Tentativi rivoluzionari nell’area post-sovietica: l’importanza delle variabili strategiche e del fattore internazionale

Thanks to his famous article published in Comparative Politics and entitled The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship (2002), Michael McFaul has been the first scholar who investigated the importance of the strategic variables in the processes of democratization of the post-communist space. Through his analysis related to the dynamics of transition in the post-communist and post-soviet world, he demonstrated that it is possible to reconcile comparative and area studies. Furthermore, without repudiating the so-called third wave analysts’ assumptions, he proposed a specifically post-soviet model of democratization. By doing so, he went beyond the classical agency vs. structure dichotomy and suggested a “third way”: the strategical approach, which had already been inaugurated by Reuschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens at the beginning of the 1990s. In recent years, this new method of study has found new areas of application, always wider and more fertile, particularly in relation to those countries affected by revolutionary movements, as in the case of the Color Revolutions (Way, 2008) and the Arab Springs (Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds, 2013). Starting from the revolutionary events occurred between 2003 and 2008 in the post-soviet area, the analysis focuses on the following features: 1. On the influence of the strategical variables in relation to the popular uprisings in six post-Soviet countries (Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus). 2. On the failure to strengthen the legitimacy based on procedure or on performance (Huntington, 1991), even where a significant government elite turnover occurred. 3. On the importance of the international factor, that influenced, directly or indirectly, the internal political dynamics, by generating new cleavages – carefully exploited and magnified by elites and counter-elites – within each political systems.

Grazie al suo famoso articolo pubblicato su Comparative Politics e intitolato "The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship" (2002), Michael McFaul è stato il primo studioso che ha studiato l'importanza delle variabili strategiche nei processi di democratizzazione dello spazio post-comunista. Attraverso la sua analisi legata alle dinamiche di transizione nel mondo post-comunista e post-sovietico ha dimostrato che è possibile conciliare studi comparativi e di area. Inoltre, senza ripudiare le cosiddette ipotesi degli analisti della terza ondata, ha proposto un modello di democratizzazione specificamente post-sovietico. Facendo così, è andato oltre la classica dicotomia tra agency e struttura e ha suggerito una "terza via": l'approccio strategico, che era già stato inaugurato da Reuschemeyer, Stephens e Stephens all'inizio degli anni '90.