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The Political Economy of Postsocialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Valerie Bunce
Valerie Bunce*
Affiliation:
The Department of Government, Cornell University
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Extract

There were two good reasons to expect that developments after socialism, whether in the former Soviet Union or in east central Europe, would follow a roughly similar course. The first was the homogenizing effects of the socialist experience. In contrast to other regions of the world, such as Latin America and southern Europe, where dictatorships had also given way to more liberalized orders, the socialist regimes of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were remarkably alike in their form and functioning.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 58 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Ten Years after 1989: What Have We Learned? , Winter 1999 , pp. 756 - 793
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1999

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References

1. Throughout this paper, the units of analysis are those states that, during the Cold War era, were part of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Given state dissolution (and the absorption of East Germany), this produces twenty-seven cases. Mongolia, therefore, is ignored in this analysis, as are several other, “semisocialist,” cases—Vietnam and China.

2. See Bunce, Valerie, Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State (Cambridge, Eng., 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a similar argument focusing on the Soviet case and using an institutionalist framework, see Solnick, Steven L., Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions (Cambridge, Mass., 1998)Google Scholar.

3. For diametrically opposed positions on the influence of the socialist past, contrast, for example, Jowitt, Ken, “The Leninist Legacy,” in Banac, Ivo, ed., Eastern Europe in Revolution (Ithaca, 1992)Google Scholar Przeworski, versus Adam, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge, Eng., 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a summary of these arguments and others that propose competing influences on postsocialist developments, that divide along the axes of optimism and pessimism, and that resemble, remarkably, earlier debates concerning the historical transition to capitalism, see Bela Greskovits, “Rival Views of Postcommunist Market Society” (paper presented at Cornell University, 5 October 1998).

4. On socialism as the “other” of capitalism, see Verdery, Katherine, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Wedel, Janine, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, 1989–1998 (New York, 1998)Google Scholar.

6. See, especially, Greskovits, “Rival Views.” Also see Grzegorz Ekiert, “Patterns of Postcommunist Transitions in Eastern Europe,” and Grzymala-Busse, Anna, “Political Legacies and Communist Party Adaptation in East-Central Europe” (both papers presented at the Council for European Studies conference, Baltimore, 26–28 February 1998)Google Scholar.

7. Bela Greskovits argues, however, that in opting for Europe, eastern Europe has paid a big price: the “Latin-Americanization” these countries were supposed to avoid. Greskovits, , “The Unveiled Periphery: Backwardness under Postcommunism ” (unpublished manuscript, Cornell University, 1999)Google Scholar.

8. See, for example, Greskovits, Bela, The Political Economy of Protest and Patience: East European and Latin American Transformations Compared (Budapest, 1998)Google Scholar; Vladimir Popov, “Explaining the Magnitude of Transformational Recession” (unpublished manuscript, 1999).

9. For example, only one country in the region—Turkmenistan—has failed to hold at least one contested election. See Dawisha, Karen, “Post-Communism's Troubled Steps toward Democracy: An Aggregate Analysis of Progress in the 27 New States” (paper, Center for the Study of Post-Communist Societies, University of Maryland, 1997)Google Scholar.

10. On the Russian case, see, for example, Fish, M. Steven, “The Predicament of Russian Liberalism: Evidence from the December, 1995 Party Elections” Europe-Asia Studies 49, no. 2 (1997): 199–220 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, “Democracy in Disarray: Central Governing Capacity in the Provinces and the Weakness of Russian Political Parties” (unpublished manuscript, Princeton University, August 1998). But by some measures, which emphasize stability over time in ideological clustering rather than specific party attachments, Russian party identification does at least seem to be developing. See Tucker, Joshua A. and Brader, Ted, “Congratulations, It's a Party: The Birth of Mass Political Parties in Russia, 1993–1996” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, 3–6 September 1998)Google Scholar.

11. See, for example, Hendley, Kathryn, “Legal Development in Post-Soviet Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs 13, no. 3 (July-September 1997): 228–51Google Scholar.

