CAMBRIDGE: Amazing but true: there is, at long last, good political news from Russia and Ukraine. Both countries held elections recently (for President in Ukraine, and parliament in Russia); both produced centrist governments. Even more remarkable, for the first time, the executive branch in each country is poised to find parliamentary support for its governmental program. This could be the beginning of effective democratic rule for the first time in these countries. Democratic rule, in turn, could give a decisive boost to true economic reform.

We must acknowledge, of course, that the political situation in both countries remains far from ideal. Both the Presidential elections in Ukraine and the Parliamentary elections in Russia were not quite fair and free. In both countries, the presidential administrations used their heavy muscle to dominate television, thereby limiting the ability of opposition candidates to make their case to the public. Ukraine’s President Leonid Kuchma won re-election despite the misery of a decade of economic paralysis and widespread corruption. President Boris Yeltsin’s favored parties won strong support in the Duma in large part because of the popularity of the brutal war that Russia is waging in Chechnya.

The good news, nonetheless, dominates the bad news. Immediately after the elections, an interesting thing happened in both countries. In Ukraine, a newly re-elected President Kuchma had to nominate a new Prime Minister for approval by the parliament. He first re-nominated the existing, lackluster Prime Minister, who was justifiably voted down by the Parliament. The President then put forward for Prime Minister an impressive reformer, Central Bank Governor Viktor Yushchenko. Remarkably, Yushchenko won strong backing in the parliament, receiving confirmation by a vote of 296 deputies out of 450 members. Yushchenko immediately declared his intention to pursue privatization, land reform, and a consolidation of bloated state finances. The omens are good.

In Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, though a dour and tough-talking state security officer and former spy in East Germany, who has masterminded the renewed Chechen war, was also impressive in democratic politics following the Duma elections. Immediately after the Duma elections, in which the two main Kremlin-backed parties in combination far exceeded the communist party vote, Prime Minister Putin went to the Duma to forge a parliamentary majority for the government’s program. This was a deft move, and a promising one for future reforms, especially since many of the leading economic reformers are working closely with Putin.

This utterly normal scene of a Prime Minister winning Parliamentary support is actually extraordinary in the context of Russia and Ukraine. In both countries, the President and executive branch (headed by a Prime Minister selected by the President) have basically waged war with Parliament during most of the post-Soviet era since 1991. Both countries adopted mixed Presidential – Parliamentary systems, with strong presidential roles. Such systems are always complicated (look at the tensions that affected France at various points of so-called “cohabitation,” when President and Parliament were headed by different parties), but the systems were especially problematic in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine, where democratic traditions were non-existent.

In both countries, the Parliaments were hostile to the Presidents, and the Presidents tried to ride roughshod over the Parliaments, ruling by decree and essentially ignoring hostile parliaments. In both countries, ongoing Presidential – Parliamentary feuding led to utter political stalemate for years, and even to violent confrontation in Russia in October 1993.

In all this, the West played an unhelpful role. The International Monetary Fund would ride into Kiev or Moscow, negotiate with the Government over the terms of a loan, and then expect the Government to impose the IMF’s conditions on the Parliament. The IMF’s idea, of course, was to strengthen the hand of the reformers, but the IMF’s crude way of imposing its conditions more often led to backlash by the parliament, and to a degeneration of the democratic process. Governments treated their parliaments as potential barriers to IMF plans, and therefore as nuisances to be evaded, not places to create coalitions of national political support.

Both countries now may be grasping for a democratic way out of crisis, but both still face high hurdles. The Ukrainian Government is broke, and will most likely have to default, or to reschedule its foreign debts, or to borrow new funds to repay the old, in 2000. The West should certainly not force Ukraine into an intense and destabilizing austerity program in a misguided attempt to collect on debt service. Russia is not only strapped for cash but also at war, and war can always unleash demons, and has already unleashed terrible violence and massive civilian death. In addition, Russia will also face new and crucial Presidential elections next summer. In both Russia and Ukraine, the West should back off from imposing programs made in Washington, and should certainly refrain from demanding excessive and self-defeating austerity. Instead, the West should encourage governments to work with their parliaments to find their way towards more representative rule. History has shown that legitimate, democratic governments can do wonders in pushing tough and needed social and economic reforms.

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