The Reform Process in Post-Communist Transition: Understanding Reform in Eastern and Central Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States

This chapter represents an attempt at a synthesis of six studies of the reform process in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The six countries are the Czech Republic, Estonia and Poland among the CEECs and Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan among the CIS.1 We present the results of the studies thematically as follows. First, in Section 4.2, we present a framework for classifying the reforms. In Section 4.3 we discuss the causative factors that got the reform process underway as well as the goals of the reforms. The next section deals with the issue of capacity for implementing reform. It is followed by a section analyzing the institutions of critical importance for the success of the reforms. In Section 4.6 we discuss the impact of political culture on the reform process. The following section describes the breadth, depth and speed of the reform process in the countries studied. In Section 4.8 we turn to the role of stakeholders and interest groups. Section 4.9 is devoted to the role of external factors such as global trends and international institutions. In Section 4.10 we turn to the crucial task of analyzing the differences between the countries with respect to reform outcomes. In Section 4.11 we deal with the political, social and cultural institutions that affect the sustainability of the reforms.