Democratization and Transition from Plan to Market Economy
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 | Film Reviews, University
To understand the still ongoing political and economical processes in Eastern Europe (or especially in Czech Rep.) since 1989, we have to know something about the existing transition theories. This post gives you a short overview about the main theories predominating the transition research.
Basically there are four directions, which are of importance. It started in the 60-ies with the Systems-Theory of Talcott Parsons which postulates the development of so called ” evolution universals”. He argued that, like Darwin`s evolution of biological organisms, societies progress through their “capacity for generalized adaptation” to their environment. This is achieved mainly through the development of specialized institutions to perform the social functions necessary to meet increasingly specialized needs (structural differentiation). Evolution is then from traditional to modern societies, and progress can be charted via bureaucratic organization, money and market complexes, social stratification, cultural legitimation and the emergence of generalized universalised norms.
Seymor M. Lipset advanced Parsons` theory and developed a casual connection between economical development and democratization. According to this, a growing GDP entails a better education, growing prosperity, tolerance, moderate working style of policy, a consolidation of civil society and eventually democratic structures. This steps of development are essential for the neoliberal paradigm which focuses the free market economy with its constitutive criteria ( e.g. private ownership, free price formation, freedom of competition).
This so called Theory of Modernization and Parsons` Systems Theory expanded into the paradigm of the neoliberal institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Bretton-Woods institutions). While this neoliberal model of development has been implemented on several countries of the third democratization wave (like India, Latin-America, Portugal) more and more criticism began to rise. Mainly the over- simplification as well as the missing explanation for the economical development without further democratization such as in several Arabic countries have been criticized.
New approaches in the transition research began to become more and more accepted. The publication of Huntington`s “Clash of Civilization” in the beginning of the 90-ies focused on the cultural aspects of countries in transition. Cultural theorists assume a close relationship between the secularization of a society and its ability and success in developing democratic structures. Therefor some societies just cannot be democratized because of their special religious-cultural roots which cannot be just replaced by new institutions and values.
Another branch of research are the stakeholder theories, which look on the microscopic level at the small elite-groups which seem to control the transition processes in a country. According to this, different stakeholder combinations can be identified as well as possible activities and developments be fore-casted. This is the main advantage over the Systems and Modernizing theories.
All in one the four theories complement one another so that a stakeholder analysis cannot be made without a system theoretical background. The multidimensional question of the success of the Czech transition strategy as well as the initial situation at the retail market will be targeted in the next post.
2 Comments to Democratization and Transition from Plan to Market Economy
Oops. What happend to you? Kind of unstuctured and lacking a message. The text sounds very scientific, but basically you are saying simple things. You can improve it, if you don’t translate from German.
Uh?
Why unstructured?
May be the title is not perfect, but the text is clear. There is no appeal and maybe, you are right, no message. But does need every blog post a message? This is not a tutorial style you know from IT 
And also i’m unsure wheather this post had the intention to be scientific
your turn
July 29, 2009