New Democracies ‘Need Formative Crises to Build Immunity’

This is the latest in a series of articles on the legacy of the fall of the Iron Curtain 30 years ago. See more.

Rather than unfolding like George Orwell's classic fable, he said the anti-totalitarian revolution ingrained the rule of law, free elections, free media, the partition of power and constitutional liberties in Central and Eastern Europe.

"It remains the foundational legacy," said Haraszti, who was a dissident under communism in Hungary and in 1989 took part in negotiations on the country's transition to free elections. "Even if we falsify it or disrespect it, it stays there." 

But according to Haraszti, who served as the representative for media freedom at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in the 2000s, a foundational legacy is not enough.

Democracies need to experience a first, formative crisis "to realise that on the basis that you have created you can still lose freedom", Haraszti said in an interview in Bratislava. 

'Immunisation of democracy'

Thus, what Central Europe is experiencing now is the struggle that all young democracies go through — not excluding the United States.

"Every new democracy's instinct is to use the freedom to disagree first and only later the freedom to agree, to cultivate the joint foundations," Haraszti said. 

He called the process the "immunisation of democracy": the country gets over the first populist power grab and comes out of that crisis stronger, with its immune system ready for the next time. 

It happened in Slovakia under authoritarian Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, he said.

Back in 1998, Slovakia found what Haraszti calls the cure for the first populist power grab: all democratic forces banded together. Opposition parties got together under...