BiblioVault - Books about Europe, Eastern

Deficit and Debt in Transition

The Political Economy of Public Finances in Central and Eastern Europe

Istvan Benczes

Central European University Press, 2014

The adjustment problems of public finance in countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are often misunderstood and misinterpreted by western scholars. This book contributes to the bridging of the gap between what is being thought by external observers and what the actual public finance reality is, as described by competent local scholars. Popular political economy research has remained biased towards advanced countries and has neglected developing and transition economies. Publications on CEE countries' public finances seem to be reluctant to apply the conceptual framework of standard political economy to these countries because of the assumption that CEE economies are different from their Western peers. But is this really the case? Are CEE economies so much different that none of the well-known "Western" political economy concepts or models can be applied to the analysis of fiscal performance in the region? Benczes demonstrates that they can be safely applied in the context of CEE economies as well. He sees no need to develop a separate or unique theory designed for the study and understanding of (one-time) transition economies.

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Desolate Landscapes

Ice-Age Settlement in Eastern Europe

John F. Hoffecker

Rutgers University Press, 2002

Ice-Age Eastern Europe was an inhospitable place, isolated from the moderating influence of oceans. Unlike Western Europe, which was settled over half a million years ago, Eastern Europe remained largely unoccupied until the appearance of the cold-adapted Neanderthals. When modern humans arrived from southern latitudes, they were anatomically less suited to colder climates, but successfully colonized Eastern Europe with the aid of innovative technologies that their Neanderthal predecessors lacked.

John F. Hoffecker provides an overview of Pleistocene or Ice-Age settlement in Eastern Europe with a heavy focus on the adaptations of Neanderthals and modern humans to this harsh environmental setting. Hoffecker argues that the Eastern European record reveals a stark contrast between Neanderthals and modern humans with respect to technology and social organization, both of which are tied to the development of language and the use of symbols. Desolate Landscapes will bring readers up to date with the rich archaeological record in this significant region and its contribution to our understanding of one of our most important events in human evolution - the rise of modern humans and the extinction of the Neanderthals.

The book is divided into seven chapters. The first discusses general anthropological principles and theories pertaining to human adaptation and development in cold environments. The second outlines the environmental conditions of the specific area under study in the book.

The next two chapters focus on Neanderthal finds in the area. The following two chapters discuss the replacement of the local Neanderthal population by the Cro-magnons, and the development of their way of life in the cold Loess Steppe environment. The final chapter summarizes the discussion and is followed by an extremely valuable and extensive bibliography, more than half of which consists of non-English (primarily Russian) sources.

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The Dilemma of Compliance

Political Parties and Post-Election Disputes

Svitlana Chernykh

University of Michigan Press, 2024

Over the past twenty years, the causes and consequences of post-election disputes have become one of the most compelling topics of research in political science. Between 2012 and 2022, political parties challenged the results of more than 25 percent of elections. When democratic transitions are dependent on the willingness of participants to accept defeat, political parties can undermine election-based democracy by rejecting the outcome. As the world enters the fourth decade since the start of the third wave of democratization, the question of whether election losers will comply or reject election outcomes is more and more pressing. The Dilemma of Compliance analyzes this phenomenon at the level of political parties, raising three important questions: Why do some political parties refuse to comply with election results? What determines the strategies they use to contest the outcomes? What consequences do post-election disputes have for the political parties that initiate them?

To answer these questions, this book draws on an original dataset of post-election responses encompassing over 300 political parties, which participated in 270 elections held in twenty-two countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union over a period of more than two decades. In doing so, it offers a new theoretical framework for studying electoral compliance in comparative perspective and advances research on democratic transition, democracy promotion, post-election protests, and party politics.

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The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe

Citizen Intellectuals and Philosopher Kings

Barbara J. Falk

Central European University Press, 2003

Discusses one of the major currents leading to the fall of communism. Falk examines the intellectual dissident movements in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary from the late 1960s through to 1989. In spite of its historic significance, no other comprehensive survey has appeared on the subject. In addition to the huge list of written sources from samizdat works to recent essays, Falks sources include interviews with many personalities of those events as well as videos and films (including Oscar winners).

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Disinflation in Transition Economies

Marek Dabrowski

Central European University Press, 2003

The authors of this outstanding scholarly work analyze the dynamics of disinflation in transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe. The volume covers all the key factors of this process: changes in money supply and money demand; exchange rate policy; currency crisis; fiscal policy; legal status of central banks; monetary policy strategy; changes in relative prices and changes in nominal and real wages. The book contains 13 chapters related to various aspects of disinflation and covering different sets of transition countries depending on their relevance to the analyzed topic and data availability.

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Dominant Powers and Subordinate States

The United States in Latin America and the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe

Jan F. Triska, ed.

Duke University Press, 1986

In comparing how the two superpowers exercise their persuasive control over their respective spheres, this book presents collective evidence toward the startling conclusion that this dominance, as it has been practiced, is no longer in the national interest of either the United States or the USSR.

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