12. On the working class under postsocialism, see, for instance, Ost, David, “Labor, Class, and Democracy: Shaping Political Antagonisms in Post-Communist Society,” in Crawford, Beverly, ed., Markets, States, and Democracy: The Political Economy of Post-Communist Transformations (Boulder, Colo., 1995), 177–203 Google Scholar; Stephen Crowley, , “Barriers to Collective Action: Steelworkers and Mutual Dependence in the Former Soviet Union,” World Politics 46, no. 4 (July 1994): 589–615 Google Scholar; Crowley, Stephen, Hot Coal, Cold Steel: Russian and Ukrainian Workers from the End of the Soviet Union to the Postcommunist Transformation (Ann Arbor, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Christensen, Paul T., Class/Power/Politics: Labor, Management, and the State under Gorbachev and Yeltsin (DeKalb, forthcoming, 2000)Google Scholar; Ost, David and Weinstein, Marc, “Unionists against Unions: Toward Hierarchical Management in Postcommunist Poland,” East European Politics and Societies 13, no. 3 (1999): 1–33 Google Scholar. On the more general question of civil society and the constraints on its development, see Krygier, Martin, “Virtuous Circles: Antipodean Reflections on Power, Institutions, and Civil Society,” East European Politics and Societies 11, no. 3 (1997): 36–88 Google Scholar; Ekiert, “Patterns of Postcommunist Transitions”; Grzymala-Busse, “Political Legacies”; Dawisha, Karen and Parrott, Bruce, eds., Conflict, Cleavage, and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus (Cambridge, Eng., 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dawisha, Karen and Parrott, Bruce, eds., The Consolidation of Democracy in East-Central Europe (Cambridge, Eng., 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dawisha, Karen and Parrott, Bruce, eds., Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Reactions in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova (Cambridge, Eng., 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dawisha, Karen and Parrott, Bruce, eds., Politics, Power, and the Struggle for Democracy in South-East Europe (Cambridge, Eng., 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dawisha, “Post-Communism's Troubled Steps.”

13. For example, to take the regional extremes: the territory of the Russian Federation is 850 times that of Slovenia (though both countries are a product of recent state dissolution); the population of the Russian Federation is 90 times that of Estonia; agriculture occupies 55 percent of the Albanian labor force and only 5 percent of the Slovene labor force; and Poland, Slovenia, and Albania are virtually homogeneous in national terms, while the titular nation of both Bosnia and Kazakhstan is a minority within each of these states.

14. These figures are drawn from the World Bank, World Development Report: The State in a Changing World (Oxford, 1997), 218–21, 230–31, 234–37, 242–47 Google Scholar; Raiser, Martin and Sanfrey, Peter, “Statistical Review,” Economics of Transition 6, no. 1 (1998): 258 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. For an insightful analysis of the Georgian case, where the state and the regime disintegrated and where both are now in the process (albeit unevenly and without any guarantees) of being reconstituted, see Nodia, Ghia, “Putting the State Back Together in Post-Soviet Georgia” (paper presented at the conference, “Beyond State Crisis: The Quest for the Efficacious State in Africa and Eurasia,” University of Wisconsin, 11–14 March 1999)Google Scholar.

16. Virtual states can also mean virtual economies. See Woodruff, David, “Barter of the Bankrupt: The Politics of Demonetization in Russia's Federal State,” in Burawoy, Michael and Verdery, Katherine, eds., Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World (Lanham, Md., 1999), 83–124 Google Scholar.

17. On the Bosnian case, see, especially, Gagnon, Valere, “Bosnian Federalism and the Institutionalization of Ethnic Division” (paper presented at the Workshop on Nationalism, Federalism, and Secession, Cornell University, 2 May 1998)Google Scholar. For a different perspective, see Hayden, Robert M., “The State as Legal Fiction,” East European Constitutional Review 7, no. 4 (Fall 1998): 45–50 Google Scholar.

18. The comparisons that follow, however, are limited in three ways. First, and most obviously, the comparative thrust of this article means that some important details defining individual cases are glanced over in the search for generalizations. Second, as already noted, this analysis will not deal with Mongolia, China, or Vietnam. Finally, my focus is on the domestic and not the international political economy of postsocialism. For insightful comparisons that incorporate more of these cases with respect to economics, see Popov, “Explaining the Magnitude.” For an illuminating study of the consequences of domestic politics, especially nationalism, for the security and foreign economic policies of the successor states of the former Soviet Union (and eastern Europe after the breakup of the Habsburg empire), see Rawi Abdelal, “Economic Nationalism after Empire: A Comparative Perspective on Nation, Economy and Security of Post-Soviet Eurasia” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1999).

19. For example, contrast O'Donnell, Guillermo, Schmitter, Philippe C., and Whitehead, Laurence, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative. Perspectives, vols. 1–4 (Baltimore, 1986)Google Scholar with Ekiert, Grzegorz, The State against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East-Central Europe (Princeton, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, or contrast Sachs, Jeffrey and Lipton, Michael, “Creating a Market in Eastern Europe: The Case of Poland,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 20, no. 1 (1990): 75–147 Google Scholar, with Poznanski, Kazimierz, Poland's Protracted Transition: Institutional Change and Economic Growth, 1970–1994 (Cambridge, Eng., 1996)Google Scholar.

