Stubborn Structures Reconceptualizing Postcommunist Regimes /

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Magyar, Balint, ed.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (701 pages)

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. Project MUSE, 2019

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Central European University Press, 2019.

Summary:

The editor of this book has brought together contributions designed to capture the essence of post-communist politics in East-Central Europe and Eurasia. Rather than on the surface structures of nominal democracies, the nineteen essays focus on the informal, often intentionally hidden, disguised and illicit understandings and arrangements that penetrate formal institutions. These phenomena often escape even the best-trained outside observers, familiar with the concepts of established democracies. Contributors to this book share the view that understanding post-communist politics is best served by a framework that builds from the ground up, proceeding from a fundamental social context.The book aims at facilitating a lexical convergence; in the absence of a robust vocabulary for describing and discussing these often highly complex informal phenomena, the authors wish to advance a new terminology of post-communist regimes. Instead of a finite dictionary, a kind of conceptual cornucopia is offered. The resulting variety reflects a larger harmony of purpose that can significantly expand the understanding the “real politics” of post-communist regimes.Countries analyzed from a variety of aspects, comparatively or as single case studies, include Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Editor’s Preface

I. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

Introduction: Freeing Post-Soviet Regimes from the Procrustean Bed of Democracy Theory

The System Paradigm Revisited: Clarification and Additions in the Light of Experiences in the Post-Socialist Region

Neopatrimonialism in post-Soviet Eurasia

Towards a terminology for postcommunist regimes

II. ACTORS OF POWER

Putin’s neo-nomenklatura system and its evolution

Republic of Clans: The evolution of the Ukrainian political system

Is Belarus a Classic Post-Communist Mafia State?

The Romanian Patronal System of Public Corruption

III. TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS

The Russian Party System

The Belarusian non-party political system: Government, trust and institutions, 1990–2015

Illiberal State Censorship: A Must-have Accessory for Any Mafia State

Disarming Public Protests in Russia: Transforming Public Goods into Private Goods

IV. WEALTH AND OWNERSHIP

The Institution of Power&Ownership in the Former USSR: Origin, Diversity of Forms, and Influence on Transformation Processes

Russia’s Network State and Reiderstvo Practices: The Roots to Weak Property Rights Protection after the post-Communist Transition

From Free Market Corruption Risk to the Certainty of a State-Run Criminal Organization (using Hungary as an example)

V. CONTRASTS AND CONNECTIONS

Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine as Post- Soviet Rent-Seeking Regimes

The Structure of Corruption: A Systemic Analysis

The new East European patronal states and the rule-of-law

Parallel System Narratives—Polish and Hungarian regime formations compared A structuralist essay

List of Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-003-72211-3

963-386-215-9

9781003722113

OCLC:

1102413061