The Political Economy of Protest and Patience
East European and Latin American Trasformations Compared
Béla Greskovits, Central European University,
Budapest
"Greskovits provides a compelling insight on the relationship
between the economic and political aspects of change
and why protest has been so muted. (the book) Deserves
a wide readership among those interested in the economic
transition of Eastern Europe."
- The Times Higher Education Supplement
"This well-informed and lively book presents a compelling
theme.a provocative and insightful perspective for students
of post-communism and comparative political economy."
- Choice
"All in all, this is innovative theorizing, of
a kind too rarely encountered in the field of transition
studies. ... The theory of postcommunist collective
action requires deepening, the notion of low-level equilibrium
democracy needs to be given a preciser meaning. ...
The Politial Economy of Protest and Patience provides
a host of observations and conjectures to stimulate
such research. That alone makes it stand out as an important
book in its field. - Pieter Vanyhuysse, London
School of Economics and Political Science. Review appeared
in British Journal of Sociology, 2001 December
Despite gloomy prophecies, democracy and the market
economy seem to be taking root throughout Central and
Eastern Europe, although set against a background of
a recession deeper and longer than that of the Great
Depression. How is this possible? Why did Eastern Europeans
protest less about the brutal social consequences of
systemic change than the people of Latin America a decade
earlier? Why has the region-wide authoritarian or populist
turnabout not occurred? Why has democracy in these countries
proved to be crisis-proof? In what ways has economic
crisis impacted on the politics of the region?
In addressing these questions, Béla Greskovits uses
a comparative analysis of the structures, institutions,
cultures, and actors shaping both the Eastern European
and the Latin American transformations. He argues that
structural, institutional, and cultural factors have
put a brake on destabilizing collective actions and
have paved the way for the emergence of the enduring,
low-level equilibrium between incom-plete democracy
and imperfect market economy which seems set to characterize
the Central and Eastern European experience for the
foreseeable future.
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Crisis
and neoliberal transformations in the 1980s and 90s
Chapter 3: The loneliness of the economic reformer
Chapter 4: Local reformers and foreign advisors
Chapter 5: The social response to economic hardship
Chapter 6: Rethinking populism under post-communism
Chapter 7: Populist transformation strategies
Chapter 8: Compensation as a government tactic
Chapter 9: Conflict, social pact and democratic
development in transforming Hungary Chapter 10: Crisis-proof,
poor democracies Bibliography
1998
233 pages
ISBN 963-9116-14-6 cloth $49.95 / €44.95 / £37.00
ISBN 963-9116-13-9 paperback $24.95 / €21.95 / £18.99
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