Download or read book The Anatomy of Post Communist Regimes written by Bálint Magyar and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-20 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a single, coherent framework of the political, economic, and social phenomena that characterize post-communist regimes, this is the most comprehensive work on the subject to date. Focusing on Central Europe, the post-Soviet countries and China, the study provides a systematic mapping of possible post-communist trajectories. At exploring the structural foundations of post-communist regime development, the work discusses the types of state, with an emphasis on informality and patronalism; the variety of actors in the political, economic, and communal spheres; the ways autocrats neutralize media, elections, etc. The analysis embraces the color revolutions of civil resistance (as in Georgia and in Ukraine) and the defensive mechanisms of democracy and autocracy; the evolution of corruption and the workings of “relational economy”; an analysis of China as “market-exploiting dictatorship”; the sociology of “clientage society”; and the instrumental use of ideology, with an emphasis on populism. Beyond a cataloguing of phenomena—actors, institutions, and dynamics of post-communist democracies, autocracies, and dictatorships—Magyar and Madlovics also conceptualize everything as building blocks to a larger, coherent structure: a new language for post-communist regimes. While being the most definitive book on the topic, the book is nevertheless written in an accessible style suitable for both beginners who wish to understand the logic of post-communism and scholars who are interested in original contributions to comparative regime theory. The book is equipped with QR codes that link to www.postcommunistregimes.com, which contains interactive, 3D supplementary material for teaching.
Download or read book Constructing Post communism written by Mikko Lagerspetz and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Constructing the Monolith written by Marc J. Selverstone and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the cold war took shape during the late 1940s, policymakers in the United States and Great Britain displayed a marked tendency to regard international communism as a "monolithic" conspiratorial movement. The image of a "communist monolith" distilled the messy realities of international relations into a neat, comprehensible formula. Its lesson was that all communists, regardless of their native land or political program, were essentially tools of the Kremlin. Marc Selverstone recreates the manner in which the "monolith" emerged as a perpetual framework on both sides of the Atlantic. Though more pervasive and millennial in its American guise, this understanding also informed conceptions of international communism in its close ally Great Britain, casting the Kremlin's challenge as but one more in a long line of threats to freedom. This illuminating and important book not only explains the cold war mindset that determined global policy for much of the twentieth century, but reveals how the search to define a foreign threat can shape the ways in which that threat is actually met.
Download or read book Exploring Organized Interests in Post Communist Policy Making written by Michael Dobbins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines organized interests in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), providing incisive analyses in three critically important policy areas - healthcare, higher education and energy. The four countries surveyed – Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic – afford rich diversity offering broad empirical material available for cross-country and cross-policy comparative analyses. Featuring interdisciplinary research, the book draws together recent developments in the evolution of post-communist advocacy organizations, their population ecology dynamics, interest intermediation, the influence of organized interests and their (bottom-up and top-down) Europeanization. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Central and Eastern European politics, interest groups and lobbying, post-communism, transition and consolidation studies, and more broadly to European studies/politics. The Open Access version of this book, available at: http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003049562, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Download or read book Rebuilding Leviathan written by Anna Grzymala-Busse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-09 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some governing parties limit their opportunistic behaviour and constrain the extraction of private gains from the state? This analysis of post-communist state reconstruction provides surprising answers to this fundamental question of party politics. Across the post-communist democracies, governing parties have opportunistically reconstructed the state - simultaneously exploiting it by extracting state resources and building new institutions that further such extraction. They enfeebled or delayed formal state institutions of monitoring and oversight, established new discretionary structures of state administration, and extracted enormous informal profits from the privatization of the communist economy. By examining how post-communist political parties rebuilt the state in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, Grzymala-Busse explains how even opportunistic political parties will limit their corrupt behaviour and abuse of state resources when faced with strong political competition.
Download or read book Communism s Shadow written by Grigore Pop-Eleches and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism's Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology—the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies' lasting influence on public opinion, Communism's Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.
