They divided the sky: elite factionalism factors during contentious politics in GDR, 1989

The rationales for elite behavior under the pressure of mass discontent during the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 in the GDR. A game model is statistically tested in order to explore causal links between elite members’ office types and their biological.

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THEY DIVIDED THE SKY: ELITE FACTIONALISM FACTORS DURING CONTENTIOUS POLITICS IN GDR, 1989

Ivan Gomza

Kyiv School of Economics

Denys Tereshchenko

National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”

Abstract

revolution peaceful elite discontent

This paper aims to break into a “black box” of inner authoritarian elite mechanics by elucidating the rationales for elite behavior under the pressure of mass discontent during the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 in the GDR. A game-theoretic model is applied and statistically tested in order to explore causal links between elite members' office types and their biological and institutional age on the one hand and defection on the other. The data corroborate three out of four initial hypotheses, namely that (1) party functionaries and (2) persons holding repression-related offices are most prone to defect, and that (3) both inner and outer party circle officials offer equal support to demands for liberalization. One hypothesis was only partly validated: there is an only partial causal relation between age and proneness to defect.

Key words: authoritarian regime, contentious politics, elite factionalism, game theory modeling, single-party regime, winning coalition.

Introduction

Kuran (1997) has pertinently opined that revolutions seem impossible ex ante and inevitable ex post. This observation is especially relevant to the German Democratic Republic (hereafter: GDR) case. Since the upheaval of 1953, the GDR regime was fairly stable: the communist ideology had no viable alternative because nationalism was discredited and liberalism uprooted; the populace enjoyed material well-being and remained loyal; a tiny opposition was being constantly monitored by the secret police, the infamous Stasi, and thus effectively contained. The implosion of 1989 came as a shock. Because it occurred prior to the Soviet demise, no one was prepared to foresee a collapse of an entrenched single-party regime under duress of mass contentious politics without even trying a Chinese option (repression of contenders). As Madarasz summarized, “the existence of the GDR for forty years in relative stability and its rapid collapse in 1989 pose a major problem for which neither historians nor sociologists nor politicians nor the media have yet found a convincing explanation” (2003: 1).

The absence of explanation, however, is not for lack of trying. The GDR spectacular demise invited many scholars to study the case intensively (see: Ross 2012) for a detailed discussion). One standard argumentation puts the evolution of international developments, first and foremost Gorbachev's rejection of the Brezhnev doctrine, as a major factor that precipitated the end of the regime. This structuralist explanation, although established as a conventional interpretation (Enquete-Kommission 1995: 1983), virtually ignores that the Soviet disengagement provided only opportunities to challenge the regime but not the contenders. In other words, it became important to explain both the origins and motives of actors who challenged the regime in 1989. Consequently, the research program advanced in the mid-1990s by scholars at the “Zentrum fьr Zeithistorische Forschung” (see: Kaiser (1997) and Lindenberger (1999) detailed the everyday life and perceptions, including the growing disillusionment with the regime, of the populace. Kopstein (1997) and Grix (2000) suggested that the regime collapsed when the social contract between the people who traded economic prosperity for loyalty and the regime went void due to economic hardships in the 1980s. Following this line of inquiry, scholars were increasingly focusing on contentious politics to explain the dynamics of the GDR demise. Pollack (1997) and Pfaff (2006) studied informal networks of dissent that eventually gave impetus to the anti-regime opposition. Opp and Gern, in a similar vein, posited that personal networks were the most important contexts for mobilizing citizens, for they made possible a “spontaneous coordination model” (1993: 675), that is, cooperation between strangers advantageous for contenders during the fateful events of 1989. Finally, Madarasz observed that four societal groups, “young people, women, writers, and Christians were favoured by the regime [...] they enjoyed some political leeway based on the regime's conviction that this social group represented the future of the socialist society” (2003: 2). In a blatant illustration of regime's miscalculation, precisely these four privileged groups formed the backbone of political opposition.

A picture of heroic citizenry challenging the regime, however, conflicts with another strain of research, namely the one convincingly emphasizing the oppressive nature of the GDR. Even when deprived of Soviet support, the regime had a formidable repressive apparatus. Stasi alone had numerous detention centers, separate armed forces, and one of the densest internal surveillance networks (BStU 2019). In addition, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (hereafter: SED) machinery controlled public opinion through propaganda and spoils distribution. All in all, as the concept of durchherrschte Gesellschaft (Kaelble, Kocka & Zwahr 1994) -- literally “overgoverned society” -- implies, there was an all-encompassing bureaucratic apparatus that produced a “dictatorship of social structures” (Bauernkдmper 2005) in the GDR. Even if, as Glaeser observed, in its last years “the party state was unable to understand and therefore to create the conditions for the possibility to come to terms with the phenomenon of political dissidence” (2010: 28), the system itself had enough resources to at least try to contain and actively repress the contentious actors in 1989.

