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The Evolution of the Political, Social and Economic Life of Cyprus, 1191-1950 Spyros Sakellaropoulos
THE Handbook of POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
the
handbook of POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
Edited by WOLFGANG MERKEL, RAJ KOLLMORGEN, and
HANS-JÜRGEN WAGENER
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1.
2.
10. Development Economics and Transformation Studies
Malcolm H. Dunn and Joseph P. Ganahl
11. Approaches to Transformation in Economics
Stefan Kolev and Joachim Zweynert
12. Political Economy Approaches
Frank Bönker
13. Political Steering Approach
Jürgen Beyer
14. Political Mobilization Approaches
Karl-Dieter Opp
15. Civil Society Approach
Grzegorz Ekiert
16. Combining Theoretical Approaches
Raj Kollmorgen and Wolfgang Merkel
SECTION III METHODS
17. Macro-Qualitative Approaches
Carsten Q. Schneider
18. Micro-Qualitative Research
Bruno Hildenbrand
19. Quantitative Methods in Transformation Research
Gert Pickel and Susanne Pickel
20. Ethnographic Methods
Tatjana Thelen
21. Discourse Approaches
Johannes Angermuller and Raj Kollmorgen
22. Economic Methods
Martin Myant and Jan Drahokoupil
23. Comparative Methods in Transformation Research: Political
Dirk Berg-Schlosser
SECTION IV HISTORIC WAVES AND TYPES OF SOCIETAL TRANSFORMATIONS
24. Post-absolutist Transformations in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Raj Kollmorgen
25. State-socialist Transformations in the Twentieth Century
Dieter Segert
26. Transformation in Fascist Interbellum Europe
Alexander Nützenadel
27. Democratic Transformations after the Second World War
Wolfgang Merkel and Johannes Gerschewski
28. China’s Transformations in the Twentieth Century: Economic, Political, and Cultural Interdependencies
Carsten Herrmann-Pillath
29. Postcolonial Transformations in Africa in the Twentieth Century
Siegmar Schmidt
30. Islamist Transformations: From Utopian Vision to Dystopian Reality
Naser Ghobadzadeh
31. Democratic Transitions in the Late Twentieth Century
Peter Thiery
32. Post-socialist Transformations in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
Raj Kollmorgen
SECTION V SPHERES
Hans-Jürgen Wagener
SECTION VI BASIC PROBLEMS OF TRANSFORMATION
Hans-Dieter
Herman W. Hoen
Katharina Pistor
Saara
Wolfgang
70.
Bruno
Hans-Joachim
Hans-Joachim
71.
Katharina
Timm
Brigitte Weiffen
Bernhard Weß els
List of Figures
2.1. The input–output model of the political system
17.1. Venn diagram: Luebbert’s sequence of democratic development
19.1. Scatter diagram, Bertelsmann Status Index, and Bertelsmann Transformation Index
23.1. Components of political culture in a system framework
23.2. Levels of analysis according to Coleman
41.1. Embedded democracy
41.2. Number of embedded democracies, defective democracies, and autocracies (BTI 2006–16)
41.3. Democracy scores in embedded and defective democracies by partial regime
41.4. Embedded democracies, defective democracies, and autocracies by region
44.1. The scheme of the first demographic transition
44.2. Live births and deaths per 1,000 people, 1841–2050, and age structure of the population in Germany, 1864–2050
53.1. Diminished subtypes of democracy and autocracy in a two-dimensional property space
List of Tables
3.1. Types of internal and external institutions
27.1. The democracies of the second wave (1943–62)
31.1. Ousted autocracies of the third wave
31.2. Systems of government in third-wave democracies
32.1. Types of political transition in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 1989–92
32.2. Dilemmas of simultaneity 354
32.3. Types of post-socialist governmental systems (1995) 355
32.4. Strategies and results of economic reforms in selected countries—the first fifteen years (1989/90–2005) 357
52.1. Classificatory typology of legacies
53.1. Explanations of hybrid regime change 524
61.1. Military intervention, external oversight of political reorganization, and status of democracy (1990–2015) 567
62.1. Financial system structure, data as percentages of GDP 576
65.1. Changes over time in people’s satisfaction with democracy in Central and Eastern Europe from 1990 to 2009 594
67.1. Primary and secondary methods used 607
67.2. Quantitative importance of privatization (EBRD database 2015, latest available year) 608
71.1. Religiosity and churchliness in selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe, compared with selected Western European countries, 1990 (agreement in %) 631
71.2. Changes to churchliness in selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe, compared with selected Western European countries, 1990–2008 (agreement in %) 633
71.3. Changes to religiosity in selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe, compared with selected Western European countries (agreement in %) 634
74.1. Social class differentiation in the Czech Republic 1988–99 (share of labour force in %) 648
74.2. Total mobility rates: men (as % in comparison) (1948–93) 649
74.3. Development of income inequality (Gini coefficient) in transformation societies in comparison, 1980s–2000s 650
List of Contributors
Ágh, Attila, Professor Emeritus, Corvinus University of Budapest
Angermuller, Johannes, Prof. Dr, University of Warwick
Apolte, Thomas, Prof. Dr, University of Münster
Beichelt, Timm, Prof. Dr, European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder
Berg-Schlosser, Dirk, Prof. Dr, University of Marburg
Beyer, Jürgen, Prof. Dr, University of Hamburg
Bönker, Frank, Prof. Dr, University of Cooperative Education Saxony
Brückner, Julian, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Bürkner, Hans-Joachim, Prof. Dr, University of Potsdam
Croissant, Aurel, Prof. Dr, Heidelberg University
Csaba, László, Distinguished Professor Dr, Central European University Budapest
Dabrowski, Marek, Prof. Dr, Bruegel Brussels, Higher School of Economics Moscow, and CASE Center for Social and Economic Research Warsaw
Dallago, Bruno, Prof., Università di Trento
Dorbritz, Jürgen, Dr phil., Federal Institute for Population Research Wiesbaden
Drahokoupil, Jan, Dr, European Trade Union Institute Brussels
Fritsch, Michael, Prof. Dr, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, School of Economics
Gabrisch, Hubert, Dr, Wiesbaden Institute for Law and Economics
Ganahl, Joseph P., Dr, Frankfurt a.M.
Gerschewski, Johannes, Dr, Humboldt University of Berlin
Ghobadzadeh, Naser, PhD, Senior Lecturer, National School of Arts, Australian Catholic University
Grimm, Sonja, Dr, University of Konstanz
Guglielmetti, Chiara, Dr, Università di Trento
Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten, Prof. Dr, University of Erfurt, Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies
Heyne, Lea, Dr, University of Zurich
Hildenbrand, Bruno, Prof. Dr, Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Hoen, Herman W., Prof. Dr, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Inkinen, Saara, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Kästner, Antje, WZB Berlin Social Science Center (previously)
Keane, John, Prof., University of Sydney
Kirchner, Christian,† Prof. Dr, Humboldt University of Berlin
Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, Prof. em. Dr, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Kolev, Stefan, Prof. Dr, University of Applied Sciences Zwickau
Kollmorgen, Raj, Prof. Dr, University of Applied Sciences Zittau/Görlitz
Kubik, Jan, Prof., PhD, University College London
Lambach, Daniel, Dr rer. pol., University of Duisburg-Essen
Lauth, Hans-Joachim, Prof. Dr, Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg
Leininger, Julia, Dr, German Development Institute, Bonn
Lorenz, Astrid, Prof. Dr, Leipzig University
Merkel, Wolfgang, Prof. Dr, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Humboldt University of Berlin
Morlino, Leonardo, Professor of Political Science, Vice Rector, LUISS‚ Guido Carli, Rome
Müller, Katharina, Prof. Dr, Mannheim University of Applied Sciences
Myant, Martin, PhD, European Trade Union Institute Brussels
Newton, Kenneth, Prof., University of Southampton
Nützenadel, Alexander, Prof. Dr, Humboldt University of Berlin
Opp, Karl-Dieter, Prof. em. Dr, Leipzig University/University of Washington
Pickel, Gert, Prof. Dr, Leipzig University
Pickel, Susanne, Prof. Dr, University of Duisburg-Essen
Pistor, Katharina, Prof. Dr, Columbia Law School New York
Pollack, Detlef, Prof. Dr, University of Münster
Popov, Vladimir, Prof. Dr, New Economic School, Moscow
Roth, Silke, Associate Professor, PhD, University of Southampton
