Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the StateFrom 1989 to 1992, all of the socialist dictatorships in Europe (including the Soviet Union) collapsed, as did the Soviet bloc. Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia dismembered, and the Cold War international order came to an abrupt end. Based on a series of controlled comparisons among regimes and states, Valerie Bunce argues in this book that two factors account for these remarkable developments: the institutional design of socialism as a regime, a state, and a bloc, and the rapid expansion during the 1980s of opportunities for domestic and international change. When combined, institutions and opportunities explain not just when, how, and why these regimes and states disintegrated, but also some of the most puzzling features of these developments - why, for example, the collapse of socialism was largely peaceful and why Yugoslavia, but not the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia, disintegrated through war. |
Contents
The Collapse of Socialism and Socialist States | 1 |
Domestic Socialism Monopoly and Deregulation | 20 |
Federalism and the Soviet Bloc Monopoly and Deregulation | 38 |
Leaving Socialism | 56 |
Leaving the State | 77 |
Violent versus Peaceful State Dismemberment | 102 |
Institutions and Opportunities Constructing and Deconstructing Regimes and States | 127 |
Notes | 165 |
177 | |
205 | |
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Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the ... Valerie Bunce No preview available - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
Albania argued argument boundaries Bunce Cambridge central chapter collapse of socialism Communist Party Comparative Politics context contrast Croatia cultural Czech Czech Republic Czechoslovakia defined democracy democratization deregulation developments dismemberment dissolution domestic dominant republic East Germany Eastern Europe Eastern European economic and political economic reform elites especially Ethnic European socialist example explain factors Finally focus Gorbachev Gorbachev reforms historical Hungary ideological institutional design Kosovo leaders leadership liberal Mečiar Milan Kučan military Milošević monopoly moreover national federalism nationalist mobilization outcome particular party-state peaceful Poland political and economic protest publics regime collapse regime transition region republican revolution role Romania Russian secession secessionist Serbian Serbs similar Slobodan Milošević Slovak Slovakia Slovene Slovenia socialist dictatorships socialist federations socialist institutions socialist regimes socialist systems society Soviet bloc Soviet Union structure struggles tion Union and Czechoslovakia University Press unusually Václav Klaus versus violent Vladimír Mečiar Yel'tsin Yugoslav Yugoslavia