In this paper, we aim to reconcile the conflicting interpretations of the GDR collapse. To bridge the gap, it is necessary to account not only for the repressive capacity of the regime or the contentious actions by contenders but also for the political will to use coercive apparatus to actively muddle the dissent. This crucial component was, in fact, lacking in 1989. In order to explain why it was lacking, a shift from contentious actors, their tactics and strategies is required. In particular, we argue that elite factionalism and the defection of the winning coalition members critically diminish the political will of incumbents to use force against the contenders. The cracks in the previously united winning coalition, in turn, are provoked by pre-existing cleavages between its individual members. In this study, we build a model which elucidates the internal structure of the GDR winning coalition and grasps the logic of political defection in regimes challenged by contentious politics. We believe that our analysis will contribute to a better understanding of the GDR implosion and the nature of authoritarian breakdown in general.

Theoretical premises

Elite factionalism has long been established as one of the predominant factors of authoritarian breakdown. In his seminal paper, Dix suggests that division within the dictatorial ruling elite is a necessary precondition for regime's loss of legitimacy and the consequent narrowing of its social base (1982), which constitutes the general path for the downfall of a dictatorship. In particular, he emphasizes that when the political opposition poses a formidable challenge, a faction within the ruling elite becomes eager to negotiate some “exit guarantees”. In other words, it seeks an agreement with the contenders not to be persecuted or penalized by subtraction of accumulated economic assets should regime collapse in exchange for abandoning the dictator (ibid.: 569). Thus, exit guarantees are a necessary condition for defection, whereas defection is required for an authoritarian breakdown. “Round tables” in Eastern European socialist states at the end of the 1980s exemplify the path predicted by Dix.

Elite factionalism became a centerpiece of the strategic theory of democratization developed by O'Donnell and Schmitter to the extent that they claim that “there is no transition whose beginning is not the consequence -- direct or indirect -- of important divisions within the authoritarian regime itself, principally along the fluctuating cleavage between hard-liners and soft-liners” (1986: 19). More specifically, O'Donnell and Schmitter argue that mass contentious politics provokes a split among the elites into two camps. One camp considers the preservation of authoritarian status quo “possible and desirable” thus advocating hardline strategies in dealing with the contenders, whereas another faction, commonly referred to as “soft-liners”, considers the regime's liberalization to be a viable survival strategy (1986: 15).

Despite the alternative explanations of authoritarian breakdown (see: Wintrobe 1998, Collier & Mahoney 1999, Rueschemeyer, Huber & Stephens 2005, Svolik 2012, Acemoglu & Robinson 2012, Svolik 2012, Boix 2013, Boix & Svolik 2013, Haggard & Kaufman 2016), most of the authors acknowledge that elite factionalism is a crucial (albeit not the unique) factor of the process in question. For instance, Svolik speculates that any authoritarian regime faces two essential difficulties: the problem of authoritarian control and the problem of authoritarian power-sharing, the latter being a particular “authoritarian leadership dynamics [due to which] an overwhelming majority of dictators Lose power to those inside the gates of the presidential palace rather than to the masses outside” (2012: 5).

A so-called “institutional turn in comparative authoritarianism” (Pepinsky 2014) gave a particular twist to the issue of factionalism. Most scholars admit that the regime's institutional framework can either hinder or accelerate elite defection. In particular, single-party regimes, concisely defined by Brooker as those where “the party and its leaders effectively operate a de facto monopoly over the entire country” (2000: 44), are believed to be the most efficient in preventing elite factionalism. Initially introduced by Geddes (1999), the idea that this regime type is on average more stable and resilient due to a combination of patronage, propaganda, power-sharing, collegial decision-making, elite cohesion, and mutual checks imposed on the dictator and the elites, was later elaborated by Smith (2005), Gandhi & Przeworski (2007), Hadenius & Teorell (2007), Kitschelt & Wilkinson (2007), Wright (2008), Malesky, Abrami, & Zheng (2011), Geddes, Wright, & Frantz (2018).

Its resilience notwithstanding, the single-party regime is not immune to instability and collapse. As Greene reminds, dominant parties eventually lose despite rigged electoral systems, patronage networks, and all-encompassing ideologies if contenders manage to appeal to higher values and mobilize citizens undeterred by high costs (2007: 139-172). Sustained mass mobilization has grave implications for the regime: Przeworski (1991: 64), Geddes (1999: 24-25), and Ulfelder (2005: 314) concur that as mass mobilization in the streets intensifies, the risks of repressions as well as co-optation costs for elites rise so high that they eventually become unbearable. At this point the narration of elite factionalism and that of single-party collapse cross: a split within party elites is likely when a fraction deems repressions too costly while the career prospects under a new regime or even under democracy appear more and more alluring. In fact, elite softliners tend to be prominent in their public recognition of the regime deficiencies and concessions to the civil society, so that contentious actors eventually enjoy lessening costs, "both real and anticipated, associated with individual expression and collective action" (O'Donnell & Schmitter 1986: 7). Likewise, Stepan surmises that soft-liners advocate “less censorship of the media, somewhat greater room for the organization of autonomous working-class activities, reintroduction of some legal safeguards... for individuals, the releasing of most political prisoners, the return of political exiles, possibly measures for improving the distribution of income, and. the toleration of political opposition' (1988: 6). Przeworski calls these policies the essential measures aimed at the opening of a political regime usually taken in order to widen the base of support for the liberal elite faction (1991: 57).

