Fading Colours? A Synthetic Comparative Case Study of the Impact of “Colour Revolutions”

The “colour revolutions” sparked a wave of optimistic commentaries about democratization in semi-authoritarian states. Today, however, there is considerable debate over whether these “revolutions” produced real reform and what lessons can be drawn for future democratization efforts. We utilize a synthetic control method of comparative case studies to evaluate political and institutional changes following “colour revolutions.” The results show divergent patterns of reform. Serbia experienced the most thorough changes in democratization and control of corruption. Ukraine's revolt increased democratic freedoms, but failed to control corruption. Georgia's protests marginally improved the control of corruption, but did little to improve the political system. Kyrgyzstan appears to have become worse as a result of its revolution. The synthetic comparisons suggest that these divergent outcomes are largely due to influences present well in advance of political upheaval. These findings shed critical light on the sources of cyclical political change in semi-authoritarian countries and the effect of domestic structural factors on democracy promotion. * Paper prepared for presentation at the 2012 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, LA. The author would like to thank Matt Rukavina for his research assistance, and Jeronimo Cortina and Lydia Tiede for reviewing previous drafts. All errors are the author's. The wave of popular revolutions that swept away the semi-authoritarian leadership in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan brought with them high expectations. Western politicians rushed to praise the dramatic popular protests, and scholars hastened to explain the success of these states in removing the semi-authoritarian leaders that had become a defining feature of politics in the region. These so-called “colour revolutions” even became a model for popular movements in other postCommunist countries and in the Middle East. Yet, eleven years after the Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia started the colour revolution phenomenon, there is substantial debate about whether these really were “revolutionary” events in terms of producing substantial political change. The optimism that characterized original revolutions has long faded, and most of these countries look much as they did before. Given the widespread influence of these revolutions, questions about the impact of colour revolutions also raise serious concerns for the Arab Spring and other recent popular democratic movements. They also raise broader 1 Semi-authoritarian regimes are political systems that combine multiparty elections with a number of authoritarian patterns, such that they cannot be considered fully democratic. These have been labeled “hybrid,” “semi-democratic,” “electoral democracies,” “competitive authoritarian,” and others. We utilize the term “semi-authoritarian” as an umbrella term for these regimes. See Larry Diamond, “Thinking About Hybrid Regimes,” Journal of Democracy 52(2002): 2135; Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, “International Linkage and Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 16(2005): 2034; Marc Morje Howard and Philip G. Roessler, “Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes,” American Journal of Political Science 50(2006): 365-381. 2 Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, “International Diffusion and Postcommunist Electoral Revolutions,” Communist and Postcommunist Studies 39(2010): 283-304; Joshua A. Tucker, “Enough! 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