<p> MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND</p><p>DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY</p><p>Sociology 3710</p><p>Fall 2005</p><p>Slot 19: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:00-3.15 pm, Room SN-4073</p><p>Instructor: Dr. Anton Oleinik Office hours: A-3094, Tuesday & Thursday, 3:15-4:15 * * * Course title: Post-Soviet Transformations * * * The course is offered to the students in Sociology, German and Russian and Political studies. Its purpose consists in exploring the problems observed in the post-Soviet countries and putting them in a broader context of modernization. ‘Catch-up’ modernization gives rise to a set of problems related to the institutional importation, e.g. gaps between formal and informal institutions. These problems exist in Russia as well as in a number of other developing countries. A model of the ‘small’ society is proposed as an analytical tool for exploring unachieved ‘catch up’ modernization. Its applications to Russia, the Southern Italy and Germany in the first half of the XX century are discussed. The ‘small’ society is also compared with the traditional society on the eve of modernization. The proposed discussion sheds some light on a number of issues in the past and present of Newfoundland. * * * Required text: Oleinik Anton (2003), Organized Crime, Prison and Post-Soviet Societies, Aldershot, Hants and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Translated by Sheryl Curtis, with a Foreword by Alain Touraine. * * * Supplementary Readings: Badie Bertrand (2000), The Imported State: The Westernization of Political Order, Stanford: Stanford University Press</p><p>Beetham David (1991), The Legitimation of Power, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press Int.., Inc.</p><p>Coleman James S. (1990), Foundations of Social Theory, Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press</p><p>. The QE II Library has three copies of this book. One is available on Reserve Desk, the second – in the Center for Newfoundland studies, the third – in book stacks. 1 Cornell Stephen and Kalt Joseph (1995), ‘Where Does Economic Development Really Come From? Constitutional Rule Among Contemporary Sioux and Apache’, Economic Inquiry, 33, 3: 402-426</p><p>Duhamel Luc (2000), ‘Justice and Politics in Moscow 1983-1986: The Ambartsumyan Case, Europe-Asia Studies, 52, 7: 1307-1319 [available at www.jstor.org]</p><p>Gerschenkron Alexander (1992), ‘Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective’, in: Granovetter Mark and Swedberg Richard, editors, The Sociology of Economic Life, Boulder: Westview Press, pp. 118-130</p><p>Kornai János (1992), The Socialist System. The Political Economy of Communism, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press</p><p>North Douglass (1990), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press</p><p>Oleinik Anton (2006), ‘Socialism’, in: Beckert Jens and Milan Zafirovsky, eds., International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 627-631</p><p>Oleinik Anton (2005a), ‘Privatization Traps in the Post-Privatization Development of the Russian Economy’, in: Oleinik Anton, editor, The Institutional Economics of Russia’s Transformation, Aldershot, Hants and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp. xiii-xxvii. Series ‘Transition and Development’ [stable URL: http://www.ashgate.com/subject_area/downloads/sample_chapters/Institutional_Economics_Russias _Transformation_Preface.pdf]</p><p>Oleinik Anton (2005b), ‘Transfer of Institutions: Actors and Constraints – the Russian Case in a Global Context’, HWWA discussion paper No. 320, Hamburg [stable URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=740264]</p><p>Oleinik Anton (2005c), ‘On Universal versus Specific Categories of Network Capitalism: A Reply to V. Barnett’s Note’, Journal of Economic Issues, 38, 4: 1040-1046</p><p>Oleynik Anton (2004), ‘Dedovshchina as an Element of the “Small Society”: Evidence from Russia and Other Countries’, Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies. An Electronic Journal of Social Sciences, Issue 1, July [stable URL: http://www.pipss.org/document136.html]</p><p>Oleynik Anton (2003), ‘Banished to Solitary Confinement in a Tower…? On the Institutional Organization of Science, Social Sciences, 34, 3: 44-51</p><p>Oleinik Anton (2002), ‘The Costs and Prospects of Reforms in Russia: An Institutional Approach’, Theme, 26, 4: 491-517 [stable URL: