Sabrina Petra Ramet - Adaptation and Transformation in Communist and Post-Communist Systems

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Adaptation and Transformation in Communist and Post-Communist Systems

Adaptation and Transformation in Communist and Post-Communist Systems

Edited by
Sabrina Petra Ramet

First published 1992 by Westview Press, Inc.

Published 2018 by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1992 Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adaptation and transformation in communist and post-communist systems
/ edited by Sabrina Petra Ramet.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8133-1423-2
1. Legitimacy of governmentsCommunist countries. 2. Political
cultureCommunist countries. Pluralism (Social sciences)
Communist countries. 4. Communist countriesEconomic policy.
5. Post-communism. I. Ramet, Sabrina P., 1949
JC474.A33 1992
306.2'09171'7DC20 92-18490
CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-00449-1 (hbk)

For Christine, my love, with devotion

Contents

, Sabrina Petra Ramet

, Daniel N. Nelson

, Patricia J. Smith

, Valerie Bunce

, Marc J. Blecher

, Systems, Sabrina Petra Ramet

, Douglas Durasoff

, Owen V. Johnson

, Valerie Bunce

, Sabrina Petra Ramet

Guide

Work on this project was begun in early 1987, The contributors to this project undertook this book in the conviction that the communist world was in deep crisis and that dramatic political and socioeconomic change was not only imminent but, in fact, already in progress. The purpose of this collection was, however, not merely to chronicle these changes as they unfolded but rather to explore specific facets of systemic change in a theoretical way, thus contributing to a theoretical understanding of the processes of transformation.

All the essays in this collection, with the exception of Valerie Bunce's "Rising Above the Past," were written specifically for this collection. That fact notwithstanding, Marc Blecher's chapter saw previous publication in the Socialist Review (Vol. 19, No. 2, April 1989). Valerie Bunce's "Rising Above the Past" was previously published in World Policy Journal (Vol. 7, No. 3, Summer 1990). I am grateful to the editors of these journals for their kind permission to reprint this material.

Special thanks also go to Karen Walton, who typed and retyped my editorial corrections, coded the manuscript for production, and throughout the entire process displayed an unflappable patience with what at times seemed like a nearly endless task.

Sabrina Petra Ramet

1
Processes of Decay, Engines of Transformation: An Introduction

Sabrina Petra Ramet

I

One of the most important lessons of which the recent political transformation of Eastern Europe reminds us is that comprehensive system change presumes the extensive decay of the preexisting system as a prerequisite to the emergence of a new system. Marx saw this quite clearly when he wrote, in The German Ideology, that no system is overthrown until it has exhausted all of its possibilities for development. Successful systems are systems at restevolving surely, but not subject to overthrow or revolutionary transformation. Revolution, thus, is a sign of system failure, a sign that the preexisting system was unable (or no longer able) to survive.

This book is devoted to the subject of adaptation and transformation, a dyad that is in some ways reminiscent of the dyad, reform and revolution, although they should not be equated. Adaptation may be understood in different ways. For the purposes of this chapter, it will be taken to mean a political response to changing conditions, demands, resources, or opportunities, which may affect policy instruments, strategies, and even goals, but which endeavors to preserve system continuity, however that may be understood. Transformation, by contrast, is taken to mean a wholesale break with the past, in which the policy goals of the preexisting system are explicitly repudiated. Adaptation may be an early indication of political decay, but it may also figure as a normal response to changing circumstances. However, adaptation is apt to mean, at a minimum, that certain elites have concluded that the existing political formulas have decayed and lost their validity, if indeed they were ever valid. Adaptation may, accordingly, be seen by its advocates as an endeavor to return to the basic principles of the system.

Any politico-economic order has certain prerequisites which it must fill if it is going to enjoy stability. There are at least five preconditions for the stabilization of a politico-economic order:

• some level of efficacy of the formal institutions of the system;
• a modicum of correspondence between the actual behavior of administrative and legal institutions, and the normative rules which govern their behavior;
• the satisfaction of the basic economic and adjudicative needs of the population;
• a basic acceptance of the "rules of the political game" as legitimate by the population;
• and, a basic acceptance that the incumbent political elites have assumed office through legitimate means.

In the absence of any of these prerequisites, a system is already in crisis, and political decay may ensue, unless successful corrective action is taken.

These five prerequisites in turn suggest certain regularities, which may be stated in propositional form:

1. The greater the need of people to turn to informal institutions, the greater the decay of formal institutions. (Although there is also some feedbackthe emergence of competitive informal institutions undercuts the legitimacy of formal institutions, just as the decay of formal institutions spurs the emergence of informal onesthis proposition establishes the primary direction of change, i.e., from the rise of informal institutions to the decay of formal institutions.) This is precisely what occurred in Poland, in the course of the 1980s, establishing a pattern reflected, in different ways, elsewhere in the region.

2. The greater the disparity between actual behavior and normative standards, the greater the decay of formal institutions. To a certain extent, some disparity is normalone might even say "healthy" (in functional terms)insofar as organizational flowcharts can never anticipate the interaction of informal groups and the emergence of informal channels. But there is a point beyond which behavioral deviance undermines normative standards, and spells normative and institutional decay.

3. The greater the failure of the order to satisfy basic economic and adjudicative needs, the greater the decay of formal institutions. This suggests that the economic-distributive system and the legal-judicial system be viewed as critical pillars of any political order.

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