Nations in Transit 1998 by Adriant Karatnycky Alexander Motyl , Charles Graybow (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 379 understandeconomic reform in Russia at either a local or national level, as well as giving an insightinto local politics and into the currentstateof federal relationsin Russia. It is a usefulcontributionto the smallbody of literatureon Russia'sprovinces. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies RUTH BROWN University College London Karatnycky,Adrian;Motyl, Alexander, and Graybow, Charles (eds). fations in Transit 1998. TransactionPublishers,New Brunswick,NJ and London, 1999. 68o pp. Tables. $49.95. FOR those keeping track of the great race to move from the Black Hole of Communism to the Promised Land of Consolidated Democracy and Free Markets,thisvolume representsthe latest edition of FreedomHouse's annual tallyof winnersand losers. The bulk of the book consists of short descriptionsof each East European and former Soviet state in the past decade. Descriptions cover the categories upon which the well-known Freedom House rankings are based: political processes, 'civilsociety', independent media, governance and public administration , rule of law, corruption, privatization, macro- and microeconomic policy. Each countryis treatedin isolationfromitsneighbours,althoughthree brief essays at the startof the book attempt to offer general conclusions and make sense out of some ratherstrikingregional clusters.Not surprisingly,the 'winners' in this year's rankings,with consolidated democracies and market economies, arePoland,the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, and thethree Balticstates;the 'transitional'governmentsand economies are in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the heartland of the former Soviet Union, while the 'consolidatedautocracies'are,with the exception of Belarus,in CentralAsia. FreedomHouse rankingsarewidely used in n-country,quantitativestudies of democratization, and NVations in Transit is less interesting for the countryspecific details it provides than for the questions it chooses to ask and how it measures complex and normatively-weightedphenomena like democratization and economic reform. On the political side, whether political parties compete in elections is clearly much more important than the extent of the franichise: Latviais rightup therewith the 'consolidateddemocracies'even as the textual account revealsthat over one-thirdof the population cannot casta vote even in local elections. On the economic side, the presence or absence of a stockmarketisdulynoted, but no systematicinquiryinto levels of per capita GDP or inequalities of wealth or income is made. Socially, 'civil society' is measured by the numbers of and tolerance for NGOs, especially those espousing the politicallycorrectcausespreferredby westerndonors. In many states,NGOs seem to focuson deliveringthe servicesstatesused to and areno longer able to provide for their populations, raising some question as to wvhlether 'civil society' in its NGO incarnation is a positive or negative indicator of social development. Significantly, the interest group networks that form the core of the pressure group system in western political systems that, is, lobbies -- are dealt with in the section on corruption. 380 SEER, 79, 2, 200I The volume has some utility as a referencework for the states and nations in question. That utilityis, unfortunately,limitedby an attemptto give up-tothe -minute descriptions,many of which inevitablybecome quite outdated by the time the volume sees the light of publication.Thus, the Balkansin I999 is a ratherdifferentplace fromthe one surveyedin early I998, when the volume wvas compiled. Equallyunfortunate,no bibliographicreferencesare supplied, such that a readerwishingto move beyond the summaryinformationgiven in the book is offered scant guidance. As a result, the volume gives a tour of EasternEurope and the formerSoviet Union by a FreedomHouse guide, but readersmightbe betteroffsittingdownwith the EconomistIntelligenceUnit's annualand quarterlyreportsfora clearersense of each country'spoliticaland economic dynamics. Department ofPolitical Science ELLEN COMISSO University ofCalifornia, SanDiego Drezov, Kyril; Gokay, Bulent and Kostovicova, Denisa (eds). Kosovo: Myths, Conflict and War.Keele European Research Centre. Southeast Europe Series.Universityof Keele, Keele, I999. iV+ I09 pp. C8.oo. THEpresent collection of articlesis the outcome of a seriesof seminarswhich took place in Keele and Cambridge between October I998 and May I999. Althoughmost of thepaperswerefirstdeliveredbeforethe onset of theNATO action, they have been updated by the contributors to take into account subsequent developments. The editors are in particularto be congratulated on the speedwithwhich theyaccomplishedthevolume'spublicationinAugust I999: a mere month after they had penned its introduction and only two months after Serbia's surrender. The collection includes by way of an appendix several relevant documents, including the military annex of the Rambouillet Agreement and the text of Security Council Resolution 1244. Since the editorsof the volume eschew diacritics,so...