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Weak States And Post-Communist Societies

 ABSTRACT | What accounts for the significant differences in performance across Eastern Europe? Why did some new states consolidate and gain legitimacy - such as the Baltics - while others are bordering on state failure - as in Moldova and Macedonia? Why did the incentive of European integration work better for Lithuania than for Bulgaria? Are there any best practices for overcoming state weakness that can be reproduced across Eastern Europe? Which institutions do, in fact, work? The articles in this issue will address all these...
WORD FROM THE EDITOR


The last few years have seen a tremendous boom in studies of the state within the fields of sociology and political science. Using the state as a central concept, scholars have developed categories to explain its role in social, economic and political change. Unsuccessful transformations in post-communist Europe have come increasingly to be blamed on... »
FOCUS

Reinventing The Peasants: Local State Capture in Post-Communist Europe

This paper takes up a neglected dimension of the social and political life of postcommunist countries, that of rural life. With the resurgence of subsistence farming, on the ashes of communist-era collectivization, features of rural politics, which this paper refers to as ‘neo-dependency’, have resurfaced. The entrenched institutional structure of small villages generate certain subjectivities... »

State Weakness in Post-Communist Countries: The Concept of State Capacity

This article addresses the issue of state capacity and suggests ways of conceptualising the term to make it more useful for the analysis of post-communist countries. While the state has recently been ‘brought back in’ to the debate about postcommunist transitions, it still suffers from considerable conceptual vagueness. However, in order to understand why some... »

EU Accession And The Serbian-Montenegrin Constitutional Charter

The Constitutional Charter of the Union of Serbia and Montenegro was finally adopted in January 2003, after protracted negotiations involving unprecedented European Union participation. This paper outlines and analyzes some aspects of the Charter agreement in the context of prospective EU enlargement. It suggests that the EU enlargement context determined the negotiating process and the... »
PAPERS

The European Citizenship Concept and Enlargement of The Union

The development of the EU citizenship concept within the current boundaries of the Union is incompatible with some of the terms of enlargement, namely the policy of transition periods, outlined in the Act of Accession. While the ECJ has tried to interpret EU citizenship as a ‘fundamental status’, the 2003 Act of Accession introduces limitations... »

The Right to Rebel: The National Liberation Army and The ‘Macedonian Crisis’ of 2001

Hailed as an exemplary case of successful inter-ethnic cooperation, Macedonia surprised many analysts and diplomats when it nearly plunged into full-blown civil war, in the spring and summer of 2001. The previously unknown ‘National Liberation Army’, or NLA, perpetrated a seven-month armed insurrection against the Macedonian government (from February to August, 2001). The aim of... »

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International
Advisory Board

  • Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (chair) Hertie School of Governance
  • Larry Diamond Stanford University
  • Tom Gallagher University of Bradford
  • Alena Ledeneva University College London
  • Michael McFaul Stanford University
  • Dennis Deletant Georgetown University
  • Helen Wallace London School of Economics and Political Science

Editorial Board

  • Claudiu Tufiș
  • Bogdan Iancu
  • George Jiglau
  • Ingi Iusmen
  • Gabriel Bădescu
  • Andrei Macsut
  • Laura Voinea

Published by:

Societatea Academica Romana