Legal Change In Post Communist States

Reformers had high hopes that the end of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union would lead to significant improvements in legal institutions and the role of law in public administration. However, the cumulative experience of 25 years of legal change since communism has been mixed, marked by achievements and failures, advances and moves backward. This book—written by a team of socio-legal scholars—probes the nuances of this process and starts the process to explain them. It covers developments across the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and it deals with both legal institutions (courts and police) and accountability to law in public administration, including anti-corruption activities. In explaining their findings, the authors probe the impact of such factors as the type of political regime (democratic to authoritarian), international influences (such as the European Union), and culture (legal and political). The volume’s contributors are: Mihaela Serban, Kim Lane Scheppele, Kriszta Kovacs, Alexei Trochev, Peter Solomon, Olga Semukhina, Maria Popova, Vincent Post. Marina Zaloznaya, William Reisinger, Vicki Hesli Claypool, Kaja Gadowska, and Elena Bogdanova.

This book-written by a team of socio-legal scholars-covers developments in legal institutions and the role of law in public administration across the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It deals with both institutions such as courts and police and accountability to law in public administration, including anticorruption activities.

The last decade of the 20th century saw radical changes in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Most of these countries made a transition from totalitarianism or authoritarianism to democracy and from central planning to a market economy. Adding to the latter, a number of national entities gained their independence after the disintegration of the federative states of the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Many recent studies have focused on these double, in some cases triple transitions, and scholars from different fields analyzed the so-called "1989 Revolution" from different perspectives. Rather less scholarly attention has been paid to the future of post-communist constitutions and prospects for constitutionalism in these countries. The main questions dealt with throughout this study can be formulated as follows: Will liberal democratic constitutionalism take root in these countries? Will new constitutions in Eastern Europe and the former USSR perish or survive? This study also aims at contributing to the construction of a general constitutional theory by studying the causes and dynamics of constitutional change in general. Such constitutional change is not only on the East European, but also on the West European agenda. The purpose of this study is not to introduce a general theory about constitutional in/stability, but studying post-communist constitutions will help us to understand the causes and dynamics of constitutional change from a broader perspective.

First published in 1999, this volume is a series of essays on the countries of Central Europe. The essays explore the post-1989 establishment of the rule of law and civil society. It brings together analysis and perceptions from social scientists, political scientists and lawyers, seeking through particular issues to explore the similarities and differences between different countries. While other books have explored the changes in former Soviet Block countries since 1989, the book’s distinctiveness lies in three qualities: its concentration on Central Europe a concept explored in the book; giving fuller attention to the Czech Republic and Slovakia than other post-communist studies often do; providing perceptions of scholars from different disciplines.

This book represents an effort to assess the unprecedented political, economic, and social reforms that have swept through Central and Eastern Europe in the five years since the collapse of Communism. The dismantling of the Warsaw Pact, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the Communist Party apparatus, and the various manifestations of the nomenklatura' political control system have meant different things in different countries, but throughout the region we have witnessed a struggle to replace an authoritarian, one-party political system and a command economy with something resembling Western-style constitutional democracy and market economics. Accompanying this struggle have been attempts to transform the legal structure of these countries. It is no exaggeration to claim that lawyers, and particularly legal scholars, have played a central role in the struggle for reform in post-communist Europe. As conceived by its principal organizer and editor (Stanislaw Frankowski), this study gives these scholars an opportunity to express their perceptions of the success achieved to date and the work still remaining. A secondary goal is to expose a Western audience to the views and insights of legal scholars who have worked within the Central and Eastern European traditions. The four parts of this book reflect the principal areas in which legal reform seemed essential. First comes the reconstitutionalization of the societies in question, which means above all else the elimination of single-party politics and the notion of unity of powers. Then comes the creation of the legal institutions that would make possible a civil society under law. Then the institutions that moderate and control theuses of state power to discipline and punish persons that have transgressed the society's norms. Finally there is the question of how law reform had dealt with industrial democracy and the anticipated transformation of the workplace.

This book seeks to explain the divergent political pathways of twenty six post-communist states, following the breakdown and eventual collapse of communism in 1989-1991. Considering the trajectories of individual states between 1990 – 2007, this book challenges two central bodies of theory relating to democratization and regime change. Through a sustained analysis of global and post-communist developments within this time period, the author shows that claims of an increasing asymmetry between the ‘electoral’ and ‘liberal’ elements of modern democracy have been greatly exaggerated. The author goes on to contend that in accounting for the geographical dispersion of post-communist regime forms, deeper structural factors should be considered as crucial. The book is divided into the following parts: Part I demonstrates how different conceptualisations of democracy can lead to very different conclusions about the empirical dynamics of democratization. Part II contrasts different explanations of post-communist political change and provides an integrated framework for explaining the political pathways encountered within the former Eastern Bloc. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of post-communist studies, democratization studies, comparative politics and regime change.

With the demise of authoritarian governments in Europe and South America, the fall of Communism in eastern and central Europe, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, scholars of democratization have been provided with an opportunity to test their theories against reality. Democratic Theory and Post-Communist Change represents the result of a collaborative effort of scholars trained in political science, sociology, law, and economics. These scholars analyze relevant democratic theory and apply it to recent events in the formerly communist states. Editor Robert D. Grey introduces this analysis by tracing the rise and fall of communism and examining democracy in the post-communist world. Other sections examine what political entities need to do to make the transition to democracy and ensure its stability, whether or not "The People" matter to democracy, and what political orientations are supportive of it. The conversion to "Rule of Law" and "Constitutionalism" and their relationship to democracy and the free market are studied. How democracy will fare in an environment of cultural diversity, what the development and impact of economic policy will be, and how the promotion and support of democracy by international powers will affect its success are among the topics considered. An interdisciplinary fusion of theory and empirical analysis, Democratic Theory and Post-Communist Change represents a comprehensive and informative study of the conditions for and processes of democratization in the former communist world.