Governing After Communism

This timely comparative analysis explores the evolution of governance in Central and Eastern Europe. The book considers post-communist leaders' key challenge: the development of central government institutions capable of coordinating, integrating, and steering the policymaking process. Building on a broad range of primary sources and extensive field research, the distinguished authors analyze the processes and outcomes of institution-building in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria since the late 1980s. They examine in detail the organization and inner workings of central executives; explain differences in executive trajectories across time and countries by considering the influence of institutional legacies, the impact of evolving party systems, and the role of crises in spurring institutional change; and show the effects of executive institutions on patterns of public policy, especially the budgetary process. Through a rigorous application of the core-executive framework, this study offers nuanced conceptual and analytical insights that will enhance understanding of both the evolving institutions of Central and Eastern Europe and the more stable West European systems. The in-depth analysis of the development of national executive institutions casts a distinctive new light on debates about EU enlargement, Europeanization, and patterns of governance.

After the fall of communism in Russia, most observers took for granted that the structures of the new democratic state would be effective agents of the popular will. This assumption was overly optimistic. Eleven respected contributors examine governance in post-Soviet Russia in comparative context, investigating the roots, characteristics, and consequences of the crisis as a whole and its manifestations in the specific realms of tax collection, statistics, federalism, social policy, regulation of the banks, currency exchange, energy policy, and parliamentary oversight of the bureaucracy.

When faced with the rapid and disorienting transition from communism to democracy, many eastern European leaders sought simple, immediately rewarding answers to complex policy problems. Undoubtedly, this hurried approach had a significant impact on the quality of democratic government in formerly communist countries. Through an analysis of urban politics in Prague between 1990 and 2000, Governing the Post-Communist City sheds new light on the factors that shaped policy in eastern Europe at the time of its democratic transformation. The first book-length study of post-communist urban politics in a city outside of Russia, Governing the Post-Communist City links the difficulties of democratic government in 1990s Prague to decisions made shortly after the fall of communism. Focusing on the issues of road infrastructure and downtown development, Martin Horak argues that local leadership was more concerned with insulating policy-making processes from public influence than with creating new policies suited to post-communist urban development. This set a precedent for the whole institutional environment of post-communist Prague and entrenched itself in the city's politics throughout the 1990s. Original, engaging, and authoritative, this study has much to say about the political climate in Prague after the downfall of communism, and makes insightful conclusions about the factors that contributed to present political circumstances in the region.

As the European Union (EU) launches its common currency (the Euro), Central European (CE) nations are searching for best practices in public liability management in order to smooth their integration into the EU. This work addresses that concern, examining borrowing policies, institution building, portfolio optimization, and the implications of the Euro and EU accession for public debt management. To help the CE countries achieve their goals, the World Bank and the European Commission held a two-day seminar in Brussels in mid-December 1997. European Union Accession presents the papers delivered at that seminar which was attended by all ten EU applicant countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. The workshop pursued the following goals: (1) to investigate the implications of the launch of the Euro and of the EU accession on fiscal prudence and on the borrowing strategies of CE countries; (2) to facilitate the dissemination of the best public liabilities management techniques developed worldwide; and (3) to explore plausible arrangements to promote prudent public liabilities management in Central Europe through a regional expertise network.

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.

Drawing on lessons from post-communist Europe, this book provides a summary of the practical wisdom learned in the management of ethnic conflicts from the Balkans to Chechnya. Grounded in empirical - mostly comparative - research, the essays go beyond theoretical postulates and normative ideals and acknowledge the considerable experience that exists within the post-communist world on ethnic conflict, nation and state building. What does the post-communist experience have in common with other nationalisms and nation-related conflicts, and what, if anything, is unique about it? This book, written by academics with experience as policy advisors, is strongly policy-oriented. The primordial type hypotheses of ethnic social capital and ancient hatreds are tested on the basis of public opinion surveys on nationalism and ethnic cohabitation in various countries in east-central Europe. Power-sharing arrangements in the Balkans, the small separatist Republics of the post-Soviet world as well as ethno-federalism from the former Yugoslavia to the former Soviet Empire are discussed in the respective chapters.

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.