Stubborn Structures: A Path-Dependence Explanation of Transitions in the Postcommunist Region

Abstract

Stubborn Structures:A Path-Dependence Explanation of Transitions in the Postcommunist Region1 Bálint Magyar (bio) and Bálint Madlovics (bio) the formula for regime change following the collapse of the Eurasian communist regimes in 1989–1990 seemed clear: to take the step from one-party communist dictatorship with a state monopoly on property to a multi-party parliamentary democracy based on private property ownership and a market economy. However, this idea has failed in several postcommunist countries, producing sui generis regime types without further movement toward the liberal democratic ideal (Zakaria 1997; Carothers 2002; Levitsky and Way 2010). In our view, the phenomena defining the development of the postcommunist region can be summarized by the term "stubborn structures," which is also the title of a new volume of studies edited by one of the authors of this paper (Magyar 2019b). Stubborn structures are a combination of culture and history—the cultural traits, way of life, and traditions of precommunist societies that had been developing until they were subjugated to communist systems, forming a kind of unifying "political lid" that was placed upon the different peoples. Under this lid, previous social development was arrested [End Page 113] and frozen. On the other hand, the decades under communist dictatorship also transformed existing social patterns and developed new ones, resulting in a special arrangement of sociological structures. The stubbornness of these structures has been most apparent in the former Soviet empire, specifically the liberated member states and satellite states of the Soviet Union. But such structures have been present in East Asian states as well, where dictatorship has not ended yet (such as China and North Korea). The stubborn structures argument embodies a form of path dependence, which refers to the idea that past events or institutional patterns have certain deterministic properties (Mahoney 2000). However, we refer not simply to a not-predetermined historical event—communist rule—but to certain initial conditions as well, that were combined with the repressive nature of communist dictatorship into a structurally stubborn mixture, which systemically distorted the democratic institutional setup of the new postcommunist countries. Naturally, stubbornness does not mean total determinism, but rather the assignment of certain probabilities to the different developmental outcomes. Indeed, after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the countries that had been under communist rule have shown a wide variety of development paths, ranging from remaining under dictatorship, to successful democratization, to the above-mentioned sui generis regimes. However, the past has shined through the newly built political systems almost invariably, and patterns of development are clearly visible along the lines of the structures we identify. BEFORE THE COLLAPSE: EURASIAN SOCIETIES AND COMMUNISM Basic Structures in Precommunist Societies2 As Karl Polányi explains in The Great Transformation, communality and reciprocity played an essential role in pre-modern economies, and it took the Industrial Revolution to separate the sphere of market action from that of communal action, which led to the development of capitalist markets in the modern sense (Polányi 2001, 45–70). However, [End Page 114] the transformative powers of the Industrial Revolution were particular to the West, where countries had also developed checks on monarchs and property rights protection, both of which are essential to the proper functioning of free enterprise systems (Acemoğlu, Johnson, and Robinson 2005). As a consequence, the nineteenth century saw a "great divergence" of the West from the East, where absolute monarchs enjoyed monopoly on land, legal protection of private property was weak, and industrialization itself took place, after several decades of lag, as a politics-driven process (Pomeranz 2000; Henderson 2013). This state of affairs amounts to the rudimentary or lack of separation of the spheres of social action in the East at the turn of the twentieth century. Claus Offe (2004, 78) divides social activities into three categories: political, market, and communal activities. Political action is embedded in a state structure and framed within features such as the acquisition and use of legitimate authority, accountability, hierarchy, and the use of rule-bound power for giving orders and extracting resources.… Market action is recognized by the contract–based pursuit of acquisitive interests within the framework of legal rules that specify, among...