ABSTRACT
The transition towards a market economy and a democratic polity in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is not just something which is happening east of the Elbe. Transition is also a strategy being implemented by international development agencies, western financial institutions, foreign aid programmes and humanitarian or other non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The eastwest divide formerly based on ‘cold war’ has now been replaced by the west’s concerted effort to ‘modernise’ the east and to ‘integrate’ the former communist states into European economic, political and security frameworks. Spearheading this effort is a gamut of western aid programmes aimed at helping the Central and East European States achieve ‘privatisation’, ‘agricultural reform’, ‘higher-education restructuring’, ‘democratic institutions’, ‘legal reform’, and ‘a developed civil society’. These objectives may be articulated in a variety of ways: as ‘strategies’, ‘indicative programmes’, or ‘plans’. At the basic level, however, they exist as concrete activities called ‘projects’. The transition in Eastern Europe is a world of projects.