One might conclude that typically resilient single-party regimes are of utmost vulnerability when their elite lose their high level of cohesion. In such circumstances, a fraction of soft-liners is likely to advocate liberalization and even regime opening, which sets the regime on the road to possible democratization. However, although there is a general consensus regarding the role of elite factionalism in authoritarian breakdown, both the origins and the dynamics of the process remain undertheorized.

A promising way to conceptualize elite factionalism in autocracies is to combine authoritarian regime studies with selectorate theory. First outlined by Paterson (1967) to describe party politics, the theory had been successfully adopted to analyze political process in the USSR and its satellites (Hodnett 1975; Stern 1978; Hauslohner 1981; Roeder 1993), but it has achieved general acclaim and universality due to groundbreaking efforts by Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2005). The selectorate theory speculates that each polity consists of four sets of individuals “built-in” into each other like a nesting doll: populace, selectorate, winning coalition, and leaders (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005: 37). Populace is the population who inhabits a given polity with or without any political rights. Individuals who play a formal role in the process of choosing a leader by giving a vote constitute the selectorate (ibid.: 42). Winning coalition is created by the selectorate members whose support and resource investments are vital to the regime's survival (ibid.: 51). At the regime pinnacle is the leader, a person who constructed a current winning coalition and whose rule embodies the regime per se. Leaders struggle to maintain their winning coalition through the distribution of both private and public goods (ibid.: 29, 3839). These vary both in substance (i.e. in what is distributed) and in the way they are distributed. Public goods are impersonal and provided through public policies, whereas private goods are received personally by a small number of individuals closest to the leadership (ibid.: 29).

The selectorate theory predicts that leaders prefer not to depend on too many actors, thus they tend to minimize the winning coalition size as much as possible till it reaches its minimum-size equilibrium. The relations of individual actors within the winning coalition and the winning coalition to selectorate ratio are two principal factors of the regime's political survival. In a nutshell, if a regime has a small winning coalition and a large selectorate, it is valuable to belong to the winning coalition since most of private goods are distributed there. Furthermore, since the selectorate members (derogatorily called “interchangeable” by Bueno de Mesquita) are abundant, in case of individual defection from the winning coalition there are plenty of actors eager to assume this place. In other words, the selectorate theory predicts that defection is endemic in two regime types: either (1) with big winning coalitions and small selectorate or (2) where private goods distributed among the winning coalition members are perceived as not of a great value.

The problem with the classical selectorate theory is that it reduces complexities to abstractions. (See Gallagher & Hanson (2015) and Cao & Ward (2015) for a wider critique.) In particular, it presents actors both within the winning coalition and the selectorate as “people without qualities”, namely as interchangeable arithmetical machines that only calculate benefits, whereas in reality they are individuals with different expertise, values, emotions, and propensities to misjudge.

We believe that professional background and personal biographies constitute important variables that differentiate individual members of the winning coalition and, consequently, play an important role in their decision whether to defect. In addition, we contend that no defection decision is taken in a sort of political vacuum; rather, general political climate and particular events like political scandals, economic crises, and - crucial for this paper--mass contentious politics strongly influence this decision. Therefore, we believe that a complex motivation structure proper to each winning coalition member affects his or her choice whether to support liberalization.

To summarize, elite factionalism is a universally observed factor of authoritarian breakdown detected in Middle East (Hinnebusch 2006), Sub-Saharan Africa (Morency- Laflamme 2015), and Soviet satellite states (Thomson 2016). Elite factionalism is contingent upon significant re-arrangements in elite motivation structures. Triggers for such changes are manifold. In Mexico, for instance, it was provoked by the regime's inner decision to open up and change the electoral law (de Sierra 2011), in Indonesia, this was due to a sweeping economic crisis (Eklцf 2003: 284-289), in numerous settings rigged elections and public outcry forced some elite members to reconsider the costs of regime support (Kuntz & Thompson 2009). In the socialist states in the late 1980s, prolonged organized activity of social movements and non-violent contentious politics was instrumental in changing calculations of the party elite (Ulfelfder 2005: 323).

The central unresolved question is whether there are some features of both professional and personal nature which make some individual elite members more prone to defect. Since the question is rather broad and the quest for personal details is bound to yield idiosyncratic results, we limit our research focus on (1) shared characteristics (e.g. age and field of expertise) of winning coalition members and (2) instances of defection under specific although universally observed circumstances, namely the challenge to the regime from the contentious politics.

