progress. In fact, they have downgraded themselves in a vicious circle with a reduced reproduction of
society. Therefore, they have to launch a new Europeanization program, and in order to have More
54
The strategy of reculer pour mieux sauter (to draw back in order to make a better jump, or take a step
back so you can take a big jump forward) may be the only way out of the present deep socio-economic, political
and ideological crisis, since the draw back has been made and its drastic impact might have convinced the NMS
citizens that it is high time already for a big jump forward.
55
According to the international media, the decline of democracy may be the biggest in Hungary, but the
danger is high also in the other NMS countries. See the latest article of New Statesman (2012) on 1 October 2012
with the title Hungary is being held hostage by an outdated tyrant.

40

Europe at Home, they have to open up towards these new values and to design new scenarios for the
next years in order to overcome the triple crisis.56
Although in very different ways, but the turn from bad governance to the backsliding in
democratization to authoritarian tendencies has become visible in all NMS countries in the last years.
The warnings from both the professional and political circles have come with urgency, but the EU has
reacted very belatedly. The recent events of the Romanian imperfect democracy have unleashed a
new wave of warnings by the Romanian experts, as earlier from all NMS countries similar alarm signs
arrived permanently, first of all from and above Hungary. It is high time that after a long history of the
abuses of the European democratic practices and values the EU produces an adequate response. While
the EU has been extremely busy with the financial crisis management, these anti-democratic and anti-EU
tendencies have grown in the EU in general and in NMS in particular. Nowadays they represent a big
danger for the EU future because these practices have produced a contamination effect from one
country to another, thus they have to be stopped as soon as possible: Recurrent challenges to the EUs
freedoms (...) seem to have found fertile ground in the presently complex economic environment. (...)
these phenomena have been chipping away at the achievements and future of European integration (...)
The political dynamics within and across the Union should set alarm bells ringing for the EU. More must
be done at the European level to safeguard, monitor and enforce democratic standards and obligations
in the countries that enjoy membership of the club and its benefits. (Stratulat and Ivan, EPC, 2012:
2).57
The suggestions of this analysis are more than welcome on the EU reactions: The EU must be
more critical early on of challenges to its building blocks. As the guardian of Treaties, the European
Commission should react promptly to democratic violations in member states. And as the defender of
peoples rights and interests, the European Parliament should never let abuses of this kind taking place
in Romania or other member states go unnoticed and unaddressed. (...) The fact that problem persists
may indicate that the EU is failing to make use of full range of tools at its disposal, but also that the
available instruments might not be the most effective ones. To tackle existing undemocratic practices
and tendencies, the EU must promote a serious and broad-based discussion about the development of a
more systematic and pro-active approach to protecting its democratic construction. Finally, the
message in the closing sentence of the analysis may seem to be an exaggeration, nevertheless it is day by
day closer to the truth: Facing creeping shortcomings in the functioning of democracy in Europe is just
as important as resolving the euro/economic crisis. (Stratulat and Ivan, EPC, 2012: 2).
The long awaited reaction from the EU has come in the 2012 State of the Union speech: In
recent months we have seen threats to the legal and democratic fabric in some of our European states.
The European Parliament and the Commission were first to raise the alarm and played the decisive role
56
There have recently been many efforts in the Western Social Democracy to elaborate the program of
the Social Democratic Governance for a post-crisis period, see e.g. Diamond, 2012, or on governing Europe
Duff, 2012.
57
I rely in this presentation of democracy abuses and the contagion/contamination effects on the
analysis of Corina Stratulat and Paul Ivan: the Romanian tale is reminiscent of Hungary under Prime Minister
Viktor Orbn, whose behaviour has invoked similar concerns over respect of democratic rights and principles.
Moreover, The developments in Romania show that democratic achievements are not irreversible and that the
principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law on which
the Union is funded (see Article 6 TEU) are not immune to assaults. (EPC, 2012: 2)