20. See, for example, Linz, Juan and Stepan, Alfred, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, 1996)Google Scholar; Bunce, Valerie, “Sequencing Political and Economic Reforms,” in Hardt, John and Kaufman, Richard, eds., East-Central European Economies in Transition (Washington, D.C., 1994)Google Scholar; Fish, M. Steven, “The Determinants of Economic Reform in the Postcommunist World,” East European Politics and Societies 12, no. 2 (1998): 31–78 Google Scholar; Weyland, Kurt, “Swallowing the Bitter Pill: Sources of Popular Support for Neoliberal Reform in Latin America,” Comparative Political Studies 31, no. 5 (October 1998): 539–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. On the question of democratization versus revolution, see Bunce, Valerie, “The First Postsocialist Decade,” East European Politics and Societies 13, no. 3 (1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. For two quite stimulating discussions of these various interpretations, see Murrell, Peter, “How Far Has the Transition Progressed?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 10, no. 2 (1996): 25–44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pusic, Vesna, “Mediteranski model na zalasku autoritarnih drzava,” Erasmus 29 (January 1997): 2–18 Google Scholar.

23. For example, in the many debates about Russia's future, one source of disagreement is whether Russia is outside the European experience and thereby likely to carve out a distinctive niche, or whether Russia, located on the fringes of Europe, but in Europe nonetheless, will end up slowly, and with detours, but surely as a typically European state. See, for instance, Malia, Martin, Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum (Cambridge, Mass., 1999)Google Scholar. Similar arguments have also been central to debates about the Balkans. See Pusic, “Mediteranski model,” and Todorova, Maria, “The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention,” Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 453–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. See “IMF Lowers Growth Forecasts for Transition Economies,” Transition 9, no. 6 (1998): 29 Google Scholar. On the Russian crisis, see Popov, Vladimir, “Pochemu rukhnul rubl'?” NG-Politekonomiia 23, no. 1 (December 1999): 3;Google Scholar Solnick, Steven, “Russia on the Edge,” East European Constitutional Review 7, no. 4 (Fall 1998): 70–72 Google Scholar; Woodruff, David, “Why Market Liberalism and the Ruble's Value Are Sinking Together,” East European Constitutional Review 7, no. 4 (Fall 1998): 73–76 Google Scholar; Kiriyenko, Sergei, “Sergei Kiriyenko on the Russian Economic Crisis,” East European Constitutional Review 8, nos. 1/2 (Winter-Spring 1999): 56–60 Google Scholar; Brown, Archie, “The Russian Crisis: Beginning of the End or End of the Beginning?” Post-Soviet Affairs 15, no. 1 (January-March 1999): 56–73 Google Scholar.

25. Just as telling are the disturbing data on poverty. While in Estonia, 8.4 percent of the population falls below the poverty line, the figures for Russia, Ukraine, the Kyrgyz Republic, Hungary, and Poland are, respectively, 31 percent, 32 percent, 40 percent, 25 percent, and 23 percent. See the World Bank, Knowledge for Development, 1998–1999 (Oxford, 1999), 190–97Google Scholar.

26. See Greskovits, Political Economy.

27. See the World Bank, World Development Report, 234–35. More recent data suggest, for example, that the Russian economy declined by 5 percent in 1998, whereas the Polish economy grew by approximately the same amount. See the World Bank, Global Economic Perspectives and the Developing Countries: Beyond Financial Crisis (Oxford, 1999), 194 Google Scholar.

28. These figures were calculated from the World Bank, World Development Report, 214–15. For a discussion of the difficulties of estimating economic performance in the postsocialist context, see Bartholdy, Kasper, “Old and New Problems in the Estimation of National Accounts in Transitional Economies,” Economics of Transition 5, no. 1 (1997): 131–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also refer to Greskovits, “Unveiled Periphery,” for a discussion of the instability of World Bank estimates of economic performance in the postsocialist world, especially with respect to what has become an ever-downward estimation of economic performance during the last years of socialism.

29. See the World Bank, World Development Report, 222–23. For example, while the average Gini coefficient for all those countries outside the postsocialist region that fall in the lower middle income category is 45.2, the postsocialist countries that are in that category, such as Moldova, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, and Slovakia, register Gini coefficients of 34.4, 30.8, 32.7, 33.6, 21.6, 27.2, and 19.5, respectively. The contrast is even more glaring for the upper middle income countries of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovenia. While their Gini coefficients are, respectively, 26.6, 27.0, and 28. 2, the remaining countries in this category average a Gini coefficient of 55.4.

30. World Bank, World Development Report, 5, 37. More specifically, the Commonwealth of Independent States led in unpredictability of changes in policies; tied with the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa in unstable government; tied with Latin America with respect to insecurity of property; and led all the other regions in the unreliability of the judiciary and levels of corruption. One example provided of the “state problem” in the former Soviet Union is Ukraine, where both decision-making and policy implementation are sabotaged by a political structure that is unusually complex and that allows for remarkable overlap in administrative jurisdictions (see the chart on 85).

31. There has also been a dramatic decline in inflation. In 1992, the average rate of inflation in east central Europe and the Baltic states was 199.2 percent and it was 13,525 percent in the former Soviet Union (minus the Baltic states); the comparable figures for 1997 are 10 and 13.1, respectively. See Raiser and Sanfrey, “Statistical Review,” 252. To put these figures in another perspective, however, it should be noted that the average rate of inflation in Russia from 1991–1997 was 340 percent. See the World Bank, Global Economic Perspectives, 194.

