Communism In Transition

As China moved from a planned to a market economy many people expected that China’s political system would similarly move from authoritarianism to democracy. It is now clear, however, that political liberalisation does not necessarily follow economic liberalisation. This book explores this apparent contradiction, presenting many new perspectives and new thinking on the subject. It considers the path of transition in China historically, makes comparisons with other countries and examines how political culture and the political outlook in China are developing at present. A key feature of the book is the fact that most of the contributors are China-born, Western-trained scholars, who bring deep knowledge and well informed views to the study.

Through ethnographic essays and short stories based on her experiences in Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2009, Kristen Ghodsee explains why many Eastern Europeans are nostalgic for the communist past.

Studying the history of East-West relations from 1918 to the revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, this volume presents an analysis of this transitory period. It reviews communism as a worldwide phenomena and the prospects for communist nations in the new era of international relations.

Looks at China's transition in comparison to other transitions from communism, going beyond comparisons of whole countries to comparisons of institutional sectors, and compares differing theoretical approaches to regime type and regime change. Subjects include Leninist adaptability in China and Taiwan, military dimensions of regime transition, economic crisis and market transition in the 1990s, principal-agent analysis of fiscal decentralization, state birth planning, and reconstituting the arts and sciences. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-socialism can be understood both as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy?as well as the older political traditions?and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular.

This edited collection addresses the dynamics of the post-Communist transition in Central Eastern Europe. Its contributors present a detailed analysis of the events unfolding during the last three decades in the region, focusing in particular on identity-building processes and reforms in Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The contributors outline reasons why some of these states accomplished a decisive break with the Communist past and became members of European and transatlantic structures, while some opted for pseudo-transition and fostered hybrid political regimes, jeopardizing their genuine integration with the West. A group of states which decided to preserve their Communist legacy is also explained. The collection describes and scrutinizes the formation of geopolitical affiliations and the evolution of discourses of belonging. It also traces the fluctuating dynamics of national decision-making and institution-building, as many of the post-Communist states reconsider and re-elaborate their initial ideas and visions of Europe today. Finally, the collection brings to light the rapidly changing perceptions of the region by the major global actors—the European Union, People’s Republic of China, Russian Federation, and others.

A unique comparative study examining why some communist regimes remain in power, whilst others have fallen.

Popular uprisings have taken many different forms in the last hundred or so years since Muslims first began to grapple with modernity and to confront various systems of domination both European and indigenous.The relevance of studies of popular uprising and revolt in the Muslim world has recently been underlined by shattering recent events, particularly in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Libya. The book consists of a close analysis of the problématique of the Qur’an, showing the openness of the text to Islamic reform and renewal; the role of Islam in creating a specific form of communism in Albania and Kosova; the Chechen revolts against Russian rule after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the short-lived period of alliance between communism and Islam in the early 1920s; the history of alliances between British Muslims and socialists since the 1950s. The book also traces the evolution of the Muslim-Communist alliance during the twentieth century, analyses the driving forces behind it, looks at the new situation created by the democratic revolts of 2010-11 in the Middle East and attempts a prognosis for future relations between these and existing communist groups. This volume contributes to the debate over the aims and methods of these popular uprisings. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics.