Conclusions

Summary

“If it had not been for ‘the system,’ we would have been like the West” – this is the premise of the Eastern European syllogism. But there are many countries that never experienced communist rule, yet remain part of the South; half of the world's population lives in countries that are capitalist, poor, and ruled by intermittent outbursts of organized violence. As a Brazilian business leader remarked, “Our businessmen think that communism has failed. They forget that our capitalism is also a monstrous failure.” Poverty, inequality, inefficiency, repression, and foreign domination are the daily experience of billions of people for whom the West remains the North.

What warrant do we have, therefore, to complete the syllogism, to believe that now, once “the system” is gone, Eastern Europe will find a path to “democracy, markets, and Europe,” to the West? This is the question that motivated this book.

Conclusions are not the place to be cautious or nuanced. Let me, therefore, first summarize the results established above and then go out on a limb and speculate about the future of Eastern Europe.

To be consolidated, democratic institutions must at the same time protect all major interests and generate economic results. Yet the institutions that have emerged from recent transitions to democracy seem to be to a large extent haphazard, adopted under the understandable pressure to terminate fundamental conflicts as quickly as possible. Hence, the new democracies are likely to experience continual conflict over basic institutions.