Overview

Offering a single, coherent framework of the political, economic, and social phenomena that characterize post-communist regimes, this is the most comprehensive work on the subject to date. Focusing on Central Europe, the post-Soviet countries and China, the study provides a systematic mapping of possible post-communist trajectories. At exploring the structural foundations of post-communist regime development, the work discusses the types of state, with an emphasis on informality and patronalism; the variety of actors in the political, economic, and communal spheres; the ways autocrats neutralize media, elections, etc. The analysis embraces the color revolutions of civil resistance (as in Georgia and in Ukraine) and the defensive mechanisms of democracy and autocracy; the evolution of corruption and the workings of “relational economy”; an analysis of China as “market-exploiting dictatorship”; the sociology of “clientage society”; and the instrumental use of ideology, with an emphasis on populism. Beyond a cataloguing of phenomena—actors, institutions, and dynamics of post-communist democracies, autocracies, and dictatorships—Magyar and Madlovics also conceptualize everything as building blocks to a larger, coherent structure: a new language for post-communist regimes. While being the most definitive book on the topic, the book is nevertheless written in an accessible style suitable for both beginners who wish to understand the logic of post-communism and scholars who are interested in original contributions to comparative regime theory. The book is equipped with QR codes that link to www.postcommunistregimes.com, which contains interactive, 3D supplementary material for teaching.

Full Product Details

Author:   Bálint Magyar ,  Bálint Madlovics
Publisher:   Central European University Press
Imprint:   Central European University Press
Weight:   1.900kg
ISBN:  