41

in seeing these worrying developments brought into check. But these situations also revealed limits of
our institutional arrangements. We need a better developed set of instruments not just the alternative
between the soft power of political persuasion and the nuclear option of article 7 of the Treaty.
(Barroso, 2012: 7).
The future of Europe depends to a great extent on how the EU will defend democracy and will
stop the spreading undemocratic practices in the NMS region and elsewhere. At the same time, it
depends also on the efforts for a Cohesive Europe, since the divided Europe will be condemned to the
systemic riots, euroscepticism and anti-democratic responses. On the other side, the NMS region has
also to change definitely the course in the More Europe at Home project. After the failure of the topdown approach it is high time to discover the bottom-up approach as the social reorganization of the
public by the civil society movements and organized interests. Since the political and economic systemic
changes have been seriously damaged by the missing social consolidation, the NMS countries have to
restart the whole exercise by focusing on the social systemic change to reach the stage of sustainable
society and sustainable democracy. The social re-unification of the NMS countries has to be seen as a
two-sided process of the reintegration from both inside and outside, as an internal reintegration within
the NMS societies assisted by the external reintegration within the EU.58
As the old Roman proverb says danger in delay. It is so in both ways, the danger is imminent
for both the NMS region and for the entire EU27(28), if urgent and appropriate actions could not been
taken. Hopefully, however, from this creative crisis something better will emerge as in my introductory
motto Jean Monnet suggested.

58
Consequently, also the Core-Periphery Divide and the future of cohesion policy in the next financial
perspective (MFF) is decisive for the NMS region (see Marzinotto, 2012), but this vital issue already goes beyond
the topic of this Report.

42

Tables I-II on the Horizon Scanning

I.

The triple crisis in its triple dimension

Transformation crisis
1989-1997
Socio-economic
changes
Political-legal changes
Socio-cultural changes

Global
financialeconomic crisis
2008-(?)
Transformation
Insufficient
EU Poor
global
recession
integration
competitiveness
Socio-political
Weak
participatory Socio-political
exclusion
politics
destabilization
Return to Europe- Strong
cognitive Populism
and
European identity
dissonance on EU
euroscepticism

II.

Post-accession crisis
1998-2007

Controversial developments in NMS

Democratic transition
European context

Three pillar integration

Types of main deficit in

NMS
Stage and form of
Europeanization

Substantive
democracy deficit
Anticipatory
Europeanization

Early democratic
consolidation
New, unbalanced
EU integration
Performancegovernance deficit
Adaptive-specific
Europeanization

43

General
deconsolidation
European Renewal as
creative crisis
Sustainability
social
deficit
Core-Periphery
ReDivide

Tables 1-43 on the Democracy, Liberty, Governance and Sustainability Indicators

I.

Democracy Indicators (DI)

Table 1
EIU rankings and overall score on 1-10 scale (10-best) (167 countries)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

2006
49
18
38
46
50
27
41

2006
7.10
8.17
7.53
7.30
7.06
7.96
7.40

2008
52
19
40
45
50
30
44

2008
7.02
8.19
7.44
7.30
7.06
7.96
7.33

2010
51
16
43
48
56
32
38

2010
6.84
8.19
7.25
7.05
6.60
7.69
7.35

2011
52
16
49
45
59
30
38

2011
6.78
8.19
7.04
7.12
6.54
7.76
7.35

Table 2

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

EIU procedural scores on 1-10 scale (10-best)

(Electoral process and civil liberties: the first and fifth categories in the EIU Table)
2006
2006
2008
2008
2010
2010
2011
9.58
8.53
9.17
8.82
9.17
8.82
9.17
9.58
9.12
9.58
9.41
9.58
9.41
9.58
9.58
9.41
9.58
9.12
9.58
8.53
9.58
9.58
9.12
9.58
9.12
9.58
9.12
9.58
9.58
8.53
9.58
8.53
9.58
8.24
9.58
9.58
8.82
9.58
8.82
9.58
8.82
9.58
9.58
8.82
9.58
8.82
9.58
9.12
9.58

44

2011
8.53
9.41
8.24
9.12
8.24
8.82
9.12

Table 3

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

EIU substantive scores on 1-10 scale (10-best)

