Download or read book The Left Transformed in Post Communist Societies written by Jane Leftwich Curry and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2004-09-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most unexpected outcomes of the Soviet bloc's transition out of communism has been the divergent but important paths followed by once ruling communist parties. In Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania those parties transformed themselves into pro-Western free market center leftists who have won elections and formed governing coalitions periodically since the early 1990s. The result has been former communists leading their countries into NATO and the EU even as their conservative opponents continue to condemn them for their communist past. No less surprising has been the ability of anti-Western neo-Leninist communist parties in Russia and Ukraine to win sizable pluralities of votes in free competitive elections. Their very strength has contributed to blocking genuine democratic alternation of power. By employing a unique cross-regional comparative framework The Left Transformed explores the divergent trajectories of ex-ruling communist parties in key countries of the former Soviet Empire. In-depth interviews, party presses and primary documents, and national election data provide a foundation for the most up-to-date examination of party transition, organization, ideology, and electoral fortunes through late 2002. This book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in contemporary history, political parties, or comparative government in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Download or read book Elites and Classes in the Transformation of State Socialism written by David Lane and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 2011 marks the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union. This may be an appropriate time to evaluate the adoption by previously state socialist societies of other economic and political models. The transition has sometimes been described in positive terms, as a movement to free societies with open markets and democratic elections. Others have argued that the transition has created weak, poverty-stricken states with undeveloped civil societies ruled by unresponsive political elites. Which is the more accurate assessment?David Lane examines a few of the theoretical approaches that help explain the trajectory of change from socialism to capitalism. He focuses on two main approaches in this volume - elite theories and social class. Theories dwelling on the role of elites regard the transformation from socialism to capitalism as a type of system transfer in which elites craft democratic and market institutions into the space left by state socialism. Lane contrasts this interpretation with class-based theories, which consider transformation in terms of revolution, and explain why such theories have not been considered the best way of framing the transition in the post-socialist states.While recognizing that elites can play important roles and have the capacity to transform societies, Lane contends that elite theories alone are inadequate to explain a system change that brings free markets. In contrast, he proposes a class approach in which two groups characterize state socialism: an administrative class and an acquisition class.
Download or read book Post Communist Mafia State written by B lint Magyar and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having won a two-third majority in Parliament at the 2010 elections, the Hungarian political party Fidesz removed many of the institutional obstacles of exerting power. Just like the party, the state itself was placed under the control of a single individual, who since then has applied the techniques used within his party to enforce submission and obedience onto society as a whole. In a new approach the author characterizes the system as the ?organized over-world?, the ?state employing mafia methods? and the ?adopted political family', applying these categories not as metaphors but elements of a coherent conceptual framework. The actions of the post-communist mafia state model are closely aligned with the interests of power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a small group of insiders. While the traditional mafia channeled wealth and economic players into its spheres of influence by means of direct coercion, the mafia state does the same by means of parliamentary legislation, legal prosecution, tax authority, police forces and secret service. The innovative conceptual framework of the book is important and timely not only for Hungary, but also for other post-communist countries subjected to autocratic rules. ÿ
Download or read book Understanding Post Communist Transformation written by Richard Rose and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-01-21 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fall of the Berlin Wall launched the transformation of government, economy and society across half of Europe and the former Soviet Union. This text deals with the process of change in former Communist bloc countries, ten of which have become new European Union (EU) democracies while Russia and her neighbours remain burdened by their Soviet legacy. Drawing on more than a hundred public opinion surveys from the New Europe Barometer, the text compares how ordinary people have coped with the stresses and opportunities of transforming Communist societies into post-Communist societies and the resulting differences between peoples in the new EU member states and Russia. Subjects covered by Understanding Post-Communist Transformation include: Stresses and opportunities of economic transformation Social capital and the development of civil society Elections and the complexities of party politics The challenges for the EU of raising standards of democratic governance Differences between Russia’s and the West’s interpretation of political life Written by one of the world's most renowned authorities on this subject, this text is ideal for courses on transition, post-communism, democratization and Russian and Eastern European history and politics.