32. For evidence on these points, also see Kolodko, Grzegorz, “Equity Issues in Policymaking in Transition Economies” (paper presented at the conference on “Economic Policy and Equity,” Washington, D.C., 8–9 June 1998)Google Scholar. Also see Cornia, Giovanni Andrea and Popov, Vladimir, “Transition and Long-Term Economic Growth: Conventional versus Non-Conventional Determinants,” MOST 1 (1998): 7–32 Google Scholar.

33. For a helpful analysis of the Russian economy that brings in a number of comparative cases, see Gregory, Paul, “Has Russia's Transition Really Been Such a Failure?” Problems of Postcommunism 44, no. 6 (1998): 58–64 Google Scholar. Also quite helpful in analyzing the Russian case is a review essay by Ericson, Richard, “Economics and the Russian Transition,” SlavicRevietu 57, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 609–25Google Scholar.

34. Of course, the recent downturn in the Russian economy suggests that some care is needed when making these generalizations. Several other countries have also shown significant problems in the past few years—most obviously, Albania and Bulgaria.

35. For instance, it has been argued that the Russian experience is unusual from the perspective of theories of democratization. See Anderson, Richard, Jr., “The Russian Anomaly and the Theory of Democracy” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, 3–6 September 1998)Google Scholar. For a somewhat different perspective, see Roeder, Philip, “The Triumph of Authoritarianism in Post-Soviet Regimes” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, 3–6 September 1998)Google Scholar.

36. I have taken the phrase “intermediate reformers” from Hellman, Joel, “Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Postcommunist Transitions,” World Politics 50, no. 2 (January 1998): 203–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. About one-half of the countries in the postsocialist region have registered a small decline in male life expectancy, but the Russian decline is, even by that sad standard, unusually large. See Murrell, “How Far Has the Transition Progressed?” table 3, p. 38, and Heleniak, Timothy, “Dramatic Population Trends in Countries of the FSU,” Transition 6 (1996): 1–5 Google Scholar. To place the Russian figures in a comparative perspective, Russian males live about as long on average as their counterparts in Bolivia—a country having about one-third the gross domestic product per capita of Russia's. See the World Bank, Knowledge for Development, 190.

38. Russia incurred costs, of course, from introducing economic reform later in the transitional process. In particular, because dominant interests in the socialist era had the opportunity to recast their economic and political portfolios in anticipation of reform, their interests shaped the course of the reform while contributing in the process to both unusually high levels of corruption and an unusually prolonged period of economic recession. Their interests also stalled the reform process. The winners, in the short-term, therefore, did not sustain the reform. Instead, they used their privileged positions to maintain a regime of rent-seeking. See, especially, Hellman, “Winners Take All.” Also see Appel, Hilary, “Voucher Privatisation in Russia: Structural Consequences and Mass Response in the Second Period of Reform, “Europe-Asia Studies 49, no. 8 (1997): 1433–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a more historical account of asymmetric resources and asymmetric gains from the Russian economic reform, see Derlugjian, Georgi, “Russia's Imperial Bankruptcy: The Process and Its Medium-term Prospects,” forthcoming in Derlugjian, and Greer, Scott, eds., The Changing Geopolitics of the World System (Westport, 1999)Google Scholar.

39. Fish, “Determinants of Economic Reform.” For a similar observation, absent the statistical support, see Bunce, “Sequencing Political and Economic Reforms.” This conclusion, however, must be read as a matter of tendencies, not laws (which is invariably the case for social inquiry). Here, one must note, for example, some difficulties in terms of measuring economic reforms (for instance, with respect to institutional development); problems of coding certain types of opposition parties; and recent instances of backtracking from economic reforms in conditions of either political instability or de-democratization.

40. The description of shock therapy is taken from “Interview with Grzegorz Kolodko: Economic Neoliberalism Became Almost Irrelevant,” Transition 9, no. 3 (1998): 2 Google Scholar. This debate has far too many participants, papers, and books to cite. For a sampling, see Åslund, Anders, Boone, Peter, and Johnson, Simon, “How to Stabilize: Lessons from Post-Communist Countries,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1 (1996): 217–313 Google Scholar; and Sachs, Jeffrey, Poland's Jump to a Market Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 1993)Google Scholar. For those who question shock therapy, see Roland, Gerard, “The Role of Political Constraints in Transition Economies,” Economics of Transition 2 (1994): 27–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kolodko, Grzegorz and Nuti, D. Mario, “The Polish Alternative: Old Myths, Hard Facts, and New Strategies in the Successful Transformation of the Political Economy” (paper, UNU/WIDER project/ UNU World Institute for Development Economics, Helsinki, 1997)Google Scholar; Poznanski, Poland's Protracted Transition; Murrell, Peter, “Conservative Political Philosophy and the Strategy of Economic Transition,” East European Politics and Societies 6, no. 1 (1992): 3–16 Google Scholar.