9789633863718

ISBN 10:   9633863716
Pages:   834
Publication Date:   16 November 2020
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments Reader’s Manual for QR Codes and Online Supplementary Material Preface by Alena Ledeneva Introduction Trapped in the Language of Democratization The Inadequacy of Existing Models for the Post-Communist Region The Multi-Dimensional Analytical Framework: Spanning Conceptual Spaces How It is Made: The Construction of a Conceptual Toolkit How to Look at It: The Framework as a Structural Construction How to Read It: A Textbook with Original Contributions How It Unfolds: Outline of the Content 1. Stubborn Structures 1.1. Guide to the Chapter 1.2. Thesis A: Regime Type Depends on the Separation of Spheres of Social Action 1.3. Thesis B: The Separation of Spheres Followed Civilizational Boundaries 1.3.1. Civilizations and the Three Historical Regions 1.3.2. The Basic Structure of Unseparated Spheres in a Feudal Framework 1.4. Thesis C: Communist Dictatorships Arrested and Reversed the Separation of Spheres 1.4.1. The Basic Structure of Merged Spheres in Communist Dictatorships 1.4.2. The Effect of Communism on the Separation of Spheres in Different Regions 1.5. Thesis D: Democratization Did Not Change the Separation of Spheres 1.5.1. The Basic Structure of Unseparated Spheres in a Democratic Framework 1.5.2. Single-Pyramid and Multi-Pyramid Systems: The Determinants of Democratization in the Three Historical Regions 1.6. Beyond Hybridology: A Triangular Conceptual Space of Regimes 2. State 2.1. Guide to the Chapter 2.2. General Definitions: The Basic Concepts of the Framework 2.2.1. Regime, State, Violence, and Coercion 2.2.2. Elite, Ruling Elite, Patronalism, and Informality 2.3. The Dominant Principle of State Functioning 2.3.1. Societal Interest, Elite Interest, and Ideology Implementation 2.3.2. States in Democracies and Dictatorships: from Constitutional State to Party State and from Night-Watchman State through Welfare State to Developmental State 2.4. Conceptualization of States Running on Elite Interest 2.4.1. Interpretative Layers: What is the Nature of the Ruling Elite? 2.4.2. Interpretative Layers: What is the Action Targeting State Institutions? 2.4.3. Interpretative Layers: What is the Action Targeting Property? 2.4.4. Interpretative Layers: What is the Legal Status of Elite-Interested Action? 2.4.5. Combining Layers of Different Dimensions: Defining the Mafia State 2.4.6. Constitutional State vs. Mafia State: Normativity and Discretionality 2.5. Challenges to the Monopoly of Violence 2.5.1. State Failure, Violent Entrepreneurs, and Oligarchic Anarchy 2.5.2. The Legitimate Use of Violence: A Typology 2.5.3. Sub-Sovereign Mafia States 2.6. The Invisible Hand and the Grabbing Hand: A Comparative Framework for State Types 3. Actors 3.1. Guide to the Chapter 3.2. The Three Spheres of Social Action 3.3. Political Actors in the Three Polar Type Regimes 3.3.1. President/Prime Minister—Chief Patron—General Party Secretary 3.3.2. Cabinet—Patron’s Court—Politburo 3.3.3. Politician—Poligarch / Political Front Man—High Level Party Cadre 3.3.4. Trustee – Patron’s Hand (Smotryashchiy)—Middle/Low Level Party Cadre 3.3.5. Civil Servant—Patronal Servant—Administrative Cadre (Apparatchik) 3.3.6. State’s Secret Service—Patron’s Secret Service—Party’s Secret Service 3.3.7. Democratic Party (Politicians’ Party)—Patron’s Party (Vassals’ Party)— Centralized Party (Cadres’ Party) 3.3.8. Governing Party—Transmission-Belt Party – State Party 3.3.9. Opposition Party—Marginalized / Domesticated / Absorbed / Liquidated / Fake party 3.4. Economic Actors in the Three Polar Type Regimes 3.4.1. Entrepreneur—Oligarch—State Enterprise Leader 3.4.2. Lobbyist—Corruption Broker—Tolkach 3.4.3. Economic Front Man (Shell Company) 3.5. Communal Actors in the Three Polar Type Regimes 3.5.1. Citizen—Servant (Client)—Subject 3.5.2. NGO—GONGO—TRANSBO 3.5.3. Independent Church – Client Church – Repressed Church 3.6. A Ruling Elite of Colluding Spheres: The Adopted Political Family 3.6.1. What the Adopted Political Family Is and Is Not 3.6.2. The Anthropological Character of the Adopted Political Family 3.6.3. Disposing over Status and Wealth as Chief Patron 3.7. The Structure of Elites in the Six Ideal Type Regimes 3.7.1. Elites in the Three Polar Type Regimes 3.7.2. Elites in the Three Intermediate Regime Types 4. Politics 4.1. Guide to the Chapter 4.2. Civil Legitimacy and the Interpretation of the Common Good  4.2.1. Civil Legitimacy as the Basis of Modern States 4.2.2. Civil Legitimacy in Liberal Democracy: Constitutionalism 4.2.3. Civil Legitimacy in Patronal Autocracy: Populism 4.2.4. Civil