Download or read book Regional Economic Issues Special Report 25 Years of Transition written by Mr.James Roaf and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2014-10-17 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past 25 years have seen a dramatic transformation in Europe’s former communist countries, resulting in their reintegration with the global economy, and, in most cases, major improvements in living standards. But the task of building full market economies has been difficult and protracted. Liberalization of trade and prices came quickly, but institutional reforms—such as governance reform, competition policy, privatization and enterprise restructuring—often faced opposition from vested interests. The results of the first years of transition were uneven. All countries suffered high inflation and major recessions as prices were freed and old economic linkages broke down. But the scale of output losses and the time taken for growth to return and inflation to be brought under control varied widely. Initial conditions and external factors played a role, but policies were critical too. Countries that undertook more front-loaded and bold reforms were rewarded with faster recovery and income convergence. Others were more vulnerable to the crises that swept the region in the wake of the 1997 Asia crisis.
Download or read book One Hundred Years of Communist Experiments written by Vladimir Tismaneanu and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has communism’s humanist quest for freedom and social justice without exception resulted in the reign of terror and lies? The authors of this collective volume address this urgent question covering the one hundred years since Lenin’s coup brought the first communist regime to power in St. Petersburg, Russia in November 1917. The first part of the volume is dedicated to the varieties of communist fantasies of salvation, and the remaining three consider how communist experiments over many different times and regions attempted to manage economics, politics, as well as society and culture. Although each communist project was adapted to the situation of the country where it operated, the studies in this volume find that because of its ideological nature, communism had a consistent penchant for totalitarianism in all of its manifestations. This book is also concerned with the future. As the world witnesses a new wave of ideological authoritarianism and collectivistic projects, the authors of the nineteen essays suggest lessons from their analyses of communism’s past to help better resist totalitarian projects in the future.
Download or read book Post Communist Democracies and Party Organization written by Margit Tavits and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-24 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margit Tavits demonstrates that the successful establishment of a political party in a new democracy crucially depends on the strength of its organization.
Download or read book Origin Ideology and Transformation of Political Parties written by Vít Hloušek and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2010 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Vít Hlousek and Lubomír Kopecek critically apply the party-families approach to political parties in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. By examining the political relevance of different party families, Hlousek and Kopecek are able to assess the validity of this typology in the analysis of the transformation of political parties in this region.
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 A Normal Country written by Andrei Shleifer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a firsthand glimpse into the intellectual challenges that Russia's turbulent transition generated. It deals with many of the most important reforms, from Gorbachev's half-hearted "perestroika," to the mass privatization program, to the efforts to build legal and regulatory institutions of a market economy.
Download or read book Post Communist Transition written by András Bozóki and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transition from communist dictatorship to multi-party democracy has proved a long and painful process for the countries of Eastern Europe, and has met with varying degrees of success. In Hungary, the radical opposition was uniquely successful in fighting off attempts by the old-guard communist elite to hijack reform programmes, by forcing free elections and creating a multi-party system. This volume focuses on the Hungarian experience, analysing in detail the process of transition from dictatorship to pluralist democracy. Some of Hungary's leading political scientists examine issues such as the legitimation crisis of communist rule, resulting struggles within the ruling elite and the forces behind transition. Constitutional reform, party formation and voting behaviour at the first free elections are also taken into account. The concluding section places the Hungarian experience in comparative perspective, within the context of other Central and Western European states.
Download or read book Institutional Design and Party Government in Post Communist Europe written by Csaba Nikolenyi and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This books examines the institutional foundations of coalition government in the ten post-communist democracies of Eastern and Central Europe for the 1990-2010 period: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Its central argument is that differences in the arrangement of political institutions systematically explain variations in patterns of multi-party government across these states. The book starts with the premise that electoral systems and constitutional provisions about the powers, the structure, and the relationship between parliament and the presidency determine the degree to which political power is dispersed or concentrated in the political system. On the basis of these institutional features, three groups of states are distinguished with regard to their degree of power concentration; the substantive chapters of the book demonstrate how these institutional combinations and differences shape three specific facets of party government which capture the main stages of the lifecycle of coalitions governments: the formation of electoral coalitions, government formation and government duration. Specifically, three comparative chapters assess the impact of institutional power concentration on the size of electoral coalitions; the likelihood that political parties form a minority government; and the number of days that a government lasts in office. The main finding of the book is that power concentration matters: political parties in those democracies where institutions are designed to concentrate political power tend to form large electoral coalitions, they tend to form majority rather than undersized governments, and they build more durable cabinets. In addition, the book contains a detailed case study of government formation in Hungary and a previously unstudied comparison of indirect presidential elections in four states: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Latvia. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu.