41. This point is obscured in many measures of economic reform, because such measures are snapshots of outcomes and, as a result, fail to recognize such important considerations as: 1) gain scores (Hungary, for instance, began postsocialism with substantial reforms already in place), and 2) the many policy roads to an outcome of strong reform scores.

42. See, especially, Hellman, “Winners Take All.” Also see Joel Hellman, “Competitive Advantage: Political Competition and Economic Reform in Postcommunist Transitions” (unpublished manuscript, 1997).

43. This, at least, is the argument of Grzegorz Kolodko (who succeeded Leszek Balcerowicz as Finance Minister) and D. Mario Nuti. See their “The Polish Alternative.”

44. See “Interview with Grzegorz Kolodko”; Cornia and Popov, “Transition and Long-Term Growth.”

45. Cornia and Popov, “Transition and Long-Term Growth,” 28. Also see Appel, “Voucher Privatisation”; Cuckovic, Nevenka, “Nesluzbeno gosodarstvo i proces privatizacije,” Financijskapraksa 21, nos. 1–2 (1997): 259–76Google Scholar; and McFaul, Michael, “When Capitalism and Democracy Collide in Transition: Russia's Weak State as an Impediment to Democratic Consolidation,” Working Paper Series, no. 1 (paper presented at Davis Center for Russian Studies, Program on New Approaches to Russian Security, Harvard University, 1998)Google Scholar.

46. Popov, “Explaining the Magnitude.” Also see Popov, , “Krakh iugo-vostochnoi Azii po-svoemu unikalen,” NG-Politekonomiia 2 (December 1998)Google Scholar; Popov, “Pochemu rukhnul rubl”'; and Cornia and Popov, “Transition and Long-Term Growth.”

47. One study that recognizes the duality of the socialist past in this respect is Crowley, Hot Coal, Cold Steel.

48. For a sampling, see Dahl, Robert, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, 1971)Google Scholar; Przeworski, Democracy and the Market; Schmitter, Philippe C. and Karl, Terry Lynn, “What Democracy Is … and Is Not,” Journal of Democracy 2, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 75–88 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49. See Przeworski, Democracy and the Market; Dahl, Polyarchy; and Bunce, Valerie, “Democracy, Stalinism, and the Management of Uncertainly,” in Szoboszlai, Gyorgy, ed., The Transition to Democracy in Hungary (Budapest, 1991)Google Scholar.

50. As defined in detail by Freedom House. See “The Comparative Survey of Freedom,” Freedom Review 28, no. 1 (1997)Google Scholar.

51. On the importance of a capable state for the functioning of democracy, see Holmes, Stephen, “When Less State Means Less Freedom,” Transition 5, no. 1 (1996): 5–15 Google Scholar.

52. See Roeder, “The Triumph of Authoritarianism,” 7. Also see Andrejs Plakans, “Democratization and Political Participation in Postcommunist Societies: The Case of Latvia,” and Toivo U. Raun, “Democratization and Political Development in Estonia,” both in Dawisha and Parrott, eds., Consolidation of Democracy, 245–89, 334–74. Recent policy changes in Latvia, however, will move this country toward a more inclusive definition of citizenship.

53. On the Russian case, see, for instance, Evangelista, Matthew, “Russia's Fragile Union,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 55, no. 5 (1999): 50–55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stoner-Weiss, Kathryn, Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton, 1997)Google Scholar; Solnick, “Russia on the Edge.”

54. Brand new state institutions might be preferable to institutions recycled from the socialist era, however. This point is made by Alexander Motyl in “Structural Constraints and Starting Points: The Logic of Systemic Change in Ukraine and Russia,” Comparative Politics 29, no. 4 (July 1997): 433–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. On these problems, see, for example, Robert, Sharlet, “Legal Transplants and Political Mutations: The Reception of Constitutional Law in Russia and the Newly-Independent States,” East European Constitutional Review 7, no. 4 (Fall 1998): 59–68 Google Scholar; Przeworski, Democracy and the Market.

56. A weak tradition in rule of law is also a problem in much of Latin America. See O'Donnell, Guillermo, “Notes on Democratic Theory and Comparative Politics” (paper presented at the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar on Democratization, Cornell University, 12 April 1999)Google Scholar.

57. These observations about state socialism are drawn from several sources. See Hankiss, Elemér, East European Alternatives (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar; Csanadi, Maria, Party-States and Their Legacies in Post-Communist Transformation (Cheltenham, Eng., 1997)Google Scholar; Valerie Bunce, “Stalinism and the Management of Uncertainty,” in Szobaszlai, ed., Transition to Democracy in Hungary.

