Topic: Post-Communist Transitions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Catalog description

This course offers students advanced theoretical, historical, and comparative studies of social and political transitions from single party Communist rule. Over the past three decades, former Communist states have produced a myriad of governments that include consolidated democracies like in Poland and the Czech Republic, weak democracies like Serbia and Romania, illiberal hybrid regimes like Russia and Ukraine, and entrenched authoritarian dictatorships like Turkmenistan and Belarus. Nearly all are still struggling to build a civil society based on political pluralism, and an economic sector designed for the free market but still adherent to social welfare. This course examines the post-Communist world in four sub-sections: Central Europe, Southeastern Europe, Russia and the Near Abroad, and Central Asia. Highlighting certain countries in each region, we will examine the relative capabilities and obstacles each region has experienced in transitioning from decades of various types of authoritarian Communist government. As such, this course provides a balance of theory and example to a series of debates in economic, political, social, and cultural issues that are part of larger studies on democratic transition.