François Bafoil

A quoi servait la sociologie en RDA

Francois Bafoil : Wozu diente die Soziologie in der DDR. Die Soziologie in der DDR hatte als Hauptfunktion die Legitimierung der Arbeit der kommunistischen Partei, SED. Dazu hatte sie die Aufgabe, sowohl die Verteidiger der verstorbenen Nation auszubilden als auch die Richtigkeit der vom Politburo der kommunistischen Partei ausgearbeiteten Richtlinien widerzuspiegeln. Das Ergebnis war eine Reihe von Texten, ausserordentlich eingeengt von unveranderlichen Kategorien, die trotz allem noch lesenswert sind, zum Verstandnis des Denk- und Aktionssystems, das im Herbst 1989 zusammenbrach. Am Ende wurden trotz der Obrigkeitsanweisungen Dysfunktionen sichtbar, die die Theorie, mehr aber noch die Zensoren, beiseiteschoben, und die, im Gegensatz zu den polnischen und hungarischen soziologischen Arbeiten, nie von einer Infragestellung des politisch-sozialen Systems begleitet wurden.

Growing Capitalism: The Waves of Expansion in the EU and ASEAN

This final chapter addresses the supra-state aspect of the EU and ASEAN. The purpose of the chapter is to understand the extent to which the growth in capitalist economic activity that occurred in the two regions reinforced the sovereignty and economic competitiveness of their member-states. One component of this broader subject is the question of whether EU and ASEAN expansion1 extended the forms of capitalism that existed previously in Europe and Asia. There are two ways to address this question, which centers on the benefits and the costs of expansion for member-states.

The Improbable German Model: Lessons from German Social and Economic Reunification

This chapter will consider the different forms of capitalism specific to the so-called market economies of Central Europe, focusing on the abolition of the East German currency on July 1, 1990, a critical turning point in the transition from Soviet-style economies to market-based economies. This event was the prelude to a full embrace of social market economy principles and a fundamentally political form of market capitalism. These developments resemble in some ways the evolution of economies modeled on Japanese capitalism that were the subject of preceding chapters. For this reason, it would be possible to conclude—erroneously—that the East German transition functioned as a model for transformations in other former communist countries. Interestingly, however, this was not the case.

Patterns of Development in Southeast Asia

This chapter is a record of my efforts to evaluate the extent to which the more recent ASEAN member-states—Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and to a much lesser extent Myanmar—have tended to pursue the same developmental paths taken by the original member-states, which generally embraced the Japanese developmental model. The conclusion is that such a model could not work because the main components—as essential as they may be—were lacking a specialized bureaucracy, institutional pluralism, semipublic agencies, and the esprit de corps of civil servants.

Cambodia: Political Capitalism and the Prebendal State

This chapter focuses on the least-developed form of political capitalism in the Mekong region, a form specific to extremely underdeveloped countries such as Cambodia. The term political capitalism is used to describe the economic situation in countries dominated by authoritarian, if not dictatorial, political groups that are customers of the zone’s big bosses,1 who exert a significant influence over a narrow range of economic sectors, without, however, having an adequate number of SOEs to allow for initial development (such as the import substitution industrialization that occurred in North and Southeast Asia). This lack of SOEs—Cambodia is deemed to have less than 20 SOEs—forced Khmer authorities to open their economy as much as possible.2 This is why, to ensure increased levels of development, extremely underdeveloped countries such as Cambodia tend to implement far-reaching deregulation policies that include the creation of special economic zones. Regional membership in ASEAN3 is essential for these countries to achieve their development objectives. Membership not only allows them to benefit from the organization’s protection, which essentially guarantees impunity in an environment of essentially nonexistent labor regulations, but also to benefit from aid and member-state investment.

