Vigilante justice in post-communist Europe

Five cases in which the names of former secret informers who supplied information to the communist secret political police were unofficially disclosed are discussed in terms of the motivations of their authors, their timing relative to 1989 and their countries’ lustration and file access legislation, and the information they make available to the general public. After contrasting them with civil society efforts to promote transitional justice and unofficial truth projects, it becomes evident that these unofficial disclosures were animated by revenge as much as the quest for unveiling the truth about communist repression.     

Afghanistan: transitional justice in the midst of war

In Afghanistan, there has been much talk about, and international support for dealing with past injustices by developing transitional justice mechanisms. Reconciliation is being promoted as a nation-building strategy. This article argues that the implementation of transitional justice poses several challenges. First, a significant component of such a strategy is based on reconciliation taking place internally among competing armed groups and ethnic identities with the goal of transforming Afghan society. This assumes the cause of past conflicts to be internal and along ethnic divisions which limits the accountability for war crimes. It also considers violence and crimes of war as a thing of the past, ignoring the present situation. Furthermore, given the ongoing war between the US-led forces and the Taliban, insecurity and escalating levels of violence one has to question whether transitional justice can take place during a war. This article concludes that transitional justice is interconnected to perceptions of security and stability. The analysis of the present situation in Afghanistan poses critical questions as to whether memories of victims can be considered as the past in the midst of war.     

Explaining the success and failure of post-communist revolutions

Since 1999, the post-Communist states have seen a series of attempts to overthrow semi-authoritarian governments, with the successful attempts known as the “colored revolutions.” However, not all such attempts have succeeded. This paper seeks to explain the variation in outcomes. Most accounts have focused on the development of grass-roots activist movements. The central argument here is that elites, and in particular security services, play a much more significant role in these revolutions than has generally been appreciated. This hypothesis is elaborated through a threshold model of protest, in which the central question is whether protests achieve a “tipping point” that makes them continue to grow larger until success is inevitable. The actions of elites, it is argued, play a decisive role in whether mass protests reach a tipping point. The argument is examined through a paired comparison of two failed attempts to overthrow governments through street protests (Serbia 1996–1997 and Ukraine 2001) with two successful cases (Serbia 1999 and Ukraine 2004). By studying cases with variation on the dependent variable, this paper seeks to improve the empirical and methodological basis of research on post-communist revolutions.     

Party identity change in post-communist politics: the cases of the successor parties in Hungary, Poland and Russia

In recent years much has been written on the communist successor parties. Although much of the existent work focuses on the electoral performance of these parties or has described, in great detail, the development of single parties, this paper evaluates the utility of theories of party identity change in application to the successor parties. As an initial exploration we investigate the successor parties' programs before and after the initial competitive parliamentary elections in Hungary (in 1990), Poland (in 1991) and Russia (in 1993) to determine the extent to which poor electoral performance in initial competitive elections compelled the successor parties to alter their political identities.     

Researching norms,narratives, and transitional justice: focus group methodology in post-conflict Croatia

This article is based on the assumption that norms can help better understand one of the expressivist aims of transitional justice, that of building a new narrative about the past. The main argument is that focus groups, as an interactive method of inquiry, are well suited to investigating how this “judicial” narrative interacts with the official and dominant war narrative in Croatia. Focus groups are more adept at this than other methodological approaches since they can effectively reflect independence of opinion; they lead to more truthful answers through spontaneity; they effectively probe taken-for-granted concepts; and they can more easily overcome distrust in post-conflict societies, especially with ex-combatants. The approach faces new challenges in such a situation since recruitment problems, insider/outsider status, and post-traumatic stress disorder, among other ethical concerns, present problems that often arise due to the group process. The powerful and unpredictable effect of the group dynamic can, therefore, provide a deep exploration of social norms, but it can also cause significant upset among participants. In this instance the methodology explores how widely accepted the war narrative is, how it is constructed, and how important the public believes it is not to question it.     

The construction of Orthodox churches in post-communist Romania

Against the background of church – state relations in contemporary Romania, this article explores the question of the construction of places of worship by the Romanian Orthodox Church after 1989. Besides providing and analysing general figures, it focuses on the proliferation of Orthodox churches in state-owned and state-operated institutions, and on the issue of funding. It also offers an examination of relevant legislation and its implications on church construction.     

Judicious choices: designing courts in post-communist politics

One area which has been generally overlooked in the literature on institutional choice in post communist politics has been the design of judicial institutions. This paper seeks to evaluate a number of different explanations for judicial systems choice in post communist politics, especially those which emphasize the influence of socio-cultural factors, economic factors, the judicial legacies of the past, and political bargaining. As an empirical test of these explanations, we examine variations in the amount of judicial power that constitution makers granted to the constitutional courts in the countries of the former Soviet Union, Mongolia, and Eastern Europe.     

Extricating the state: The move to competitive capture in post-communist Bulgaria

This article uses the Bulgarian case to analyse movement from a situation of what appeared to be a ‘Partial-Reform Equilibrium’ to an ‘Equilibrium of Competitive Capture’. In such a process, elections are important forces for change, but not because they bring reformist parties to power or lead to completed economic liberalisation. Instead, especially in the first several electoral cycles in a new democracy, they can bring to power new leaders who are not beholden to existing captors, but rather to other clients that would like to capture the state for their own interests. Over time, the country experiences a parade of captors, eventually leading to a system where no single group owns the state, but where it is still not insulated. Instead, several competing groups fight with each other to raid it for their own benefits.     