Rovira Kaltwasser, Cristóbal, Prof. Dr, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile
Saliba, Ilyas, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Schedler, Andreas, Prof. Dr, CIDE, Center for Economic Research and Teaching, Department of Political Studies, Mexico City
Schmidt, Siegmar, Prof. Dr, University of Koblenz and Landau
Schmotz, Alexander, Dr, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Schneider, Carsten Q., Prof. Dr, Central European University Budapest
Segert, Dieter, Prof. Dr, University of Vienna
Stefes, Christoph H., Prof., PhD, University of Colorado, Denver
Sterbling, Anton, Prof. Dr, Saxon University of Applied Police Sciences, Rothenburg
Tanneberg, Dag, Research Fellow, University of Potsdam
Thelen, Tatjana, Prof. Dr, University of Vienna
Thiery, Peter, Dr, Heidelberg University
Thomaß, Barbara, Prof. Dr, Ruhr University Bochum
Trappmann, Vera, Associate Professor, Dr, University of Leeds
van Aaken, Anne, Alexander von Humboldt Professor, University of Hamburg
Voigt, Stefan, Prof., Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg and CESifo
Wagener, Hans-Jürgen, Prof. em. Dr, European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder
Walker, Charlie, Associate Professor, PhD, University of Southampton
Weiffen, Brigitte, Prof. Dr, University of São Paulo
Weßels, Bernhard, Prof. Dr, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Humboldt University of Berlin
Zweynert, Joachim, Prof. Dr, Witten/Herdecke University
chapter 1 Transformation and Transition Research: An Introduction
Wolfgang Merkel, Raj Kollmorgen, and Hans-Jürgen Wagener
Transformation is a scientific catch-all term. For where do we not observe transformations? Mathematics, biology, and electrotechnics use the concept as often as do economics, sociology, cultural science, and linguistics. It describes a change of form, nature, shape, character, style, or properties of a phenomenon. This includes, in most sciences, the determination of an initial and a final state of transformation.
In the social sciences, understood broadly to include politics, law, economics, and social development, the term was first used by Nikolai Bukharin (1979 [1920]) and later gained wide recognition through Karl Polanyi’s (2001 [1944]) classic The Great Transformation. As a Marxist theoretician and prominent actor in the Russian Revolution, Bukharin analysed the collapse of the old capitalist system and outlined deliberate organizational steps towards the construction of the new communist system. The original title of his book (in English The Economics of the Transition Period: Part I General Theory of the Transformation Process; part II was never written) already contained the two concepts that will be dealt with in this Handbook: ‘transformation process’, or intentional, radical systemic change; and ‘transition period’, or the historical path along which the change takes place.
The Russian transition to communism is one instance of Polanyi’s Great Transformation, others being the transition to Italian Fascism or German National Socialism and the American New Deal (see also Schivelbusch 2005). Polanyi sees the collapse of the gold standard as the final blow to the utopian liberal market society of the nineteenth century heralding a new communal society along the line of Owen’s communities. As a matter of fact, his great transformation did not take place the way he had envisaged. In 1944, the very year when his book was published, the Bretton Woods conference was setting the stage for the international economic cooperation that would undergird the postwar resilience of the market. This is a reminder that transformation, although being a set of intentional policy measures, is by no means determinate. It may fail or its final result may turn out quite differently from the original intentions. Nevertheless, Polanyi’s approach remained
groundbreaking for transformation research and for postwar economic policy, since it reversed the strict separation of economy and society and advocated an integrated political-economic thinking together with an interventionist regulation of the market. Following this tradition, the present Handbook will approach its topic from various angles: the political, economic, social, and cultural.
