Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ostensible victory of world capitalism, viable alternatives to the IMF’s and World Bank’s development agenda seem increasingly difficult to envision. The hegemony of a neo-liberal model of development that seeks economic growth over redistribution has proven a formidable challenge to envisioning alternatives that emphasize economic and social justice, environmental sustainability, and the empowerment of ordinary people. At least two communist parties, however, can lay claim to more hopeful and creative attempts to effect transformative projects from below: the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) in Kerala. But why and how are the SACP and CPI(M) drawn to navigate paths between social democracy and Soviet-style state socialism that places participatory democracy at the center of their socialist visions?
In this paper I explore the recent histories of the SACP and CPI(M) in an effort to explain the unique trajectories of these two Parties. Throughout the 1990s, both the SACP and CPI(M) have commanded popular bases and worked to achieve radical transformation through and within the institutions of parliamentary democracy. Both have understood democratic socialism to entail both a sensitivity to local conditions and a pluralistic, participatory democratic conception of the political. Despite these similar commitments, the SACP and CPI(M) have tended to emphasize different strategies and practices in their efforts to transform society from below. In particular, the SACP has tended to emphasize mass-mobilizing strategies and practices, while the CPI(M) has given much emphasis to grassroots-organizing strategies and practices.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Contrary to the early optimistic expectations of a uniform transition from Communism to Western-style democracies, the changes of the last fifteen years suggest a growing divergence among the former Communist “comrades.” The paper uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative evidence to trace the different regime trajectories of post-communist countries to differences in Leninist and pre-Communist legacies.
The first part of the paper puts the ex-communist countries in comparative perspective (especially with respect to Western Europe and Latin America) and finds that a distinct Leninist legacy is still noticeable in the prevalence of non-civic popular attitudes, the weakness of civil society organizations and the instability and shallow institutionalization of political parties, and an overall democracy deficit.
The second part of the paper analyzes the roots of the remarkable diversity of post-communist political trajectories despite the shared experience of several decades of Leninism. This diversity is due to the survival of several important and strongly correlated cross-country legacy differences with respect to cultural/religious traditions, degrees of modernization and state and nation building challenges. These historical legacies date back to the pre-communist period and have proven to be remarkably resilient despite half a century of Communist economic, social and political experiments. The paper argues that the failure of communist policies to reverse (or at least to reduce significantly) the great intra-regional differences in economic and political development is due to the neglect and/or reinforcement of traditional cultural patterns and ethnic tensions, which were further complicated by the economic distortions of communist industrialization. In the process, communist rule produced societies with a unique and highly uneven developmental profile, which combines traditional and modern elements. Therefore, under the veneer of large-scale modernization and industrialization the former communist countries were still divided by fundamental cross-country differences in culture, social norms and power relations. Judging by the regime transformations of the past 16 years, the persistence of these long-term historical legacy differences has undermined the democratic promise inherent in the region’s rapid communist-era modernization progress and is likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Post-1989 regime changes in Central and Eastern European communist countries radically altered life conditions and values of their populations. In this paper, I examine value changes and persistence of communist ideologies by looking at the differences in distributive justice beliefs among the transitional and communist cohort. Using data from the 1996 International Social Justice Project, I compare the transitional cohort (born 1969-1977) and the communist cohort (born 1945-1953) in Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary and Russia. The findings suggest that, unexpectedly, there are no cohort differences in the perceptions of market and statist justice in any country but Russia: the transitional cohort consistently sides with the communist cohort in their justice ideologies. Also, the results support the hypothesis about the distributive justice ideologies reflecting different communist and post-communist paths of these countries. As expected, there is a clustering of Russia vs. Bulgaria vs. East Germany and Hungary, though not in the predicted direction.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: The notion of feminism carries different cultural dimensions in political complex societies in transition such as most of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Gail Kligman, Katherine Verdery, Mihaela Miroiu are some of the international scholars articulating the role of feminism and the women's contribution in the public sphere in communist and post-communist Romania. This paper proposes an examination of the conventional roles of women in the political arena in Romania, while arguing for the challenging discursive powers feminism had in such a society. The paper examines public discourse and women in political life, in particular Elena Ceausescu, the wife of the former Romanian president, Nicolae Ceausescu, Doina Cornea and Ana Blandiana, two famous Romanian dissidents, and the current feminist movement. The paper argues that conventional and unconventional roles for women in political life create separate arenas for participation in terms of feminism or political voice. Such exploration emphasizes the importance of such concept as Global Feminisms and the need for communication studies to
expand intercultural and rhetorical perspectives on women's voices that need to be heard in global world.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A raison d'être of post-communist civil society aid projects was that civil society and the nonprofit sector need to be built out of scratch and be insulated from communist legacies. I argue that neither civil society, nor nonprofits emerged out of an institutional vacuum after the fall of communism. I assess the scholarly literature on the communists’ treatment of what is identified today as civil society and nonprofit organizations (voluntary associations and foundations) in post-war Hungary. I bring together arguments from studies of communism and post-communist transitions to re-evaluate our knowledge about the political and economic climate and their effect on civil society and its organizations in Hungary until 1989. I identify three institutional origins of post-communist civil society and nonprofits under state socialism: social organizations, associations that were state-controlled and structured into mass organizations; the second economy, the state-sanctioned sphere of private economic activities pursued outside the formal socialist state economy; and the second society, the informal and clandestine sphere of political activity pursued outside the institutions of the party-state. Post-communist civil society and its constituent nonprofits have roots in the capitalist transformation and political liberalization that grew potent under late socialism and within the communist organizational apparatus.