The paper emphasizes the transition in Russia and the role institutions played before and during the process. In Russia, a big bang approach was applied. That is to say, transition was conducted all of a sudden, omitting important underlying reforms. This practice should function as a shock therapy. Hence, the approach should leave no other chance than an abrupt adaption to the new free-market rules. These rules would then lead to fast economic growth and development, as they did in other places. However, since Russian GDP per capita and thereby living standards deteriorated dramatically in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the plan did not work. At any rate, since then Russian economic indicators recovered and partly achieved their pre-1991 levels at the end of the last decade. The paper depicts Russia's reform efforts and the subsequent developments. The close ties among the political elite, the banking sector and the old nomenklatura are demonstrated. The patrimonial system that persisted for centuries is still observable at the state level. At any rate, Russia can neither evade its historical and institutional development path nor its societal structures that are based on networks and nepotism. Russia's systemic lack of the rule of law and therewith of secure property, the character of the Russian political system with the patriarch as the head of state and the resulting necessity of corruption and bribes inhibit the realization of its full growth potential.
With the end of the Cold War, many assumed that socialism, together with the specific constitutional values and political structures was dead (or dying). This article will challenge these assumptions. Post-Cold War reality did not, however, follow these assumptions. Some countries, especially in Asia, continue to adhere to socialist constitutional approaches. Some cannot fully overcome their socialist legacy. And still others include socialist values in their constitutions and practice. These values and ideas warrant study. Most notably, socialism carries with it a certain set of values and, consequently, a corresponding pressure on legal institutions. The authors, guest editors of this special issue of the Russian Law Journal on the socialist legacies in the world constitutions, outline a general approach for the study of socialist constitutional legacies. The article therefore addresses (a) the methodology of socialist constitutional legacies analysis, (b) the core values of the socialist constitutions and (c) ways in which socialist constitutional ideas and concepts can be combined with the principles of constitutionalism. This analysis raises a number of important – but under-researched questions. One is the extent to which these socialist ideas or concepts are actually socialist. Another is the extent to which these ideas can be included in constitutional discourse.
This paper provides a brief overview of elite change and continuity in East Germany as a post-socialist society. To do so, at first, some peculiarities of the former cadre system and elites in socialist East Germany, i.e. the late German Democratic Republic, are addressed with regard to social structure development and the arrangement of generations. Selected empirical evidence is based on cross-sectoral, longitudinal and cohort analyses and the inspection of prosopographic elite data compiled until the end of the 1980s which deconstruct the myth of a levelled egalitarian socialist society. In the second part of the paper, elite change and continuity after the political change of 1989/90 is discussed in the context of the transformation of institutions. Inspired by Bourdieu's analytic paradigm, one central thesis on the career survivals, take-offs, and breakdowns of East German elites is the continued validity and efficacy of social and cultural capital obtained before the fall of the wall, most of all formal qualification. Dimension of vertical social inequality under socialist rule, such as gender and class background, remain to be decisive until today.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, founder of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and leader of the first Socialist State in the world, devoted great attention from the very first days of the soviet power to the education of the people, to organising the work of cultural and educational institutions, libraries and reading rooms. He considered libraries as the most massive and accessible centres of political education for the workers, propagation of knowledge, and the raising of the peoples cultural and technical level. Lenin's works, reports and speeches, notes and draft resolutions of Party and state organisations contained a detailed programme for constructing the Soviet socialist system of library services for the people.
Abstract The twentieth and twenty-first centuries witnessed political change moving away from socialism on a national scale in some countries. In one model the institutions of government were completely transformed, e.g. Russia from the USSR, while in another model markets have been added to the socialist frame, e.g. in China. The conditions of art production and hence communicative reflexivity are different in each country witnessing these transformations, yet several trends can be identified, and these will be described in a series of brief case studies.