Download or read book Local Communities and Post Communist Transformation written by Simon Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-communist transformation in the former Soviet bloc has had a profound effect, not just in the political and economic sphere, but on all aspects of life. Although a great deal has been written about transformation, much of it has been about transformation viewed from the top, and little has been written about how things have changed for ordinary people at the local level. This book, based on extensive original research, examines the changes resulting from transformation at the local level in the form Czechoslovakia. It considers especially local democracy, social movements, and work collectives, and paints a picture of people gradually growing in self-confidence and taking more control of their communities, having lived for decades in a framework where so much was directed from the top.
Download or read book The Autocratic Middle Class written by Bryn Rosenfeld and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The conventional wisdom is that a growing middle class will give rise to democracy. Yet the middle classes of the developing world have grown at a remarkable pace over the past two decades, and much of this growth has taken place in countries that remain nondemocratic. Rosenfeld explains this phenomenon by showing how modern autocracies secure support from key middle-class constituencies. Drawing on original surveys, interviews, archival documents, and secondary sources collected from nine months in the field, she compares the experiences of recent post-communist countries, including Russia, the Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, to show that under autocracy, state efforts weaken support for democracy, especially among the middle class. When autocratic states engage extensively in their economies - by offering state employment, offering perks to those to those who are loyal, and threatening dismissal to those who are disloyal - the middle classes become dependent on the state for economic opportunities and career advancement, and, ultimately, do not support a shift toward democratization. Her argument explains why popular support for Ukraine's Orange Revolution unraveled or why Russians did not protest evidence of massive electoral fraud. The author's research questions the assumption that a rising share of educated, white-collar workers always makes the conditions for democracy more favorable, and why dependence on the state has such pernicious consequences for democratization"--
Download or read book The Estate Origins of Democracy in Russia written by Tomila V. Lankina and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A devastating challenge to the idea of communism as a 'great leveller', this extraordinarily original, rigorous, and ambitious book debunks Marxism-inspired accounts of its equalitarian consequences. It is the first study systematically to link the genesis of the 'bourgeoisie-cum-middle class' – Imperial, Soviet, and post-communist – to Tzarist estate institutions which distinguished between nobility, clergy, the urban merchants and meshchane, and peasants. It demonstrates how the pre-communist bourgeoisie, particularly the merchant and urban commercial strata but also the high human capital aristocracy and clergy, survived and adapted in Soviet Russia. Under both Tzarism and communism, the estate system engendered an educated, autonomous bourgeoisie and professional class, along with an oppositional public sphere, and persistent social cleavages that continue to plague democratic consensus. This book also shows how the middle class, conventionally bracketed under one generic umbrella, is often two-pronged in nature – one originating among the educated estates of feudal orders, and the other fabricated as part of state-induced modernization.
Download or read book Postcommunist Transformation and the Social Sciences written by Frank Bönker and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003-08 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work's major substantive themes revolve around problems of post-communist socio-economic transformations. Specifically, it explores post-communist systemic change, the role of religion and collective identity, the significance of trust and economic culture, patterns of state-economy interactions in enterprise restructuring, the context of EU expansion, the strengths and weaknesses of economic theory and neo-liberal doctrine, and the history of ideas in the post-communist transformation debate.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation written by Robert A. Saunders and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2010-05-13 with total page 774 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation provides insight into this rapidly developing country. The volume includes coverage of pivotal movements, events, and persons in the late Soviet Union (1985-1991) and contemporary Russia (1991-present), as well as detailed entries covering the country's expansive geography, unique culture, diverse ethnic groups, and complex political and social environment. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, maps, a bibliography, and over 600 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, events, places, and organizations.
