Introduction

All the former state socialist countries have, over recent years, transformed or reformed their economies. This book addresses the question of how far they have changed into capitalist systems and, if so, what kind of capitalism they have developed, or are developing. The collection of papers has been the subject of two conferences of participants. The first, organized by David Lane, constituted the Thirteenth Research Seminar of the Managing Economic Transformation (MET) Network, supported by the Jean Monnet Centre for Excellence, and held at the University of Cambridge, 12 March 2004. The second workshop was organized by Martin Myant at the University of Paisley on 23 and 24 September 2005, supported by the university’s Business School. The contributors were asked to consider how far the societies in transformation from state socialism carry a common footprint from their communist pasts, or whether other factors have led to divergences in the kinds of capitalism that are emerging. An initial framework is provided by the considerable literature on the ‘varieties of capitalism’ in advanced economies, but it becomes clear that even these different frameworks need to be applied flexibly and sensitively. It also becomes clear that comparisons between countries using accessible quantitative indicators reveal only part of the story. Legal and institutional frameworks can appear similar between countries and yet have very different meanings in the different contexts; the quantitative data also do not address the role of causal factors.