ABSTRACT
The transitions from state socialism in China, Russia and Eastern Europe provide natural experiments involving change in the stratification order on a scale reminiscent of that experienced in the West during the rise of capitalism. Comparative stratification research builds on modernization theory in assuming that industrial development, whether socialist or capitalist, leads to convergence (Lipset and Zetterberg 1959; Treiman 1970; Grusky and Hauser 1984; Hauser and Grusky 1984). Institutional theorists, however, are skeptical about theories of convergence driven by industrialism. If convergence pointed the way to state socialism’s future, the sweeping measures to institute a market economy in industrially developed Eastern Europe and Russia would not have been necessary. Rather than focusing on the effects of industrial growth, institutionalists insist that research on state socialism needs also to take into account underlying differences in institutional forms. Such a focus on alternative institutional forms that provide a deep structure for economic action underlies my argument that the shift from redistribution to markets gives rise to different mechanisms of stratification.
