ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a theoretical and conceptual background for analysing negative structural phenomena relating to the party development and regime dynamics in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. It deals with the phenomenon of complex state-centred clientelism. The conceptual stretching of multifaceted clientelism is presented within the context of the unique post-communist period. The demise of the Soviet communist totalitarian system at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s liberated more states from dictatorship than any other event of the twentieth century. In a comparative perspective, within the communist and consequently post-communist environment, a notable continuity can be identified in the operation of the nomenklatura. Nomenklatura status included membership of the ruling and bureaucratic elite, but at the same time acquired a privileged lifestyle, ensuring a higher standard of accommodation, healthcare and so on. The flexible client-client pattern of interactions reflects more precisely the characteristics of post-communism.