State Liberalism and Market Socialism: A Comparison between Singapore and Vietnam

This chapter examines two examples of “nomenklatura capitalism,” one of the varieties of political capitalism. The first example is Singapore, a city-state and founding member of ASEAN that is considered a “model” by a number of Mekong countries because of its “administrative guidance” under a Leninist-style party that manages a profoundly liberalized economy. Singapore is as well a model for China due to the successful combination of an authoritarian regime and a liberalized economy. Furthermore, the city-state is the desirable mix between a “Westernization” reduced to an effective public management, and strictly Asian values.1 The second example considered here is Vietnam, which responded to the failure of its own policies and the collapse of Soviet-style command economies with major changes in economic policies at the end of the 1980s and 1990s. The changes involved a gradual, limited opening of the public sector to foreign investors, who were under the strict control of a public bureaucracy, supported by central and regional administrative powers. In both countries, however, there is evidence of the structural components of a political economy defined by collusion between political and business elites, the clear separation between economic sectors opened to foreigners and domestic markets controlled by state-owned firms, bureaucratic secrecy, and strict control over the working class, and society in general. The first section of this chapter defines the principal characteristics of “nomenklatura capitalism” under the rule by law. The second section discusses the case of Singapore, while the third section focuses on Vietnam.

Hybrid Forms of Dependent Capitalism

This book has analyzed two different transformations in order to paint a portrait of the different forms of capitalism that have emerged in Central Europe and Southeast Asia. The first transformation concerns the variety of national political economies, while the second involves relationships within the EU and ASEAN regional organizations. The combination of these systemic changes in both regions provides insight not only into the resurgence of the question of national sovereignty but also into the mechanisms that underlie the growth of economic markets. Exploring these two transformational patterns has led me to an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the states involved and, in turn, to an appreciation of the importance of the concept of dependency that they all seem to share. Dependency has a number of defining attributes, including 1) promoting national sovereignty; 2) the influence of foreign capital; 3) different approaches to industrial relations; and 4) specific relationships between individual states and regional organizations. I will conclude this book by comparing these four variables as a way of distinguishing the different subtypes of capitalism in Central Europe and Southeast Asia. In the process, I will raise a number of related points, including the “Varieties of capitalism” approach that has informed a number of significant studies of the two regions.1

Industrial Companies and Territories: The Reform Process in Central and Eastern Europe

Close examination of how market capitalism has developed in Central Europe since 1990 reveals a striking paradox. On the one hand, highly ideological forces that emphasized removing every trace of government involvement in the name of individual initiative and liberalized exchanges propelled the initial wave of changes. On the other hand, the authorities quickly made moves intended to soften the devastating impact of the new economic rules, particularly that affecting employment and regional imbalances. Their efforts sometimes simply reflected a desire to preserve national sovereignty that led authorities to refuse to hand over certain state-run businesses. This early, deeply ideological vision of a completely market-driven economy was gradually replaced by a more regulated approach to market capitalism, in which fierce efforts to preserve national sovereignty were blended with the desire to restore local and regional equilibrium that were overturned in the early phases of the transformation. In other words, national sovereignty was in fact successfully reclaimed, as much as a means of pursuing highly market-driven economic policies as to ensure solidarity. In this sense, these new, previously Soviet-style states cleared their own unique European path to development and capitalism that combined free-market policies with protectionism while allocating a strong role to the state.

Political Capitalism and Market Economies

A remarkable aspect of the political and economic transitions in European postcommunist countries and in Southeast Asia is the combination of highly diverse forms of political domination and the various forms of capitalism that have developed. The political spectrum in the two regions extends from the most dictatorial authority to participatory, multiparty democracy, while the economies include both highly liberalized sectors and wide swaths of territory in which the state remains the predominant actor. To be more specific, the Southeast Asian states examined in this study are dominated by authoritarian elites that have nevertheless proven able to substantially open their economies toward global markets and exchanges. By contrast, the new Central European democratic states have market economies, which uniformly continue to be not only highly dependent on foreign capital but also protectionist in some industrial sectors. As a consequence, instead of a situation in which a closed economic regime is necessarily matched with an authoritarian political system, or a developed market economy with an open political system, the actual situations found in the two regions exhibit complex political and economic combinations often referred to as “hybrids.”

L'adaptation de la société polonaise à l'Europe

L’impact des transformations economiques a ete largement differencie en Pologne selon les secteurs professionnels. Si les ouvriers ont largement subi le poids des restructurations industrielles, les exploitants agricoles ont davantage pu se maintenir en l’etat. Des categories sociales nouvelles sont apparues au sommet de la pyramide sociale suite a la domination progressive du diplome comme facteur de mobilite ascendante, ou au bas avec les pauvres, les chomeurs, les exclus. Flexibilite de l’emploi et maintien de certaines traditions se sont combinees pour une dynamique d’adaptation considerable de la societe polonaise.