Civil Society in Cuba: the Logic of Emergence in Comparative Perspective

The resurgence of civil society was credited with playing a critical role in the transitions of the socalled Third Wave of democracy (1974-1987). Social movements, human right organizations, churches, and other forms of organized “people power” mobilized repressed populations against authoritarian governments throughout the world and helped bring about regime change from Portugal to the Philippines. The unexpected fourth wave which came in the wake of the collapse of European communist regimes and the disappearance of the Soviet Union was also declared a triumph of civil society against the state by many observers. Vladimir Tismaneanu (1992) was representative when he asserted that the main cause of the East European revolutions was “the rise and ripening of civil societies in countries long dominated by totalitarian Leninist parties” (p. xiii). However, not all communist party-states succumbed during the critical years 1989-1991. Contrary to early optimistic reports, civil societies did not “rise” in all communist polities, even in those where transitions away from communism took place. Ironically, three of the five communist “survivors”—China, Cuba, and Vietnam—had more prominent dissident movements and a greater level of independent social activity in the late 1980s than some of the victims of the Leninist extinction.1 The enduring party-states were not immune to the world crisis of communism, however their regime elites were able to survive the conjunctural crisis and maintain political control through the deft combination of repression and reform. The persistence of these party-state regimes requires a closer look at the dynamic of emergence and its relation to regime change.