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Dorothee Bohle and Béla Greskovits Capitalist Diversity on Europe's Periphery Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 2012, 304 pp.
With the collapse of the socialist regimes and the accompanying environment of radical uncertainty, countries of East- Central Europe had to form a new political and economic order by incorporating institutions of liberal democracy and market economy. In Capitalist Diversity on Europe's Periphery, Bohle and Greskovits are showing the variance of capitalism that resulted from the transition process beginning in the 1990s and continuing to the current economic crisis. The theoretical framework of the analysis is inspired by Karl Polanyi's work. Accordingly, the authors placed particular importance on the political elites' efforts to maintain the fragile balance in the triangular relationship between market efficiency, social cohesion and political legitimacy during the transition phase. According to Bohle and Greskovits, postsocialist countries developed three basic types of capitalist political economy: neoliberal (Baltic countries), embedded neoliberal (Visegrad countries) and neocorporatist (Slovenia). In addition, the authors included the category of 'laggard' countries (Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia), which demonstrate a mixture of the first two models and a weak state.
Neoliberal Regime in Baltic Countries
The Baltic countries (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) followed a radical path to transition by applying rapid privatization and low capital controls primarily in order to attract foreign investment. At the same time the government constrained the influence of citizens on the process of political decision-making and minimized social compensations for the transition losses. By neglecting its industrial capacities, these countries opened the road to the financial, communication and real estate sector. Here the economic strategy was enabled by its...