The GDR case: history and context

The GDR offers a uniquely insightful case in several respects. Firstly, the GDR regime undoubtfully represented a single-party authoritarian type. That is manifested by the fact that the number of all party and organization members in the East German Parliament, Volkskammer, with the prevalence of SED representatives, were fixed (see Neugebauer 1974: 390; Schroeder 2013, 213-215; Zimmerman 1988: 250). Besides, albeit other parties were allowed, the state's socialist priorities, as well as the "leading role" of SED in East-German society, were enshrined in the Constitution (Verfassung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik 1974, see Preamble, art. 1, art. 2, art. 6, art. 9, art. 10). The Volkskammer was rather a rubber-stamp parliament whose functions were restricted to a limited discussion and unanimous voting. Leaders of the former opposition to SED were effectively co-opted within the legislature. Since the GDR was a single-party autocracy, we assume that it possessed basic features usually ascribed to this regime type, namely elite cohesion, prominent resilience, and - rather paradoxically - vulnerability to mass discontent. Consequently, the GDR case lends itself to study the motivational structure of elite defection.

We focused on the period of flagrant instability in GDR history, the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. Albeit the demonstrations in some East German cities famously thrived from the early October of 1989, the first publicly visible cracks within the regime's winning coalition began to surface by the 18th of October, when the long-reigning General

Secretary of SED Erich Honecker was forced to resign, the new leader Egon Krenz was inaugurated, and “the turning point” (die Wende in German) seeking some liberalization was proclaimed (Major 2010: 246-248). From this point on, a protracted process of elite factionalism took off. One by one, major party leaders but also importantly less weighty Central Committee (hereafter: CC or CC SED) members embraced or disavowed the new party policies up until the entire Politburo was forced to resign on November 8 and the new government was constituted on November 18. Therefore, this paper focuses on the time period between October 18th through November 18th of 1989, for it was during this month that the most intense factionalism occurred until the winning coalition eventually reshuffled under external (popular) pressure.

The GDR case is illustrative because its elites were, reportedly, the most coherent among former socialist countries (Fulbrook 2015: 260). Indeed, unlike in Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia, party elites in GDR never manifested any serious inner splits prior to the October of 1989. Still, as notices Madarasz (2003: 21) citing Hans Modrow (the GDR's last socialist prime minister), the GDR had neither homogeneous nor monolithic elites with consensual political views. Beneficially for our study, the lack of clear-cut splits before mass protests commenced sets the stage for accurate observation on how contentious politics alone (though coupled with the withdrawal of guarantees of protection from the USSR) catalyzed regime's collapse.

Moreover, the regime's power structure is of the utmost significance. It was rather the Council of Ministers, an East-German government, packed only with obedient functionaries and technocrats, that had concentrated most power among the state institutions. Of course, this Council tended to replicate the decisions approved by the SED Central Committee and its Politburo not least because these organs shared most of their leaders (Meyer 1991: 46). These leaders, in turn, shared not only power that came with their offices but also a range of privileges offered by the state. SED party leadership was thus the regime's true winning coalition. Consequently, there were both clearly identifiable and well-institutionalized selectorate and winning coalition under the GDR, which renders the task of tracing liberalization support patterns more feasible. Indeed, we do not have to account for, for instance, the hidden economic interests that might be represented in other cases by oligarchs and interest groups.

The challenge of a robust and clear winning coalition delineation arises. For the purpose of analysis, we consider (1) members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany who (2) were also members of its Central Committee or (3) of its Politburo and who (4) participated in the most important decision-making processes within the regime as players who constitute the GDR winning coalition. We ascribe the primordial role to the Central Committee because without its decision no party member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany could assume any important governmental position.

Concerning the inner hierarchy distinctions (between what we for analytical purpose call inner and outer circles of winning coalition), Meyer (1991: 76) opines how the “political Leading core” could be discerned. He claims that the Fьhrungskern (German for "leading core") was composed of nearly fifty people, all chiefs of the central party organs plus members of Politburo, secretaries of CC SED, and first secretaries of Bezirke (major

East-German administrative units). As suggested by Meyer (1991) and Thieme (2015), these actors usually combined several offices both within the party and in the state institutions. Their outstanding position indeed mattered: as shown by Fulbrook (2015: 185), they enjoyed considerable privileges such as "freedom to travel to the West, access to Western currency (and hence hard currency shops), preferential treatment for the purchase of new cars..." or the ownership of "private hunting lodges with relatively luxurious facilities." These privileges were reserved for party members and could be scaled along party hierarchy levels. Obviously, highly concentrated power came alongside combined chief offices and economic privileges. As of 1989, almost half of Politburo members (11 out of 21) were also members of CC Secretariat, five were first secretaries of Bezirksleitungen, one (Horst Sindermann) presided over the GDR parliament, the Volkskammer, four presided over the most powerful executive organ, the Council of Ministers, and one, party chief Erich Honecker, was also the head of the National Defense Council and of the State Council of the GDR (Meyer 1991: 7).

