Subversive Institutions: The Design and the Destruction of Socialism and the State (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics) - Hardcover

Bunce, Valerie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521584493 ISBN 13: 9780521584494

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1999

Synopsis

From 1989 to 1992, all of the socialist dictatorships in Europe (including the Soviet Union) collapsed, as did the Soviet bloc. Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia dismembered, and the Cold War international order came to an abrupt end. Based on a series of controlled comparisons among regimes and states, Valerie Bunce argues in this book that two factors account for these remarkable developments: the institutional design of socialism as a regime, a state, and a bloc, and the rapid expansion during the 1980s of opportunities for domestic and international change. When combined, institutions and opportunities explain not just when, how, and why these regimes and states disintegrated, but also some of the most puzzling features of these developments - why, for example, the collapse of socialism was largely peaceful and why Yugoslavia, but not the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia, disintegrated through war.

About this title

Review:

'The argument is remarkable elegant and concise.' Contemporary European History

Book Description:

On the basis of a series of comparison studies, Valerie Bunce argues that two key factors explain the remarkable collapse of European socialism from 1989 to 1992: the longterm costs of the very structure of socialism and the shorter-term costs of expanded opportunities for regime and state change in the 1980s. Together, these two factors explain not just why socialist regimes and states ended, but also why the process was peaceful in some cases and violent in others.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0521584493
• ISBN 13: 9780521584494
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 222