Thus, the present Handbook explicitly opts for a multidisciplinary perspective focusing on the complex discourses in sociology, economics, law, political science, and history. Without further specification, one may be inclined to equate transformation with social change in general. Transformation research would thus amount to a new designation for any political, social, or economic research on development and change. Some scholars more or less explicitly adhere to this view (the most conspicuous example being Polanyi (2001 [1944])). We follow a different approach in taking into account the political and scientific semantics that has evolved after the historical break of 1989 and is dominant today. In this conception, transformation is a political, social, and economic change of a substantial systemic character that has been initiated in a revolutionary and target-oriented way by identifiable actors. As such, it has to be distinguished from evolutionary change that is also initiated by purposeful action, but is a much longer-term process often resulting in unintended consequences of those actions. Evolution is a continuous, gradual, incremental process driven by changes in the stock of knowledge (North 2005, 63). In contrast, discrete system transformations are historical exceptions quite often triggered by crisis situations. In the end, they generally level off into evolutionary development.
Basic Concepts
Social, political, and economic change has been a central issue of philosophy in Europe since the eighteenth century. Crisis, change, progress, and their evolutionary or revolutionary forms and stages have become important topics of intellectual and political discourse for thinkers such as, among others, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, the Marquis de Condorcet, Edmund Burke, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Auguste Comte, and Herbert Spencer. They can be seen as important precursors of social science research on change and transformation.
Karl Marx (1818–83) was arguably the first to analyse political, social, and economic dynamics empirically and to formulate a more or less coherent theory of social development starting from an all-embracing construction that owes much to Hegel’s philosophy of history (Marx 1970 [1859], 1976 [1867]). He describes the economic ‘mode of production’ as a dialectical conjunction of ‘productive forces’ and ‘production relations’. Cognitive and technical stages of development require corresponding structural and organizational forms, while specific production relations, for their part, trigger particular dynamics of productive forces. From a certain point in history onward, the development of productive forces stands in contradiction to the given production, and particularly property, relations. New production relations and a new mode of production then become historically necessary.
At the same time, the mode of production as ‘base’ together with a corresponding ‘superstructure’ of political and legal institutions and social forms of consciousness constitute, according to Marx, a totality of social relations—the ‘social-economic formation’. As a result
of the dynamics of the base, social formations are subject to continuous internal change and replace each other historically (Marx 1970 [1859], 7–13). The Marxist view ascribes to cognitive and technical-organizational development and the corresponding interests and class relations an overriding importance for social change and transformation. It has become one of the most influential starting points for subsequent theoretical developments.
Four such developments between the 1880s and the end of the Second World War shall be mentioned here. In contrast to Marx, Max Weber (1864–1920) stressed the interrelations of ideas, interests, and institutions. Like Marx, he considers economic interests and their dynamics to be an essential explanatory component—one that has to be complemented, however, by a perspective highlighting the importance of formative long-term ideas (mind) and culture (conduct of life) as well as institutions (order) for all at least partly autonomous ‘value spheres’ of society (economy, law, politics, religion, arts, and sciences). Therefore, Weber considers Marx’s theory of base and superstructure to be too simplistic as would be a straightforward interests-action scheme (Weber 2001 [1920]).
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883–1950), in his Theory of Economic Development (1934 [1911]), explicitly takes up Marx’s basic idea of capitalist development. As with Marx, technical and organizational innovation becomes the driving force. Yet it is not the capitalist, but the entrepreneur who is Schumpeter’s central actor in the capitalist system. Today, Schumpeter is seen as one of the founding fathers of evolutionary economics. Up to this point, the concept of transformation is never mentioned.
Nor is it mentioned in another trend-setting approach, the theory of ‘social phenomena’ of the Austrian Carl Menger (1840–1921). Menger differentiates between social phenomena that come pragmatically into existence and those that come organically:
Some social phenomena are the results of a common will directed towards their establishment (agreement, positive legislation, etc.), while others are the unintended result of human efforts aimed at attaining essentially individual goals (the unintended results of these). In the first case social phenomena result from the common will directed towards their establishment (they are its intended products). In the second case social phenomena come about as the unintended result of individual human efforts (pursuing individual interests) without a common will directed towards their establishment. (Menger 1985 [1883], 133)
Organically developed social phenomena have to be clearly distinguished from natural organisms because they are based on deliberate human action, as are pragmatic institutions. The difference is that with organic phenomena, there is no actor consciously intending the ultimately emerging concrete phenomenon.
