After the Collapse of Communism

Comparative Lessons of Transition

Michael McFaul, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780521834841
• eBook ISBN: 9781139239233
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

This collection of essays is the result of a conference convened at Princeton University marking the ten-year anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some of the best minds in post-Soviet studies focused on the task of identifying in what ways the post-Communist experience with transition has confirmed or confounded conventional theories of political and economic development. The result is a rich array of essays examining vital aspects of the transitional decade following the Soviet collapse and the comparative lessons learned. These essays explicitly tally the gains and losses to post-Soviet countries of the last ten years as well as comparing the post-Soviet experience implicitly and explicitly with that of other developing countries. Each essay blends political science theory with fresh empirical analysis.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction: The Evolving Social Science of Postcommunism
• 1 The Triumph of Nation-States: Lessons from the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia*
• 2 The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: Noncooperative Transitions in the Postcommunist World
• 3 Circumstances versus Policy Choices: Why Has the Economic Performance of the Soviet Successor States Been So Poor?*
• 4 Whither the Central State? The Regional Sources of Russia’s Stalled Reforms
• 5 Parties, Citizens, and the Prospects for Democratic Consolidation in Russia
• 6 Comparative Democratization: Lessons From Russia and the Postcommunist World
• 7 Russians as Joiners: Realist and Liberal Conceptions of Postcommunist Europe1
• Index