WEBINAR 6: EUROPE (OVERVIEW) - Deceptive Democratisation: The Cracks in the Foundation of Democracy in Latvia and Lithuania

Beatrice MONCIUNSKAITE

20 November 2020

How successful has democratisation been in Lithuania and Latvia three decades on from their declaration of independence from the Soviet Union? Although these countries have been praised for taking to democracy particularly well after Soviet collapse, clues of an incomplete transition to democracy have begun to show. Although Lithuania and Latvia have not been under the global spotlight for dismantling liberal democracy to the extent that Poland and Hungary have, can we be confident that this will continue? Both Lithuania and Latvia have a similar historical background to Poland and Hungary including being former communist states and being part of the 2004 European Union (EU) enlargement. However, there has been sparse research conducted on the health of democracy in Lithuania and Latvia.

This blog post will aim to identify several factors that threaten the democratic stability of both Lithuania and Latvia. Structural deficiencies in each country’s democratic system push them towards potential democratic backsliding by leaving institutional structures weak to populist power-grabs. With so many established democracies in the world succumbing to anti-system reforms, is the democratic future in Lithuania and Latvia as bright as many anticipate?

Structural Democratic Deficiencies in Lithuania and Latvia

The journey towards adopting liberal constitutional democracy in Lithuania and Latvia was motivated by the prospect of ‘re-joining’ Europe and rejecting the painful legacy of Soviet occupation. Importantly, acceding to the EU was also hoped to bring Western-style economic prosperity. The EU however, set out strict standards for accession in the Copenhagen Criteria that were intended to put new member states in line with the political ideology and economic infrastructure of existing member states. The transformation from socialist states to liberal constitutional democracies was a painstaking process which demanded many sacrifices domestically. Lithuania and Latvia along with other Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries like the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Poland, managed to become members of the EU in 2004.

However, there are concerns that the rush to transform into a democracy led to some weaknesses in democratic infrastructures not being properly addressed. These issues have now started to rise to the surface as made evident by the exponential growth of Euroscepticism, populism and anti-system sentiments in the CEE region in the past decade. These developments are worrying as they threaten the fundamental values of democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights that the EU is built upon. Because older and well-established democracies built their democratic institutions from the ground up and through hundreds of years of trial and error, they are experienced and resilient to anti-system politics.

As Bojan Bugarič identifies, CEE countries are fragile due to their inexperience. The haste to enter the EU led to the implementation of the Copenhagen criteria in substance but not in spirit. This has resulted in frail national democratic infrastructures such as weak judiciaries, disillusioned civil society, and ineffective anti-corruption agencies. As a result, young democracies of the CEE region such as Latvia and Lithuania are left open to power-grabs. As we have learned from the experiences of Hungary and Poland, it only takes one determined authoritarian populist to reverse years of democratic progress.

Systemic Corruption and Ineffective Anti-Corruption Agencies

Dealing with pervasive corruption in both Lithuania and Latvia proved to be one of the most stubborn obstacles to EU accession. Despite significant progress, corruption remains a sprawling problem in both countries. Transparency International, a leading non-profit organisation that monitors corruption globally, has reported either worsening or relatively unchanging scores for both Lithuania and Latvia over the past five years. Although both countries made some critical strides to combat corruption during their accession efforts, this progress seemed to stagnate as soon as EU membership was achieved.

Although sophisticated anti-corruption laws and institutions were established in these countries, there was a resounding lack of enthusiasm on the part of governments to use them effectively. Therefore, it is no surprise that both Lithuania and Latvia suffer from extensive administrative and political corruption. Both countries have been rocked by high profile political scandals involving bribery of politicians and judges and general government ineffectiveness in fighting corruption.

Lithuania was shaken by one of the biggest political corruption scandals in the nation’s history in 2016. In spring of that year, the then party leader of the Liberal Movement (Lietuvos Respublikos Liberalų Sąjūdis; LRLS), Eligijus Masiulis, was caught up in a bribery scandal. A suspected bribe of €106,000 was found in his car which was allegedly given to him by the vice-president of MG Baltic, a large business group, in exchange for favourable political decisions. During the investigation of this case, it became clear that many other prominent politicians, including some from the Labour Party (Darbo Partija, DP), were also involved in this corruption network.

Lithuanian governments have also struggled to gain the initiative to address the issue of corruption for many years. The Peasants and Greens Union (Lietuvos Valstiečių ir Žaliųjų Sąjunga; LPGU), who were in power from 2016 to October 2020, have been accused of ineffectiveness in dealing with corruption. They have also come under fire for politicising and taking advantage of anti-corruption measures to hinder opposition members. Such claims came as LPGU leaders attempted to ban anyone who has been convicted of corruption from running in national elections for ten years. This has been criticised for being a thinly veiled attempt by the then ruling LPGU government to stifle the campaign of the Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokratų Partija; LSDP) whose leader has been convicted of inappropriate public procurement.