58. Lilia Shevtsova, “Russia: Retreat of Democracy?” and Michael McFaul, “The Human Factor in State Dissolution: Economic Reform, Political Change, and State Effectiveness in the Soviet Union and Russia,” (both papers presented at the conference, “Beyond State Crisis? The Quest for the Efficacious State in Africa and Eurasia,” University of Wisconsin, 11–14 March 1999). Also see Colton, Timothy, “Super Presidentialism and Russia's Backward State,” Post-Soviet Affairs 11, no. 2 (April-June 1995): 144–48Google Scholar. For historical and comparative perspectives on this question, see Bunce, Valerie, “The Political Economy of the Brezhnev Era: The Rise and Fall of Corporatism,” British Journal of Political Science 13, no. 1 (January 1983): 129–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bunce, , “Domestic Reform and International Change: Gorbachev in Historical Perspective,” International Organization 47, no. 3 (1993): 107–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greskovits, Bela, “Brothers-in-Arms or Rivals in Politics? Top Politicians and Top Policy-Makers in the Hungarian Transformation” (discussion paper, Collegium Budapest, November 1998)Google Scholar.

59. See Bunce, Valerie and Csanadi, Maria, “Uncertainty in the Transition: Post-Communism in Hungary, “East European Politics and Societies 7, no. 2 (1993): 240–75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60. Murrell, “How Far Has the Transition Progressed?” 33. For a more charitable interpretation of Russian political institutions, see Breslauer, George, “Political Succession and the Nature of Political Competition in Russia,” Problems of Post-Communism 44, no. 5 (1997): 32–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further insights into the impact of institutional design, see Hellman, Joel, “Competitive Advantage: Political Competition and Economic Reform in Postcommunist Transitions” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 3–6 September 1996)Google Scholar.

61. See, for example, Easter, Gerald, “Preference for Presidentialism: Postcommunist Regime Change in Russia and the NIS,” World Politics 49, no. 2 (January 1997): 184–211 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frye, Timothy, “A Politics of Institutional Choice: Postcommunist Presidencies,” Comparative Political Studies 30, no. 5 (October 1997): 523–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bunce, Valerie, “Presidents and the Transition in Eastern Europe,” in von Mettenheim, Kurt, ed., Presidential Institutions and Democratic Politics: Comparing Regional and National Contexts (Baltimore, 1997), 161–76Google Scholar.

62. See, for example, Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition; Stepan, Alfred and Skach, Cindy, “Constitutional Frameworks and Democratic Consolidation: Parliamentarianism versus Presidentialism,” World Politics 46, no. 1 (October 1993): 1–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fish, M. Steven, “Reversal and Erosion of Democracy in the Postcommunist World” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, 3–6 September 1998)Google Scholar; Bernhard, Michael, “Institutional Choice and the Failure of Democracy: The Case of Interwar Poland,” East European Politics and Societies 13, no. 1 (1999): 34–70 Google Scholar.

63. The Polish case, with its mixed presidential-parliamentary system, might seem to provide an exception. What we must remember here, however, is that Poland was the first country in the region to begin a transition from dictatorship to democracy. While public support of Solidarity (which included in its ranks many members of the Polish United Workers Party [PUWP]) certainly outstripped the support of the PUWP (as the June 1989 elections revealed), this could not, given the highly uncertain political climate surrounding Polish developments at the time, translate into an adoption of parliamentary government. Put simply, being the first worked in favor of exaggerating the capacity of the communists to protect their interests through the adoption of presidential government. Indeed, recognition of this fact is a major reason why Solidarity was so crucial to the selection of Wojciech Jaruzelski as the first “quasi-communist” president.

64. This contrast reflects, most obviously, the degree to which the revolution that ended Communist Party hegemony was both liberal and full-scale. Another historical factor, however, considerably predates even socialism: whether these areas were influenced by Roman law. Where they were, the legal-administrative tradition accepts the possibility of a law-based state. See, for example, Szucs, Jeno, “The Three Historical Regions of Europe: An Outline,” Acta Historica: Revue de l'académie des Sciences de Hongrie 29, nos. 2–4 (1983): 131–84Google Scholar. Also see Anderson, Perry, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974)Google Scholar.

65. Here I am referring to those arguments regarding the impact of economic development on democratization and the greater difficulties that heterogeneous national settings—or settings where the national and the state questions have yet to be resolved—have in creating stable and durable democratic orders. See, for instance, Rustow, Dankwart, “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics 2, no. 3 (April 1970): 337–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lijphart, Arend, “Unequal Participation: Democracy's Unresolved Dilemma,” American Political Science Review 91, no. 1 (March 1997): 1–14 Google Scholar; Przeworski, Adam and Limongi, Fernando, “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” World Politics 49, no. 2 (January 1997): 155–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snyder, Tim and Vachudova, Milada, “Are Transitions Transitory? Two Types of Political Change in Eastern Europe since 1989,” East European Politics and Societies 11 (Winter 1997): 1–35 Google Scholar. Although the three “quick” but poor democracies in the region have, recently, become decidedly less democratic (Albania, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan), some of the richest democracies in the region have also backtracked in recent years (Slovakia and Croatia). Thus, there is some question concerning whether economic development has as much impact on democratic sustainability as Przeworski and Limongi have argued.