Most assessments of the influence of scholars and public intellectuals focus on their ideas, which are based upon an implicit assumption that their widespread circulation are a result of the veracity and strength of the ideas themselves, rather than the processes of production and distribution, including the intellectual's own contribution to the ideas' popularity by attending conferences and public rallies, writing for periodicals, and so on. This concise article offers an assessment of the late Stuart Hall's role as a socialist public intellectual by connecting the person, scholar and public intellectual to the organisations, institutions and publications through which his contributions to both cultural studies and left politics were produced and distributed. This article includes an emphasis on Hall's 'Thatcherism' thesis and his public interventions via the periodical, Marxism Today, during the 1980s.
Based on five research papers, the dissertation "Institutions and Entrepreneurship" analyzes institutional influences on entrepreneurship, as well as determinants and effects of institutional change. In particular, the effects of implicit institutions, i.e. societal norms and values, on the occupational choice of becoming an entrepreneur, are investigated. Using the German history of separation and reunification as quasi-natural experiment, the thesis finds that the East Germans' preference structure significantly differs from the preference structure of the West German control group, thus constituting an obstacle to entrepreneurship in East Germany. The thesis shows that these differences in the implicit institutions result from the Socialist Regime in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and investigates various channels by which those institutions where formed. Particularly, the dissertation identifies the effects of education and schooling in the GDR on the formation of entrepreneurial preferences. Moreover, the thesis evaluates the effectiveness of several measures of entrepreneurship education at German universities. In a diff-in-diff framework, the analysis finds significant differences in the effects of the introduction of chairs for entrepreneurship, the participation in the publicly funded EXIST-program, and the simultaneous application of both measures, on students' attitude towards entrepreneurship as occupational alternative. Eventually, the dissertation takes a more general view on institutional change an identifies effects of the introduction of the Internet on voting behavior. Using a distance-based Instrumental Variables approach, the thesis shows that the introduction of the Internet significantly decreased voter turnout in Germany. However, it is rather the established parties that could benefit from the new medium, while small and particularly fringe parties tend to lose vote shares due to the introduction of the Internet.
The article analyzes the program views of representatives of the right wing of the Russian neonarodnichestvo — Socialist Party of People — by the state Institute of problems, the state of the Russian state in the first quarter of the twentieth century, as well as determine the appropriate directions and possible prospects of its development. It is shown that the national socialists were not completely characteristic of anti–state judgment and mood in any form; on the contrary, a socialist state in the future, they tied a just social system, the growth of general and civic culture of the Russian population. The main principle of their ideological concept was the recognition of the basic role of the state in political, social, economic processes in the lawmaking. This statist views Popular Socialists were flexible and dialectical; their commitment to the state as the principal political institution was not dogmatic, not overshadow the interests of society and the individual. Basic research methods: analysis, synthesis, biographical method, analogy, comparison.
The article analyses some constitutional changes and social phenomena over thirty years of transition and transformation of the economy and society in Croatia. The findings point at very frequent radical changes in key institutions and the tendency to believe that problems can be solved via formal legislative approach. Most of Croatia's main problems (political and societal) arise from the wrong choice and performance of democratic and market institutions and understanding of integrations. The adopted legislation has not provided for predictability, Preliability, or system stability in key areas of human interaction. The findings indicate an ambivalent attitude of the actors towards the state, the political system, and the rule of law. After three decades of transition and transformation, the failure of the established model of political governance is visible. In order to change the model of political governance, there must be an agreement about the political role model and the consensus about the fundamental values of society.