Noteworthy, even the CC members who did not belong to the Fьhrungskern cohort appeared to be astonished when the information on the privileges of their comrades was disclosed in November 1989 (Hertle & Gerd-Rьdiger 1997: 464, 477), which implies that the distribution of both the power and goods within the CC was not equal and a distinction between Central Committee's inner and outer circles has to be accounted for.

It is significant that the GDR regime displays all the features outlined in the previous theorizations on elite defection, thus inviting for a case-study to better understand elite defection. Both the high initial elite cohesion levels and the outstanding position of technocrats in the government coupled with the visible inequalities in power and privileges within the winning coalition lay the ground for us to further theorize on the possible cleavage patterns the regime may “crack” along when exposed to the pressure of contentious politics.

Relying on the speculations of prior researchers and on our own assumptions regarding the inner SED party divisions, we introduce a game-theoretic model to analyze political behavior of top SED party members based on the information about their positions, office types and levels within the party hierarchy.

Data and methods

I. Modeling political behavior

The initial broad inquiry question of this paper is “Why only some members of the winning coalition support regime liberalization whilst others do not?” To provide empirically testable results, a more precise research question is needed, namely “What are the rational calculations driving some members of winning coalition to support contenders to the regime and the status quo?” This research question espouses the broad rationalist methodology because we consider each winning coalition member as a rational actor whose behavior is based on the calculation of costs and benefits connected to each possible decision (to defect or to repress). Given outstanding invulnerability of single-party regimes to factionalism, only significant challenges “from beneath” (i.e. from a social movement or popular contention) are capable of altering a winning coalition member's expectations regarding the prospects of the regime. Thus, periods of crisis and instability offer proper occasions to observe the trajectories of the coalition's breaking down.

Some basic concepts from rational choice theory and particularly from game theory are employed in this model.

First, analyzing choices and consequent actions, we assume that “the action chosen by a decision-maker is at least as good, according to her preferences, as every other available action” (Osborne 2003: 6; our italics). Second, we use classical game theory concepts, namely actions, preferences, and payoff functions. In our formal model, we stipulate that each individual player is free to choose between supporting `hard' or `soft' approach to deal with contenders. Third, we calculate payoff functions, hereafter: u(a), and expressed in numerical values. U(a) is always an ordinal variable, which helps to set preferences for each actor, but prevents from calculating the ratio between them.

The model is based upon the assumption that an elite member's decision on liberalization is contingent upon his or her estimate of the results of such a decision (hence, the payoff functions), which, in turn, depends on the specificities of an actor's position within the winning coalition. The respective assumptions we made are schematically depicted below on a decision tree.

The decision tree (see Figure 1) illustrates different outputs for a game (that is a choice between hardline and soft-line policies) for players with different positions within the regime. The game itself proceeds as follows. As soon as authorities find out an antiregime contentious politics mobilized a considerable amount of citizens, each individual winning coalition member has to make a choice: either to publicly approve or to disavow repressions against contenders. However, while assessing the decision outcomes elite members deal with uncertainty regarding contenders' chances to eventually win and topple at least the regime's conservative wing.

Several combinations are possible. In case a player decides to stick to the old party line, thus supporting repressions against the protesters, and the hard-liners eventually win, their payoff depends on the position held by him or her within the party. If a winning coalition member belongs to its inner circle that provides him or her with more goods and privileges as well as with leverage over party colleagues, his or her payoff will be highest, amounting to 2. If an actor comes from the outer circle and his or her privileges and access to goods are much more modest, the payoff will equal 1. If a winning coalition member opts to publicly support liberalization and hard-liners eventually win, the miscalculation is expected to be punished through deprivation of some privileges, restricted access to decision-making or even imprisonment. The losses correspond with expected utility -1.

Figure 1. Values of payoff functions for winning coalition members during mass contentious politics (given in parentheses).

If contenders achieve their goals and regime opening ensues, both calculations and outcomes are more complex.

For an individual who participated in regime's repressive actions and who, therefore, could be charged with regime crimes after liberalization, support of repressions during mass protests could lead to civic degradation or imprisonment, a payoff function of -2. This is true for the individuals who hold the offices directly associated with the necessity to make the decision to repress or tolerate the contentious politics.

Conversely, for individuals responsible neither for regime crimes nor repressive actions during mass contention, the regime opening barely poses much significant threat. This corresponds to a payoff value of 0. This idea is concurrent with the observation by Geddes, Wright, and Frantz (2014: 321) that autocrats after democratization must feel safer in comparison to their counterparts succeeded by other forms of authoritarianism. Even better off are former (single) party regime leaders (ibid.).