This idea originates from the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Adam Ferguson, who held that ‘nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design’ (Ferguson 1782 [1767], 205). It became the vantage point of Friedrich von Hayek’s (1899–1992) evolutionary social theory, which sustained a deep distrust towards pragmatically constructed institutions: ‘We have never designed our economic system. We were not intelligent enough for that’ (Hayek 1979, 164). Democracy and the capitalist competitive order are undoubtedly results of long-term evolution. But whoever intends to introduce them today—replacing, for instance, a statesocialist system with a market one—would be substituting pragmatically the old regime with certain institutions that have been elaborated in scientific, ideological, and political
discourses as constitutive system elements. Such a transformation would then be effected consciously; it follows a given model and is thus imitative. Spontaneously evolved and consciously designed institutions as results of evolution and transformation entail each other and can never be sharply separated.
Menger’s examples of organically evolved social phenomena are the city, money, language, law, and others. These may well be appropriate examples. The city as social entity, which Max Weber (1978 [1921], ch. 16) vividly analysed, did not spring out of an integral master plan, but was formed over centuries in an evolutionary manner as a result of separate individual and collective decisions. Yet Baron Haussmann’s reconstruction of Paris or the introduction of the euro through the Maastricht Treaty are examples from the sphere of urban and monetary systems that clearly have constructivist pragmatic origins and can serve as examples for social transformation.
As already mentioned, the concept of transformation found its first distinctive formulation in the work of Karl Polanyi (1886–1964). In his book The Great Transformation (2001 [1944]), Polanyi describes the liberal market economy of the nineteenth century as a utopia that collapsed with the Great Depression of the 1930s at the latest. After the socially adverse institutions of the labour and land markets had been gradually eroded by trade unions, welfare state activities, and protectionism, the collapse of the gold standard sealed the demise of the market utopia. Its failure is ‘at the heart of the transformation’ (Polanyi 2001 [1944], 218). The concept of transformation, however, shows up rarely in the book and, when it does, serves as a synonym for secular social change.
Let us briefly summarize. Social institutions and governmental regimes are systems of action structured by values and norms. Within these systems, self-conscious actors communicate with each other using different material and symbolic resources. The systems develop and change in response to new knowledge, altered allocations of resources, and changes in values and institutions. The accumulation of knowledge and changes in values can perhaps be explained only in an evolutionary way. Institutions may likewise have originated in an evolutionary fashion. But as far as formal institutions are concerned, their modification, as a rule, takes place consciously. In this context, we understand transformation as a substantial change of social systems, which may evolve spontaneously, but is mostly caused by the decisions of intentionally acting subjects. It follows that the Handbook, in treating transformation as a mode of system change, must in its first part elaborate the basic concepts of system, institution, and actors as well as theoretical perspectives emanating from them.
Theoretical Refinements
Beginning in the late 1950s, modernization theory highlighted problems of social change and of its control (Lipset 1959; Parsons 1966). This approach describes a multitude of social, political, economic, and cultural developments in the direction of modernity, but also within already existing modern societies. It rarely addresses explicitly discrete transformation events, but when these happen, they often contain elements of modernization. Two principles are characteristic of modernization theory: modernity is a product of Western development
and any development in this direction implies progress. Modernization entails an increase of individual freedom, the guarantee of individual rights, democratic codetermination, and economic welfare. Problems of Eurocentrism, a deterministic belief in progress, and a functionalist obscuring of individual action gave rise to critical assessments of this approach in the 1970s and 1980s.
What followed was a paradigm shift from a sociological functionalism of systems and modernization theory to actor-centred approaches to policymaking. It is not long-run socio-economic change that determines the direction and result of transformation towards either socialism (Marxism) or democracy (modernization theory); rather, the behaviour of identifiable actors affects the nonetheless contingent outcome of political transition to either democracy or dictatorship. At least three elements are introduced into what has now become political transformation theory: actors, decision, and contingency. Long-run perspectives on great socio-economic changes thus give way to the problématique of the shortterm behaviour of concrete actors that may lead to genuine transformation.