http://facta.junis.ni.ac.yu/teme/teme4-2002/teme4- 2002-01.pdf]</p><p>Redfield Robert (1955), The Little Community. Viewpoints for the Study of a Human Whole, Uppsala and Stockholm: Almqvist & Wicksells Boktryckeri AB</p><p>Shlapentokh Vladimir (1989), Public and Private Life of the Soviet People. Changing Values in Post-Stalin Russia, Oxford: Oxford University Press</p><p>2 Soto Hernando de (2004), The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism, New York: Basic Books</p><p>Swedberg Richard (2003), Principles of Economic Sociology, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press</p><p>Thévenot Laurent et al. (2005), ‘Values, Coordination and Rationality: The Economy of Conventions’, in: Oleinik Anton, editor, The Institutional Economics of Russia’s Tranformation, Aldershot, Hants and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp. 21-44. Series ‘Transition and Development’</p><p>Zweinert Joachim (2004), ‘Shared Mental Models, Catch-Up Development and Economic Policy-Making. The Case of Germany after WWII and Its Significance for Contemporary Russia’, discussion paper No. 288, Hamburg: HWWA * * * Method of Evaluation:</p><p>Evaluation will consist of  two individual writing assignments (20% and 25%),  a mid-term quiz (5%),  class participation (10%),  a final examination (40%). * * * Course outline: [This outline might be subject of changes]</p><p>Introduction: ‘Catch-up’ modernization 1. 8.09 Why the conventional analysis of post-Soviet transformation fails to explain today’s trends in socio-economic development? Unattended results of conscious human actions: authoritarian tendencies in politics, political capitalism, extralegal economy, terrorism. Inner instability of the emerging system. OLEINIK, (2005a), pp. xiii-xvi 2. 13.09 Less-developed countries and post-Soviet countries: common features of ‘catch-up’ modernization. State bureaucracy as a key actor of modernization. GERSCHENKRON OLEINIK, (2005b), pp. 4-12 3. 15.09 ‘Westernization’: institutional importation as a way of modernization. Types of institutional transfers. Who is interested in institutional importation and why? ‘Washington consensus’: stabilization, liberalization and mass privatization. Limits of the institutional importation. ‘Post-Washington consensus’: institutional reforms, start-ups and case by case privatization. BADIE, Part II 4. 20.09 Do imported institutions fit the informal institutions structuring everyday life in a given society? Measuring the degree of ‘elective affinity’ between imported institutions and the informal institutions. TEXT, pp. 36-40 and 250-252 OLEINIK, (2002), pp. 502-514 5. 22.09 Empirical studies. Institutional change in two tribes of Native Americans. The Russian case: institutional importation in the 1990.</p><p>3 TEXT, pp. 197-229 CORNELL and KALT</p><p>Does spontaneous evolution really lead toward capitalism? 6. 27.09 Perspectives of a ‘bottom-up’, evolutionary modernization. The program of reforms promoted by H. De Soto. Reducing the costs of formality (the costs of access and the costs of remaining formal). Administrative reform as a cost-reducing policy. Mid-term quiz SOTO, pp. 131-187 (Chapter 5 ‘The Costs and Importance of the Law’) 7. 29.09 Institutional legacy of the Soviet system. Was the institutional system of socialism stable? Alternative explanations for the fall of socialism in the Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. KORNAI, pp. 360-379 (Chapter 15 ‘The Coherence of the Classical System’) OLEINIK, (2006) 8. 4.10 Family as a basic unit of Soviet and post-Soviet societies. ‘Privatization’ of public life. Friends and acquaintances. Blat networks. Family-based economic interactions. TEXT, pp. 168-175 SHLAPENTOKH, pp. 165-189 (Chapter 7 ‘Legal and Illegal Private Life: Primary Groups’) 9. 6.10 Informal economy during the Soviet times. Functionalist approach: informal economy as a stabilizing factor. Rules of the game respected by the entrepreneurs who act in the shadow. Case study: blat and bribing in the retail trade. TEXT, pp. 199-208 DUHAMEL 11.10 Fall semester break 10. 13.10 Is it worth legalizing the existing informal norms? Model of a ‘small’ society. Non differentiation of spheres of everyday life. Prevalence of personalized relationships. Imperfect control of violence. Duality of norms. Imposed authority, or power. Extralegal tendencies of the ‘small’ society. TEXT, pp.10-40 11. 