Skills that sustained authoritarian rule can be repurposed for democratic success afterward

Evidence

Yet, as this chapter will show, elite resources held the key to the regeneration of ruling parties of the discredited regime. Since the successor party elites spent their careers in the communist parties and their auxiliaries, these resources were very likely to have their origin in the parties. Paradoxically, specific organizational practices of the communist parties – the privileging of young party activists, the constant tinkering with policy, and the “cat and mouse” game of negotiation with society and the opposition – could both sustain the parties’ rule prior to 1989 and foster their democratic success afterwards. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 122

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s central question about whether group capacities survive the removal of their constitutive external threat — here the same Leninist practices that sustained monopoly rule later enabled democratic regeneration. — connects to: Authoritarian-era party practices can later produce democratic competence — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 122; Authoritarian-era organizational practices determine successor parties’ democratic survival skills — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 88; Authoritarian-era institutional choices can shape political behavior after democratic openings. — Johan Brosché and Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, Electoral violence and the legacy of…, 13 (+6 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the same organizational practices served both authoritarian endurance and democratic success inverts the assumption that discredited legacies are purely liabilities.

Broader Connections

• Authoritarian-era party practices can later produce democratic competence #corroborates (0.95) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 122
• Authoritarian party organizations paradoxically produced skilled elites that won democratic competition #corroborates (0.90) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 139
• Suppressing democracy trained communist elites in the skills democratic competition later needed #exemplifies (0.90) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 64
• Authoritarian-era organizational practices determine successor parties’ democratic survival skills #corroborates (0.85) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 88
• Policy-reform experience and prior opposition negotiations gave elites portable skills later rewarded in democracy. #corroborates (0.85) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 368
• Authoritarian-era institutional choices can shape political behavior after democratic openings. #expands (0.80) — Johan Brosché and Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, Electoral violence and the legacy of…, 13
• Authoritarian ruling parties normally lack incentives to develop responsive governance skills #complicates (0.70) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 121