Book Review: Pluralism, Socialism, and Political Legitimacy: Reflections on ‘Opening-up’ Communism, The New Great Transformation? Change and Continuity in East-Central Europe, Constitution Making in Eastern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe: The Challenge of Transition, Transition from Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, Building Democracy? The International Dimension of Democratisation in Eastern Europe, Social Democracy in a Post-Communist Europe, An Essay on Rights, beyond the Beltway: Engaging the Public in US Foreign Policy, Politics in Eastern Europe, The End of the Communist Power Monopoly, Developments in East European Politics, War and Responsibility: Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and its Aftermath, The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives, Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus, Intuition and Construction: The Foundation of Normative Theory, on the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent, and the Limits of Society, The Limits of Hobbesian Contractarianism, Alternative Paradigms: T
| Published date | 01 March 1996 |
| Date | 01 March 1996 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1996.tb00762.x |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Political Studies
(1996), XLIV. 136-152
Book
Reviews
F.
M. Barnard,
Pluralism, Socialism, and Political Legitimacy: Reflections
on
‘Opening-
Up’
Communism
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992), xii
+
189 pp.,
E27.95 ISBN
0
521 40252 2.
Christopher
G.
A. Bryant and Edmund Mokrzycki (eds),
The
New
Great Transforma-
tion? Change and Continuit!, in East-Central Europe
(London, Routledge, 1994),
xii+228 pp.. E37.50 ISBN 0415092493, f13.99 pbk ISBN 0415092507.
A.
E. Dick Howard (ed.),
Constitution Making in Eastern Europe
(Baltimore MD, Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1993). viii+215 pp., E12.50 pbk ISBN 094387548X.
Regina Cowen Karp (ed.),
Central and Eastern Europe: the Challenge of Transition
(Oxford, Oxford University Press/SIPRI, 1994), xivf322 pp., E30.00 ISBN
0
19829169
8.
Constantine C. Menges (ed.),
Transition from Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe
(Lanham MD, University Press of America/Program on Transition to Democracy,
1994), xvi+320 pp., $61.00 ISBN 08191 9296
I,
$24.50 pbk ISBN 08191 9297X.
Geoffrey Pridham, Eric Herring and George Sanford (eds),
Building Democracy? The
International Dimension of Democratisation in Eastern Europe
(London, Pinter,
1994), viii+224 pp., €37.50 ISBN 07185 14599.
Michael Waller, Bruno Coppieters and Kris Deschouwer (eds),
Social Democracy in a
Post-Communist Europe
(Ilford, Frank Cass, 1994),
ix
+203 pp., E30.00 ISBN
0714645222, E15.00 pbk ISBN 071464092
1.
Rather than opening up the debate about the nature
of
political and national
community and the establishment
of
viable political orders, the exhaustion of the
revolutionary socialist challenge in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the
political systems associated with
it
has allowed political theorists to project their own
(often inappropriate) ideas on the region, while area specialists are too often mired in
the details to address larger theoretical questions. The appearance of these
books,
therefore, provides a timely opportunity to review the progress of the so-called
transition in post-communist Eastern Europe and to examine the state of transition
studies,
or
‘transitology’
to
use Claus Offe’s term.
These ‘transitions’ raise issues of concern not only to area studies specialists but
challenge the whole basis of current thinking
on
democracy, and indeed question the
very nature of politics itself. Posed often in terms of a transition to democracy and the
market, assumed as a set of fairly inflexible constants, ‘transition’ becomes something
preordained: to challenge its postulates is represented as a revolt against reason itself.
This was the logic
of
the original revolutionary socialist project itself, and thus the
politics of ‘building democracy’ mimic the ‘building socialism’ tradition that it
so
vigorously rejects.
The ‘building democracy’ model, moreover, throws a cruel light on the authoritative,
if
not authoritarian, processes at the heart of contemporary democratic systems. In
Eastern Europe today we can see the sinews, raw, exposed and not yet draped in dignity
and ceremony, of the world culture of capitalist democracy. The apparent lack of an
alternative compounds the cruelty. The main actors, knowing whither the transition
seemingly leads, are shamed by the mocking truth, once
so
despised in the mouths of
communist functionaries, that hard measures today will give rise to a radiant future
tomorrow.
