Download or read book Political Authority and Party Secretaries in Poland 1975 1986 written by Paul G. Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-06-08 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the changing position and role of the Polish United Workers' Party and its apparatus between 1975 and 1986. Their role and the way they perform it is seen as a major determinant of the nature of party leadership and, more generally, of the strength of political authority in communist states.
Download or read book Problems of Communism written by and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book State Labor and the Transition to a Market Economy written by Agnieszka Paczyńska and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-19 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In response to mounting debt crises and macroeconomic instability in the 1980s, many countries in the developing world adopted neoliberal policies promoting the unfettered play of market forces and deregulation of the economy and attempted large-scale structural adjustment, including the privatization of public-sector industries. How much influence did various societal groups have on this transition to a market economy, and what explains the variances in interest-group influence across countries? In this book, Agnieszka Paczyńska explores these questions by studying the role of organized labor in the transition process in four countries in different regions—the Czech Republic and Poland in eastern Europe, Egypt in the Middle East, and Mexico in Latin America. In Egypt and Poland, she shows, labor had substantial influence on the process, whereas in the Czech Republic and Mexico it did not. Her explanation highlights the complex relationship between institutional structures and the “critical junctures” provided by economic crises, revealing that the ability of groups like organized labor to wield influence on reform efforts depends to a great extent on not only their current resources (such as financial autonomy and legal prerogatives) but also the historical legacies of their past ties to the state. This new edition features an epilogue that analyzes the role of organized labor uprisings in 2011, the protests in Egypt, the overthrow of Mubarak, and the post-Mubarak regime.
Download or read book Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe written by Grzegorz Ekiert and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-15 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a shared effort to apply a general historical-institutionalist approach to the problem of assessing institutional change in the wake of communism's collapse in Europe. It brings together a number of leading senior and junior scholars with outstanding reputations as specialists in postcommunism and comparative politics to address central theoretical and empirical issues involved in the study of postcommunism. The authors address such questions as how historical 'legacies' of the communist regime be defined, how their impact can be measured in methodologically rigorous ways, and how the effects of temporal and spatial context can be taken into account in empirical research on the region. Taken as a whole, the volume makes an important contribution to the growing literature by utilizing the comparative historical method to study key problems of world politics.
Download or read book Beyond Stalinism written by Ronald J. Hill and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1992. The present collection of essays brings together the concepts of change and development, by using the concept of evolution to explore various forms of change in the communist and 'post-communist' world. The author's experience of living in the provinces of the Soviet Union later persuaded them of the inappropriateness of at least a rigid application of the concept of totalitarianism. This title will also satiate the further interest of the interaction between 'capitalism' (or liberal democracy) and 'communism', particularly the impact of capitalism's technical innovations on some of communism's basic principles of rule.
Download or read book The Collapse of a Single Party System written by Graeme J. Gill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-10-13 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1994 book traces the disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to December 1991.
Download or read book Redeeming the Communist Past written by Anna M. Grzymala-Busse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-02-18 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major study examines the regeneration of the former communist parties in East Central Europe after 1989.
Download or read book Solidarity and contention written by Maryjane Osa and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Demise of the Soviet Communist Party written by Atsushi Ogushi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-11-02 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, based on extensive original research in previously unexplored sources, including the party archives, provides a great deal of new information on the disintegration of the Soviet communist party, in 1991 and the preceding years. It argues that, contrary to prevailing views, the party was reformable in late Soviet times, but that attempts to reform it failed: reforms succeeded in preventing the party interfering in the state body, and thereby abolished the party's traditional administrative functions, but without creating an alternative power centre, and without transforming the party from a vanguard party into a parliamentary party. It demonstrates that the party, having ceased to offer career paths for aspiring party members, thereby lost its reason for existence, that an exodus of party members then followed, which in turn caused a financial crisis; and that this financial crisis, and the resulting engagement in commercial activity, fragmented and dispersed party property. It shows how the failed coup of 1991 was led by the military rather than the party, and how having lost its reason for existence and its property, the party had no choice but to accept the reality that it was de facto dead.
Download or read book Political Science written by William J. Crotty and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, the study of legislatures has traditionally been a central preoccupation of political scientists. Legislatures provide good laboratories for testing theories and methodologies of significance in the discipline and, more broadly, for contributing to an understanding of how representative government works.
