Fish , Steven M. Gill , Graeme Petrovic , Milenko A Quarter Century of Post-Communism Assessed (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 391 with that of Western European societies. Dying in 1988, he was not to witness the collapse of Communism. Anyone interested in Czechoslovak Communism and its human impact should read this book. Faculty of Social Sciences Francis D. Raška Charles University (Prague) Fish, Steven M.; Gill, Graeme and Petrovic, Milenko (eds). A Quarter Century of Post-Communism Assessed. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017. xii + 360 pp. Figures. Tables. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. £109.00: €124.79: $149.99. The passage of every five or ten years since the upheaval of 1989–91 is an invitation to reflect on the paths taken by the thirty states that were once in the Soviet bloc. Since the twentieth anniversaries in 2009–11, which coincided with the global economic crisis, these moments have become more challenging, not less. It used to be relatively easy to group countries into categories of frontrunners and laggards, their variations in democratic quality traceable to underlying structural factors, to institutions or to critical junctures when key actors took strategic decisions. Some guesswork and uncertainty were always present, such as whether Slovakia in the 1990s would be included in the first wave of European Union (EU) enlargement, but even those questions seemed tidily answered by events: once Slovakia replaced its ruling coalition in 1998, it soon showed it could join the company of the pre-accession stars, such as Hungary under the young Viktor Orbán’s first ministry and the Czech Republic under Prime Minister Miloš Zeman. While these countries had their shortcomings, there was reason to believe that they would be corrected by the tractor-beam power of the EU’s conditionality and tutelage. The countries that remained outside that happy camp had some disqualifying defect — they were Balkan states still recovering from war, or former Soviet states still too corrupt or politically unsettled or economically unreformed or just too remote to be imaginable as part of Europe. But then the wave of ‘colour revolutions’ in the early 2000s raised hopes that states from Serbia to Kyrgyzstan could also take a turn for the better. By the point when a quarter-century had elapsed, these relatively neat categories had outlived their usefulness. As the diverse contributions to this collection show, post-Communism is full of enduring conundrums, such as why Mongolia exceeds expectations while other states, including Russia and Belarus, fall short. Former frontrunners for EU membership, once inside the club, have sorely tested the union’s ability and willingness to enforce the democratic criteria that were insisted upon as conditions for accession; SEER, 98, 2, APRIL 2020 392 Orbán and Zeman are still around, but as sources of vexation. Leslie Holmes’s chapter shows that countries with no imminent prospect of EU membership, such as Georgia, can tackle corruption with more determination than many EU member-states, new and old. Milenko Petrovic argues convincingly that enlargement into the Western Balkans has been impeded primarily by EU disappointment with its new members and reluctance to provide the preaccession resources that might help applicants such as North Macedonia. This enlargement fatigue creates a negative feedback loop, reducing the incentive for leaders in Serbia or Bosnia to improve their performance and discouraging the private investment that could boost and transform local economies. (This contrasts sharply with chapter five, which shows the impact of foreign firms, especially automotive, on Central Europe, although that too could be problematic if those firms move out in search of lower wages.) EU-hopefuls now enjoy less of the handholding that helped earlier applicants get through the acquis screening and negotiating; instead, they face conditions deliberately so demanding as to put off accession for the foreseeable future. The EU is also found wanting with regard to its missions to promote the rule of law (in admittedly very difficult circumstances) in Bosnia and Kosovo, as assessed by Efstathios Fakiolas and Nikolaos Tzifakis in their chapter. The editors, who are seasoned scholars of post-Communism, try valiantly in Part One to find patterns and explanatory variables in their introductory chapters. These are excellent efforts that could be assigned for a comparative course on democratization, although much of the book presumes a basic degree of familiarity, so is...