This paper aims at explaining the role and importance of the evolution of institutions for sustainable agri-environments during the transition process by referring to examples of agri-environmental problems faced in Central and Eastern European countries. It is often stated that the replacement of institutional structures in post socialist countries would bring a unique opportunity to implement new policies and institutions needed to ensure that economic growth is environmentally sustainable. This idea stems from the assumption that the breakdown of the socialist system resembles that (of the Schumpeterian1 type) of creative destruction - a process that incessantly revolutionizes economic structures from within. However, not all kinds of institutions, especially at local level, can simply be implemented, and even more, not incessantly. Instead, they evolve as a response to ecosystem and social system characteristics, and this is a rather slow process. A central question therefore is whether the required institutional arrangements for achieving sustainability in the area of agrienvironmental resource management can be built more easily in periods of transition as they fill institutional gaps, or whether processes of transition make institution building a more difficult and far more time consuming task than previously thought. Above all, we want to find out, how these two processes of institution building at different scales affect the sustainable management of resources such as water and biodiversity in agriculture? It will become clear that the agrienvironmental problem areas faced during transition are complex and dynamic and require adequate institutions both by political design and from the grassroots, to be developed by the respective actors involved. Transition from centrally planned to pluralistic systems has to be considered as a particular and in some respect non-typical process of institutional change. Popular theories of institutional change do not necessarily apply. The privatisation experience from many CEE countries will serve as an example. Finally, we will provide some examples of missing or insufficient interaction between political actors or agencies and people in CEE countries. Substantial investments into social and human capital, particularly regarding informal institutions are needed for institutions of sustainability to evolve.
Politische und sozioökonomische Rahmenbedingungen haben entscheidenden Einfluss auf Landnutzungswandel; die relative Bedeutung dieser Faktoren untereinander ist jedoch oftmals unklar. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, durch die Untersuchung der Auswirkungen der politischen und sozioökonomischen Transformation auf Landnutzungswandel in Osteuropa zu einem besseren Verständnis solcher übergreifenden Einflussfaktoren beizutragen. Am Beispiel des Dreiländerecks Polen-Slowakei-Ukraine in den Karpaten wurden hierzu grenzüberschreitende Landschaftsvergleiche durchgeführt, da solche Vergleiche die Entkopplung der Faktoren allgemeiner Landnutzungstrends von Faktoren länderspezifischer Veränderungen ermöglichen. Darüber hinaus sind die Auswirkungen postsozialistischen Landschaftswandels auf die Karpaten, einem Gebiet mit einzigartigem ökologischen Wert, bisher weitestgehend unerforscht. Mit Hilfe von Landsat TM/ETM+ Satellitendaten aus dem Jahr 2000 wurden rezente Landschaftsunterschiede zwischen Ländern quantifiziert. Auf der Basis von Bildern von 1986-2000 wurde anschliessend überprüft, ob Länderunterschiede auf sozialistischen oder post-sozialistischen Landschaftswandel zurückführbar sind. Die Ergebnisse dieser Analysen zeigten weit verbreiteten Landnutzungswandel nach 1989 als Folge von sich verschlechternden wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen, geschwächten Institutionen und gesellschaftlichem Wandel. Die Länder unterschieden sich jedoch auch deutlich hinsichtlich Forstveränderungen, Brachfallung und Parzellierung von Ackerland. Diese Unterschiede lassen sich durch verschiedene Besitzverhältnisse, Bewirtschaftungsformen und Landreformen erklären. Während sich Polen und die Slowakei landschaftlich seit 1989 annähern, entfernt sich die Ukraine zunehmend. Diese Arbeit unterstreicht die Bedeutung ökonomischer und institutioneller Veränderungen für Landschaftswandel und zeigt, wie unterschiedliche Besitzstrukturen und Landreformen Landschaftswandel beeinflussen. ; Broad-scale political and socio-economic conditions are powerful determinants of land use change. Yet, their relative importance is unclear. The main goal of this thesis was to increase the understanding of such broad-scale drivers of land use change by studying how Eastern Europe's landscapes were affected by the political and socio-economic transition after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The border triangle of Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine in the Carpathians was selected as a study area, because cross-border comparisons of land use change allow for decoupling overall trends in the transition period from country specific changes. Moreover, the Carpathians are of exceptional ecological value, but little is known about land use effects on these ecosystems after 1989. Post-socialist land use change was quantified based on Landsat TM/ETM+ images by (1) comparing contemporary (year 2000) landscapes among countries, and (2) using images from 1986 to 2000 to investigate whether differences originated from socialist or post-socialist land use change. Results indicated that forest change, farmland abandonment, and farmland parcelization were widespread in the transition period, likely due to worsening economic conditions, weakened institutions, and societal change. However, land use trends also differed strongly among the three countries due to dissimilar land ownership patterns, land management practices, and land reforms. Poland and Slovakia converged in the transition period in terms of land cover, while Ukraine clearly diverged. This thesis provided compelling evidence of the importance of economic and institutional change for land use change and underpinned the pivotal role of ownership patterns and land management policies. These factors were important to understand land use change in Eastern Europe, and they are likely equally important elsewhere.