(Political participation political culture: the third and fourth categories in the EIU Table)
2006
2006
2008
2008
2010
2010
2011
2011
6.67
5.00
6.11
5.63
6.11
4.38
6.11
4.38
7.22
8.13
6.67
8.13
6.67
8.13
6.67
8.13
5.00
6.88
5.56
6.88
5.00
6.88
4.44
6.88
6.11
5.63
6.11
5.63
6.11
4.38
6.11
4.38
6.11
5.00
6.11
5.00
5.00
3.75
4.44
4.38
6.67
6.88
6.67
6.88
6.67
6.25
6.67
6.25
6.11
5.00
6.11
5.00
5.56
5.00
5.56
5.00

Table 4
EIU functioning of government on 1-10 scale (10-best)
(The second category in the EIU Table)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

2006
5.71
6.79
6.79
6.07
6.07
7.86
7.50

2008
5.36
7.14
6.07
6.07
6.07
7.86
7.14

2010
5.71
7.14
6.07
6.07
6.43
7.14
7.50

45

2011
5.71
7.14
6.07
6.43
6.07
7.50
7.50

Table 5
BTI 2003-2012 overall rankings in SI and MI (128 countries)
2006SM
2008SM
2010SM
2012P
2012E
2012M
BG
16-21
15-13
14-14
13
17
20
CZ
3-10
1-20
1-9
2
1
18
HU
5-15
5-18
8-20
17
11
48
PL
9-23
11-53
10-19
8
6
13
RO
19-24
17-22
16-25
14
19
23
SI
1-4
2-12
2-18
2
3
18
SK
6-6
7-5
6-8
10
7
12
In 2012 there are only separate indicators for SI, therefore the two figures indicate the rankings
for political (2012P) and economic (2012E) transformations, and 2012M stands for the MI rankings.
Table 6
BTI SI overall scores 2003-2012 (10-best)
2003
2006
2008
2010
2012
BG
7.7
7.98
8.44
8.36
8.65-7.93
CZ
9.6
9.23
9.56
9.65
9.65-9.57
HU
9.7
9.16
9.18
9.00
8.35-8.61
PL
9.4
8.90
8.76
8.86
9.20-8.89
RO
7.43
7.89
8.31
8.23
8.55-7.79
SI
9.6
9.45
9.49
9.52
9.65-9.25
SK
9.6
9.06
9.14
9.14
9.00-8.75
In 2012 there is no overall or aggregate BTI SI score, but two separate scores for political and
economic transformations.

46

Table 7

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

BTI SI political transformation scores 2003-2012 (10-best)

2003
2006
2008
2010
2012
4.0
8.45
8.70
8.75
8.65
5.0
9.45
9.55
9.80
9.65
5.0
9.40
935
9.25
8.35
5.0
9.20
8.80
9.00
9.20
4.0
8.20
8.55
8.50
8.55
5.0
9.55
9.70
9.75
9.65
5.0
9.20
9.20
9.35
9.00
Table 8

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

BTI SI economic transformation scores 2003-2012 (10-best)

2003
2006
2008
2010
2012
3.7
7.50
8.18
7.96
7.93
4.6
9.00
9.57
9.50
9.57
4.7
8.93
9.00
8.75
8.61
4.4
8.61
8.71
8.71
8.89
3.3
7.57
8.07
7.96
7.79
4.6
9.36
9.29
9.29
9.25
4.6
8.93
9.07
8.93
8.75
Table 9

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

BTI SI rule of law scores 2003-2012 (10-best)

2003
2006
2008
2010
2012
3.0
7.8
8.5
8.3
8.5
5.0
9.0
9.3
9.5
9.5
5.0
9.0
9.3
9.0
7.8
5.0
9.3
8.8
8.8
9.3
3.0
7.3
8.3
8.3
8.3
5.0
9.5
9.8
9.8
9.5
5.0
9.0
9.3
9.3
8.5

47

Table 10

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

BTI SI political and social integration scores 2003-2012 (10-best)

2003
2006
2008
2010
2012
4.0
7.0
7.3
7.5
7.3
5.0
8.8
9.0
9.5
9.3
5.0
8.5
8.5
8.8
7.8
5.0
7.8
7.5
7.8
8.0
4.0
7.0
7.3
7.3
7.5
5.0
9.0
9.3
9.5
9.3
5.0
7.5
7.8
8.3
8.3

Table 11
BTI - MI overall scores 2003-2012 (10-best)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

2003
6.4
6.7
6.7
6.6
5.7
7.0
7.4

2006
6.51
6.95
6.81
6.36
6.33
7.41
7.32

2008
6.73
6.62
6.67
5.27
6.49
6.83
7.20

48

2010
6.67
6.95
6.51
6.52
6.27
6.55
7.03

2012
6.56
6.57
5.47
6.79
6.35
6.57
6.80

II.

