Functioning oF Political economies

For most of the 1990s, many analysts focused their attention on determining the circumstances under which a particular set of economic policies could be implemented in a post-communist state. Although that research agenda led to important breakthroughs regarding the importance of “first-round winners” in post-communist states and the short-run compatibility of democratization and marketization, it was nonetheless based on an anemic conception of political economy: the politics of (a narrow type of) economic reform. In the last decade, the field has moved beyond that limiting focus by asking broader questions about how post-communist political and economic systems operate in practice: Who has what resources? What constraints do they face? How do they get things done in that context? In doing so, analysts have come to emphasize the centrality of informal networks for the functioning of both politics and economics in many post-communist countries. This article uses insights from that evolution of thought to suggest a framework for further investigation of postcommunist political economies that focuses on the fate of “first-round winners.”