There have also been many reports of widespread corruption in Latvia with the most recent Eurobarometer survey on corruption in EU Member States indicating that 84% of Latvians believe that corruption is widespread. This figure is significantly higher than the average of other member states which stands at 71%. This figure has remained unchanged since the last survey in 2017, which indicates that there has been no progress in tackling corruption in Latvia. In 2019, the United States Department of the Treasury’s Office for Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions against Aivars Lembergs and four other associates, under their ‘Magnitsky Law’. The OFAC accused Lembergs, a prominent Latvian oligarch and politician, of money laundering, bribery and abuse of power. This has proven to be another blow to Latvia’s global reputation as it struggles to manage money laundering networks that hinder foreign investment and economic development.

Weak Judicial Independence

Lithuania and Latvia have also both struggled to establish trustworthy independent courts. Although significant progress has been made in gaining judicial independence since the democratisation process began, a number of scandals and inefficiencies have stifled further growth. In 2019 reports of bribe-taking by judges of the Lithuanian Court of Appeal and Supreme Court shook the nation's confidence in their judiciary. In a 2017 survey, 19% of Lithuanian judges and 18% of Latvian judges expressed that they have been affected by a threat of, or actual, disciplinary or other action as a result of deciding cases in a certain way. These figures were some of the highest in the EU, so it is no surprise that public confidence in their justice systems is low. In a study carried out by the European Commission, 39% of Latvian citizens rated the independence of their courts and judges as very bad or fairly bad, while 33% of Lithuanians said their country’s judicial independence was very bad or fairly bad.

Disillusioned Civil Society

 With both countries’ populations continuing to fall due to persistently high levels of emigration amongst young people, civil society is weak in these two Baltic states. Latvia, in particular, is an ethnically divided country with over 25% of the population being comprised of Russian-speaking minorities. During the democratisation and Europeanisation process in the late 1990s and early 2000s, high levels of ethnic inequality in Latvia were contentious issues for the European Commission when accession deliberations were underway. Latvia struggled to reconcile the ethnic divisions within its borders, which remains one of the most significant political issues in the country today.

During the liberalisation of Latvia’s language and citizenship laws, many from the Russian speaking minority felt let down by the EU not doing enough to secure their equality. This was laid to bare during the EU accession vote in Latvia in 2004. Although 67% of Latvian voters were in favour of EU membership, the reality was that 57% of Latvian speakers were in favour of EU membership. However, only 20% of the Russian speaking population supported EU accession. This would explain why trust in the EU in Latvia remains the lowest of all Baltic states, at only 49%.

The combination of ethnic division, lack of trustworthiness of democratic institutions and pervasive corruption have left the people of Lithuania and Latvia disillusioned with democracy. Both countries have displayed persistently low civic and political engagement with voter turnout rates some of the lowest amongst EU member states. Voter turnout for parliamentary elections in Lithuania has fallen from 53% in 2012 to 48% in the recent October 2020 elections. This is the second-worst voter turnout statistic in Lithuania’s modern democratic history. Latvia’s voter turnout rates are equally reflective of peoples wanning political engagement having dropped from 65% to 55% in the last ten years.

Conclusion

Populism has been gaining traction with the Latvian public in recent years with many observers voicing concerns. The populist parties who received the largest percentage of votes in the 2018 parliamentary elections all took advantage of the country’s pervasive corruption and ethnic inequality to rally support for their anti-EU and anti-system campaigns. At the same time, the Lithuanian governing coalition of the past four years was accused of many attempted power-grabs and populist rhetoric. Although strong-willed populist parties similar to Fidesz or PiS have not yet captured these countries, the structural democratic deficiencies this blog has highlighted leaves the stage open for such parties to take hold.

It is vital that these issues within Lithuanian and Latvian democracy are addressed before they develop further. As we know from observations of Poland and Hungary, once an anti-system party entrenches their power, implementing remedies then might be too little too late.

Beatrice Monciunskaite is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University. She graduated from Dublin City University with a B.C.L. degree in 2018 and graduated from Trinity College Dublin with her LL.M. degree in 2019. Beatrice is currently in the second year of her Ph.D. research and was recently awarded a scholarship by the Irish Research Council for her work. She is also editor-in-chief of the Dublin Law and Politics Review. Beatrice’s research interests are wide-ranging but mainly focus on the topics of democratisation, political philosophy and constitutional law. She has teaching experience in modules such as criminology, criminal law and moot court.