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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 08/02
Postcommunism as a Historical Episode of State-Building: A Reversed Tillyan Perspective
Venelin I. Ganev
November 2001
Abstract
This analytical essay offers a historical-sociological interpretation of a widely discussed and yet under-analyzed phenomenon that transpired in the former Soviet world after the collapse of communist regimes: the “weakness of the state.” After a critical survey of currently dominant approaches to this problem—approaches that conjure up the ideological commitment of global and local “neo-liberal” elites—I present an alternative explanation of the crisis of state capacity in postcommunism. The analytical matrix proposed in the essay—I call it “reversed Tillyan perspective”—rests on two general presuppositions: first, that the process of reconfiguring state structures in postcommunism is shaped by the distinct structural legacy of state socialism, and, second, that this legacy may be best comprehended if we approach it with the analytical tools provided by the historical sociology of state formation, and in particular Charles Tilly’s work on state building in Western Europe. In the final section of the essay, I explore the broader implication of the analysis of postcommunist “state weakness” for the study of state structures in the modern worlds.
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