Legitimacy in Communist Dictatorship: Marxism-Leninism  4.2.5. Weberian Legitimacy Patterns: Populism as a Call for Substantive-Rational Legitimacy 4.3. The Institutions of Public Deliberation in the Three Polar Type Regimes 4.3.1. Discussing: Media and the Spheres of Communication 4.3.2. Associating: Protests, Interest Groups, and Party Systems 4.3.3. Electing: Campaigns, Elections, and Referenda 4.3.4. Lawmaking: Policies, Laws, and Legislatures 4.3.5. Enforcing: Courts, Prosecution, and the Institutions of State Coercion 4.4. Defensive Mechanisms: Stability, Erosion, and the Strategies of Consolidating Democracies and Autocracies 4.4.1. Liberal Democracy: Separation of Branches of Power and Civil Society 4.4.2. Patronal Democracy: Separation of Networks of Power and Color Revolutions 4.4.3. Patronal Autocracy: Separation of Resources of Power and the Problem of Succession 4.4.4. Reversing Autocratic Change: The Regime-Critique Paradigm and Democratic Consolidation 5. Economy 5.1. Guide to the Chapter 5.2. Relational Economics as a Challenger of the Neoclassical Synthesis 5.3. Relation 5.3.1. General Definitions: Relation, Cooperation, Collusion 5.3.2. Collusion and Corruption: A Typology 5.3.3. Corruption Types in Comparison: General Dimensions and a Case Study for the Transformation of Corruption  5.3.4. Corruption Measurement, Criminal Ecosystem, and the Role of Corrupt Monies in Regime Survival 5.3.5. Relation in Communist Dictatorships 5.3.6. The Culture of Relation in the Post-Communist Region: From Family Obligations to Blat and Guanxi 5.4. State Intervention 5.4.1. The General Framework 5.4.2. Regulatory Intervention: The Forms of Rent Creation 5.4.3. Budgetary Intervention: The Forms of Taxation and Spending 5.5. Ownership 5.5.1. Political Reorganization of Ownership Structure in the Post-Communist Region 5.5.2. Making a Privatization Profile: Technocratic and Non-Technocratic Motives 5.5.3. Making a Patronalization Profile: Predation and Property Rights 5.5.4. Predation and Economic Dynamics: Stalking Value, Hunting Value, and Booty Value 5.6. Comparative Economic Systems 5.6.1. Administrative Market, Competitive Market, and Relational Market 5.6.2. Mixed Market Economies: the Dynamic Balance of the Three Economic Mechanisms in Market-Exploiting Dictatorships 5.6.3. From Crony to Mafia: Types of Political Capitalism 6. Society 6.1. Guide to the Chapter 6.2. The Level of Social Structures: Networks and Societal Patronalization 6.2.1. Open and Limited-Access Orders: Eliminating the Strength of Weak Ties 6.2.2. Clientage Society: Inequality and Social Mobility in Patronal Autocracy 6.3. The Stability of Power and Mass Political Persuasion 6.4. The Level of Discourses: Ideology and the Political Market 6.4.1. The Supply Side: Ideology-Applying Actors and Regimes 6.4.2. The Demand Side: From Identity Politics to Conspiracy Theories 6.4.3. Populism Summarized: An Ideological Instrument for the Political Program of Morally Unconstrained Collective Egoism 6.5. Modalities of Informal Governance: A Summary 7. Regimes 7.1. Guide to the Chapter 7.2. The Triangular Framework: Defining the Six Ideal Type Regimes 7.2.1. Doubling of the Kornaian Ideal Types of Democracy, Autocracy, and Dictatorship 7.2.2. Eleven Dimensions in the Triangular Framework 7.3. Regime Dynamics: A Typology with Modelled Trajectories of Twelve Post- Communist Countries 7.3.1. General Definitions: Sequence, Trajectory, and Pattern Change 7.3.2. Primary Trajectories after Communism (Estonia, Romania, Kazakhstan, and China) 7.3.3. Secondary Trajectories after the Regime Change (Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Russia) 7.3.4. Regime Cycles and the Duality of Personal and Impersonal Institutional Change (Ukraine, Macedonia, Moldova, and Georgia) 7.4. Beyond Regime Specificities: Country and Policy-Specific Features 7.4.1. Ethnic Cleavages as a Source of Pluralism and Disorder 7.4.2. Deep State and the Survival of Communist Secret Services 7.4.3. Country Size and the Global Ambitions of Former Empires 7.4.4. Geopolitical Orientation and the Coexistence of Liberal and Patronal Regimes in the European Union 7.4.5. Dependence of Capitalism and the Global Connections of Local Patronal Networks 7.4.6. Natural Resources and Other Sources of Distributable Rent 7.4.7. Policy-Specific Features: Regime-Based Analysis and the Room for Maneuver  Conclusion The Significance of Language and the Basic Axioms to Analyze Post-Communist Regimes Towards a Global Perspective: Dissolving our Implicit Axioms for the Post- Communist Region Technology and Climate Change: Era-Specific Features and the Prospects for the Future Bibliography Index

Reviews

This thought-provoking and comprehensive volume comes at a propitious time. Thirty years following the Soviet Union's collapse, it asks fundamental questions about the nature of the post-communist transition, the quality of governance in the post-Soviet world (and beyond), and the sources of regime variation. With the benefit of hindsight, Balint Magyar and Balint Madlovics reflect on an extensive literature in a context of some abject democratic failure and increasingly consolidated corrupt networks in select countries, alongside more positive evelopments, including, variously, sustained economic growth (including in China-a perhaps surprising case for inclusion in the study) and/or increased freedoms in particular regions. For such an extensive investigation, the authors do an admirable job of sustaining the argument. Like all great studies, this one tries to answer some key questions while also provoking pressing new ones. -- Rachel A. Epstein * The Russian Review * I would advise any scholar entering this field to begin by reading this book, and diving into any of the particular areas they illuminate so powerfully-stubborn structures, the state, actors, politics, economy, society, corruption, regimes, and others. Indeed, the next time I teach about (de)democratizations, this volume's diagrams of regime transformations for twelve postcommunist countries will supplement the diagrams Charles Tilly's Democracy (2007) offers. If I headed a foundation I would assemble for six months those dedicated to figuring how power works in culture and society, within the postcommunist world and beyond it, to engage this volume and these scholars. -- Michael D. Kennedy * Slavic Review * The book by Balint Magyar and Balint Madlovics is a substantial work, and not only in terms of its physical characteristics. The authors have created a detailed and coherent conceptual framework for the study of post-communist regimes, which will be indispensable for future researchers. In addition to the theoretical coherence, the numerous conceptual innovations and the deep embeddedness in relevant literature, the sheer professionalism of the execution is also worth highlighting - I personally found it particularly useful that the book's website allows us to compare the regime trajectories of different countries. The book is a voluminous and original work that helps us see the functioning of post-communist regimes in historical perspective and on a broad comparative canvas. If not as a textbook to be read in its entirety, it will still be an indispensable part of the reading list for courses on its subject. https://revdem.ceu.edu/2022/06/24/beyond-the-mafia-state/ -- Gabor Illes * Review of Democracy * Magyar's new book, co-authored with Balint Madlovics, is The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes: A Conceptual Framework. It contains, among other insights, a critique of how we usually talk about and measure corruption. Magyar and Madlovics write that the problem with measurements used by, say, Transparency International, which produces an annual index of perceived corruption, is that the index assumes that corruption represents a departure from a norm: 'They understand the state by its formal identity: as dominantly an institution of the public good, with some subordinates who deviate from that purpose and abuse their position by requesting or accepting bribes and appointing cronies without a legitimate basis.' This view of corruption fails when confronted with a government to which corruption is central, or in which corruption is not voluntary but coercive-where the corrupt relationship is forced by one partner upon the other. * New Yorker * This book, over 800 pages, is one of few serious attempts to offer a systematic and massive 'anatomy', as Magyar and Madlovics rightly call it, of all the possible variations between the oversimplistic dualist opposition of communist dictatorship and liberal democracy. A key feature of this book is that it is structured in a way that can be easily integrated into teaching. The book comes with its own dedicated website offering extensive online resources including a draft seminar that can be adopted for a course on post-communist regimes, and a 3D interactive model of post-communist regime trajectories that can be studied using desktop software and a mobile app. A large number of topologies, analytical models, quotes of important ideas clarifying tables and figures facilitate a variety of teaching methods in classroom settings. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09668136.2021.1951024 -- Chi Zhang Review symposium on The Anatomy of Post-communist Regimes: Magyar and Madlovics's book aims to contribute to our understanding of the role of stubborn structures and to highlight the decisive role of informal politics in post-communist political and economic developments. The book elaborates a comprehensive framework for predicting future regime change, authoritarian breakdowns and revolutionary breakthroughs in the post-communist world; and it provides very important insights into the nature of post-communist political, economic and social systems. It is a terrific achievement. The publication of Magyar and Madlovics's book means that post-communist studies have reached a qualitatively new level. A new paradigm for this research field has emerged. From now scholars working in this branch of knowledge will have to engage with the conclusions of this book, do their research based on them or refine them. The book defines post-communist countries as relational economies, which are conceptualized as different 'beasts' from both market and planned economies. These relational economies are characterized by interdependency between economic and political power. The book's analysis of mechanisms through which political and economic power interact in these places makes it read like an entertaining political-economic crime novel. We are offered a refined interpretation of one of Magyar's most important descriptive concepts, the 'mafia state'. Clearly detached from day-to-day criminality, the mafia state is ruled by an adopted political family, patrimonializing political power in a democratic environment and using it in predatory ways, routinely stepping over formal laws and operating the state as a criminal organization. In other words, it is a combination of a clan state, a neopatrimonial-neosultanistic state, a predatory state, and a criminal state. -- Oleksandr Fisun, Andrey Ryabov, Sonja Avlijas, Julia Kiraly * Socio-Economic Review *

