Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T15:39:30.651Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Postcommunist Political Capitalism: A Weberian Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2009

Venelin I. Ganev
Venelin I. Ganev
Affiliation:
Political Science, Miami University of Ohio
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“Political capitalism” is a term frequently deployed in analyses of the economic systems that emerged in the former Soviet block after the implosion of communist autocracy. This crisp, evocative phrase effectively expresses the shared feeling that the transmogrifications of the formerly “planned economies” did not lead to the desired consolidation of a “normal” capitalism. Many would say that by the mid-2000s several East European countries had reached a state approximating “Western ordinariness.” But even they would agree that, at least during the first dozen years of postcommunist changes, the somewhat mysterious dynamics shaping postcommunist “economic domains” were marred by persisting “anomalies,” enduring “atavisms,” and recurring “distortions” which originated in the realm of “politics.” One cannot in good faith dispute that there was something “political” about the way the idiosyncratic postcommunist economies functioned throughout the 1990s.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 648 - 674
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Hanson, Stephen E., “Defining Democratic Consolidation,” in Anderson, Richard D. et al. , eds., Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 128Google Scholar.

2 On the network linkages connecting politics and markets in France, see Birnbaum, Pierre's The Idea of France (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001)Google Scholar, ch. 6.

3 Weber, Max, Economy and Society, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 164–65Google Scholar.

4 See, for example, Weber, Max, General Economic History (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1981), 334Google Scholar.

5 Cf. Love, John R., Antiquity and Capitalism: Max Weber and the Sociological Foundations of Roman Civilization (London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar; and Wittfogel, Karl, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), esp. 256Google Scholar.

6 Weber, General Economic History, 347.

7 Weber, Max, “The Nation State and Economic Policy (Freiburg Address),” in Political Writings, Lassman, Peter and Speirs, Ronald, trans. and ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 13Google Scholar, 12.

8 Ringer, Fritz, Max Weber: An Intellectual Biography (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Honigsheim, Paul, On Max Weber (New York: Free Press, 1968), 4Google Scholar.

10 On Weber's experiences and thinking during the war, see Mommsen, Wolfgang J., Max Weber and German Politics 1890–1920 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984)Google Scholar, chs 7 and 8; Weber, Marianne, Max Weber: A Biography (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1995)Google Scholar, chs 15 and 16; and Radkau, Joachim, Max Weber: Die Leidenschaft des Denkens (Munchen: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2005), 699–736Google Scholar. On his political writings, see Beetham, David, Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Loewenstein, Karl, Max Weber's Political Ideas in the Perspective of Our Time, Richard, and Winston, Clara, trans. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

11 Weber, Max, “Suffrage and Democracy in Germany,” in Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 89Google Scholar (my emphasis).

12 Cf. Weber, Max, Gesammelte politische Schiften (Tubingen: J.C.b. Mohr, 1988), 253Google Scholar.

13 Cf. Weber, Max, “Parliament and Government in Germany under a New Political Order,” in Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 155Google Scholar.

14 Cf. Weber, “Suffrage and Democracy,” 90.

15 Ibid., 89.

16 Weber, “Parliament and Government,” 157, 158.

17 Weber, , “Socialism,” in Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 275Google Scholar.

18 Collins, Randall, “Weber's Last Theory of Capitalism: A Systematization,” American Sociological Review 45, 6 (Dec. 1980), 934CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Weber, “Suffrage and Democracy,” 104 (his emphasis).

20 Ibid., 104.

21 For the original German text, see “Wahlrecht und Demokratie in Deutschland,” and “Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland,” both in Weber, Gesammelte politische Schriften, 264, 308, 309.

22 On the importance of Weber's evolving intellectual engagement with Nietzsche, see Eden, Robert, “Weber and Nietzsche: Questioning the Liberation of Social Science from Historicism,” in Momsen, Wolfgang J. and Osterhammel, Jurgen, eds., Max Weber and His Contemporaries (London: Unwin Hyman, 1987), 405–21Google Scholar.

23 Weber, Max, “Politics as Vocation,” in Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 312Google Scholar.

24 Weber, “Suffrage and Democracy,” 90–91 (his emphasis).

25 Cf. Kunz, Andreas, Civil Servants and the Politics of Inflation in Germany, 1914–1924 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 The quotes are from the chapter on bureaucracy in Economy and Society, II, 956, 973, 975. The quote on “the duty to obey” is from “Parliament and Governance,” 204.

