Transitional Societies in Eastern Europe: Moving Beyond the Washington Consensus Paradigm in Transitology

Abstract

Post-communist transitions are generally thought to be a part of the past. However, most students of those transitions now acknowledge that the processes of transition in the countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union are far from over. Instead of reaching a point where all countries converge towards normal capitalism, the experiences of the countries from the region are extremely diverse. This article surveys the literature on post-communist transitions and argues that transitologists have experienced a shift from viewing transitions as mostly similar and converging to viewing transitions as uniquely complex and diverging. To advance this argument, the article: (i) systematizes the literature along methodological lines; (ii) uses a policy paradigm (namely, the Washington Consensus) as a metaphor to illustrate the tensions in the literature; and (iii) connects the shift away from one-size-fits-all policies with the evolution in the literature from being formally prescriptive and abstract to being context-sensitive and emphasizing complexity.

An equilibrium path for institutional change in China

“…China should learn from the experience of the pre-collapse Soviet Union during the 1990s (Kokushkin, 2012). The lack of democratic accountability at a local level is manifested in the absence of genuine electoral mechanisms that might allow citizens to collectively express their preferences and in the lack of an independent judiciary that can enforce legal and social contracts against the government and corrupt officials.…”

The influence of the Washington Consensus programme on the transitional economies of Eastern Europe - a firm-level analysis

“…The belief was that the superiority of the Western capital system had been proven, and therefore its adoption by the transition economies was a prerequisite for socioeconomic success (Gabrisch & Hölscher, 2006). There were two players in the process: the constructivists, believers in the shock therapy of rapid privatisation and price and trade liberalisation, and the Popperians, who believed in gradualism and a slow transition with the establishment of a strong institutional base as a prerequisite for further progress (Ellman et al, 1993;Kokushkin, 2011). The neoliberal thought collective ensured that the political and economic policy, supported by many in academic circles, dominated the initial implementation process throughout the transitional economies -albeit that national governments did not universally implement the shock therapy programme but picked and chose which elements to adopt (Gabrisch & Hölscher, 2006).…”