ABSTRACT
Institutional redesign constituted the essence of the vast program of post-communist transformation on which East Central Europeans embarked in 1989, after the political and economic structures of the “dictatorships of the people” had been completely discredited. The revolutions of 1989, whether velvet or bloody, showed that East Central Europeans knew exactly what they did not like: a regime dominated by one mass ideological party that was generally insulated from and often aloof to the demands of citizens, grafted on a centrally planned economy with low levels of competitiveness and productivity that kept people impoverished and, in some countries, starved and cold in the name of equality. At the same time, East Central Europeans were far less certain about the kind of democracy they did like. Some of them wanted to enjoy the good life that the Western Europeans had but did not fully understand that democracy or capitalism entailed obligations and responsibilities and could lead to negative outcomes, not just roses and champagne. Others unrealistically wished for a system that would combine the advantages of democracy (basic freedoms and competitive multi-party politics) with the advantages of communism (equality, job security, free creches, education, and health care), while also avoiding the disadvantages of both systems. And still others wanted a reformed communism that represented the “third way,” which, in many ways, anticipated what China was able and willing to build shortly thereafter: a politically closed dictatorship dominated by a communist party that tolerated some elements of free market that encouraged private entrepreneurship, liberalized export and import activities, and did not punish self-enrichment. In the end, what East Central Europeans got were new states “built on top of and with the half-collapsed, half-standing institutions of the past.” 1