Download or read book The State against Society written by Grzegorz Ekiert and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1996-09-30 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classical images of state-socialism developed in contemporary social sciences were founded on simple presuppositions. State-socialist regimes were considered to be politically stable due to their pervasive institutional and ideological control over the everyday lives of their citizens, impervious to reform and change, and representative of extreme political and economic dependency. Despite their contrasting historical experiences, they have been treated as basically identical in their institutional design, social and economic structures, and policies. Grzegorz Ekiert challenges this notion in a comparative analysis of the major political crises in post-1945 East Central Europe: Hungary (1956-63), Czechoslovakia (1968-76), and Poland (1980-89). The author maintains that the nature and consequences of these crises can better explain the distinctive experiences of East Central European countries under communist rule than can the formal characteristics of their political and economic systems or their politically dependent status. He explores how political crises reshaped party-state institutions, redefined relations between party and state institutions, altered the relationship between the state and various groups and organizations within society, and modified the political practices of these regimes. He shows how these events transformed cultural categories, produced collective memories, and imposed long-lasting constraints on mass political behavior and the policy choices of ruling elites. These crises shaped the political evolution of the region, produced important cross-national differences among state-socialist regimes, and contributed to the distinctive patterns of their collapse.
Download or read book An Algebra of Soviet Power written by Michael E. Urban and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-11-23 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Control of office has long been regarded as the key element in understanding power and policy in the Soviet system. What, however, accounts for the control of office and how are individuals recruited into positions of power and responsibility? In An Algebra of Soviet Power, Michael Urban adopts a fresh approach and introduces into the field of political elite studies the sociological technique of vacancy chain analysis.
Download or read book Central Europe Since 1945 written by Paul G. Lewis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central Europe - here, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia and Hungary - is at the centre of international attention since the Soviet collapse. An understanding of its postwar history is critical to an appreciation of the challenges facing its present rulers. This is an engrossing account of the installation, development, operation and eventual downfall of its (very different) communist regimes, and the transition to the freedoms and uncertainties of the post-Soviet world. The book covers political, economic, social and cultural change, emphasising the crucial relationships with the USSR throughout.
Download or read book Watching the Watchers written by Henry Thomson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-29 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Secret police are central actors in dictatorships, yet we know very little about these institutions. Exploring communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, Henry Thomson opens this black box for the first time. This book will appeal to anyone interested in how authoritarian regimes and their secret police forces work"--
Download or read book Europeanization and Regionalization in the EU s Enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe written by J. Hughes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2004-10-12 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of EU conditionality and compliance during the enlargement to the Central and Eastern European candidate countries. EU conditionality for membership is widely understood as having been a driving force for Europeanization, providing incentives and sanctions for compliance or non-compliance with EU norms, such as the 'Copenhagen Criteria' and the adoption of the acquis communautaire . By taking regional policy and regionalization as a case study, this book provides a comparative analysis of the effects of conditionality on the Central and East European countries and explores the many paradoxes and weaknesses in the use of EU conditionality over time.
Download or read book Spring Will Be Ours written by Andrzej Paczkowski and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Spring Will Be Ours focuses on the turbulent half century from the outbreak of World War II in 1939, which started the chain of events that would lead to the communist takeover of Poland, to 1989, when futile attempts to reform the communist system gave way to its total transformation. Andrzej Paczkowski shows how the communists captured and consolidated power, describes their use of terror and propaganda, and illuminates the changes that took place within the governing elite. He also documents the political opposition to the regime - both inside Poland and abroad - that resulted in upheavals in 1956, 1968, 1970, 1976, and 1980. His narrative makes evident the pressures that the elite felt from above, from Moscow, and from below, from the population and from within the party. The history of Poland and the Poles is of special interest because on numerous occasions in the twentieth century this relatively small country influenced developments on a global scale.
Download or read book Musical Solidarities written by Andrea Bohlman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-01-06 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland is a music history of Solidarity, the social movement opposing state socialism in 1980s Poland. The story unfolds along crucial sites of political action under state socialism: underground radio networks, the sanctuaries of the Polish Roman Catholic Church, labor strikes and student demonstrations, and commemorative performances. Through innovative close listenings of archival recordings, author Andrea F. Bohlman uncovers creative sonic practices in bootleg cassettes, televised state propaganda, and the unofficial, uncensored print culture of the opposition. She argues that sound both unified and splintered the Polish opposition, keeping the contingent formations of political dissent in dynamic tension. By revealing the diverse repertories-singer-songwriter verses, religious hymns, large-scale symphonies, experimental music, and popular song-that played a role across the decade, she challenges paradigmatic visions of a late twentieth-century global protest culture that place song and communitas at the helm of social and political change. Musical Solidarities brings together perspectives from historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and sound studies to demonstrate the value of sound for thinking politics. Unfurling the rich soundscapes of political action at demonstrations, church services, meetings, and in detention, it offers a nuanced portrait of this pivotal decade of European and global history.