Download or read book Religion Politics and Nation Building in Post Communist Countries written by Greg Simons and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The increasing significance and visibility of relationships between religion and public arenas and institutions following the fall of communism in Europe provide the core focus of this fascinating book. Leading international scholars consider the religious and political role of Christian Orthodoxy in the Russian Federation, Romania, Georgia and Ukraine alongside the revival of old, indigenous religions, often referred to as 'shamanistic' and look at how, despite Islam’s long history and many adherents in the south, Islamophobic attitudes have increasingly been added to traditional anti-Semitic, anti-Western or anti-liberal elements of Russian nationalism. Contrasts between the church’s position in the post-communist nation building process of secular Estonia with its role in predominantly Catholic Poland are also explored. Religion, Politics and Nation-Building in Post-Communist Countries gives a broad overview of the political importance of religion in the Post-Soviet space but its interest and relevance extends far beyond the geographical focus, providing examples of the challenges in the spheres of public, religious and social policy for all transitional countries.
Download or read book Governing the Post communist City written by Martin Horak and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When faced with the rapid and disorienting transition from communism to democracy, many eastern European leaders sought simple, immediately rewarding answers to complex policy problems. Undoubtedly, this hurried approach had a significant impact on the quality of democratic government in formerly communist countries. Through an analysis of urban politics in Prague between 1990 and 2000, Governing the Post-Communist City sheds new light on the factors that shaped policy in eastern Europe at the time of its democratic transformation. The first book-length study of post-communist urban politics in a city outside of Russia, Governing the Post-Communist City links the difficulties of democratic government in 1990s Prague to decisions made shortly after the fall of communism. Focusing on the issues of road infrastructure and downtown development, Martin Horak argues that local leadership was more concerned with insulating policy-making processes from public influence than with creating new policies suited to post-communist urban development. This set a precedent for the whole institutional environment of post-communist Prague and entrenched itself in the city's politics throughout the 1990s. Original, engaging, and authoritative, this study has much to say about the political climate in Prague after the downfall of communism, and makes insightful conclusions about the factors that contributed to present political circumstances in the region.
Download or read book Informal Nationalism After Communism written by Abel Polese and published by . This book was released on with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, nation-building and identity construction in the post-socialist region have been the subject of extensive academic research. The majority of these studies have taken a 'top-down' approach - focusing on the variety of ways in which governments have sought to define the nascent nation states - and in the process have often oversimplified the complex and overlapping processes at play across the region. Drawing on research on the Balkans, Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, this book focuses instead on the role of non-traditional, non-politicised and non-elite actors in the construction of identity. Across topics as diverse as school textbooks, turbofolk and home decoration, contributors - each an academic with extensive on-the-ground experience - identify and analyse the ways that individuals living across the post-socialist region redefine identity on a daily basis, often by manipulating and adapting state policy. In the process, Informal Nationalism After Communism demonstrates the necessity of holistic, trans-national and interdisciplinary approaches to national identity construction rather than studies limited to a single-state territory. This is important reading for all scholars and policy makers working on the post-socialist region. Book jacket.
Download or read book Constructing Capitalism written by Kazimierz Poznański and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 1992-08-04 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The product of an international political economy colloquium series held at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies"--Page vii. Continued by: The evolutionary transition to capitalism. 1995. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Download or read book The Post Communist Condition written by Aleksandra Galasi?ska and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-17 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on discourses in one national context of post-communist transformation. Proposing a macro-micro approach to discourse analysis and transformation, it examines a spectrum of topics including Polish history, with its ‘interpreters’; changes in political bodies and the media, policies of the Catholic Church and the Institute of National Remembrance; xenophobia and anti-Semitism, with the emergence of unemployment and homelessness; experiences of new gender relations and migrations. In effect, drawing upon unique sets of data, the book shows how post-communist transformation can be understood through analyses of the changing public and private discourses. It shows Polish post-communism as a fragile and uneasy transformation, with people and institutions struggling to make sense of it and of life within it. The volume will be of interest to a broad range of social scientists: discourse analysts, sociologists, modern historians and political scientists, as well as to the informed lay public.
