Andrew Barnes

The Political Foundations of Post-communist Regimes Marketization, Agrarian Legacies, or International Influences

This article explores the causes of differing post-communist regime transitions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, emphasizing the increasingly prominent thesis that economic liberalization promotes political democratization. We explore this argument in light of findings from other regions that have emphasized modernization, agrarian class structure, and international influences. Our results are based on a multilevel design strategy, first analyzing data on 26 post-communist countries over a 7-to 9-year period using time-series/cross-sectional methods and then turning to a comparative analysis of four purposively selected cases to explore the causal mechanisms implied but not tested in the quantitative analysis. Our results suggest that faith in economic liberalization as a cause of democratization may be misplaced. However, there is support for the notion that large agrarian sectors are unfavorable to democratic development, whereas positive democratic conditionality from outside agents can play an important role in transition dynamics.

Financial nationalism and its international enablers: The Hungarian experience

ABSTRACT Viktor Orbán and his centre-right Fidesz party won Hungarys April 2010 parliamentary elections in a landslide, running on a nationalist-populist platform of economic self-rule. This paper explores Hungarys financial nationalist turn and its surprisingly successful resistance to IMF and EU pressures to change course. We open by theorizing financial nationalism, and then trace its ideational roots and contemporary character in Hungary. We subsequently argue that two international factors ironically enabled Orbán to take his financial nationalist ideas from theory to practice: 1) IMF and EU policies that first contributed to Fideszs electoral victory and then made it difficult to counter Orbán once in power; and 2) the tolerant behavior of international bond markets. In particular, Orbáns willingness and ability to use unorthodox, financial nationalist policies to control government deficits and debt both reduced EU and IMF leverage over Hungary and encouraged bond markets to overlook the unsavory politics that produced those numbers.

Comparative Theft: Context and Choice in the Hungarian, Czech, and Russian Transformations, 1989-2000

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, some post-communist political economies were burdened by impenetrable cross-ownership groups, money-laundering banks, and captured states, while others had effectively limited corruption and laid the groundwork for long-term development. Study of post-communist corruption, however, has been hampered by a tendency to treat it as an undifferentiated phenomenon across the region. Based on purposively selected case studies of Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Russia, this article begins by systematically describing the political economies of those countries in a way that allows for a useful comparison. It then argues that the varied outcomes in the former Soviet bloc grew out of a combination of two factors: (1) the context of state-economy relations at the end of the Communist Party era and (2) the choices made by new governments on how to control the transfer of state assets to the private sector. In making that argument, the article clarifies which legacies from the old regime, which policy choices in the new era, and which aspects of state capacity are most important in shaping post-communist transformations.

Extricating the state: The move to competitive capture in post-communist Bulgaria

Abstract This article uses the Bulgarian case to analyse movement from a situation of what appeared to be a ‘Partial-Reform Equilibrium’ to an ‘Equilibrium of Competitive Capture’. In such a process, elections are important forces for change, but not because they bring reformist parties to power or lead to completed economic liberalisation. Instead, especially in the first several electoral cycles in a new democracy, they can bring to power new leaders who are not beholden to existing captors, but rather to other clients that would like to capture the state for their own interests. Over time, the country experiences a parade of captors, eventually leading to a system where no single group owns the state, but where it is still not insulated. Instead, several competing groups fight with each other to raid it for their own benefits.

Industrial Property in Russia: The Return of the State and a Focus on Oil

For most of two decades, Russias political economy has been characterized by an intense struggle for property that has passed through numerous phases. The most recent phase, which began with the government takeover of prime oil assets from the Yukos company in 2003-04, has seen the central state reassert itself as the dominant player in the competition and demonstrate its intention to expand its control of the petroleum sector for both economic and foreign-policy reasons. Nevertheless, the federal government is far from the only competitor for assets in todays Russia. An analysis of the actors, motives, and resources at play points to multiple cracks in the current system that may serve as fault lines in a new round of destructive competition after Putin leaves office.

Property, power, and the presidency: ownership policy reform and Russian executive–legislative relations, 1990–1999

Abstract This article asks how new rules of political conduct are established in a country attempting political transformation and sweeping economic change. Based on a close analysis of the conflict over property policy and its effect on Russian executive–legislative relations in the 1990s, the study argues that regardless of formal distributions of power, the real allocation of policy-making authority is shaped in struggles over substantive policy issues. Those arenas, especially during the first years after the fall of an authoritarian regime, can function as “political classrooms” in which leaders either adopt or reject such practices as compromise and negotiation.