The most complicated case is that of persons responsible for regime crimes but who eventually supported regime liberalization. Presumably, they might hope to negotiate a pardon and to get away with what they have done (e.g. through leaving the country). Such a player, however, must face one more uncertainty, for the outcome of negotiation as well as chances for a safe exit, depends on the severity of crimes committed. Clearly, for the head of state or for members of the winning coalition working for repressive organs such chances are close to zero. Expected utility for them will thus be equal to -2. And, conversely, for a person who is responsible for regime crimes, the support of soft-line policies might prove decisive. In line with this suggestion, Tanaka states that the decision to open elections for opposition competitors significantly increases the safety of autocrats under the new regime even if they do fail electorally. Indeed, repressions against former soft-liners among elites almost never seem advantageous neither to former opposition nor to the international community (2016: 4). If a person is not responsible for regime crimes and can be categorized as a technocrat, military, or party veteran, sticking to soft-line policies will neither bring significant benefits in case the contender wins nor incur any unbearable costs in case of a crackdown, resulting into a payoff function of 0. Technocrats and military, whose access to power is necessarily assured by their special training and exercise or belonging to powerful institutions with intrinsic norms and values, might be expected to receive a much higher amount of private goods under autocracy than they can count upon under democracy or even within a wider winning coalition. Regime opening, thus, promises them only a few extra perks. The same is true for party veterans. Although they also belong to party functionaries who might proceed with their political career even after the regime collapse and its democratization (what we see has happened with former SED members' passage to the German leftist party Die Linke (for instance, former prime minister and party chief Hans Modrow or lawyer and SED party member Gregor Gysi), they, due to their age or to the high level of ideological indoctrination, cannot or simply do not have incentives to profit from regime opening. For the other group of party functionaries, young party functionaries, regime liberalization offers opportunities for further political participation or even competition for power, given that single-party regimes are reportedly more prone to democratize rather than to transform into another autocracy type (Geddes, Wright, & Frantz 2014: 325). The expected outcome of successful liberalization support for them thus equals 1 and is one of the most powerful drivers (also `transition benefits', according to Sutter 2000: 70) prompting some elite members to seek liberalization.

Methodologically, our formal model represents a Bayesian game. In other words, this is a game with incomplete information since the knowledge on outcomes of contender's effort to force the regime change are not unclear beforehand. Therefore, players do not know if the strategy they have chosen is bound to bring victory. In order to account for the inherent uncertainty of each decision, the concept of expected utility (EU) is usually deployed. We multiply a payoff function by the probability of obtaining the payoff to calculate EU.

The model suggests that a winning coalition member opts for a soft-line strategy when the following conditions are met: the expected utility EUs of the decision to support liberalization is equal or bigger than the expected utility EUh of supporting the status quo. The number of all possible combinations discussed above (e.g. a hard-liner among technocrats not responsible for regime crimes nor for repressive actions during mass protests) equals 18. Eighteen unstrict inequalities must, thus, be written down and solved so that the conditions for elite defection are set. Still, as the conditions for technocrats, military, and party veterans are all the same in this model, the inequalities for them will be presented as one. Po stands for the probability of contender's victory. Hence the probability of hard-liner's victory Ph = 1 - Po. The probability of a successful pardon negotiation with the new regime by a person responsible for regime crimes is signified as Pp, while the imprisonment probability is Pi = 1 - Pp.

There are ten possible solutions of inequalities:

1) for an inner circle technocrat/military/party veteran neither responsible for regime crimes nor obliged to decide to repress or tolerate the contender:

EUh ? EUs;

2 (1 - Po) + 0 Po? (-1)(1 - Po) + 0 Po;

2 - 2 Po ? Po - 1;

3 ? 3 Po;

1 ? Po, which means that such a winning coalition member will opt to liberalize only when assured that contender's success is inevitable.

2) for an inner circle technocrat/military/party veteran who is not responsible for regime crimes but who as an office-holder has to choose either repression or toleration:

EUh ? EUs;

2 (1 - Po) - 2 Po ? -1 (1 - Po) + 0 Po;

2 - 4 Po ? Po - 1;

3 ? 5Po;

3/5 ? Po, which means that this winning coalition member supports liberalization if the opposition's chances to win exceed 60%.

3) for an outer circle technocrat/military/party veteran who is neither responsible for regime crimes nor obliged to decide whether to repress or to tolerate the contender:

EUh ? EUs;

(1 - Po) + 0 Po ? -1 (1 - Po) + 0 Po;

1 - Po ? Po - 1;

2 ? 2 Po;

1 ? Po, which means that this winning coalition member will opt for liberalization only when no other option to contender's victory left.

4) for an outer circle technocrat/military/party veteran who is NOT responsible for regime crimes but as an office-holder has to choose either repression or toleration:

EUh ? EUs;

(1 - Po) - 2 Po ? -1 (1 - Po) + 0 Po;

1 - 3 Po ? Po - 1;

2 ? 4 Po;

1/2 ? Po, which means that this winning coalition member supports regime opening provided that opposition's chances to succeed are estimated to surpass 50%.

5) for an inner circle young party functionary who is neither responsible for regime crimes nor obliged to decide to repress or tolerate the contender:

EUh ? EUs;

2 (1 - Po) + 0 Po ? -1 (1 - Po) + Po;

2 - 2 Po ? 2 Po - 1;

3 ? 4 Po;

V ? Po, which means that this winning coalition member opts for liberalization only if opposition's victory is expected to happen with a 75% probability or higher.

