Book Review Tadayuki Hayashi, Ed

Review of Central and East European Law 31 (2006) 127-130 Book Review Tadayuki Hayashi, ed. Democracy and Market Economics in Central and Eastern Europe: Are New Institutions Being Consolidated? Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University 2004, 409 pp. ISBN 4-938637-31-6 When visiting the United States in 1959, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev used the words “we will bury you” to signify the competition between the two world-leading co-ordination systems and to designate the obvious winner. Thirty years later, the opposite of this prophesy became a reality. Western advisors were travelling eastwards to Warsaw, Budapest, Moscow, and other capitals in Central and Eastern Europe to help governments bury communism and build a democratic capitalist order on the legacy of central planning and dictatorship. Huge changes in the society of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe were the inevitable corollary of transition following the collapse of communism. But transition did not only have domestic impact. The ef- fects were global. For example, within fifteen years after the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, eight countries with a communist legacy have entered the European Union (EU) and eastward enlargement of the EU have not yet been brought to a standstill. For scholars, transition has opened windows of opportunities as well. The demise of communism had taken many academics by surprise, but the building of a market economy embedded in a democratic order facilitated a kind of laboratory experiment that was unknown in social sciences. In the absence of a ready-made and appropriate theory of transition, scholars were forced to rely on experiments in the region. Many of the institutional changes materialized as the result of trial and error and, therefore, academics focused on comparative approaches. Democracy and Market Economics in Central and Eastern Europe: Are New Institutions Being Consolidated? is one of the books appraising the laboratory experiments and drawing conclusions from comparisons. The volume—edited by Tadayuki Hayashi—is the fruit of a conference organized by the Slavic Research Center of the Hokkaido University that was held in 2003. It consists of four parts. Part 1 addresses the dual transitions— democratization and market reform—in Central and Eastern Europe. Globalization provides the context of the chapters. The contributions comprising of Part 2 focus on the experiences in a number of Central DOI: 10.1163/092598806X111631 128 Review of Central and East European Law 31 (2006) European countries, to the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. In a similar way, Part 3 scrutinizes Southeastern European experiences with transition from an authoritarian political system to a market economy based upon democracy. The chapters in the concluding Part 4 facilitate an extra comparison since they tune in Japanese institutional change. The leading thread running through the book is the extent to which institutions are consolidated, which, of course, has its roots in the question: “When is transition over?” It is beyond the scope of this review to extensively discuss all the contributions to the volume. Therefore, a focus upon the four parts of the book will have to suffice. The chapters comprising of Part I on European- ization and Globalization in East Central Europe scrutinize the room for maneuver within the transition process. The widely held idea is that the EU has defined the standards for market and democracy and—given the desire of the post-socialist countries to seek entry into the Union—has set the agenda for transition. Attila Ágh and , in their highly informative contributions, conclude that the EU has indeed served as an anchor for reform, but it has not eradicated room for maneuver. Kostelecký also points out that in the first half of the 1990s—i.e., before official application of membership—the influence of the EU was rather moderate. Democratization was to a large extent a matter of domestic affairs in the respective Central and Eastern European countries. That changed drastically after official requests for EU-membership. Part 2 is presented by the editor as one made up of case studies. This qualification—although right in and of itself—is somewhat unobtrusive since the contributing chapters do expose a lot more than just a case study; they also provide input for theoretical reflection. The two chapters on the Czech Republic—written by Milan Sojka and Tadayuki Hayashi—offer excellent grip on neo-liberal approaches in the Czech Republic, whereas Péter Gedeon and Soňa Szomolányi—in their contributions on Hungary and Slovakia, respectively—reveal reluctance towards straightforward neo-liberal design. Initially, Slovakia had to pay a high price for this dis- inclination. Part 2 underpins that consolidation of democratic and market institutions in the so-called “front-runner states” followed different tracks as a result of different legacies. At the same time, these chapters divulge that neo-liberal institutional design, as was opted for in the Czech Republic, has not necessarily yielded the best results. What Part 2 reveals for Central European countries, Part 3 does for the countries on the Balkan, including Bulgaria and Romania. The spe- cific nature of the countries that once belonged to Yugoslavia is depicted in the chapters by Milica Uvalic and Vojmir Franičević. Taro Tsukimura .

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