The Breakdown of Isms

Though most all of the world’s communist regimes have been toppled, a few remnants persist. However, what we have noticed is that very often, the last stage of Communism before it’s death is usually nationalism. In fact, not only communism but most isms end like this. Fascism is slightly diferent insofar as it usually contains a strong nationalist sentiment. Note the difference though, fascism has an ideology whereas an authoritarian government doesn’t necesarily. Even the ideology of democracy has failed, see the Weimar Republic.

I also freely admit that there are flaws to the model as it is tends to represent a more vertical and causal development excluding horizontal factors. Therefore the idea is to try and map the vertical development and use that to see how and where we can use horizontal factors to influence where “the ball drops” (looking at the model).

The following models are works in progress and I therefore invite all the constructive criticsm you can muster in the hope of creating an even more accurate model. This is meant as a starting point.

That was the basic model.

Note first that during the nationalism stage, the ideology is slowly dropped for nationalism and thus the ism because run of the mill authoritarianism. I often use “collapse” as a general term which could mean literal collapse or revolution (violent or nonviolent). The point is what happens, not as much the how it happens. You’ll also see on the bottom right “WAR.” Here we’re speaking usually of a war between states, though a civil war or breakup is also possible such as the USSR had though the emphasis is that it is usually violent.

Here is the same model with examples ( The colored balls represent about where the given country is):

Just as no plan ever survives its first contact with reality, neither do isms. Keep also in mind that I use “transition” in a broad sense. It could be a “revolution” like in Georgia or a more subtle political one like in England or Spain where monarchies peacefully became constitutional monarchies. The emphasis here is that it’s a peaceful one. In addition, you’ll note Yugoslavia splinters into different lines. These of course represent the paths of some of its different successor states.

In addition to how several famous communist regimes collapsed, I made a separate chart of how various pieces of the USSR collapsed.

You’ll first notice in the second graphic with individual former USSR republics, the nationalism staged is skipped as on a USSR-wide scale it had already happened. They begin with ideology changing to authoritarianism.

These charts help us to see where other countries have gone and at what stage some are currently at so that we can better understand why certain countries went one path and where others could go. Their ultimate goal is clear though: liberal democracy.