6) for an inner circle young party functionary who is not responsible for regime crimes but as an office-holder has to choose either repression or toleration:

EUh ? EUs;

2 (1 - Po) - 2 Po ? -1 (1 - Po) + Po;

2 - 2 Po - 2 Po ? 2 Po - 1;

3 ? 6 Po;

1/2 ? Po, this winning coalition member will support regime opening if opposition's victory chances exceed 50%.

7) an outer circle young party functionary who is neither responsible for regime crimes nor obliged to decide to repress or tolerate the contender:

EUh ? EUs;

1 - Po + 0 Po ? - 1(1 - Po) + Po;

2 ? 3 Po;

2/3 ? Po, this winning coalition member will choose the soft-line policies if opposition's chances exceed 66.7%.

8) an outer circle young party functionary who is NOT responsible for regime crimes but as an office-holder has to choose either repression or toleration:

EUh ? EUs;

(1 - Po) - 2Po ? - 1(1 - Po) + Po;

2 ? 5Po;

2/5 ? Po, this winning coalition member supports liberalization with opposition's chances for victory being no less than 40%.

9) an inner circle coalition member who is responsible for regime crimes:

EUh ? EUs;

-2 Po + 2 (1 - Po) ? (0 Pp - 2 (1 - Pp)) Po - 1 (1 - Po);

-2 Po + 2 - 2 Po ? -2 Po + 2 Pp Po - 1 + Po;

3 ? 3Po + 2 Pp Po;

1 ? Po (1+ 2/3 Pp), so that there is no clear-cut condition under which this winning coalition member defects. Only a range of Po and Pp values allows for this type's defection.

It has to be said, though, that under some critically low value of Pp chances of this player supporting liberalization remain impossible even when the value of Po remains high.

10) an outer circle coalition member who is responsible for regime crimes:

EUh ? EUs;

-2 Po + (1 - Po) ? (0 Pp - 2 (1 - Pp)) Po - 1 (1 - Po);

-2 Po + 1 - Po ? -2 Po + 2 Po Pp - 1 + Po;

2 ? 2 Po + 2 Po Pp;

1 ? Po (Pp + 1), so that there is no clear-cut condition under which this winning coalition member defects. Only a range of Po and Pp values allows for this type's defection, although the fact that the conditions of this inequality are much easily satisfied (meaning that the range of values for both variables satisfying him or her is wider) must be regarded. This, in turn, means that those responsible for regime crimes belonging to the outer circle might be somewhat more inclined to support liberalization than those responsible for regime crimes from the inner circle.

If in any of two last inequalities Pp ^ 0 (i.e. the chances for imprisonment for a player grow significantly high), those inequalities turn into the already well-known condition 1 ? Po, meaning that an individual will not switch to support soft-line policies.

We recognize an inherent drawback in the assumption underlying this model that each winning coalition member is an independent rational actor and the inbuilt inaptitude of the model to directly account for the network effects. Yet, it is dubious that winning coalition members would ever defect if they had no idea of how their fellow colleagues assess the chances of regime survival. Naturally, this knowledge is accounted for by the Po variable that indicates a person's estimate of protesters' odds to win. Hence, the model retains a huge bulk of validity.

Although due to deeply subjective nature of these variables, we are not capable of calculating precise values for Po and Pp, it is possible to put forward some assumptions on the role of the factors which might influence them. In terms of game theory framework, both variables show merely an estimate of the situation based on the information available to an individual. It is needless to say that this estimate might turn out to be (completely) wrong but still influencing the individual's strategic decisions.

We consider the following factors to be critical for the estimate of the contender's chances to win.

1. Assessment of relative threats posed by the contentious politics. The best proxy for this variable is the number of protesters usually known at least to some winning coalition members. In addition, quality of contentious actors' coordination and tactics they choose contribute to threat perceptions.

2. The number of winning coalition members who have already publicly supported the contender's cause and argued for regime opening. These defectors assume the role of institutional allies thus ratcheting the probability of contenders' success.

3. Transnational opportunity structure, perceived as availability of external support guarantees to the regime, be it military or economic.

Solved inequalities are aggregated in the following table. It contains, thus, all the predictions of our model regarding the conditions under which winning coalition members are expected to support liberalization. From these inequalities, we draw four hypotheses regarding the behavior of winning coalition members in the situation of increasing civil society mass mobilization within a single-party regime.