66. See, for example, Fish, “Determinants of Economic Reform”; Stepan and Skach, “Constitutional Frameworks and Democratic Consolidation,” 1–22; Colton, “Super Presidentialism and Russia's Backward State,” 144–48; Easter, “Preference for Presidentialism,” 184–211; Valerie Bunce, “Presidents and the Transition in Eastern Europe,” in von Mettenheim, ed., Presidential Institutions and Democratic Politics, 161–76. As both Gerald Easter and I have argued, however, institutional design may not be the culprit as much as the politics— or the relative strength of the ex-communists versus the opposition forces—behind the adoption of parliamentary versus presidential government. Moreover, as Steve Fish has argued, what may really matter is presidential interpretation of presidential power in new democracies. See his “Reversal and Erosion. ”

67. See Fish, M. Steven, “Democratization's Prerequisites,” Post-Soviet Affairs 14, no. 3 (July-September 1998): 212–47Google Scholar; Valerie Bunce, “Sequencing of Political and Economic Reforms.”

68. See Walton, John and Sweddon, David, Free Markets and Food Riots: The Politics of Global Adjustment (Oxford, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69. A number of studies of the elite's commitment to democracy in the postsocialist world have been written. For the Russian case, see, for example, Zimmerman, William, “Markets, Democracy, and Russian Foreign Policy,” Post-Soviet Affairs 10, no. 2 (April-June 1994): 103–26Google Scholar; Stoner-Weiss, Local Heroes; Miller, Arthur, Hesli, Vicki L., and Reisinger, William, “Conceptions of Democracy among Mass and Elite in Post-Soviet Societies,” British Journal of Political Science 27, no. 3 (July 1997): 157–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rivera, Sharon Werning, “Explaining Elite Commitments to Democracy in Postcommunist Russia” (paper presented at the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar on Democratization, Cornell University, 3 May 1999)Google Scholar; Rivera, Sharon Werning, “Communists as Democrats: Elite Political Culture in Postcommunist Russia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1998)Google Scholar. Rivera's research has several notable characteristics that need to be highlighted. First, she has interviewed both central and regional elites. Second, she has interviewed both bureaucratic and elected political officials (with the latter emerging as more supportive of democracy than the former). Finally, among her many findings is a challenge to the assumption, so central to the literature on democratization, that political leaders are self-interested in their preferences and, thus, their behavior. This assumption serves as the basis for much theorizing about the games political leaders play during democratization, and it has often been used as the point of departure for solving the puzzle of why authoritarian elites adhere to the new democratic rules of the game.

70. See Hanson, Stephen E. and Kopstein, Jeffrey S., “The Weimar/Russia Comparison,” Post-Soviet Affairs 13, no. 3 (July-September 1997): 252–83Google Scholar; Shenfield, Stephen D., “The Weimar/Russia Comparison: Reflections on Hanson and Kopstein,” Post-Soviet Affairs 14, no. 4 (October-December 1998): 355–68Google Scholar; Kopstein, Jeffrey S. and Hanson, Stephen E., “Path to Uncivil Societies and Anti-Liberal States: A Reply to Shenfield,” Post-Soviet Affairs 14, no. 4 (October-December 1998): 369–75Google Scholar. For a highly insightful, if depressing, analysis of the contemporary Russian scene that speaks to the debilitating interaction between economic reform and democratization, see Brown, “The Russian Crisis.”

71. This is particularly the case—in Russia at least—for those publics who have been the losers in the transition to capitalism. See Kullberg, Judith and Zimmerman, William, “Liberal Elites, Socialist Masses, and Problems in Russian Democratization,” World Politics 51, no. 3 (April 1999): 323–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72. See, for example, Callaghy, Thomas M., “Political Passions and Economic Interests,” in Callaghy, Thomas M. and Ravenhill, John, eds., Hemmed In: Responses to Africa's Economic Decline (New York, 1993), 463–519 Google Scholar; Bienen, Henry and Herbst, Jeffrey, “The Relationship between Political and Economic Reform in Africa,” Comparative Politics 29, no. 1 (October 1996): 23–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robert Kaufman, “Liberalization and Democratization in South America: Perspectives from the 1970s,” in O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, 2:85–107; Maravall, Jose Maria, “Politics and Policy: Economic Reforms in Southern Europe,” in Bresser Pereira, Luiz Carlos, Maravall, Jose Maria, and Przeworski, Adam, eds., Economic Reforms in New Democracies: A Social Democratic Approach (Cambridge, Eng., 1993), 77–131 Google Scholar; Haggard, Stephan and Kaufman, Robert, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton, 1995)Google Scholar; Guillermo O'Donnell and Phillipe C. Schmitter, “Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies,” in O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, 2:39; Haggard, Stephan and Kaufman, Robert R., “The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions,” Comparative Politics 29, no. 3 (April 1997): 263–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73. Bunce, Valerie, Do New Leaders Make a Difference? Executive Succession and Public Policy under Capitalism and Socialism (Princeton, 1981)Google Scholar. Also see Keeler, John, “Opening the Window for Reform: Mandates, Crises, and Extraordinary Policy-Making,” Comparative Political Studies 25, no. 4 (September 1993): 433–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Balcerowicz, Leszek, Socialism, Capitalism, Transformation (Budapest, 1995)Google Scholar.