Liberty Indicators (LI)

Table 12
NIT Democracy Scores 2003-2012 (1-best)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

2003
3.38
2.33
1.96
1.75
3.63
1.79
2.08

2004
3.25
2.33
1.96
1.75
3.58
1.75
2.08

2005
3.18
2.29
1.96
2.00
3.39
1.68
2.00

2006
2.93
2.25
2.00
2.14
3.39
1.75
1.96

2007
2.89
2.25
2.14
2.36
3.29
1.82
2.14

2008
2.86
2.14
2.14
2.39
3.36
1.86
2.29

2009
3.04
2.18
2.29
2.25
3.36
1.93
2.46

2010
3.04
2.21
2.39
2.32
3.46
1.93
2.68

2011
3.07
2.18
2.61
2.21
3.43
1.93
2.54

2012
3.14
2.18
2.86
2.14
3.43
1.89
2.50

Table 13
FIW 1990-1997, PR and CL scores (1-best) (194 countries)
PR (political rights) CL (civil liberties)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

1990
3-4
2-2
2-2
2-2
6-5
2-3
2-2

1991
2-3
2-2
2-2
2-2
5-5
2-2
2-2

1992
2-3
2-2
2-2
2-2
4-4
1-2
2-2

1993
2-2
1-2
1-2
2-2
4-4
1-2
3-4

49

1994
2-2
1-2
1-2
2-2
4-3
1-2
2-3

1995
2-2
1-2
1-2
1-2
4-3
1-2
2-3

1996
2-3
1-2
1-2
1-2
2-3
1-2
2-4

1997
2-3
1-2
1-2
1-2
2-2
1-2
2-2

Table 14
FIW 1998-2003, and 2012 PR and CL scores (1-best) (194 countries)
PR (political rights) CL (civil liberties)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

1998
2-3
1-2
1-2
1-2
2-2
1-2
2-2

1999
2-3
1-2
1-2
1-2
2-2
1-2
1-2

2000
2-3
1-2
1-2
1-2
2-2
1-2
1-2

2001
2-3
1-2
1-2
1-2
2-2
1-2
1-2

2002
1-3
1-2
1-2
1-2
2-2
1-2
1-2

2003
1-2
1-2
1-2
1-2
2-2
1-1
1-2

2012
2-2
1-1
1-2
1-1
2-2
1-1
1-1

Table 15
From FIW 2003-2012: Aggregate Scores in Political Rights (0-40, 40-best)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

2003
36
37
37
37
32
38
36

2004
36
37
37
37
32
38
36

2005
36
37
37
38
28
38
37

2006
36
37
37
38
30
38
37

2007
36
38
37
38
32
38
37

50

2008
36
38
37
38
32
38
37

2009
35
38
37
38
34
38
37

2010
35
38
37
38
34
38
37

2011
35
38
37
38
34
38
37

2012
34
38
36
38
34
38
37

Table 16
From FIW 2003-2012: Aggregate Scores in Civil Liberties (0-60, 60-best)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

2003
50
47
52
51
46
54
47

2004
50
52
52
52
47
54
51

2005
51
56
55
54
44
53
53

2006
51
55
56
54
45
54
54

2007
50
57
55
53
49
53
54

2008
49
57
55
55
49
53
54

2009
47
57
55
55
49
53
54

2010
47
57
54
55
49
53
53

2011
47
57
53
55
49
53
54

Table 17
NIT democracy scores: best and worst dimensions in 2012 (1-best)
worst
Corruption 4.00
Corruption 3.25
Corruption 3.50
Corruption 3.25
Corruption 4.00
Corruption 2.25
Corruption 3.50

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

best
electoral process 2.00
electoral process 1.25
electoral process 2.25
electoral process 1.25
electoral process - 3.00
electoral process 1.50
electoral process 1.50