In his study of
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville noted that ‘a democratic
republic exists in the United States; and the principal object of this book has been to
explain the causes of its existence’. The student of post-communist Europe is faced with
1
Political
Studies
Associalion
1996
Published by
Blackwell
Publishers.
108
Cowley
Road.
Oxford
OX4
IJF.
UK
and
238
Main
Street.
Cambridge.
MA
02142.
USA
Book
Reviews
I37
two very different problems, namely the study of what exists and to examine the
potential for the emergence of something that has yet to be born. It is not clear which is
the most difficult task. The division between ‘is’ and ‘ought’
(Sein
und
Sollen),
indeed, is
not transcended, but even Georg Lukics insisted on the ultimate autonomy of ‘decisions
between alternatives’.
But are there alternatives? Vaclav Have1 famously asserted that the Third Path leads
to the Third World, while others insist that the First Path,
so
choicelessly propounded
by international financial organizations
(IFOs),
leads to the Fourth World, a peculiar
combination of deindustrialization, corruption, criminalization, mass immiseration and
comprador capitalism. The works under review are as split as the societies themselves
over the question. Barnard seizes the philosophical high ground in a brilliant analysis of
what he calls the ‘thought experiment’ that culminated in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, the
thought-out possibility drawing on the ideas of Vladimir Klokocka of an alternative
political practice combining pluralism and socialism. This is an exceptionally sophisti-
cated analysis of the politics (in the profound sense) of Soviet-type systems, of the
possibility
of
a critique from within the revolutionary socialist project, and of the
language in which we can discuss the striving for substantive community. The argument
of the philosophers of ‘socialism with a human face’ that ‘Reform was to
emerge
fhrough
politics, not be
imposed
upon
politics’ (p. 138) rings true today.
The collection of essays edited by Bryant and Mokrzycki takes up the theme of the
open-endedness of historical processes. They insist that it is more appropriate to speak
of a transformation, in which only the point
of
departure is known, than a transition,
which assumes a guaranteed end-state as the destination. Written from a sociological
perspective, the essays suggest that post-communist systems have themselves become a
new social formation marked not only by the legacy
of
40
years of Soviet-type rule but
also by the neo-utopianism of the ‘Bolsheviks of the market’, whose policies by and
large have predominated since 1989. The tone is unremittingly depressing and negative
(something that characterizes much sociological writing on post-communism), and fails
to note the real achievements of the post-communist regimes and societies in extending
the realm of political freedom and institutionalizing (in however rudimentary a way) the
aspirations of the 1989 revolutions, aspirations that cannot simply be dismissed as
‘euphoria’ and which remain to this day, in however attenuated a
form.
This, however, begs the question: could the hopes for reconstituting civil society and
formalizing political and economic pluralism have been pursued in some other way? The
answer according to Maurice Glasman in this collection is a resounding yes. In a
sophisticated reconstruction and application to Eastern Europe of Karl Polanyi’s argu-
ments in
The
Great
Transformation
on the emergence of the modern market capitalist
system, Glasman convincingly argues that some combination of social democracy and
social markets was a viable alternative, but in seeking to explain why this option,
implemented
so
successfully in West Germany’s social market economy, was not
adopted he falls back on some rather simplistic reasoning.
No
one has argued more
clearly than Glasman that ‘there
is
no alternative to the market, but the market is no
alternative’ (p. 21
3),
but the roots of the neo-liberal utopianism prevalent under post-
communism remain unexplored.
The other books tend to leave the field of battle and survey the scene from the quiet of
the study window. Dick Howard’s edited survey on constitution-making provides a
useful introduction to a crucial area of post-communist institution-building. In his essay
on Hungary Peter Paczolay addresses the question of the use of the term transition,
noting (from Dahrendorf) that transition would suggest the ‘controlled transformation
of illiberal states into liberal ones’ initiated by the existing governments (p.
27),
whereas
something more revolutionary in the legal sense took place in 1989. The legal definition
of revolution pits Hans Kelsen’s formal view that every illegal change in a constitution is
a revolution, whereas Alf Ross takes a broader view in emphasizing the necessary
discontinuities in a new constitutional order. These arguments can certainly be applied
profitably to Russia’s constitutional crisis, and although written before the events of
C
Political Studies Association,
1996
To continue reading
Request your trial