The paradigm shift was inaugurated by Dankwart A. Rustow’s (1970) ‘Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model’. In his ‘genetic theory of democracy’, Rustow accounts for the structural and socio-economic prerequisites for successful democratization. But democratic transition is no longer conceived as a linearly determined process of evolution with, at most, the middle class as actor. Instead, Rustow emphasizes a multiplicity of possible transformation paths and actors. The outcome of such a transition remains, in principle, open. Rustow thus established the basic elements of a theoretical programme that, together with the multivolume study Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy edited by Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead (1986), enjoyed unrivalled dominance within political science research on transformation for the next decade. This paradigm shift meant that in political science, the term ‘transformation’ was replaced by ‘transition’. The ensuing paradigm of transition research was wrongly accused of pursuing a deterministic research programme by focusing on transitions to democracy. The critique did not take note of the fact that the authors of the aforementioned study always spoke of ‘transition to something else’ (O’Donnell et al. 1986, 3).
Between the middle of the 1970s and the end of the 1980s, one can notice a marked increase in studies analysing complex social and, above all, political changes. The transition from authoritarian to democratic political systems and to capitalist market economies found a relatively consistent conceptual framework and research programme in the form of the extended modernization and transition approaches. The concept of transformation was rarely used at that time. As Eberhard Sandschneider (1995, 33–5) remarked, transformation remained a vague concept. Not being a recognized technical term, it led a shadow existence. This changed only in 1989/90 with the sudden collapse of the state-socialist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe. Not only did individual regimes fall, but the whole social system of communism. In addition, the new elites declared almost unanimously their intention to return to democratic and capitalist relations and with it ‘to return to Europe’. Things developed somewhat differently and more gradually in the communist countries of East Asia (like China and Vietnam), where transformation was concentrated in the economic system, in the end by no means less radically. The ‘unprecedented event’ (Wolf Lepenies) turned transformation into a keyword and a scientific term of its own.
In fact, transformation had been conceptualized earlier, if only tentatively. According to political scientist Richard L. Merritt (1980, 14), ‘transformation can be viewed as a decisive change in one or more of that system’s defining characteristics’. More generally, and oriented towards transitive action, Ulrich Weihe (1985, 1013) defined system transformation as ‘intentional and directed activity of system elements or its environment to influence its equilibrium and stability in such a way that significant and basic principles of organization and structural patterns cannot be sustained anymore’. The obvious intention here was to distinguish transformation from reforms and evolutionary system changes. Reforms take place within a given system paradigm, which thus becomes modernized, more efficient, or better adapted to a changed environment. With the passage of time, consecutive reforms may lead gradually to a new system paradigm. This, however, is neither intended at the beginning nor institutionalized by leaps and bounds.
Changes of the social system, or any subsystem thereof, may be initiated by a conscious act of transformation, but are never fully completed by it. They are always complemented by adaptations and modifications in informal institutions, in the cultural system, and in individual mentalities. Depending on the theoretical and disciplinary perspective, such longterm informal changes are either analysed as integral features of social transformation or are left out as objects of transformation research and conceived instead as results of accompanying evolutionary processes.
In summary, system transformation can be characterized as a specific type of social change aimed at the alteration of the entire social structure of institutions. Individual actors deliberately and instantaneously initiate these processes of change. The balance between conscious control and momentum within the processes shifts in favour of the latter; the process as a whole may last years, if not decades. The key problem of any transformation— as understood in the 1990s—consists in the sudden changes in the institutional framework, which, in the case of post-socialist transition, implied the immediate establishment of basic institutions of the market, democracy, the rule of law, and the welfare state. Clearly, there is no time to develop these elements organically. The ship has to be rebuilt at sea (Elster et al. 1998). Orientation towards historical precedents, imitation and emulation, institutional transfer, and/or foreign consultancy become strategic options in the transformation process.
Some political scientists have used the term transformation in a broader, more general sense since 1989: ‘It has no specific meaning, but is employed [. . .] as [a] generic term for all forms, time structures, and aspects of systemic change (see Sandschneider 1995, 38). It includes variation of regime, change of regime, modification of system, change of system, or transition’ (Merkel 2010, 66). Such transformations of political systems are by no means always provoked by conscious action. Under the pressure of crises, authoritarian elites may be inclined to hazard limited reform measures, which may develop dynamics of their own and ultimately lead to unintended transformations of entire political systems (Przeworski 1991).
