Post-Communism in Institutional, Ideological and Communicative Dimensions: Critical Notes. Part I.

Gutorov V.A.,

Head of Department of Theory and Philosophy of Politics, Faculty of Political Science, Saint-Petersburg State University, gut-50@mail.ru

elibrary_id: 72442 | ORCID: 0000-0001-8063-2558 | RESEARCHER_ID: F-7724-2013

Tarasov I.N.,

Head of the Chair of Politics, Social Technologies and Mass Communications, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, ITarasov@kantiana.ru

elibrary_id: 214336 |

DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2018.03.05

Rubric: Theme of the Issue: Political Science for Bringing Russia and Europe Closer to Each Other

For citation:

Gutorov V.A., Tarasov I.N. Post-Communism in Institutional, Ideological and Communicative Dimensions: Critical Notes. Part I.. – Polis. Political Studies. 2018. No. 3. P. 60-77. (In Russ.). https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2018.03.05

Abstract

The article can be regarded as a contribution to the analysis of both the historical tradition and the prospects for social change in post-communist societies, taking into account the actual question of the extent to which contemporary theoretical debates reflect the real political, ideological and communicative trends in this region. The article raises a series of timely and acute questions about the modern condition and future of post-communism in the Central and Eastern Europe. The first part of the article is devoted primarily to the institutional and ideological aspects of post-communist transformations. These aspects are highlighted not by chance, because today there are many problematic research areas that are still historically and methodologically difficult to perceive by scientists as quite adequate research objects. In the theory of democratic transit, post-communism was initially viewed as a relatively short historical period that separated the dominance of authoritarian communist power from the triumph of consolidated democracy. In fact, the formation of the “core” of the post-communist institutional project, namely, the creation of political system that would effectively replace the old system with a minimum of transaction costs was the most difficult part of the process. The classical theory of modernization, forced to substantially restructure its methodology, nevertheless appeared, in the eyes of most Western scholars, to be much more suitable for studying post-communist processes than “transitology”. The article explores in detail a very characteristic model of “antipolitics” implemented in most post-communist countries already at the first stage of reforms. In the scientific literature for a long period, the problem of the formation of ideological discourses in the post-communist world has received much less attention than institutional aspects. Analysts everywhere note that, at the present time, the formation of ideological discourse in post-communist polities is carried out for the most part situationally, depending on the emerging external and internal political conjuncture. At the beginning of the XXI century the disappearance of the dichotomy itself of “capitalism-socialism” from the mass consciousness undoubtedly strengthened the diffuse character of both mass consciousness and the emerging new ideological discourse.

Keywords

post-communism; democracy; market economy; transitology; political institutions; bureaucracy; “antipolitics”; political transformations; party systems; ideology; ideological discourses; liberalism; neo-conservatism; political myth-making.

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