Transitions from state socialism generated a startling array of early economic outcomes, ranging from severe economic crises to steady economic growth, and igniting debates about the causal role of policy choices, institutional design, and initial economic circumstances. We depart from prior explanations in two ways. First, we distinguish between causes of initial recessions and causes of varia...

Twenty-five years after the collapse of the communist regimes, there is a wide diversity among countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union when it comes to the methods they have adopted to confront their communist past, the timing of their transitional justice policies, as well as the progress they have registered to date. Some countries have adopted radical lustration programs bann...

The relations between Tito and Togliatti their respective parties were conditioned by the omnipresent influence that Communist party of Soviet Union had on both partners. During period Stalin?s rule, Italian communist staunch Stalinists, thus Tito?s split with Stalin issue Trieste main obstacles in bilateral relations. Khrushchev?s destalinization process opened new possibilities for inter acro...

Are political parties in young democracies responsive to the policy preferences of public? Compared extensive scholarship on party responsiveness established democracies, research is limited. We argue that weaker programmatic party–voter linkages post-communist create incentives for respond their supporters rather than more general electorate. Such occurs two ways. First, follow shifts mean pos...

Why are some states more corrupt than others? More specifically, why is post-communist Romania significantly more corrupt than post-communist Hungary even though both transitioned to democracy from USSR satellite states in 1989 and both went on to enter the European Union? This paper argues that though the implementation of communism in political institutions at the time of transition cannot se...

The role of the Italian Communist Party (P.C.I.) in denouement party system early 1990s was decisive, its dissolution helping to trigger organizational and electoral collapse existing parties. If so, question that arises is what triggered P.C.I. A conventional wisdom has developed literature puts down communist regimes central eastern Europe, effectively removing as an agent own destiny. Yet, a...

Despite their increased popularity in Latin America, Africa and Asia, truth commissions have remained an overlooked solution to coming to terms with the recent human rights abuses perpetrated in communist Europe. Since the start of the democratization process in the early 1990s, only Germany, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and Romania have employed truth commissions as meth...

The author analyzes the solution of social issue in programs Russian political parties. It is noted that not all parties have a program, despite fact opportunity to formulate main directions policy and implement them. program documents such as United Russia, Just Communist Party Federation are most informative. Pension provision demanded by parties, therefore, each contains proposals for its so...

The electoral system adopted by Hungary in 1989 represents a monument to the potential for institutional design through bargaining to produce complex yet stable institutions. The key compromise reached during this bargaining process was the decision to use the mixed member system, electing a roughly even measure of representatives from both majoritarian single-member districts (SMDs) and from m...