“Communities of Practice” as an Analytical Construct: Implications for Theory and Practice

Abstract

The “community of practice” (CoP) has emerged as a potentially powerful unit of analysis linking the individual and the collective because it situates the role of learning, knowledge transfer, and participation among people as the central enterprise of collective action. The authors?uo; surface tensions and highlight unanswered questions regarding CoP theory, concluding that it relies on a largely normative and under-operationalized set of premises. Avenues for theory development and the empirical testing of assertions are provided.     

“Double transformations:” nation formation and democratization in interwar East Central Europe

Following the collapse of empires and the subsequent founding of self-determined nation-states, East Central Europe experienced a turning point after World War I. The new states had to transform themselves from branches of a multi-ethnic empire to independent nation-states, as well as from a system of monarchy to democracy at the same time. We argue that one cannot really understand why democracy failed in almost all East Central European states after World War I if one does not take into account the extreme challenges of this “double transformation” consisting of the interactions of the two tightly interwoven processes of nation formation and democratization. Therefore, we deem it necessary to develop a broader research program that addresses the complex interlacement of these two fundamental transformations of politics and society.