The Great Surprise of the Small Transformation

Róna‐Tas, Ákos

doi:10.3998/mpub.15030

Cited by 56 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…They "spontaneously" privatized the enterprises they directed-to themselves. Subsequently, "by funneling to their new companies the orders that would have gone to their old employers, they could get off to a secure start (Róna-Tas 1997)." In such settings, informal institutions are a way to share risks and information, as well as to redistribute and even to create new forms of property ownership.…”

Section: Replacementmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Best Laid Plans: The Impact of Informal Rules on Formal Institutions in Transitional Regimes

Grzymała-Busse

2010

St Comp Int Dev

122

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How do informal institutions influence the formation and function of formal institutions? Existing typologies focus on the interaction of informal institutions with an established framework of formal rules that is taken for granted. In transitional settings, such typologies are less helpful, since many formal institutions are in a state of flux. Instead, using examples drawn from postcommunist state development, I argue that informal institutions can replace, undermine, and reinforce formal institutions irrespective of the latter's strength, and that the elite competition generated by informal rules further influences which of these interactions dominate the development of the institutional framework. In transitional settings, the emergence and effectiveness of many formal institutions is endogenous to the informal institutions themselves.How do informal institutions influence the emergence and function of formal institutions? Further, how do we account for the variation in formal institutions of the market, state, and democracy in post-communist countries? Post-communist democracies show surprising variation in the emergence and enforcement of their formal market and state institutions, which cannot be easily explained by historical legacies, formal institutional deficits, or external influence alone. The development of these post-communist formal rules demonstrates the mechanisms of informal influence on the emergence and transformation of formal institutions. This influence is direct: informal institutions serve as templates and substitutes for formal choices. Even as they compensate for formal institutions, informal rules can subvert them. Informal institutions also reify formal rules by defining and expanding their domain, and by providing incentives and information to follow formal institutions. The effect is also indirect: informal institutions shape elite competition and cooperation, which St Comp Int Dev (2010) 45:311-333

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Section: Replacementmentioning

confidence: 98%

The Best Laid Plans: The Impact of Informal Rules on Formal Institutions in Transitional Regimes

Grzymała-Busse

2010

St Comp Int Dev

122

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“…Rather than learning or developing new sources of information, they take "off the shelf" examples. For example, postcommunist economic entrepreneurs relied first and foremost on their existing personal alliances to insure themselves during the transition to the market economy (Stark & Vedres, 2006;Róna-Tas, 1997). Similarly, the authors of many postcommunist constitutions turned to pre-World War II templates, adopting extant institutional solutions.…”

Section: Tempomentioning

confidence: 99%

Time Will Tell? Temporality and the Analysis of Causal Mechanisms and Processes

Grzymała-Busse

2010

Comparative Political Studies

232

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Causal inference and the logic of historical explanation are grounded in temporality. Yet the relationship between causal analysis and aspects of temporality, such as duration, tempo, acceleration, and timing, is often less clear. Using examples from analyses of institutional change and postcommunist regime transitions, the author argues that aspects of temporality allow us to predict which causal mechanisms can unfold and to differentiate causal sequences. Explicitly specifying the role of temporality can thus improve scholars’ understanding of political mechanisms, sequences, and the processes they constitute.

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“…15 Late communism in Hungary was characterized by an extensive and wide-ranging sphere of private market activity, including craftsmanship, house building, and farming. Building on work by economic historians (such as Ivan Berend) and economic sociologists (such as Akos Rona-Tas) and on a mass of documentary evidence, he argues that the longstanding taboo against unemployment in the Hungarian workers' state was a political invention caused by de-Stalinization policies and the implicit social compact struck between Party and citizens after the crushed revolution of 1956.…”

Section: Quiescence and Illiberalism: Two Stages In The Political Dynmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kneeling at the Altar of (Il)-Liberalism: The Politics of Ideas, Job Loss, and Union Weakness in East Central Europe

Vanhuysse

2008

Inter. Labor Working-Class Hist.

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As East Central Europe is fast approaching the end of its second decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, new studies of postcommunist politics and society can increasingly benefit from a longer historical perspective. We can now replace the “history of the present” lens that was typical of much research in the highly volatile 1990s with accounts that more extensively compare the most fundamental trends emerging from the decades before and after 1989–1990. In this spirit, both books under review make substantive and historically well-informed contributions to our understanding of the politics of work and workers in Central and Eastern Europe. In The Defeat of Solidarity, David Ost develops a gripping account of the progressive and interlinked defeats of labor interests and liberal democratic politics in Poland from the 1980s up to the present day. In Constructing Unemployment, Phineas Baxandall offers a theory of the political meaning of unemployment, applied mainly to the case of Hungary from the late 1940s until the end of the 1990s.

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The Great Surprise of the Small Transformation

Cited by 56 publications

References 0 publications

The Best Laid Plans: The Impact of Informal Rules on Formal Institutions in Transitional Regimes

The Best Laid Plans: The Impact of Informal Rules on Formal Institutions in Transitional Regimes

Time Will Tell? Temporality and the Analysis of Causal Mechanisms and Processes

Kneeling at the Altar of (Il)-Liberalism: The Politics of Ideas, Job Loss, and Union Weakness in East Central Europe

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