As one of the world's few states that remains nominally socialist, Vietnam is today caught up in a set of profound changes. These changes are reshaping its society in a manner that the expounders of this nineteenth century doctrine and the founders of the twentieth century states who drew upon it for inspiration could scarcely have imagined. At the forefront of such changes has been the opening up of a substantial role for private economic interests, the intensification of commerce and integration with the global capitalist economy. Political institutions from the National Assembly to mass organizations such as the Farmer's Association have had to contend with the decentralization of the economic landscape and now serve as venues for the voicing of evermore diverse social interests. The media holds up a mirror to an increasingly pluralist society, and emerging civil society groupings, sectoral interests, and localist emphases have dragged the initiative for setting political and economic priorities away from the bureaucracy and the country's sole political party. The society has become more urbanized, the popularization of technologies such as motorbikes, the Internet, and mobile phones has transformed the way people communicate with each other. A flow of human movements both within the country and across borders has refigured people's relationships to place and home. The growing importance of particularist cultural, ethnic, and religious affiliations, both new and reaffirmed, gives voice to the complexity and dissonance of Vietnamese people's temporal and spatial experiences and to the tensions and divisions that have opened up within their society. This book is about one of the most challenging of these changes in reform-era Vietnam, the emergence of social inequalities. Social inequality refers to differences between people in their material well-being, their social position, cultural standing, or ability to influence others. It also refers to disparities in people's ability to ensure that they have a better future and that their children are secure, healthy, and have viable livelihoods.
Do ties between political parties and businesses harm or benefit the development of market institutions? The post-communist transition offers an unparalleled opportunity to explore when and how networks linking the polity and the economy support the development of functional institutions. A quantitative and qualitative analysis covering eleven post-socialist countries combined with detailed case studies of Bulgaria, Poland and Romania documents how the most successful post-communist countries are those where dense networks link politicians and businesspeople, as long as politicians are constrained by intense political competition. The comparison of original network datasets shows how this combination allowed Poland to emerge with stable institutions. Bulgaria, marred by weak institutions, corruption and violence, cautions us that in developing economies intense political competition alone is harmful in the absence of dense personal and ownership networks. Indeed, as Romania illustrates, networks are so critical that their weakness is not mitigated even by low political competition. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.--Provided by publisher. ; Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. Foundations: 1. Approaches to institution building; Part II. The Role of Networks: 2. When broad networks increase cooperation; 3. Tracing ownership networks; Part III. The Role of Uncertainty: 4. When uncertainty increases cooperation; 5. Tracing elite career networks; Part IV. Bringing It Together: 6. Institutional development in new democracies; 7. Conclusion: political varieties of capitalism in emerging markets. ; Do ties between political parties and businesses harm or benefit the development of market institutions? The post-communist transition offers an unparalleled opportunity to explore when and how networks linking the polity and the economy support the development of functional institutions. A quantitative and qualitative analysis covering eleven post-socialist countries combined with detailed case studies of Bulgaria, Poland and Romania documents how the most successful post-communist countries are those where dense networks link politicians and businesspeople, as long as politicians are constrained by intense political competition. The comparison of original network datasets shows how this combination allowed Poland to emerge with stable institutions. Bulgaria, marred by weak institutions, corruption and violence, cautions us that in developing economies intense political competition alone is harmful in the absence of dense personal and ownership networks. Indeed, as Romania illustrates, networks are so critical that their weakness is not mitigated even by low political competition. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.--Provided by publisher. ; Mode of access: Internet. ; Description based on print version record.
