An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes

An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes PDF Author: Antoni Z. Kamiński
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Finally, to realize how the partisan, totalitarian state established and maintained itself is to be well armed against similar developments in the future. An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes explains Communism as an ideological and political phenomenon. It describes Communism's doctrine, its rise in Russia, its evolution, and the mechanics of its demise. This powerful book clarifies why the Soviet experiment has failed. It delineates the political and economic mechanisms that are destroying Communist governments around the world by forcing their ruling elites to look for solutions contradicting the very logic of Communism's institutional design. The author cautions that much of Russian history is made up of cycles of autocratic leadership, occasionally giving way to troubled and unsettled times until another autocrat gains dominance.

An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes

An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes PDF Author: Antoni Z. Kamiński
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Get Book Here

Book Description
Finally, to realize how the partisan, totalitarian state established and maintained itself is to be well armed against similar developments in the future. An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes explains Communism as an ideological and political phenomenon. It describes Communism's doctrine, its rise in Russia, its evolution, and the mechanics of its demise. This powerful book clarifies why the Soviet experiment has failed. It delineates the political and economic mechanisms that are destroying Communist governments around the world by forcing their ruling elites to look for solutions contradicting the very logic of Communism's institutional design. The author cautions that much of Russian history is made up of cycles of autocratic leadership, occasionally giving way to troubled and unsettled times until another autocrat gains dominance.

The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes

The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes PDF Author: Bálint Magyar
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633863708
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 834

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Book Description
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.

Communism: A Very Short Introduction

Communism: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Leslie Holmes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199551545
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
The collapse of communism was one of the most defining moments of the twentieth century. This Very Short Introduction examines the history behind the political, economic, and social structures of communism as an ideology.

Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies

Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies PDF Author: Jon Elster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521479318
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
The authors of this book have developed a new and stimulating approach to the analysis of the transitions of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia to democracy and a market economy. They integrate interdisciplinary theoretical work with elaborate empirical data on some of the most challenging events of the twentieth century. Three groups of phenomena and their causal interconnection are explored: the material legacies, constraints, habits and cognitive frameworks inherited from the past; the erratic configuration of new actors, and new spaces for action; and a new institutional order under which agency is institutionalized and the sustainability of institutions is achieved. The book studies the interrelations of national identities, economic interests, and political institutions with the transformation process, concentrating on issues of constitution making, democratic infrastructure, the market economy, and social policy.

Max Weber and Institutional Theory

Max Weber and Institutional Theory PDF Author: M. Rainer Lepsius
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319447084
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
This book presents a collection of essays on institutional theory written by the German sociologist and Weber-expert M. Rainer Lepsius. Based on Weber’s work, the author develops concepts of institutional theory, which he subsequently applies to topics such as National Socialism, democratization processes, German unification, and the institutionalization of the European Union. By showing how charismatic leadership can under certain circumstances threaten democratic structures and curtail individual freedoms, and by analyzing the structural and cultural conditions under which people develop trust in political and social structures and ultimately come to support and comply with them, the author provides a sound analytical understanding of the development of democratic institutions and a democratic political culture. This collection of essays was edited, translated and commented on by Claus Wendt.

Communism's Shadow

Communism's Shadow PDF Author: Grigore Pop-Eleches
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400887828
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
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.

An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes

An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes PDF Author: Antoni Z. Kamiński
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781558151741
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
The history of Communism in the Soviet Union appears at an end. The repressive partisan regime is gone, but we cannot yet see the shape of the system that will replace it. What is clear is that there still exists a need to understand the foundations upon which the Communists built their institutions. The strategies of the West to help the Soviet system transform itself will be valueless unless they take into account the institutional order under which that society labored for seventy years. The transition we are witnessing is incomplete, and events have alarmingly revealed that there remain forces in Soviet society to which democratic change is anathema. Moreover, the vast majority of Soviet citizens have never lived under any other kind of system; those on the outside who are trying to help them build self-governing institutions must understand their experience. Finally, to realize how the partisan, totalitarian state established and maintained itself is to be well armed against similar developments in the future. An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes explains Communism as an ideological and political phenomenon. It describes Communism's doctrine, its rise in Russia, its evolution, and the mechanics of its demise. This powerful book clarifies why the Soviet experiment has failed. It delineates the political and economic mechanisms that are destroying Communist governments around the world by forcing their ruling elites to look for solutions contradicting the very logic of Communism's institutional design. The author cautions that much of Russian history is made up of cycles of autocratic leadership, occasionally giving way to troubled and unsettled times until another autocrat gains dominance. The road to reform in Russia itself is more difficult, he shows, than in the Baltic republics and the former Soviet dependencies in East-Central Europe. An Institutional Theory of Communist Regimes is an invaluable guide to the lessons of the Communist experience and to the practical problems the disintegration of the Communist bloc poses for the world.

Stubborn Structures

Stubborn Structures PDF Author: Bálint Magyar
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633862159
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 713

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Book Description
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.

The Politics of Institutional Choice

The Politics of Institutional Choice PDF Author: Steven S. Smith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691057370
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Events in Russia since the late 1980s have created a rare opportunity to watch the birth of democratic institutions close at hand. Here Steven Smith and Thomas Remington provide the first intensive, theoretically grounded examination of the early development of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federation's parliament created by the 1993 constitution. They offer an integrated account of the choices made by the newly elected members of the Duma in establishing basic operating arrangements: an agenda-setting governing body, a standing committee system, an electoral law, and a party system. Not only do these decisions promise to have lasting consequences for the post-communist Russian regime, but they also enable the authors to test assumptions about politicians' goals from the standpoint of institutional theory. Smith and Remington challenge in particular the notion, derived from American contexts, that politicians pursue a single, overarching goal in the creation of institutions. They argue that politicians have multiple political goals--career, policy, and partisan--that drive their choices. Among Duma members, the authors detect many cross currents of interests, generated by the mixed electoral system, which combines both single-member districts and proportional representation, and by sharp policy divisions and an emerging party system. Elected officials may shift from concentrating on one goal to emphasizing another, but political contexts can help determine their behavior. This book brings a fresh perspective to numerous theories by incorporating first-hand accounts of major institutional choices and placing developments in their actual context.

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism PDF Author: S. A. Smith
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191667528
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 834

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Book Description
The impact of Communism on the twentieth century was massive, equal to that of the two world wars. Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, historians knew relatively little about the secretive world of communist states and parties. Since then, the opening of state, party, and diplomatic archives of the former Eastern Bloc has released a flood of new documentation. The thirty-five essays in this Handbook, written by an international team of scholars, draw on this new material to offer a global history of communism in the twentieth century. In contrast to many histories that concentrate on the Soviet Union, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism is genuinely global in its coverage, paying particular attention to the Chinese Revolution. It is 'global', too, in the sense that the essays seek to integrate history 'from above' and 'from below', to trace the complex mediations between state and society, and to explore the social and cultural as well as the political and economic realities that shaped the lives of citizens fated to live under communist rule. The essays reflect on the similarities and differences between communist states in order to situate them in their socio-political and cultural contexts and to capture their changing nature over time. Where appropriate, they also reflect on how the fortunes of international communism were shaped by the wider economic, political, and cultural forces of the capitalist world. The Handbook provides an informative introduction for those new to the field and a comprehensive overview of the current state of scholarship for those seeking to deepen their understanding.