Deconstructing Balkan particularism: the ambiguous social capital of Southeastern Europe

Mungiu‐Pippidi, Alina

doi:10.1080/1468385042000328367

Cited by 48 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Problems of affordability intertwined with more subtle issues springing from a particularistic culture (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2005), namely, a relaxed legal culture ready to excuse law infringement on the justification of special circumstances and particular status, such as being a neighbour which could excuse defaults or fund misappropriations from legal recourse. Constraints from low affordability have been grafted onto this subtle particularistic culture and fostered a variety of informal processes whether in economic, financial, legal or administrative terms.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategies forInSituHome Improvement in Romanian Large Housing Estates

Soaita

2012

Housing Studies

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Socio-economic and physical change has visibly affected post-socialist cities, yet the state of decay of their inherited large housing estates has only deepened throughout the 1990s, despite of the change in tenure through IntroductionUnder the macro-economic constraints of post-communist restructuring since 1989, Eastern European governments have launched neo-liberal policies of large scale housing privatisation and overall state retreat from housing provision. Consequently, owner-occupation has reached over 93 percent of the housing stock in most Eastern European countries, and in Romanian large housing estates it has surpassed 99 percent (NIS, 2005). The state of decay of these estates has deepened throughout the 1990s. In order to take on their new responsibilities, flat-owners were challenged from two major directions. First, a comprehensive regulatory framework able to sustain a market-driven housing system, including condominium management, was until recently non-existent. documented (Hardin & Baden, 1977;Olson, 1971;Ostrom, 1990), this was likely to spur dilemmas of collective action and thus, asset degradation. Second, the macro-economic reforms of transition, global economic change and laissez-faire state policies throughout the 1990s have engendered an affordability crisis affecting both access to housing and the running costs of utilities and repairs. Whose housing problems?Besides the politico-economic rationale of early post-communist reforms, it was nonetheless hoped that decentralization and housing privatisation would stimulate local actors to improve housing quality and availability. In particular, households would begin to address the deferred maintenance problems of their newly privatized dwellings whereas local governments would engage in the delivery of housing services and assist social housing needs. This challenge of shaping new roles and attitudes among housing actors requires a discussion of the concept of ownership and its bundle of collective rights, which are prone to social dilemmas. The social contract of ownershipBroadly speaking, the paradigmatic change experienced by Eastern Europe has been twice engineered through the mechanism of property rights. Prior communist policies of nationalisation were reversed by post-communist policies of privatisation and restitution,

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategies forInSituHome Improvement in Romanian Large Housing Estates

Soaita

2012

Housing Studies

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“…29 Political institutions will be considered as impartial if they are based on the principle of universalism where equal treatment is a norm regardless of one's social status. 30 In this sense, impartiality is primarily the attribute of public servants, law enforcement officials and politicians who are legally bound to implement policies in an impartial way. These political actors must ensure that citizens' rights are continuously and fully protected through efficient and effective public administration.…”

Section: Good Quality Of Government: a Road To Political Legitimacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Informal Institutions in the Western Balkans: An Obstacle to Democratic Consolidation

Marcic¹

2014

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies

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The countries of the Western Balkans have achieved significant progress in protecting civic freedoms and political rights, that is, formal democracy. However, the region's performance is lagging behind other consolidated democratic post-communist countries with strong formal institutions. By following the theory of impartiality (Rothstein and Teorell), this paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of citizens' perception of informal institutions in the region, and support for a democratic regime with impartial public administration. We employ a quantitative online survey in three countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. The findings indicate that citizens consider formal institutions as very ineffective and hence embrace informal institutions as the lesser of two evils. At the same time, citizens would approve of a more equitable political system and hence contribute to democratic consolidation.

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“…Our underlying claim is that voters with a more universalistic stance would prefer candidates who foster the interests of the entire community whilst more particularistic inclined ones would prefer candidates who foster the interests of a narrower circle of related people (i. e. family, clan, and friends). This relates to the distinction between "generalized" versus "limited" morality introduced by Platteau (2000) and stressed by Tabellini (2010) and with the extensive literature showing that particularism is often associated with more widespread informal institutions (Mungiu-Pippidi 2005), lower civic mindedness and higher corruption (Uslaner 2002).…”

Section: Support For Democracy and Support For Shari'amentioning

confidence: 99%

Vote for Your Family! Particularism, Support for Democracy and Support for Shari’a in the Arab World

Bakker¹,

Rotondi²

2016

Review of Middle East Economics and Finance

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This paper examines the micro-foundations of the relationship between political particularism, support for democracy and support for Shari'a in the Arab World. Our hypotheses suggest that particularism reduces support for democracy whilst it increases support for Shari'a since, at the individuallevel, in-group (family/clan) obligations are more binding than obligations towards the state (universal). We test our hypotheses using data from the Arab Barometer. Results suggest that, even when allowing for the correlation of the error terms, particularism significantly increases support for Shari'a whilst it decreases support for democracy. Our results are robust to alternative specifications of the model and to the use of techniques aimed at addressing the potential endogeneity of particularism.

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Deconstructing Balkan particularism: the ambiguous social capital of Southeastern Europe

Cited by 48 publications

References 11 publications

Strategies forInSituHome Improvement in Romanian Large Housing Estates

Strategies forInSituHome Improvement in Romanian Large Housing Estates

Informal Institutions in the Western Balkans: An Obstacle to Democratic Consolidation

Vote for Your Family! Particularism, Support for Democracy and Support for Shari’a in the Arab World

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