cisar@policy.hu
Working Bibliography and Internet Sources
NGOs and Information Technologies
Selected Sources on e-Government in the CR
Selected On-line Conference Papers
Summary
The focus of this paper is the different paths taken by different countries in the region after the collapse of socialism. The paper distinguishes between the ‘nationalizing alternative’ as one basic direction, and the ‘catching up option’ as another one. The paper further argues that this dichotomy itself forms around two clusters of several potential stances which could have been taken in the process of transformations. The goal of the paper is to propose a general framework, with the help of which the interactions ‘behind’ the political decisions taken by political elites in the post-socialist countries could be explained. The paper utilizes some of the tools of institutionalism and Bourdieu’s sociology to bridge the gap between the macro-structural processes and the micro-level of social action. The construction of a theoretical framework incorporating the diverse nature of the processes under way in Eastern Europe requires a theoretical approach sensitive not only to the different levels of analysis, but also to the different types of social processes. These processes are often referred to as simultaneous marketization, democratization, and nation building. Depending on the character of the particular processes, the publications in the areas of political economy, theory of democracy, and nationalism studies respectively, describe particular ‘metamorphoses’ of economies, polities, and nations. Although they all try to reflect upon each other, each of them puts different emphasis. The aim of this paper is to outline a framework suitable for theorizing all of them.