ABSTRACT

The argument that post-communist polities might have a stateness problem. It was scholars examining such issues who first suggested that post-communist societies experienced a rather dramatic fluctuation of stateness. The explanation of state dysfunctionality in post-communism is therefore indistinguishable from the ideological critique of markets and capitalism. The heuristic potential of a Hobbesian interpretation of the crisis of governability in the former Soviet world is considerable. It is Hobbes's insights that constitute the basic premise of state-centered studies of post-communist politics, namely that systematic examinations of the post-communist political condition should focus on the symptoms and causes of Leviathan's malaise. This chapter explores two ramifications of the idea that the crisis of governability in early post-communism has its origin in the fluctuation of postcommunist stateness. One among this is that narratives about post-1989 transformations can no longer be told as if functional state apparatuses were available to policymakers.