Political elite, civil society, and type of capitalism: Estonia and Slovenia

East European Quarterly, March, 2008 by Frane Adam, Matevz Tomsic, Primoz Kristan

Notwithstanding the quite frequent change of governments, it is obvious that Estonian politics is dominated by a conservative-liberal world-views. (Vogt 2003). This relates to the configuration of elites which has experienced the considerable circulation of key positions. As previously mentioned, this circulation was not very "deep," meaning that (mostly the younger) people recruited to elite positions have not been complete newcomers since they occupied positions of some importance even at the end of the communist period (Steen 1997; Steen/Ruus 2002). (8) However, this influenced the ideological composition of the political sphere and society at large since the vast majority of them embraced a neo-liberal ideology.

Although Estonia has had, at least in the first years of its independence, considerable continuity in terms of the communist pedigree of the political elite, this has not had an impact on the rightist or neo-liberal character of the political space. (9) In fact, even political parties belonging to the left side of the Estonian political spectrum are clearly pro-market, so much so that in many countries they might qualify as steadfast right-wingers (Vogt 2003: 83). (10) A change in ideological affiliation also occurred with some top functionaries of the former regime. A typical example is Arnold Ruutel, the former president of the republic, who was the last president of the Supreme Soviet of Estonia but later became a leading figure of one new political party (the Estonian People's Union) that claims to represent nationalist-conservative values. Evidently, a position in the former regime's power structure did not determine ideological preferences in the post-communist situation as happened in some other countries such as Slovenia.

Left-wing and right-wing hegemony

One could say that both Slovenia and Estonia have for most of the post-communist period been characterized by politico-ideological hegemony. What differs is the content and bearer of this hegemony. While in Slovenia it was carried by the "leftist-liberal" camp (Adam/Tomsic 2002) and oriented toward a so-called "gradualism" (Rojec et al, 2004), in Estonia it was led by the conservative-liberal camp and directed at radical change in the sense of the liberalization of society (Lagerspetz 2001; Lagerspetz/Vogt 2004). Hegemony in Slovenia was maintained in conditions of a bipolar structure of the political space, even though the electoral support for both camps was often quite in balance, mainly through informal elite networks. Hegemony in Estonia was, despite the absence of a dominant political entity and the relative fragmentation of the political space, maintained through the wide value and policy consensus of the main political actors.

It appears that the presence of an "external threat" in the form of Russia as a strong neighbour and former oppressor as well as the large Russophone population acted as a homogenizer of Estonian elites on the basis of a national and neo-liberal ideological platform. In the case of Slovenia, the absence of such a strong ongoing threat--despite the fact that its former Yugoslav neighbours were at war--prevented such homogenization. Instead, the so-called "soft transition" with the important role of the "old" elite which managed to stay in many key positions in society combined with a tradition of strong ideological polarization maintained the state of a bipolar constellation and the domination of one political bloc until the last election in 2004.