Strategic Choice and Path-Dependency in Post-Socialism: Institutional Dynamics in the Transformation Process

Strategic Choice and Path-Dependency in Post-Socialism focuses on the distinctive institutional legacies of state socialism and their impact on the transformation of Poland, Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia. Strategic dilemmas and problems of institutional design involved in the transition from state socialism to democratic and market-orientated societies are also addressed in this ground breaking volume.

A distinguished group of scholars from Eastern and Central Europe, as well as the West, addresses the transformation process from the institutional and evolutionary perspectives in political economy and the social sciences. The first part presents six essays by Western scholars reflecting on institutional design, strategic dilemmas, path-dependency, and the dynamics of post-socialism with a general relevance to the transformation process. The remaining papers provide detailed, contemporary analyses of the transformation of Poland, Hungary, and the former Czechoslovakia respectively. Each part covers the same broad set of themes so that the reader obtains an insightful and authoritative overview of the problems of institutional design, strategic dilemmas and path dependency.

This strong combination of theoretically informed comparative analysis with up-to-date case studies, drawing on several years' experience of the countries discussed, will ensure that this major new volume will be welcomed by students and researchers interested in Eastern and Central Europe, comparative economics, politics and sociology.

Edited by Jerzy Hausner, Professor and Head of the Department of Public Economy and Administration, Cracow Academy of Economics, Poland, Bob Jessop, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University and Klaus Nielsen, Professor of Institutional Economics, Birkbeck University of London, UK