Institutional Diversity in the Post-socialist Area during Crisis

The main aim of the paper is to identify the types of capitalism in the Eurasian transition economies in comparison with the other European countries and evaluate the influence of the recent global crisis on the institutional organization of these states. The paper uses cluster analysis for identifying the types of capitalism. The paper identifies 3 basic groups (core and periphery of the EEA and the other transition economies) and 10 sub-clusters in the European area. According to the results, only Estonia is at the same level as the core of the EEA, whilst the rest of the EU-8 economies and Montenegro with the Mediterranean economies comprise the periphery. In general, CEECs and EU Balkan States have higher quality institutional environment, but on the basis of the analysis of the selected indicators (economic growth, inflows of FDI and unemployment), these economies were impacted more by the recent global crisis than part of the Balkan and post-soviet countries in the clusters “2a” and “2c”. For the losing economies, one can consider sub-cluster “2d” (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine).