Rival Views of Post-Communist Market Society: The Path Dependence of Transitology

Béla Greskovits

Research output: Contribution to Book/Report typesChapterpeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

This is an essay in the short history of social thought on East European transformations. I shall present the structure of the discourse on the likely economic, social and political dynamics under postcommunism. I shall also point to the historical and theoretical roots of the competing concepts and assess the contribution of transitology to our understanding of social change. While reviewing various interpretations of Eastern Europe’s transformation I identified two important axes of the debate: the political consequences of capitalist expansion and the impact of the communist legacy on the viability and specificity of East European democratic market societies. I shall use these axes as a simple framework to analyse the nature of the discourse. Specifically, I shall structure the transformation debate according to the participants’ answers to the following questions. (1) Is economic liberalism a prerequisite of, or a threat to political freedom and democracy? (2) Is the communist legacy a liability, or an asset from the viewpoint of the emerging market society? In section 2, I shall introduce four frequently advocated but mutually contradicting theses on the perspectives and the sources of viability of the post-communist market society. Studying the origins of rival views I argue that they are not entirely new, rather in essence each of them had been advocated earlier in different historical contexts. Based on Albert O. Hirschman’s tableau of theories in section 3, I shall demonstrate that the manner social scientists think about postcommunism has much in common with the ideas of their predecessors who faced the emergence of capitalism over the past centuries.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationDemocratic and Capitalist Transitions in Eastern Europe
Subtitle of host publicationLessons for the social sciences
EditorsMichel Dobry
PublisherSpringer Dordrecht
Pages19-47
ISBN (Electronic)978-94-011-4162-8
ISBN (Print)978-94-010-5813-1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2000

Publication series

NameGeoJournal Library
Volume55

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