Table 18
NIT democracy scores: second worst dimensions (2012) (1-best)
BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI

Indmedia 3.75
Nationgov 2.75
Indmedia 3.50
Nationgov 2.50
Indmedia - 4.00
Indmedia 2.25
51

Nationgov 3.50
Indmedia 2.50
Nationgov 3.50
Judiciary 2.50
Nationgov, Judy 3.75
Nationgov 2.00

2012
47
57
52
55
49
53
55

SK

Indmedia 2.75
Nationgov, Judy 2.75
Indmedia - Independent media, Nationgov - National government, Judy - Judiciary
Table 19
NIT democracy scores: second best dimensions (2012) (1-best)
Civil society
2.50
1.75
2.00
1.50
2.50
2.00
1.75

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

Local government
3.00
1.75
2.50
1.75
3.00
1.50
2.50

Table 20
Social Watch Gender Equity Index (GEI) 2012 (100-best)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

Education
99
100
98
100
99
100
100

Ec. Activity
81
74
82
75
80
79
75

52

Empowerment
47
46
40
52
39
47
43

Overall GEI
76
73
73
76
72
75
73

Table 21

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

TI Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2004-2011 rankings and scores

The perceived level of public sector corruption in 183 countries, 10-best
2003
2004
2007
2008
2009
2010
54-3.9
54-4.1
64-4.1
72-3.6
71-3.8
73-3.6
54-3.9
51.4.2
41-5.2
45-5.2
52-4.9
53-4.6
40-4.8
42-4.8
39-5.3
47-5.1
46-5.1
50-4.7
64-3.6
67-3.5
61-4.2
58-4.6
49-5.0
41-5.3
83-2.8
87-2.9
69-3.7
70-3.8
71-3.8
69-3.7
29-5.9
31-6.0
27-6.6
26-6.7
27-6.6
27-6.4
59-3.7
57-4.0
49-4.9
52-5.0
50-4.5
58-4.3

Table 22
TI V4 National Integrity System scores in 2012 (100-best)
Pillars
Supreme Audit
Ombudsman
Electoral Management
Legislature
Judiciary
Media
Civil Society
Executive
Anti-Corruption Agencies
Political Parties
Law Enforcement
Public Administration
Business

Visegrad Four
74
74
67
63
61
60
59
59
57
56
55
51
47

Hungary
65
69
72
69
58
55
60
64
47
43
67
58
44

53

2011
86-3.3
57-4.4
54-4.6
41-5.5
75-3.6
35-5.9
66-4.4

III.

Performance Indicators (PI)

Table 23
Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) composite scores (1996-2011)
VA
PS
GE
RQ
RL
CC
BG
60-50
40-60
40-60
50-60
40-50
25-55
CZ
80-75
85-85
70-80
80-80
80-80
80-65
HU
80-75
80-70
80-70
75-80
75-70
75-75
PL
80-80
70-85
75-70
70-80
70-70
75-70
RO
60-60
60-50
35-50
55-70
55-50
50-50
SI
90-80
90-70
80-80
85-70
85-80
85-80
SK
65-75
75-80
70-75
70-85
60-70
70-65
Voice and Accountability (VA), Political Stability and Absence of Violence (PS), Government
Effectiveness (GE), Regulatory Quality (RQ), Rule of Law (RL), Control of Corruption (CC)

Table 24
WB Doing Business (2009-2012) rankings from 183 countries

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

2009
42
66
41
72
45
58
35

2010
44
74
47
72
55
53
42

2011
57
70
46
59
65
37
43

54

2012
59
64
51
62
72
37
48

Table 25
OECD Overview of the social situation in the late 2000s
Selected indicators out of 17 indicators, Red (R) - bottom two deciles, Yellow (Y) - six
intermediary deciles, Green (G) - top two deciles.
EQ1
EQ2
HE1
HE3
CO1 CO2
CO3
CO4
CO5
rankings
CZ
G
G
R
R
Y
R
Y
Y
R
6-9-2
HU Y
G
R
R
Y
R
R
Y
Y
9-7-1
PL
Y
Y
R
Y
Y
Y
Y
R
R
7-10-0
SI
G
Y
Y
Y
Y
R
Y
Y
Y
1-14-2
SK
G
G
R
R
Y
Y
R
R
Y
7-8-2
EQ1 Gini coefficient of income inequality, EQ2 Poverty rate, HE1 Life expectancy at birth,
HE3 Rate of positive experience, CO2 Corruption index, CO3 Pro-social behaviour, CO4 Voting
rates, CO5 Tolerance of diversity. The entire Table contains 17 indicators: the rankings show the
numbers of R-Y-G indicators.

