The authors of the “Stubborn Structures” have brought together contributions designed to capture the essence of post-communist politics in East-Central Europe and Eurasia. Rather than on the surface structures of nominal democracies, the nineteen essays focus on the informal, often intentionally hidden, disguised and illicit understandings and arrangements that penetrate formal institutions. The conference will be focusing on these phenomena, which often escape even the best-trained outside observers, familiar with the concepts of established democracies. Contributors to this book, who will briefly present their chapters, share the view that understanding post-communist politics is best served by a framework that builds from the ground up, proceeding from a fundamental social context. They aim at facilitating a lexical convergence; in the absence of a robust vocabulary for describing and discussing these often highly complex informal phenomena, to advance a new terminology of post-communist regimes. The resulting variety reflects a larger harmony of purpose that can significantly expand the understanding of the “real politics” of post-communist regimes

The conference continues with an official book launch of the ’Stubborn Structures - Re-conceptualizing Post-Communist Regimes’ with remarks by Iván Szelényi (William Graham Sumner Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Political Science, Yale University).

PROGRAM

10:00 - 12:00 Panel I

Chair: András Bozóki (CEU, Department of Political Science)

Oleksandr Fisun (V. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine)

Neopatrimonialism in Post-Soviet Eurasia

Andrey Ryabov (Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russia)

The Institution of Power and Ownership in the Former USSR: Origin, Diversity of Forms, and Influence on Transformation Processes

Nikolay Petrov (National research University Higher School of Economics, Russia)

Putin’s Neo-Nomenklatura System and its Evolution

Mikhail Minakov (Kennan Institute, the USA)

Republic of Clans: The Evolution of the Ukrainian Political System

Alexei Pikulik (Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, Belarus)

Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine as Post-Soviet Rent-Seeking Regimes

12:00 - 12:30 Coffee break

12:30 - 14:30 Panel II

Chair: Péter Inkei (CEU Press, vice director)

László Nándor Magyari (Babes-Bolyai University, Romania)

The Romanian Patronal System of Public Corruption

Kálmán Mizsei (CEU, Department of Economics)

The New East European Patronal States and the Rule-of-Law

Zoltán Sz. Bíró (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary)

The Russian Party System

Miklós Haraszti (CEU, Center for Media, Data and Society)

Illiberal State Censorship: A Must-have Accessory for Any Mafia State

Bálint Magyar (IAS CEU)

Post-Communist Regime Trajectories

16:00 - 17:30 Book launch

The event is opne to the public. Please register here until May 27.