Table 1. Defection conditions for different types of winning coalition members (Po is the probability of social movement's victory and consequent regime liberalization)

NOT responsible for regime crimes

Inner circle

An office related to repressions

Technocrat

3/5 ? Po

Party veteran

3/5 ? Po

Military

3/5 ? Po

Young functionary

1/2 ? Po

An office NOT

related to repressions

Technocrat

1 ? Po

Party veteran

1 ? Po

Military

1 ? Po

Young functionary

3/4 ? Po

Outer circle

An office related to repressions

Technocrat

1/2 ? Po

Party veteran

1/2 ? Po

Military

1/2 ? Po

Young functionary

2/5 ? Po

An office NOT

related to repressions

Technocrat

1 ? Po

Party veteran

1 ? Po

Military

1 ? Po

Young functionary

2/3 ? Po

Responsible for regime crimes

Inner circle

1 ? Po (1+ 2/3 Pp)

Outer circle

1 ? Po (Pp + 1)

The aggregated payoffs (see Table 1) yields several observations and empirically testable hypotheses. First, there is an understandable difference in liberalization support between winning coalition members who neither hold a repression-related office nor are responsible for regime crimes but who assume a technocratic or military post on the one hand, and who we call party functionaries, on the other. While party functionaries are expected to defect, technocrats and military tend to stay with the winning coalition (except when the regime overturn seems inevitable). In other words, technocrats and the military tend to be hard-liners more often than party functionaries. Hence,

H1. Those technocrats and the military who do not hold a repression-related office tend to defect less often than party functionaries.

Second, an institutional age variable is noteworthy: whereas party veterans, just like technocrats and the military, restrain themselves from easily triggered defections, new (“young”) party functionaries find the liberalization alluring much earlier. Hence,

H2. Young party functionaries, unless they hold repression-related offices, tend to support regime liberalization more often than party veterans.

Third, repression-related officeholders face harsher choices and more imminent risks in case of miscalculation on whether the contender eventually achieves the regime change. In other words, their motivation structures are much more open and, consequently, we expect them to defect more eagerly. Hence,

H3. Those winning coalition members who hold repression-related offices

tend to actively oppose to liberalization less frequently than those who do not.

Finally, inner and outer circle elite members' defection conditions differ only in the degree of uncertainty concerning the outcomes of contentious politics. Since the uncertainty variable is highly subjective and the margin between conditions is narrow, it is hard to predict significant differences in the behavior of these groups. Hence,

H4. Outer circle winning coalition members tend to support regime liberalization just as often as winning coalition members from the inner circle.

In order to test these hypotheses, we examine the elite behavior during the German Democratic Republic regime collapse between two crucial months of contentious politics, namely September and October of 1989, since it was in this period of growing mass discontent that most of the defection among the GDR elites took place.

II. Data and Research Design

To grasp and describe all parameters embedded in the model, we introduce eight variables (six independent and two dependent ones). Variable values are set in correspondence with empirical data collected from the GDR media, court cases, and directories providing reference information on party functionaries.

The information on the SED Central Committee's members is basically a skeleton of our data set. We used the list of Central Committee's members found in the official report in CC's newspaper Neues Deutschland on April 22, 1986 (Mitglieder des Zentralkomitees der SED: 4). However, we do not take into account individuals who died or were expelled from the party before the period we study the time period from till the 13th of November 1989 after which the winning coalition was dramatically remodeled and its power balance shifted after Politburo and government resigned and a new government with Hans Modrow as the prime minister was introduced. In sum, there are 214 CC members whose choices and behavior constitute our database.

A) Independent variables

A-1. Biological age and institutional age of a CC SED member. We used several sources to obtain relevant biographical information on CC members, namely Wer War Wer in der DDR? (Mьller-Enbergs, Wielgohs, & Hoffman 2003) and Die Volkskammer der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (1982). Both years of birth and years when an individual joined the SED are provided in these volumes. Fortunately, the directories are designed in a way that significantly facilitates the research, for the names of party functionaries, executives, and even journalists are arranged in alphabetic order. In addition, places of birth, education, career developments, and other relevant biographical data are provided. We put the years into SPSS as auxiliary variables year_of_birth and year_of_joining_the_party and then computed, by deducting them from 1989, two independent variables biological age and institutional age. When party joining year for a particular individual was not available, we used the year when s\he joined the party- affiliated civic organization instead. In some instances, when an individual had been a member of the Communist or the Socialist party which existed prior to SED, we put into the database the year of their merger, 1946.

Figure 2. Frequency distribution of the biological_age variable values among CC SED members

Figure 2 and Figure 3 illustrate the frequency distributions of CC SED members by their biological age and institutional age. It turned out that most of the studied subjects hold the party membership for at least 40 years, since it had been founded or even longer.

Figure 3. Frequency distribution of the institutional age variable among CC SED members

A-2. CC SED member's office type. The most ambiguous variable to be coded was a CC SED member's office, i.e. whether s\he belongs to technocrats, to the military or to the party functionaries. The general rule of thumb was that as opposed to party functionaries, predominantly involved into party organization processes and ideological propaganda, technocrats hold their office mostly due to their special training and expertise or because they possess a significant amount of symbolic capital in society in general or in academia in particular. In addition, unlike party functionaries who had often been members of socialist youth organizations, combined several civic activities, and might at least once during their lifetime dramatically change their specialization (as, for instance, Hans-Joachim Hoffmann who from an ordinary FDJ and SED functionary came to be the Minister for Culture), technocrats rather had a more coherent career path corresponding to their training.

...

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