The uneven conceptualization of transformation has not remained without consequences. Under the impression of the events of 1989/90, many scholars confined their understanding of social transformation to post-socialist developments. Transformation research and the study of post-socialism were treated as synonymous. Previous processes of change and their analysis served at most as historical analogies. The term seemed to be identified exclusively with post-socialist ruptures. The paradigmatic case of post-socialist
transformation in East Central Europe exhibits, according to János Kornai, four properties that make it historically unique (Kornai 2006, 217–18):
1. The change occurred in the direction of Western civilization: politically in the direction of democracy, economically in the direction of the capitalist market.
2. Transformation encompassed all social spheres simultaneously: the economy, the political system and its ideology, the legal system, and the entire social structure.
3. Transformation was non-violent. Apart from a few exceptions, it proceeded in a peaceful manner. It was not preceded by war and it was not enforced by foreign powers.
4. The change occurred with incredible speed within ten to fifteen years.
On the other hand, transformation research exerted a pull effect in the wake of these developments, with the result that the most disparate of phenomena that had previously been termed modification, development, variation, change, reorganization, or modernization now came to be understood as transformation. In the discussion of historical waves of transformation later in this Handbook, it will be seen that such far-reaching events did happen previously, with lasting effects for the individual countries.
The all-embracing character of transformation has the consequence that research will not be able to explain it from a single vantage point, within a coherent theory, and by a uniform method. Systems theory tries to do so; the price that it pays for the attempt, however, is a high degree of abstraction that can be made productive for empirical research only to a limited extent, since neither actors nor their behaviour can be meaningfully integrated into the theory (Merkel 2010, 87–9).
The social sciences therefore study the transformation in a multidisciplinary way using different theoretical approaches and methods. This is reflected in Sections II and III of the present Handbook. Section II introduces several research approaches from the political, social, cultural, and economic sciences. It is not only a question of accepted theories and schools, but also of object and perspective. These approaches complement each other and account for blind spots that necessarily appear in any monodisciplinary approach. Section III deals with the multidisciplinary diversity from the point of view of methods and research techniques.
Historical Waves of Transformation
János Kornai emphasized the uniqueness of post-socialist transformation in East Central Europe. While all historical events and processes can be said to be unique, of course, similar changes can be identified at other times and in other regions. Transformation research, therefore, is restricted neither to a singular case or set of regional cases nor to a particular epoch. It allows for comparison, typological generalization, and theoretical explanation encompassing a number of different sets of cases. At the beginning of postsocialist transformation, it was expected that scientific research of the phenomenon would lead to a ‘theoretical leap forward’ (R. Mayntz) or to a new integral theory of social change (S. N. Eisenstadt). This expectation, regrettably, has not come true.
Until the Protestant Reformation, i.e., until the beginning of the modern era, major historical changes happened, as a rule, in an evolutionary way and not as the intended outcome of prolonged reform efforts. The pragmatic design of positive institutions, which is at the basis of the concept of transformation, is historically a rather recent phenomenon. It was only the end of the ancien régime that took place in many countries as the abrupt result of a socio-economic and political revolutionary project. The political economy of transformation registers the decisive elements: new technologies, new forms of organization, economic revolutions, new classes and strata, social movements, political entrepreneurs, and old elites resistant to change (Marx 1970 [1859]; Blum 1978).
The reform of Peter the Great (reigning 1682–1725) can certainly be subsumed under the heading of transformation. It followed a typical pattern: starting with a military reform, it necessitated a fiscal reform that entailed a reorganization of state administration and the recruitment of a new elite that, in turn, carried out an enlightened cultural transformation. In the wake of the French Revolution, which led to the Napoleonic transformation of the French state, a number of similarly profound changes happened in Europe and beyond. After the Seven Years’ War against Russia (1767–74) and the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca that stipulated heavy burdens and losses for the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Selim III (r. 1789–1808) tried to introduce, in the end unsuccessfully, a new order following in some respects the example of Peter the Great (Yaycioglu 2016). The Stein–Hardenberg–Scharnhorst reforms triggered by the 1806 Prussian defeat at Jena and Auerstedt also fit perfectly into the transformation paradigm (Tilly 1996). We find similar events in 1861 in Russia after the Crimean War, in 1865 in the US South after the Civil War, in 1868 in Japan after the unfriendly ‘visit’ of Commodore Perry, and in 1911/12 in China after the collapse of state authority and simultaneous foreign interventions, just to name a few examples.