"Inventing the Socialist Child" illustrates the thinking, institution-building, and daily practices by which childhood was reformulated and shaped in the context of socialist nation-building in urban China from 1949 to 1966. This project draws on archival and published documents, mostly from the cities of Shanghai and Tianjin, to demonstrate that, despite numerous and overlapping political campaigns, unstable foreign relations, and rapid policy changes during the decades following the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, one area in which the state had a remarkably consistent policy was its efforts to foster a specific kind of socialist childhood. Although the officials of the Maoist state believed children should be reared by their families, their goal of producing cooperative, revolutionary citizens required efforts to constrain non-state "bad influences." State officials' wariness about the values imparted by family and community members was compounded by the mobilization of women for production, which took many adult women out of the home and had the potential to leave children unsupervised for long periods. The desire to supplement or supplant inadequate supervision of children caused the state to intrude in family structure and child-rearing in new and important ways. "Inventing the Socialist Child" helps scholars understand how the shift to socialism brought major changes to every area of life, including gender roles, family life and child rearing, and the everyday experience of childhood during a time of revolutionary change. "Inventing the Socialist Child" enters broader conversations about childrearing and family-state relations in the postwar era around the world, and demonstrates that China used children in a tool of its postwar stabilization and nation-building efforts, deploying images of children in domestic and international propaganda, as well as actual children as agents of state-directed change—both ideological and practical—within families and society.
China's transition to a market economy has been a process of basic institutional changes and institution building. The institutional change from a socialist labour regime (SLR) as one of the backbones upholding the traditional leninist system to a new 'socialist' market labour regime (SMLR) became particularly important for the success of economic and political reforms. This analysis is based on the analytical framework of regimes and makes use of the idea of path dependence. An ensemble of institutions, mutually interconnected and influencing each other, forms the regime and shapes its trajectory. Six institutions are identified to constitute the employment regime: (1) the system of social control, (2) the production system, (3) the system of industrial relations, (4) the welfare system, (5) the family order, and (6) the educational system. The SMLR is still characterised by its socialist past and differs from other varieties of transformation labour regimes and bears little resemblance to labour regimes in Western market economies. ; Die Entstehung einer Marktwirtschaft in der VR China ist ein tief greifender Prozess institutionellen Wandels. Der Wandel von einem sozialistischen Beschäftigungsregime, das zu den Stützen des traditionellen leninistischen Systems gehörte, hin zu einem neuen 'sozialistischen' marktwirtschaftlichen Beschäftigungsregime ist dabei von besonderer Bedeutung für den Erfolg der wirtschaftlichen und politischen Reformen. Für die Analyse dieses Prozesses wird in diesem Paper der Regimeansatz vorgeschlagen, der das weitgehend national verfasste Beschäftigungsregime als ein Ensemble von Institutionen auffasst, die miteinander verbunden sind und sich gegenseitig beeinflussen. Sechs Institutionen werden betrachtet: (1) das System sozialer Kontrolle, (2) das Produktionssystem, (3) das System der Arbeitgeber-Arbeitnehmer-Beziehungen, (4) das Wohlfahrtssystem, (5) das Haushaltssystem und (6) das Bildungssystem. Das so konstitutierte Beschäftigungsregime entwickelt eine Eigendynamik mit pfadabhängigen Wandlungsmustern. Die 'sozialistische' marktwirtschaftliche Ordnung trägt daher immer noch Züge der sozialistischen Vergangenheit und unterscheidet sich von den Beschäftigungsregimen anderer Transformationsländer und westlicher Marktwirtschaften.
