Synopses & Reviews
Including essays by several leading contemporary specialists, this volume addresses the extent to which postcommunist societies have successfully institutionalized democratic politics and capitalist market economies over a decade after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. As the first volume to apply a systematic "comparative historical" approach to the subject matter, it reveals the precise social, cultural, and geographical constraints and opportunities facing postcommunist reformers.
Synopsis
This book contains essays by several of the leading contemporary specialists on the region of Central and Eastern Europe. The volume addresses the extent to which postcommunist societies have successfully institutionalized democratic politics and capitalist market economies over a decade after the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
Synopsis
Addresses the problem of assessing institutional change in the wake of communism's collapse in Europe.
Table of Contents
About the contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction Grzegorz Ekiert and Stephen E. Hanson; Part I. Postcommunist Transformations and the Role of Historical Legacies: 1. Time, space and institutional change in central and eastern Europe Grzegorz Ekiert and Stephen E. Hanson; 2. Accounting for postcommunist regime diversity: what counts as a good cause? Herbert Kitschelt; Part II. Postcommunist Europe: Continuity and Change in Regional Patterns: 3. Patterns of postcommunist transformation in central and eastern Europe Grzegorz Ekiert; 4. Postcommunist spaces: a political geography approach to explaining postcommunist outcomes Jeffrey S. Kopstein and David A. Reilly; Part III. Institutional Redesign and Historical Legacies: Case Studies: 5. Redeeming the past: communist successor parties after 1989 Anna Grzymala-Busse; 6. Leninist legacies and legacies of state socialism in postcommunist central Europe's constitutional development Allison Stanger; 7. Historical legacies, institutions and the politics of social policy in Hungary and Poland, 1989-1999 Tomasz Inglot; 8. Postcommunist unemployment politics: historical legacies and the curious acceptance of job loss Phineas Baxandall; 9. 'Past' dependence or path contingency? Institutional design in postcommunist financial systems Juliet Johnson; 10. Cultural legacies of state socialism: history making and cultural-political entrepreneurship in postcommunist Poland and Russia Jan Kubik; Epilogue: from area studies to contextualized comparisons Paul Pierson; Index.