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CZECH EXCEPTIONALISM? A COMPARATIVE POLITICAL ECONOMY INTERPRETATION OF POST-COMMUNIST POLICY PATHWAYS, 1989-2004

100%
Vanhuysse P.
Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review
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2006
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vol. 42
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issue 6
1115-1136
EN
This article makes a plea for a more explicitly intentional and political-strategic analysis of post-communist public policy pathways. The author analyses a set of social and labour-market policies implemented in the Czech Republic (pro-active job loss prevention) compared to Hungary and Poland (large-scale non-elderly retirement), and indicates why, far from being fully constrained by structural or external variables or by international pressures, political elites were able to design policy packages that served to reduce anti-reform protests. Once enacted at a formative historical turning point, these early policies fundamentally reshaped the subsequent operational space of post-communist politics throughout the 1990s. They crystallised the distinct pathways of post-communist welfare regimes, and they enabled early, and irreversible, democratic and market reform progress. While seemingly inefficient, and definitely costly in public-finance terms, these policy packages contained a degree of political rationality, as they contributed to the making of the great Czech, Hungarian, and Polish transition success stories, in an otherwise highly heterogeneous population of post-communist transition cases.
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WORKERS WITHOUT POWER: AGENCY, LEGACIES, AND LABOUR DECLINE IN EAST EUROPEAN VARIETIES OF CAPITALISM

100%
Vanhuysse P.
Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review
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2007
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vol. 43
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issue 3
495-522
EN
This article revisits the case for paying more attention to agency and strategy in theories of post-communist politics and society. The author analyses two trends of major social and political significance in Central and Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2007: the apparent political inconsequentiality of rising unemployment and the causes and consequences of the dramatic decline of organised labour, across a wide variety of political and institutional settings. While the prevailing explanations have emphasised the institutional and ideological legacies of the communist past, the author points to theoretical reasons for why the 'unsettled times' of transformation may have been particularly conducive to elite agency. Looking beyond legacies can shed light on the degree to which elites have channelled the expression of workers' reform grievances towards socially peaceful but, possibly, politically illiberal repertoires of expression. Pointing to past developments across a number of advanced and developing democracies, the author situates the post-communist labour decline within a larger comparative and historical context. Lastly, the author indicates how the erosion of labour power has influenced the particular models of democracy and the varieties of capitalism that have been emerging in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989.
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