Table 26
OECD Selected social indicators out of 17 in the late 2000s
EQ1
EQ2
EQ3
CO1
CO2
CO3
CO4
CO5
CZ
0.26
5.4
29
56
81
28
64
42
HU
0.27
6.4
73
47
82
22
64
44
PL
0.31
10.1
36
47
70
33
54
36
SI
0.24
7.6
19
53
75
41
63
53
SK
0.25
6.7
36
47
75
25
55
44
EQ1 Gini coefficient: the lower the better, EQ2 Percentage of people living with less than 50%
of median, EQ3 Percentage of people with income difficulties, CO1 Percentage of people having trust
in others, CO2 Corruption index (0-best), CO3 Pro-social behaviour index (100-best), CO4 Voting
rates in the most recent election (100-best), CO5 Community tolerance index of minorities (100-best)

55

Table 27
IMD World Competitiveness Scoreboard 2003-2012 (ranking 59 countries)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

2004
-43
42
41
54
45
40

2005
-36
37
57
55
52
40

2006
47
31
41
58
57
45
39

2007
41
32
35
44
34
40
52

2008
39
28
38
44
45
32
30

2009
38
29
45
44
54
32
33

2010
53
29
42
32
54
52
49

2011
53
30
47
34
50
51
48

2012
54
33
45
34
53
51
47

Table 28
World Economic Forum, Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) 2005-2012
(Rankings in 144 countries)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

2005
61
29
35
43
67
30
36

2006
72
29
41
48
68
33
37

2007
79
33
47
51
74
39
41

2008
76
33
62
53
68
42
46

56

2009
76
31
58
46
64
37
47

2010
71
36
52
39
67
45
60

2011
74
38
48
41
77
57
69

2012
62
39
60
41
78
56
71

Table 29
WEF The Lisbon Review 2010, Rankings and scores in EU27
(10-best)
EU Rank
27
15
21
24
26
14
19

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

Score
3.77
4.71
4.28
4.07
3.96
4.79
4.45

Overall rank
83
31
48
60
66
28
42

Table 30
WEF country overall rankings, institutions and public trust in politicians
(2008-2012, Rankings in 144 countries)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

2008
rank
76
33
62
53
68
42
46

2008
inst
111
72
64
88
89
49
73

2008
trust
112
117
94
113
106
47
115

2011
rank
74
38
48
41
77
57
69

2011
inst
110
84
73
52
99
55
101

57

2011
trust
95
134
130
76
119
96
132

2012
rank
62
39
60
41
78
56
71

2012
inst
108
82
80
55
116
58
104

2012
trust
85
139
128
90
133
116
136

Table 31
WEF overall scores with the scores in the innovation sub-index and in the health and primary
education pillar in 2007 and 2012 (6-best)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

Overall scores
3.96-4.27
4.74-4.51
4.52-4.30
4.28-4.46
4.02-4.07
4.64-4.34
4.55-4.14

Innovation
3.26-2.98
4.47-3.81
4.08-3.61
3.80-3.25
3.52-2.92
4.18-3.85
3.96-2.98

58

Health-Education
6.61-5.92
6.42-5.87
6.39-5.89
6.76-6.03
6.38-5.51
6.83-6.29
6.31-6.03

IV.

