The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a historic milestone, which catalysed the transformation of communist regimes across the world. In the past three decades, we have seen significant reforms take hold in several former communist states, particularly in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet countries, where socioeconomic and political ideals have gradually gravitated towards different forms of democracy and market economy. Meanwhile, in Asia, we have seen astonishing economic growth and a movement from central planning to the market, but few democratic reforms (e.g. in China and Vietnam), and some very specific hybrid regimes (e.g. in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia such as Azerbaijan), while the unpredictable, isolationist North Korea remains a source of instability for the broader region.
The unfulfilled expectation that the post-Berlin-Wall transformation would lead to the best Western standards of liberal democracy and market economy has stimulated a considerable compendium of research into the history, politics, economics and sociology of transition, which it is impossible to acknowledge in its entirety in the format of a book introduction. Nonetheless, let us start with a review of the most significant recent publications, all of which address the key question: whether and why not all the post-communist countries have been equally successful in their transition.
Five years ago, marking the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Berend and Bugaric (2015) argued that, contrary to the view expressed by some researchers and commentators, the post-communist region of Europe has not become ânormalâ and is no nearer to its Western neighbours than before. In reality, âThe region still belongs to the periphery of Europe with a mostly dual economy and low level of incomeâ (p. 219). Where some sectors, such as banking, have modernized, they have been subsidiaries of Western multinationals, while the political systems are often authoritarian, and democratic âformâ gives cover to non-democratic content.
Furthermore, Bugaric (2015) claims that Central and Eastern European countries are facing a very serious crisis of constitutional democracy, because the rule-of-law institutions in these countries are less robust than in Western ones. Western democracies have many checks and balances that cope more successfully with attacks on their liberal institutions: Their courts, media, human rights organizations, and ombudsmen have longer and better-developed traditions of independence and professionalism. In contrast, the examples of Hungary and Slovenia (and now Poland too) show that even the most advanced post-communist democracies are not immune to backsliding and reverting, in a relatively short period of time, from consolidated democracies into distinct forms of semi-authoritarian and diminished democratic regimes.
While agreeing with others that no former communist country has been completely successful in catching up with the technologically advanced Western nations, Norkus (2015) distinguishes two groups: those that have decreased the GDP gap with advanced market economies since 1989â1990, and those that havenât. Rather than comparing general historic and cultural differences, Norkus emphasizes specific causal conditions for their progress or failure in convergence, such as implementation of âconsensus-styleâ market reforms, neighbourhood with advanced affluent countries, peaceful transition, accession to the European Union (EU), endowment with natural resources, and state sovereignty before post-communism. Bohle (2016) also links the relative success of the post-communist countries in transition to their membership of the EU.
Meanwhile, there is a substantial difference between the evolution of post-communist Central and Eastern Europe and that of China (Roland, 2018). In Central and Eastern Europe, the driver for transition has been the collapse of communist state structures, while in China there has been a determined will to prevent such an outcome: âThis reconceptualization helps to better understand the emergence of bad institutions and corruption in Eastern Europe under the market economy as well as the absence of political liberalization in China and the strengthening of the power of the Communist Party in recent yearsâ (p. 589).
Roland (2012) explains and predicts the success or otherwise of the post-communist transformation by reference to long-term history. He distinguishes between Russia, which during the most recent 100 years was modernizing economically but remained politically very autocratic, Central Europe, which was economically very prosperous and well-integrated into Western Europe but was experiencing nationalistic tensions, and China, which was opening up to the outside world, searching for modern institutions capable of unifying it, but under military command. Even though all these countries have experienced several decades of post-communist regimes, long-running trends in their characters have not changed.
Cooley (2019) suggests that, since 2005, many of the post-communist governments increasingly view Western pillars of liberalism as threatening their domestic authority and regime survival. This has been why they have actively supported Russian-led initiatives to curtail Western influence: âAs a result, the ecology of the post-Communist space has transformed from one where the liberal order was briefly dominant to one where new illiberal regional organizations, practices, and counter-norms have flourished and now regularly interact with liberal counterpartsâ (p. 588). Ăgh (2016) claims that all of the East-Central European countries have been diverging from the EU mainstream in recent years, especially Hungary, because of the socioeconomic crises these countries have faced. Such backlashes have also been observed in Slovenia (Bugaric & Kuhelj, 2015) and the Czech Republic (Hanley & Vachudova, 2018).
Similar processes of reforms going backwards have been observed in Russia. Among other authors, Becker and Vasileva (2017) trace the history of Russiaâs political-economic development since the early 1990s as one of initial liberalization and, a decade later, subsequent re-statization. They argue that endemic Russian patrimonialism hindered the rise of economically facilitated state capacity, increasing the proportion of government involvement in the economy and giving rise to excessive regulation. We would, perhaps, include Belarus, as well as the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, in such an analysis.
Graney (2019) introduces a new approach to âEuropeanizationâ in the post-Soviet world since 1989, which includes political, security and cultural-civilizational aspects. She accepts the failure of the political science premise of the superiority of Europe over other places and spaces in the mentality of most of the political elites and populations of the former Soviet Union space. This gives her a tool for innovative case studies of all the post-Soviet countries.
Aslund (2018) argues that the absence of real property rights, lack of social reforms and institutional development in post-communist judicial systems have been the biggest problems in those post-communist countries not belonging to the EU, even if there has been an initial understanding of the need for comprehensive economic reform programmes.
There is a considerable body of literature looking at corruption as an endemic impediment to successful transition. SkÄ
pska (2009) refers to the famous argument of Max Weber, that there is a strong and direct connection between the rule of law and economic success, and the establishment of the rule of law facilitates the functioning of an efficient economy. These principles are long-lasting and deeply embedded in Western European and North American legal cultures and mentalities. By contrast, in recent developments in Eastern and Central Europe, especially the privatization of state-owned property, one observes growing corruption, nepotism and clientelism as important mechanisms of law-making. These contribute to the pathologies of post-communist economic transformation following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The historic pretext to corruption was not similar in every communist regime, according to Kostadinova (2012), and this might explain why the levels of corruption among post-communist democracies are different....