Political Regime Types and Varieties of Post-Socialist Capitalism in the Era of Globalization

Abstract

For the former state socialist countries 1989 was the year of the starting of the simultaneous transformation of their political regimes and economic systems. This entailed attempts at remaking simultaneously the political and economic institutions of these countries under the conditions of opening up their economies and entering the ‘era of globalization’. These countries have ended a developmental model that was built upon the combination of authoritarian political regime, state control of the economy combined with limited links to the global markets. In 1989 they started their pathways towards some uncertain something else, away from autocracy, command economy and autarchy. The goal of this chapter is to provide a description of and an explanation for the diverging pathways of the post-socialist countries that have combined different political regime types with specific varieties of capitalism and have ended up with dramatically different patterns of insertion into the global markets.