ABSTRACT

Only a developed market economy produces the social structural conditions for stable democracy and makes it possible to form compromises within the framework of what is perceived a positive-sum game. But the introduction of a market economy in the postsocialist societies is a “political” project, which has prospects of success only if it rests on a strong democratic legitimation. Under the label “transition to democracy,” an important and successful research branch in the social sciences has concerned itself over the last decade with comparative studies of political modernizing processes since the Second World War. The “capitalism by design” depends in every detail on highly visible decisions which hence require justification, and its development cannot rely on blind evolutionary emergences, which has largely been the pattern in the history of pioneering Western capitalism.