Patterns of Change in Eastern Europe
Patterns of Change in Eastern Europe

Summary/Abstract: My aim in this paper is to delineate and explain patterns to be found in the current changes taking place in Eastern Europe and to discuss the accompanying divisions within the ruling group and society in general. My methodological starting point is the sensitive issues area approach introduced by S. Krasner. In the Eastern bloc the issue area is obviously the crisis of the system itself, but, in a "revolution from above," how the reformers perceive this is also important. The current official interpretation of this crisis is schematically formulated in the worldsystem perspective based on the idea of two levels of dependency. The first is dependence on capitalism because of the underdevelopment of socialism, which suffers the double "punishment" of being peripheral and of being unable, due to the collective ownership of property, to follow the logic of the market. [...]

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