Sustainable Development Index (SY)

Table 32
Human Development Index (HDI) in 2011 Sustainability and Equity
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
BG
55
0.771
73.4
13.7
10.6
11.412
0.68
CZ
27
0.865
77.7
15.6
12.3
21.405
0.78
HU
38
0.816
74.4
15.3
11.1
16.581
0.73
PL
39
0.813
76.1
15.3
10.0
17.451
0.72
RO
50
0.781
74.0
14.9
10.4
11.046
0.68
SI
21
0.884
79.3
16.9
11.6
33.352
0.78
SK
35
0.834
75.4
14.9
11.6
19.998
0.75
HDI rank in 2011; 2. HDI score in 2011; 3. Life expectancy at birth (Longevity - First indicator); 4.
Expected years of schooling (Knowledge - Second indicator A); 5. Mean years of schooling (Knowledge Second indicator B); 6. GNI per capita in PPP US $ terms (Living standards Third indicator); 7.
Estimated score in 1985.

Table 33
Eurostat, GDP per capita in PPP EU27 1995-2011 (EU27=100)
(The catching up process between 1995 and 2011)

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK
EU15

1995
32
77
51
43
33
74
47
116

2004
35
78
63
51
34
87
57
113

2005
37
79
63
51
35
87
60
113

2006
38
80
63
52
38
88
63
112

2007
40
83
62
54
42
88
68
111

59

2008
44
81
64
56
47
91
73
111

2009
44
82
65
61
47
87
73
110

2010
44
80
65
63
47
85
73
110

2011
45
80
66
65
49
84
73
110

Table 34
Eurostat, Employment rate, age group 15-64, 2004-2011

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK
EU27

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

54.2
55.6
58.6
61.7
64.0
62.6
64.2
64.8
65.3
66.1
66.6
65.4
56.8
56.9
57.3
57.3
56.7
55.4
51.7
52.6
54.5
57.0
59.2
59.3
57.7
57.6
58.8
58.8
59.0
58.6
65.3
66.0
66.6
67.8
68.6
67.5
57.0
57.7
59.4
60.7
62.3
60.2
116
113
112
111
111
110
The data from 2011 relate to the age group 20-64

2010
59.7
65.0
55.4
59.3
58.8
66.2
58.8
110

2011
63.9
70.9
60.7
64.8
62.8
68.4
65.1
68.8

Table 35
European Quality of Life Surveys (EQLS) 2003 and 2007 rankings
Life satisfaction indicators in the Eurobarometer and EQLS (27 countries)
2003 EB
2003 EQLS
2007 EB
EQLS
BG
27
16
27
27
CZ
18
17
19
16
HU
23
22
26
25
PL
19
24
16
18
RO
20
25
22
26
SI
15
26
13
11
SK
24
27
18
20
The EB contains only subjective indicators, while EQLS also objective indicators, so this gives the
contrast between them. The EQLS 2011-2012 has not yet been published.

60

Table 36
Eurobarometer Nos. 73,74,75,77 (public opinion: good-bad)
JP2010
JP2011
JP2012
ES2012
BG
55-22
50-28
40-42
7-91
CZ
52-41
52-43
40-54
16-84
HU
54-36
49-44
39-54
6-93
PL
43-44
44-43
32-53
30-66
RO
29-48
42-44
42-42
8-90
SI
33-63
38-59
29-67
11-89
SK
55-38
59-35
45-49
13-85
JP2010 - Perspectives for jobs, JP2011 Perspectives for jobs, JP2012 Perspectives for jobs
(declined in 23 countries out of 27), ES2012 Assessment of economic situation

Table 37
Legatum Index 2008 (104 countries), overall rankings with separate rankings and scores for
Economic Competitiveness (EC, 9 indices) and Comparative Liveability (CL, 13 indices). The EC and CL
scores are aggregates and the scores of the individual indices may go to both positive and negative
directions.

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

overall
64
23
41
38
47
24
31

EC rank
48
16
33
37
31
23
22

EC score
0
12
6
3
6
8
9

61

CL rank
75
31
54
47
65
24
48

CL score
-6
4
-2
0
-5
8
0

Table 38
Legatum Index 2009, overall and special rankings (104 countries)
overall
EC
EO
GO
ED
HH
SA
PF
SC
BG
48
79
46
61
52
47
39
58
74
CZ
26
30
27
30
30
24
21
40
35
HU
36
62
42
33
33
31
27
53
77
PL
28
45
35
36
24
30
25
36
22
RO
58
84
51
67
49
54
42
60
103
SI
22
31
24
25
15
25
10
23
33
SK
32
52
31
39
26
26
33
38
45
Economy (EC), Entrepreneurship and Opportunity (EO), Governance (GO), Education (ED), Health
(HH), Safety and Security (SA), Personal Freedom (PF), Social Capital (SC)

