ABSTRACT

The ‘velvet revolutions’, which initiated the systemic transformations of most former state socialist countries into market-oriented, liberal democracies, were headed not only by calls for a reformed political system but equally by demands for an improvement in general living conditions. The success of reforms was to be measured in terms of the new systems’ ability to enhance citizens’ material welfare as well as their democratic enfranchisement. In many ways, economic restructuring was seen as a means to achieve this end, not as a self-legitimising process (Genov 1998).