Stephen Holmes > Quotes

“The difference between post-communist China, post-communist Central Europe and post-communist Russia closely tracks the distinction between three styles or strategies of development: namely, imitating the means (or borrowing), imitating the ends (or converting), and imitating the appearances (or simulating).”
― Stephen Holmes, The Light that Failed: A Reckoning

“Antiliberals endlessly berate their enemies for "instrumental thinking." But they do not clearly explain the evil of producing better goods at a lower cost.”
― Stephen Holmes, The Anatomy of Antiliberalism

“The most memorable lesson of the unexpected end of the Soviet Union for most Russians may be that history is a series of covert operations. Not the revolutionary masses, apparently, but the cloak-and-dagger intelligence agencies, in both East and West, are the real locomotives of history.”
― Stephen Holmes, The Light that Failed: A Reckoning

“What ‘managed democracy’ simulated, in other words, was not democracy but management. It took only modest administrative capacity to rig an election; it was certainly easier to engineer elections than to provide a high-quality education”
― Stephen Holmes, The Light that Failed: A Reckoning

“Illiberal politicians owe their political success to popular resentment at having spent two decades genuflecting before putatively canonical foreign models. This explains why, in the populists’ over-the-top speeches, the European Union and the Soviet Union are discussed interchangeably.”
― Stephen Holmes, The Light that Failed: A Reckoning

“It turns out that people often support, or at least accept, rulers not for what they do but simply because of the offices they inhabit or titles they hold. ‘Popularity’ in Russia is a consequence not a cause of the power one wields. Instead of representing people’s interests, elections register the willingness of voters to submit to incumbents who are able to sideline any and all challengers to their power.”
― Stephen Holmes, The Light that Failed: A Reckoning