Product details
- Categories: Economic and Monetary Affairs
- Publisher: CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
- ISBN: 9780801478154
- Publication Date: 01/08/2012
- Binding: Paperback
- Number of pages: 304
- Language: English
Summary
With the collapse of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance in 1991, the Eastern European nations of the former socialist bloc had to figure out their newly capitalist future. Capitalism, they found, was not a single set of political-economic relations. Rather, they each had to decide what sort of capitalist nation to become. In Capitalist Diversity on Europe's Periphery, Dorothee Bohle and Béla Geskovits trace the form that capitalism took in each country, the assets and liabilities left behind by socialism, the transformational strategies embraced by political and technocratic elites, and the influence of transnational actors and institutions. They also evaluate the impact of three regional shocks: the recession of the early 1990s, the rolling global financial crisis that started in July 1997, and the political shocks that attended EU enlargement in 2004.
Bohle and Greskovits show that the postsocialist states have established three basic variants of capitalist political economy: neoliberal, embedded neoliberal, and neocorporatist. The Baltic states followed a neoliberal prescription: low controls on capital, open markets, reduced provisions for social welfare. The larger states of central and eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, and the Czech and Slovak republics) have used foreign investment to stimulate export industries but retained social welfare regimes and substantial government power to enforce industrial policy. Slovenia has proved to be an outlier, successfully mixing competitive industries and neocorporatist social inclusion. Bohle and Greskovits also describe the political contention over such arrangements in Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia. A highly original and theoretically sophisticated typology of capitalism in postsocialist Europe, this book is unique in the breadth and depth of its conceptually coherent and empirically rich comparative analysis.
Table of contents
Introduction: The Success, Fragility, and Diversity of Postsocialist Capitalism
1. Capitalist Diversity after Socialism
Comparing East European Capitalisms
Polanyian Varieties
Postsocialist Regime Concepts
Matrixes of Institutions and Performances
Puzzles of the Small State Pattern
2. Paths to Postsocialist Capitalism
Leaving the East
Mobilizing Consent
Returning to the West: Transnationalization and European Integration
3. Nation Builders and Neoliberals: The Baltic States
Origins of the National and Nationalizing Projects
Exclusionary and Inclusionary Democracies
The Politics of Early Economic Reforms
Nationalist Social Contracts
Constructing the Estonian Success Story
Internationalization, European Integration, and the Baltic Economic Miracle
4. Manufacturing Miracles and Welfare State Problems: The Visegrád Group
Unsuccessful Experiments and Double-Edged Inheritances
Welfarist Social Contracts
Rival Manufacturing Miracles
Contesting the Euro
5. Neocorporatism and Weak States: The Southeastern European Countries
Labor's Won Battles and Lost Wars
Postsocialist Capitalism in Strong and Weak States
Neocorporatist Balancing versus Crisis-Driven Path Corrections
6. The Return of Hard Times
Recession, Austerity, and No Alternatives: The Baltic States
Semicore Specialization, Polarized Democracy, and Austerity: The Visegrád Model in Peril
The Crisis, Neocorporatism, and Weak States: Southeastern Europe
Responsible Government or the Specter of Ungovernability
Conclusion: Postsocialist Capitalism Twenty Years On
Legacies, Initial Choices, and Repressed Alternatives
Market, Welfare, Democracy, and Identity: Compatibilities and Trade-offs
Virtues and Vices of Deep International Integration
Global Convergence versus Capitalist Diversity
New Global Transformations
Index