27 Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1, 49 (my emphasis).

28 On the notion of “validity,” or Geltung, see Economy and Society, I, 31.

29 On vertical and horizontal accountability, see O'Donnell, Guillermo, “Delegative Democracy,” The Journal of Democracy 5, 1 (Winter 1994): 55–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Collins, “Weber's Last Theory of Capitalism,” 931.

31 Weber, Max, “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy,” in The Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: Free Press, 1949), 101Google Scholar.

32 Staniszkis, Jadwiga, The Dynamic of the Breakthrough in Eastern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 32Google Scholar, 26, 38, 46.

33 See Poznanski, Kazimierz, “The Crisis of Transition as a State Crisis,” in Bönker, Frank, Müller, Klaus, and Pickel, Andreas, eds., Postcommunist Transformation and the Social Sciences: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 55–76Google Scholar; Wydra, Harald, Continuities in Poland's Permanent Transition (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King, Lawrence and Szelényi, Iván, “Post-Communist Economic Systems,” in Swedberg, Richard and Smelser, Neil, eds., Handbook of Economic Sociology, 2d ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 205–29Google Scholar; Róna-Tas, Akos, “Path Dependence and Capital Theory: Sociology of the Post-Communist Economic Transformation,” East European Politics and Societies 12, 1 (Winter 1998): 107–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Derluguian, Georgi, Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), 275Google Scholar.

34 Berking, Helmuth, “Experiencing Unification: An East German Village after the Fall of the Wall,” in Rudolph, Lloyd I. and Jacobsen, John Kurt, eds., Experiencing the State (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 146Google Scholar.

35 King, Lawrence, “Postcommunist Divergence: A Comparative Analysis of the Transition to Capitalism in Poland and Russia,” Studies in Comparative International Development 37, 3 (Fall 2002), 15–16, 27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Szelényi, Iván, Eyal, Gil, and Townsley, Eleanor, Making Capitalism without Capitalists: Class Formation and Elite Struggles in Post-Communist Central Europe (London: Verso, 1998), 172Google Scholar.

37 Herrera, Yoshiko, Imagined Economies: The Sources of Russian Regionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 99–100Google Scholar.

38 Holmes, Stephen, “Cultural Legacies or State Collapse? Probing the Postcommunist Dilemma,” in Mandelbaum, Michael, ed., Postcommunism: Four Perspectives (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996), 50 (original italics)Google Scholar.

39 Lynch, Allen C., How Russia Is not Ruled (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 50–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Way, Lucan A., “The Dilemmas of Reform in Weak States: The Case of Post-Soviet Fiscal Decentralization,” Politics and Society 30, 4 (Dec. 2002), 581CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Verdery, Katherine, What Was Socialism and what Comes Next? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 225Google Scholar, 227.

42 Ganev, Venelin I., Preying on the State: The Transformation of Postcommunist Bulgaria (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

43 Bunce, Valerie and Csanadi, Maria, “Uncertainty in the Transition: Postcommunism in Hungary,” East European Politics and Societies 7, 2 (Spring 1993), 263CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Kaminski, Antoni and Kurczewska, Joanna, “Institutional Transformations in Poland: The Rise of Nomadic Political Elites,” in Alestalo, Matti, ed., The Transformation of Europe: Social Conditions and Consequences (Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences, 1994), 132Google Scholar, 133, 149.

45 A few examples from the 1980s are the declaration of martial law in Poland, the trials and imprisonment of Charter 77 activists in Czechoslovakia, the “systematization” of agricultural areas in Romania, and the “Bulgarization” of the Turkish ethnic minority in Bulgaria.

