The Impact of Nationalism

Journal of Democracy, Volume 12, Number 4, October 2001, pp. 27-34 (Article) Observers who comment on the slide toward de-democratization across much of what used to be the USSR often neglect another development that is just as interesting: Why is it, just ten years after all of them were born from the same Soviet institutional womb, that these 15 countries have become so different from one another? Take Estonia and Turkmenistan. The former is a consolidated democracy with a liberal market economy. It belongs, or will soon belong, to all the best international clubs: NATO, the World Trade Organization, the Council of Europe, the European Union, and so on. The latter is run by a dictatorial (though not very ideological) strongman, and in some respects may be even farther from democracy than it was at the end of the Brezhnev era.