Download or read book Meandering in Transition written by Ostap Kushnir and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-08-19 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection addresses the dynamics of the post-Communist transition in Central Eastern Europe. Its contributors present a detailed analysis of the events unfolding during the last three decades in the region, focusing in particular on identity-building processes and reforms in Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The contributors outline reasons why some of these states accomplished a decisive break with the Communist past and became members of European and transatlantic structures, while some opted for pseudo-transition and fostered hybrid political regimes, jeopardizing their genuine integration with the West. A group of states which decided to preserve their Communist legacy is also explained. The collection describes and scrutinizes the formation of geopolitical affiliations and the evolution of discourses of belonging. It also traces the fluctuating dynamics of national decision-making and institution-building, as many of the post-Communist states reconsider and re-elaborate their initial ideas and visions of Europe today. Finally, the collection brings to light the rapidly changing perceptions of the region by the major global actors—the European Union, People’s Republic of China, Russian Federation, and others.
Download or read book Everyday Life under Communism and After written by Tibor Valuch and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By providing a survey of consumption and lifestyle in Hungary during the second half of the twentieth century, this book shows how common people lived during and after tumultuous regime changes. After an introduction covering the late 1930s, the study centers on the communist era, and goes on to describe changes in the post-communist period with its legacy of state socialism. Tibor Valuch poses a series of questions. Who could be called rich or poor and how did they live in the various periods? How did living, furnishings, clothing, income, and consumption mirror the structure of the society and its transformations? How could people accommodate their lifestyles to the political and social system? How specific to the regime was consumption after the communist takeover, and how did consumption habits change after the demise of state socialism? The answers, based on micro-histories, statistical data, population censuses and surveys help to understand the complexities of daily life, not only in Hungary, but also in other communist regimes in east-central Europe, with insights on their antecedents and afterlives.
Download or read book Museums of Communism written by Stephen M. Norris and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did communities come to terms with the collapse of communism? In order to guide the wider narrative, many former communist countries constructed museums dedicated to chronicling their experiences. Museums of Communism explores the complicated intersection of history, commemoration, and victimization made evident in these museums constructed after 1991. While contributors from a diverse range of fields explore various museums and include nearly 90 photographs, a common denominator emerges: rather than focusing on artifacts and historical documents, these museums often privilege memories and stories. In doing so, the museums shift attention from experiences of guilt or collaboration to narratives of shared victimization under communist rule. As editor Stephen M. Norris demonstrates, these museums are often problematic at best and revisionist at worst. From occupation museums in the Baltic States to memorial museums in Ukraine, former secret police prisons in Romania, and nostalgic museums of everyday life in Russia, the sites considered offer new ways of understanding the challenges of separating memory and myth.
Download or read book Pathways written by Karin Hilmer Pedersen and published by Aarhus Universitetsforlag. This book was released on 2009-08-30 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political and economic developments after the implosion of the Soviet Union have not been easy, nor have outcomes been similar. The different trajectories of political development in post-communist countries are traced through cases from within the post-communist region that exhibit maximum variation in terms of both background variables and outcome. Six countries - Kazakhstan, Georgia, Estonia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Poland - have been selected. Following the Tocquevillian tradition, a 'method' of indirect comparison where in-depth knowledge of a country based on linguistics and history is held up against existing concepts, six country specialists have drawn broad pictures of what characterises 'their' country in terms of political and economic reform, state building and nation building, at the same time placing developments within the international context. The book argues that the elite constellation along two dimensions - consensus about the direction of policy and institutions, and the extent of inclusion of elite interests in decision making - is specific to each country and points to the direction of future developments.
Download or read book Making Capitalism Without Capitalists written by Gil Eyal and published by Verso. This book was released on 1998 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on the transition from socialism to capitalism in Eastern Europe since the 1980s, where capitalism was made without a capitalist class. This text reflects on the sociological characteristics of the Communist system and offers a theory of post-Communist societies.
Download or read book Post communism written by Leslie Holmes and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive, comparative, and up to date, this book will be essential reading for lecturers and students of politics, and the general reader.