46 Szelényi, Eyal, and Townsley, Making Capitalism, 22.

47 Hanley, Eric A., “Cadre Capitalism in Hungary and Poland: Property Accumulation among Communist-Era Elites,” East European Politics and Societies 14, 1 (Winter 2000): 143–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 The Privatization Process in Central Europe, Roman Frydman, Andrzej Rapaczynski and John S. Earle et al., eds. (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1993), 183. See also Róna-Tas, Akos, “The First Shall Be Last? Entrepreneurship and Communist Cadres in the Transition from Socialism,” American Journal of Sociology 100, 1 (July 1994): 45–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stoica, Catalin Augustin, “From Good Communists to Even Better Capitalists?” East European Politics and Societies 18, 2 (May 2004): 236–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Johnson, Julia, A Fistful of Rubbles: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Banking System (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 36Google Scholar.

49 On the interactions between public and private bureaucracies as a Weberian theme, see Kocka, Jurgen, “Capitalism and Bureaucracy in German Industrialization before 1914,” The Economic History Review 34, 3 (Aug. 1981 453–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1, 64–68. The importance of this analytical category for Weberian social and political analysis is cogently explained by Breiner, Peter, “The Political Logic of Economics and the Economic Logic of Modernity in Max Weber,” Political Theory 23, 1 (Feb. 1995): 25–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Cf. Schwartz, Andrew Harrison, The Politics of Greed (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004)Google Scholar; and Avramov, Roumen and Guenov, Kamen, “The Rebirth of Capitalism in Bulgaria,” Bank Review 4, 4 (Apr. 1994): 1–18Google Scholar.

52 Cf. Stark, David, “Privatization in Hungary: From Plan to Market or from Plan to Clan?” East European Politics and Societies 4, 3 (Fall 1990): n.p.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Staniszkis, Dynamic of the Breakthrough.

53 Cf. Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina, “Reinventing the Peasants: Local State Capture in Post-Communist Europe,” Romanian Journal of Political Science 3, 2 (Fall 2003): 23–37Google Scholar; and Hellman, Joel, “Winners Take All,” World Politics 50, 2 (Feb. 1998): 203–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1, 315.

55 Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 2, 667–68.

56 See Schwartz, Politics of Greed; Verdery, What Was Socialism; Mink, Andras, “Interview with a Hungarian Police Investigator,” East European Constitutional Review 6, 4 (Fall 1997): 78–80Google Scholar; Nikolov, Yovo, “Organized Crime in Bulgaria,” East European Constitutional Review 6, 4 (Fall 1997): 80–85Google Scholar.

57 Evans, Peter, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 45Google Scholar.

58 On the theoretical controversies, see Kotkin, Stephen and Sajo, Andras, eds., Political Corruption in Transition: A Skeptic's Handbook (Budapest: CEU Press, 2002)Google Scholar. On cultural explorations, see Ganev, Georgy, “Where Has Marxism Gone?” East European Politics and Societies 19, 3 (Summer 2005): 443–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On conceptual disputes, see Karklins, Rasma, The System Made Me Do It: Corruption in Post-Communist Societies (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2005)Google Scholar. On methodological debates, see Krastev, Ivan, Shifting Obsessions: Three Essays on the Politics of Anti-Corruption (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. On policy recommendations, see the essays in Part II of Rose-Ackerman, Susan and Kornai, Janos, eds., Building a Trustworthy State in Post-Socialist Transitions (London: Palgrave, 2004)Google Scholar.

59 Evans, Peter, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 59Google Scholar.

60 For an analytical discussion of predatory projects in postcommunism, see Ganev, Venelin I., “Post-Communism as an Episode of State-Building: A Reversed Tillyan Perspective,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 38, 4 (Dec. 2005): 425–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Solnick, Steven, Stealing the State: Control and Collapse in Soviet Institutions (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 7Google Scholar.

62 More detailed analysis see in Ganev, Venelin I., “The Dorian Gray Effect: Winners as State-Breakers in Postcommunism,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 34, 1 (Winter 2001): 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Fish, M. Steven, Democracy Derailed in Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 169CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Fligstein, Neil, The Architecture of Markets: An Economic Sociology of Twenty-First-Century Capitalist Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 17Google Scholar.

65 For an enlightening analytical effort along these lines see Vahudova, Milada Anna, Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage and Integration after Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On why that might be a difficult task, see Barnes, Andrew, “Extricating the State: The Move to Competitive Capture in Post-Communist Bulgaria,” Europe-Asia Studies 59, 1 (Jan. 2007), 71–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Pocock, J.G.A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), viiiGoogle Scholar.