Table 39
Legatum Index 2010, overall and special rankings (110 countries)

overall
EC
EO
GO
ED
HH
SA
PF
SC
BG
46
75
55
57
48
45
40
40
80
CZ
24
26
29
30
27
21
28
30
32
HU
34
48
42
33
31
28
26
50
55
PL
29
37
38
35
26
32
21
32
25
RO
51
67
50
65
43
53
43
49
94
SI
21
34
26
27
16
16
9
22
38
SK
37
47
36
39
32
29
32
63
40
Economy Fundamentals (EC), Entrepreneurship and Opportunity (EO), Governance (GO),
Education (ED), Health (HH), Safety and Security (SA), Personal Freedom (PF), Social Capital (SC)

62

Table 40
Legatum Index 2011, overall and special rankings (110 countries)
overall
EC
EO
GO
ED
HH
SA
PF
SC
BG
48
79
46
61
52
47
39
58
74
CZ
26
30
27
30
30
24
21
40
35
HU
36
62
42
33
33
31
27
53
77
PL
28
45
35
36
24
30
25
36
22
RO
58
84
51
67
49
54
42
60
103
SI
22
31
24
25
15
25
10
23
33
SK
32
52
31
39
26
26
33
38
45
Economy (EC), Entrepreneurship and Opportunity (EO), Governance (GO), Education (ED), Health
(HH), Safety and Security (SA), Personal Freedom (PF), Social Capital (SC)

Table 41
Legatum Prosperity Index, aggregate rakings in 2011 (110 countries)
LPI
ALS
GDP
GCI
HDI
EFI
CPI
VOH
BG
48/110
101/110
51/110
71/139
58/169
60/179
73/178
53/153
CZ
26/110
40/110
30/110
36/139
28/169
28/179
53/178
5/153
HU
36/110
83/110
35/110
52/139
36/169
51/179
50/178
20/153
PL
28/110
52/110
34/110
39/139
41/169
68/179
41/178
22/153
RO
58/110
77/110
53/110
67/139
50/169
63/179
69/178
40/153
SI
22/110
42/110
27/110
45/139
29/169
66/179
27/178
10/153
SK
32/110
45/110
32/110
60/139
31/169
37/169
59/178
23/153
Legatum Prosperity Index (LPI), Average Life Satisfaction Ranking (ALS), Per Capita GDP Ranking
(GDP), WEF Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), UN Human Development Index (HDI), Heritage
Economic Freedom Index (EFI), Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (CPI), Vision of
Humanity Global Peace Index (VOH)

63

Table 42
Happy Planet Index 2009 and 2012, rankings and indices (100-best)
(143 and 151 countries respectively)
2009
82
92
90
77
70
66
73

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

2009
42.0
38.3
38.9
42.8
43.9
44.5
43.5

2012
123
92
104
71
75
87
89

2012
34.1
39.4
37.4
42.6
42.2
40.2
40.1

Table 43
Happy Planet Index 2012 (151 countries) (100-best and 10-best)
The environmental sustainability as the big burden for the future

BG
CZ
HU
PL
RO
SI
SK

HPI1
123
92
104
71
75
87
89

HPI2
34.1
39.4
37.4
42.6
42.2
40.2
40.1

W-B1
4.2
6.2
4.7
5.8
4.9
6.1
6.1

W-B2
120
43
101
55
92
45
48

L-E1
73.4
77.7
74.4
76.1
74.0
79.3
75.6

L-E2
72
35
58
41
63
28
48

E-F1
3.6
5.3
3.6
3.9
2.8
5.2
4.7

E-F2
98
130
99
101
86
129
120

HPI1 Happy Planet Index, country ranking; HPI2 - Happy Planet Index, score; W-B1
Experienced well-being score; W-B1 Experienced well-being country ranking; L-E1 - Life expectancy in
years; L-E2 - Life expectancy, country ranking; E-F1 - Ecological footprint, score; E-F2 - Ecological
footprint, country ranking

64

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