Epress.am News from Armenia
In many ways, Armenia was much more outward looking and had the support of the Diaspora as a bridge to the Western world, as a conduit of ideas and practices of democracy and the market economy, and connections to the export markets and technologies of the West. But it didn’t work […] and I think that at a very high level the biggest issue is that in the transition economies where the former communist elites were totally cast aside, the transition worked much better. And in places like Russia, Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan, where the communist elites control the process, thing work really badly. In Armenia, unfortunately, we are much closer to the second type of transition. So I think that what could have been is that Armenia could have looked much more like the Czech Republic or Estonia, and what we got instead is a country that looks much more like Azerbaijan, or Uzbekistan, which is a real shame, Daron Acemoglu, world renowned economist and author of Why Nations Fail, said during his Skype talk at a conference – entitled “END OF TRANSITION: Armenia 25 Years On. Now What?” – hosted by the University of Southern California Institute of Armenian Studies in Los Angeles on April 9, Civilnet reports.
“What makes it even more depressing is that in some sense even in some of the worst transitions, like Kazakhstan, things have been getting better. Today Kazakhstan is very far from being a democratic country but there are at least some movements towards strengthening institutions, whereas in Armenia, I think, the beginning was stronger and it’s been getting worse and worse, and I have really come very close to losing all hope for Armenia in the last few years, because the degree of corruption, the degree of political control of politicians that are really set on sort of closing the system rather than on opening the system has been quite systematic, and civil society organizations, which were very active early on and in the middle, have I think become tried because the opposition against them from the state has been so strong,” Acemoglu said.
According to the economist, there have been many unsuccessful governments in Armenia, but for a variety of reasons – partly patronage, partly not enough civil society opposition to it – those governments have not been systemically voted out; the future therefore can only be brighter in Armenia if the democratic process works better; ““Of course, Armenia did not have the European Union to act as an anchor, to act as a model; it was supposed to have the Diaspora, but I think the effect of the Diaspora has been mixed in that, first of all, Diaspora has been a source of easy money for Armenia, and easy money is really what breeds the worst kind of corruption in a weak institutional environment as Armenia.”
The war and the increasing tensions with Azerbaijan, Acemoglu continued, haven’t helped the political process either; “But there are no two ways about it: we have to build on the same strengths that are crucial for the emergence of democracy everywhere – civil society, freedom of press, organizations ranging from student organizations to trade unions to professional business organizations, and political parties that are free and are not just conceived as patronage machines. […] When you are locked into an existential struggle against Azerbaijan, it’s much easier for politicians and perhaps part of the public to bring out the more nationalistic and the more hostile traditions in the past rather than the ones that are more about openness and forward-looking aspects of the country. We have seen throughout the Middle East and throughout the Central Asia how destructive, how dangerous the nationalist, war-based, aggressive rhetoric can be, and I think there is no reason for Armenia to succumb to that.”