74. On the issue of identities, see Powers, Denise V. and Cox, James H., “Echoes from the Past: The Relationship between Satisfaction with Economic Reforms and Voting Behavior in Poland,” American Political Science Review 91, no. 3 (September 1997): 617–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Contrast this, for example, with Colton, Timothy, “Economics and Voting in Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs 12, no. 4 (October-December 1996)Google Scholar. On the impact of nationalism on political horizons, see Abdelal, “Economic Nationalism after Empire.”

75. The one exception to this generalization is Hungary, where the opposition forces in the first election were divided among three parties and where the results of the May 1990 election, as a result, failed to produce a decisive victory for one political party. But this is an exception that seems to support the generalization. What followed that election was an economic reform process that proceeded more slowly than in, say, Poland. Indeed, it was only when the ex-communists returned to power with a decisive victory in the 1994 elections that needed austerity measures were introduced and implemented.

76. I have borrowed the term from Martin Krygier. See his “Virtuous Circles.”

77. Space limitations prevent me from discussing some other possible explanations that also fail to account for electoral outcomes, or, for that matter, what follows. In particular, neither nationalism (that is, whether and to what extent communist elites used nationalism to solidify their position in a rapidly changing political environment, or the extent to which protests in the last years of socialism were primarily concerned with nationalist issues) nor economic performance during the last years of socialism (with poor performance linked in theory at least to the rejection of socialism) helps us differentiate among our elections or among the political-economic trajectories of these countries.

78. For a review of these factors and the research that identified their importance and for an analysis of their impact on the collapse of state socialism, the Soviet bloc, and the socialist federations, see Bunce, Subversive Institutions. Also refer to Ekiert, State against Society.

79. My thanks to Gail Lapidus and Sharon Wolchik for a recent discussion developing this point.

80. The recent parliamentary election might change all this. See Butora, Martin and Butorova, Zora, “Slovakia's Democratic Awakening,” Joural of Democracy 10, no. 1 (January 1999): 80–95 Google Scholar. As of this writing, however, the presidential election has yet to be decided.

81. See, for example, Schmitter, Philippe C. and Karl, Terry Lynn, “The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go?” Slavic Review 53, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 173–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bunce, Valerie, “Should Transitologists Be Grounded?” Slavic Review 54, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 111–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bunce, Valerie, “Regional Differences in Democratization: The East versus the South,” Post-Soviet Affairs 14, no. 3 (July-September 1998): 187–211 Google Scholar.

82. See, especially, Haggard and Kaufman, Political Economy of Democratic Transitions; Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition; Jose Maria Maravall, “Politics and Policy: Economic Reforms in Southern Europe,” in Pereira, Maravall, and Przeworski, eds., Economic Reforms in New Democracies, 77–131; Kaufman, “Liberalization and Democratization in South America,” 85–107; Karl, Terry Lynn, “Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 23, no. 1 (October 1990): 1–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A different line of argument, however, has recently been suggested by Kurt Weyland, “Swallowing the Bitter Pill.” Specialists in Africa also seem to concur that democratization and economic reform are in serious tension with one another, and that various forms of bridging are preferable to the more radical option of simultaneous transformation. See, for instance, Callaghy, “Political Passions and Economic Interests,” 463–519; Bienen and Herbst, “Relationship between Political and Economic Reform in Africa,” 23–42.

83. This argument is further elaborated in Bunce, “Regional Differences in Democratization.”

84. The phrase is taken from’ Palma, Giuseppe Di, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley, 1990)Google Scholar.

85. Przeworski, Democracy and the Market

86. Others have made the same point. See, for example, McFaul, Michael, “State Power, Institutional Change, and the Politics of Privatization in Russia,” World Politics 47, no. 2 (January 1995): 210–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Motyl, Alexander, “Empire or Stability: The Case for Soviet Dissolution,” World Policy Journals, no. 3 (1991): 499–524 Google Scholar.

87. Szucs, “Three Historical Regions.” Also see Shevtsova, Lilia, Yel'tsin's Russia: Mytlis and Reality (Washington, D.C., 1999)Google Scholar. As Shevtsova argues, the breakdown of political authority and the fragmentation of the Russian economy might be, from a longer-term perspective on democratization, a helpful set of developments. The problem is that the Medieval world within which Europe was situated was both patient and distant. Neither of these conditions hold today, and Russian travails are likely, as a result, to have powerful and unpleasant consequences for the larger global system.