The study of post-communist Slovenian firms and their internationalization

Understanding the evolution and growing importance of firms in post-communist countries is a critical new research direction for the study of communist and post-communist economies. In light of this, the primary purpose of this study is to identify the conditions necessary for the internationalization of enterprises from post-communist Slovenia, based on the responses of 298 firms currently engaged in the export of Slovenian products. The study supports the idea that many of the conditions necessary for international expansion of the firms are also applicable to firms from the post-communist economy, that is Slovenia. Environmental factors, including economic stability and cultural similarity, firm size and experience, stable markets, management strategies and other country-specific factors, were found to have significant influences on the participation of post-communist firms in the global economy. Environmental factors, including economic stability and cultural similarity, were found to be the most important in the factor analysis. Firm size and experience also exerted an influence on the internationalization of post-communist Slovenian firms. However, stable markets were found to be more important than firm size or management strategies at this point in time. Slovenia’s small size, its former command economy, and other country-specific factors, were also found to have significant influences for the firms involved in this study.     

The malleable homo sovieticus: transnational entrepreneurs in post-communist East Central Europe

This paper investigates the coping strategies of post-1989 East Central European transnational migrant entrepreneurs. Paradoxically, rather than facilitating transfer into the region of liberal-democratic orientations and practices, the incorporation of East Central Europe into late 20th-century consumer capitalism based on short-cycle flexible production in sectors unregulated by legal-institutional frameworks reproduces some of the features of the accustomed homo sovieticus syndrome: in particular, the reliance on the beat-the-system/bend-the-rules orientation on informal/crony patronage and connections, and immediate consumption rather than deferred gratification/investment-oriented capital accumulation renders effective strategies of economic action in the new situation. The effects of so-informed transnational migrant entrepreneurs' activities on the transformation processes in their home-countries are also discussed.     

Collective action and post-communist enterprise: The economic logic of Russia's business associations

Drawing on a unique set of surveys, this article explores the question of whether Russia's post-communist business associations are generally antithetical to or supportive of the broad objectives of economic restructuring. Contrary to the most widely cited analysis as to the purposes of collective action in the business community, the survey evidence demonstrates that association members have embraced market-adapting forms of behaviour at greater rates than non-members. The responses of both firms and associations, moreover, suggest that the associations themselves are, at least in part, directly responsible. These findings point to the conclusion that in contemporary Russia the net returns to collective action in support of market development are high relative to those for purposes that are less supportive.     

The historical foundations of party politics in post-communist East Central Europe

This article gauges how plausible deep historical explanations are in accounting for the emergence of particular types of parties in post-communist Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Generating and testing hypotheses from the centuries-long historical logic of Lipset and Rokkan's model of cleavage and party development, it finds that the historical foundations of post-communist parties may be deeper than most analyses assume and that the influence of the communist era may be less than is often believed. While a full understanding of the emergence of post-communist party types requires both historical and non-historical explanations, historical ones should not be underestimated.     

Overcoming the past: De-communization and reconstruction of post-communist societies

In several of the central and eastern European nations, the fall of Communism has initiated a new round of political intolerance that threatens to destroy the foundations of their fragile democratic regimes. Campaigns of lustration (political “cleansing”) have imposed ideological tests for employment and political participation in the Balkan countries and in parts of the former Soviet Union. The small, poor nation of Albania has been especially seriously impacted by this atmosphere of vengeacean against ex-Communists and their families. Justified by the principles of destructive entitlement—reminiscent of ancient cultural rituals of blood retribution—journalists have been arrested, members of the opposition have been imprisoned, and University programs have been suspended. In response to Albania’s plight, and to a similar pattern of civil rights abuses in neighboring countries, social scientists have begun to analyze the powerful role played by the “past-in-the-present” in current reconstruction efforts. As Jurgen Habermas, Adam Michnik, Seymour Martins Lipset, and others have noted, a new “culture of forgiveness” may well be a necessary condition for the development of stable and authentic democratic societies in the region. Fatos Tarifa is currently at the Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Tirana in 1985. He is director of the New Sociological Research Center (NSRC) in Tirana, Albania, and is the author of several books and journal articles, including a 1991 bookIn Search of the Sociological Fact (published in Albanian). Jay Weinstein is a professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University. He has travelled widely in the Third World and in Central and Eastern Europe. Author of numerous books, journal articles, and chapters, he is currently working on a volume entitledSocial and Cultural Change: Social Science for a Dynamic World (forthcoming in 1997 by Allyn & Bacon Publishers).     

The role of committee systems in post-communist legislatures: a case study of the Lithuanian Seimas

European parliamentary committee systems play an important role in organising the work of legislatures so as to assure the parliamentary leadership of its agenda. At the same time, the strategic positioning of committees in the legislative process provides opportunities for chairs to potentially undo the will of the leadership. We consider the degree to which committees in the Lithuanian legislature serve the private interests of legislators or those of the parliamentary leadership. We argue that while committees most often assist the leadership in obtaining preferred legislative outcomes, chairs on occasion have been able to change proposals or even frustrate the parliamentary leadership of governing coalitions.