revolution as state building
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Books Reviewed: Ukraine’s Orange Revolution Andrew Wilson (New Haven, London, Yale University Press, 2005), 232pp., ISBN: 0 3001 1290 4 Runaway State Building Conor O’Dwyer (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 278pp., ISBN: 0 8018 8365 2
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he fall of the communist system in Eastern and Central Europe has triggered socioeconomic changes, which, besides their epochal consequences for these societies, have created a natural experiment to test academic theories concerning democratic institutions, democratic processes, and the relationship between political and economic changes. As we can now see, large-scale socioeconomic transformations under way in Central and Eastern Europe have proved difficult for social scientific analysis. Researchers have been caught in the dilemma of an analysis in terms of abstract and broad notions (such as authoritarianism/ democracy, plan/market, etatised/civil society, etc.), and, thus, the threat of little empirical and policy relevance, or a detailed empirical analysis with in turn little theoretical significance. This dilemma is not of course a new one, and much effort has been spent to solve it by new
methodological approaches and research designs. It has been reconfirmed that the choice of theoretical perspective and research design affects researchers’ ability to arrive at scientifically interesting conclusions in an important way. The social sciences have worked out various approaches suitable for the analysis of large, societal changes. One might range them along an axis going from individualistic to holistic approaches. The underlying dimension is whether a researcher is examining the reaction (adjustment) of individuals to the ongoing external changes, or whether he/ she looks at the changes of entities (or variables) that cannot be reduced to the level of an individual. The choice of the perspective is contingent upon the researcher’s goal, and upon the nature of the analysed phenomena. Thus, when analysing political support for a party or a policy one focusses on the electoral behaviour of individuals and an european political science: 6 2007
(439 – 445) & 2007 European Consortium for Political Research. 1680-4333/07 $30 www.palgrave-journals.com/eps
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aggregate variable the political support is easily disaggregated into the voting behaviour of specific individuals. The scale of the change has led some researchers to conceive the analysis in terms of a move from one system to another one (a kind of compared static analysis). ‘Transition’, ‘revolution’ and ‘regime change’ are key notions for this approach and authors such Adam Przeworski (1991) or Claus Offe (1996) stand out as its most prominent representatives. The use of such terms suggests both an abrupt change in key aspects of societal life and a movement towards a well defined and definite system. The insufficiencies of this approach became visible when, after few years of transition, researchers have discovered a remarkable continuity (path dependence) in the transforming societies (Bruszt and
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