Magyar's new book, co-authored with Balint Madlovics, is 'The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes: A Conceptual Framework.' It contains, among other insights, a critique of how we usually talk about and measure corruption. Magyar and Madlovics write that the problem with measurements used by, say, Transparency International, which produces an annual index of perceived corruption, is that the index assumes that corruption represents a departure from a norm: 'They understand the state by its formal identity: as dominantly an institution of the public good, with some subordinates who deviate from that purpose and abuse their position by requesting or accepting bribes and appointing cronies without a legitimate basis.' This view of corruption fails when confronted with a government to which corruption is central, or in which corruption is not voluntary but coercive-where the corrupt relationship is forced by one partner upon the other. * New Yorker *

Magyar's new book, co-authored with Balint Madlovics, is The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes: A Conceptual Framework. It contains, among other insights, a critique of how we usually talk about and measure corruption. Magyar and Madlovics write that the problem with measurements used by, say, Transparency International, which produces an annual index of perceived corruption, is that the index assumes that corruption represents a departure from a norm: 'They understand the state by its formal identity: as dominantly an institution of the public good, with some subordinates who deviate from that purpose and abuse their position by requesting or accepting bribes and appointing cronies without a legitimate basis.' This view of corruption fails when confronted with a government to which corruption is central, or in which corruption is not voluntary but coercive-where the corrupt relationship is forced by one partner upon the other. * New Yorker * This book, over 800 pages, is one of few serious attempts to offer a systematic and massive 'anatomy', as Magyar and Madlovics rightly call it, of all the possible variations between the oversimplistic dualist opposition of communist dictatorship and liberal democracy. A key feature of this book is that it is structured in a way that can be easily integrated into teaching. The book comes with its own dedicated website offering extensive online resources including a draft seminar that can be adopted for a course on post-communist regimes, and a 3D interactive model of post-communist regime trajectories that can be studied using desktop software and a mobile app. A large number of topologies, analytical models, quotes of important ideas clarifying tables and figures facilitate a variety of teaching methods in classroom settings. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09668136.2021.1951024 -- Chi Zhang

Author Information

Bálint Magyar is Research Fellow at CEU Democracy Institute, working on the subject of patronalism in post-communist countries. He was a member of the Hungarian Parliament (1990-2010). As a Minister of Education (1996-1998; 2002-2006) he initiated and carried out reforms in public and higher education. Bálint Madlovics (*1993) is a political scientist and economist. He is a junior research fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute. He holds MA in Political Science (2018) from Central European University in Budapest, and BA in Applied Economics (2016) from Corvinus University of Budapest. 

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