 The structural sources of postcommunist regime trajectoriesLucan Ahmad Way and Adam Casey Post-Soviet Affairs, 2018, vol. 34, issue 5, 317-332 Abstract: Regime trajectories in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (FSU) have diverged considerably since the collapse of communism. We argue that this variation is the product of two largely structural factors: the salience of anti-Soviet nationalism and the opportunity for membership in the European Union (EU) that was mostly the product of geography. In Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, anti-Soviet nationalism and the stimulus of EU democratic conditionality contributed to the rise of a non-communist elite that confronted serious internal and external pressure to democratize. By contrast, weaker anti-Soviet nationalism and dearth of pressure from the EU allowed for the persistence of communist elites who faced relatively weak external constraints on autocratic behavior. We argue that these structural factors played a more important role in accounting for variation in democratization across the postcommunist world than factors such as institutional design. At the same time, the different character of structural forces in Eastern Europe and the FSU has likely created greater room for voluntarist factors in determining regime variation within the former Soviet Union than within Eastern Europe. Date: 2018 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rpsaxx:v:34:y:2018:i:5:p:317-332 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/1060586X.2018.1494959 Access Statistics for this article Post-Soviet Affairs is currently edited by Timothy Frye More articles in Post-Soviet Affairs from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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