It seems apparent from these examples that decisive changes of system or regime take place only in a crisis following the weakening of the ruling regime. After all, why should a successful system undergo sudden change? Such was also the case with the post-socialist transformation, even though it was not preceded by war and military defeat. Gorbachev’s perestroika, however, amounted to an implicit confession of inferiority in the Cold War or the ‘competition of systems’ declared by Khrushchev. The renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine paved the way in East Central Europe for overdue systemic changes. The ensuing transformation erased four states from the map: the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). They were replaced by no fewer than twenty-four new states. In a number of cases, this did not happen without bloody internal and external conflicts.
The historical situation meant that these transformations mostly represented catch-up modernizations. Knowledge, productive forces, and social relations had changed even under the old system, yet the old elites stubbornly opposed any process of adaptation. Only a crisis could change the political power relations and pave the way for transition to a new system. Since the basic elements of the new regime had already been institutionalized in other countries, it was possible to imitate or adopt them in certain areas. In the case of catch-up industrialization, this happened in the technical-organizational sphere. In the social system, such transplants occurred mainly in the legal system. The Code Napoléon, the German Civil Code, or Swiss law served as models for legal transformation in many ‘catchup countries’ (Watson 2000). Post-socialist transformation in East Central Europe oriented
itself towards the Western prototype of capitalism and democracy. In addition, prospective membership in the European Union and the accompanying adoption of the integral acquis communautaire functioned as anchors for transformation, with the effect of excluding from the outset a number of alternative development options and speeding up the establishment of new institutions.
Kornai (2006) had emphasized the distinctive feature of post-socialist transformation as its proceeding in the direction of Western civilization. This is certainly true for the ‘return to Europe’. But it must also be mentioned that the prior great transformations of the twentieth century that led to state-socialist and fascist social systems did not choose the opposite direction as far as it could be perceived ex ante, even if ex post their routes turned out to be dead ends. The instituting of a socialist economic system after the Russian Revolution, which Nikolai Bukharin (1979 [1920]) in his ‘The Economics of the Transition Period’ had described as a process of transformation, was hailed not only in socialist circles as a step in the right direction of the political-economic development of Western civilization. Mutatis mutandis this was also the case with the introduction of Fascism and National Socialism, as absurd as we may consider it today. It has already been remarked that Karl Polanyi (2001 [1944]) adhered to this view (see also Schivelbusch 2005). After the Great Depression at the latest, the capitalist system had led to ruin in the eyes of many observers and socialism, not necessarily in its Bolshevik variety, was considered the system of the future. Joseph A. Schumpeter’s (1942) Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy and Karl Polanyi’s (2001 [1944]) The Great Transformation are typical exemplars of this way of thinking. Friedrich von Hayek’s (2007 [1944]) The Road to Serfdom was one of the few decidedly opposing voices at the time.
Even if the state-socialist system was introduced at gunpoint by the Red Army in East Central Europe after the Second World War, this would have hardly been possible if broad strata in these countries had not conceded socialism a chance for national and individual reconstruction and development. The resilience of the capitalist market economy in Western Europe after its transformation from the wartime economy was due not only to its efficiency, but also to its transition to the welfare state and the social market economy as an alternative reaction to the capitalist crisis and the establishment of state socialism.
The institution of a market economy—with or without adjectives—has been one of the central aims of post-socialist transformation. Only in countries where this process has not yet (like in Cuba and North Korea) or not yet thoroughly (like in Belarus, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) been initiated is the old state-socialist regime still in place. As far as democracy is concerned, the picture is less unambiguous, as is well known. It doesn’t make much sense, however, not to count China or Vietnam as transformation countries just because the politics there takes place in an authoritarian framework. This also implies that it is not constitutive of transformation processes to always occur simultaneously in the political and economic spheres. Some authors (Elster 1990; Offe 1991) have even posited a dilemma of simultaneity, since the advantages of economic transformation will materialize with a time lag, thus possibly blocking political decisions in their favour.
Western civilization loses its paradigmatic character where transformation in other cultural environments becomes the object of research. Islamic transformation, as in Iran or Pakistan, certainly followed models other than the Western one. What is happening after the so-called Arabellion in the Near East and Northern Africa remains too inchoate to make any substantial statements.