18.10 A traditional society versus the ‘small’ society. Marginal role of the state in the case of traditional communities. Case study: the ‘little community’ of Chan Kom. The Newfoundland case. REDFIELD, pp. 33-51 12. 20.10 A ‘complex’ society as the opposite to the ‘small’ society. Modern society as a society with clearly differentiated functional subsystems. Political philosophy (M. Walzer) and the theory of conventions (L. Boltanski, L. Thévenot). The State as an actor in the process of differentiation. 1st assignment (20%) deadline SWEBDERG, pp. 49-51; THÉVENOT, pp. 21-35 13. 25.10 Two registers of actions: localized interactions and interactions on a large scale. Liberty to choose between the registers in the ‘complex’ society. Can one easily pass from the one register to the other in the ‘small’ society? NORTH, pp. 27-35 and 118-130 (Chapters 1 ‘An introduction to institutions and institutional change’ and 4 ‘A transaction costs theory of exchange’ and 13 ‘Stability and change in economic history’) OLEINIK, (2005c)</p><p>Is the model of the ‘small’ society country-specific? 4 14. 27.10 Prisoners’ community as an example of the ‘small’ society. Total surveillance: private and public life in prison. Informal hierarchy and imperfect control of violence. Duality of informal norms. Power of prison’s guards. TEXT, pp. 45-138 15. 1.11 Prison in post-Soviet countries (Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine) compared with prison in the West (France, Canada). TEXT, pp. 138-150 16. 3.11 Post-Soviet countries: is there a society? Family as a basic and quasi-unique social unit. Absent border line between private and public life: particularities of housing conditions; deficit of the legal guarantees of privacy. Double thinking. Victims that can be sacrificed: strangers (especially Africans), Chechens and others. Social machinery of terrorism: two Chechen wars. TEXT, pp. 162-196 and 267-269 17. 8.11 The ‘small’ society in the post-Soviet army. The ‘small’ society in the academic and university milieu: Russia and the West. OLEYNIK, 2003 OLEYNIK, 2004 18. 11.11 South of Italy in the XIX century as a ‘small’ society (P. Arlacchi). Personalized relationships as a cement of the Mafia. The Mafia Business: a market play according to traditional norms. Insiders and outsiders. TEXT, pp. 152-155</p><p>Power relationships as a central element for understanding post-Soviet transformations 19. 15.11 Taxonomy of power relationships: a sociological perspective. A particular ‘deal’ as a basis of imposed power. Commons on pleasure of being persuaded. BEETHAM, pp. 5-41 COLEMAN, pp. 65-90 20. 17.11 Power as a dominating form of authority relationships throughout the history of Russia. Power of tsars compared with power of Western monarchs. Stalinism. Post-Stalin Russia: a deal of the rulers with ordinary people (elements of disjoint authority). Absent civil society distorts feed-back mechanisms between the rulers and ordinary people in the post- Soviet Russia. TEXT, pp.155-162 21. 22.11 Continuity and change: Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia. The self-production of power under new forms (dynamics of different forms of violence). Critical sociology: analyzing relationships based on domination in different spheres of everyday life. Political capitalism: how does it work? Economic power as a source of political power. The YUKOS case. 2nd assignment (25%) deadline OLEINIK, (2005b), pp. 20-29 22. 24.11 Administrative reform and the strengthening of a ‘vertical of power’: how to reduce opportunism of the post-Soviet bureaucrat. Mechanisms of control of the bureaucracy today and during the Soviet rule. Administrative reform as creation of the feed-back mechanisms between the rulers and ordinary people. Strong and democratic State as a leading force in modernization. Changing informal norms before their legalization. SOTO, New Preface 23. 29.11 Limiting tendencies toward authoritarianism: external and internal checks and balances. Dependency on external yet democratic influences as the lesser evil. Russia and Baltic states compared. Russia and Ukraine compared. Russia and Germany in the first half of the XX century compared. 5 OLEINIK, (2005b), pp. 29-34 ZWEYNERT, pp. 6-21 24. 1.12 Concluding discussion. Does Russian civilization really exist? Particular configuration of power relationship as a key factor to be taken into consideration while studying Russia. Optimism and pessimism about the future: the choice depends on the number of factors one takes into account.</p><p>Examination</p><p>6</p>