Le sujet supposé agir : assessing local agency and structural determinacy in socialist and postsocialist Europe

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article tries to assess the recent turn towards local agency in state socialist and postsocialist scholarship. After reconstructing the shift from the world system perspective on the socialist bloc to the more recent contributions which emphasize the role of local agency, the article then builds a test case for the latter paradigm, constructed on two criteria: internal coherence of the ideas and trajectory of the local agent, and external efficacy of its actions. These criteria are then tested by focusing on the long-time career of a particularly privileged local agent: Mugur Isărescu, Romania’s National Bank governor. By testing and invalidating the application of the two axes of local agency – internal coherence and external efficacy – in Isarescu’s thought, policies and institutional trajectory, the article argues for the limited and merely instrumental role of local agency and its overdetermination by global, structural conditionality.