Abstract
The book’s main purpose is to contribute to the study of upgrading organizational rationality in Eastern Europe. It also tries to operationalize post-Communist transformation processes in the region.
Interpreting post-1989 transformations is an important challenge. Sociologists have a bad record, failing to anticipate the implosion of the Soviet Empire. Moreover, the tools for analysing the ensuing processes are in need of realignment and renewal. Genov has made this his task. He shows that even if the implosion of the Soviet (Russian) Empire came as a surprise even to the best informed observers, it could be characterized as a crisis foretold, deeply embedded in longue durées.
In this light, there is hardly any doubt that Weberian ideas about rationalization processes could be helpful in attempts to diagnose trends in contemporary societies, Genov writes (p. 43). Weber’s focus obviously is on the particular traits of Occidental rationalization, which might be claimed to be universal and irreversible. However, this is contested by the multiple modernity paradigm, and indeed already Europe itself manifests several path-dependent roads to Modernity. The Soviet experiment in modernization from above is also a manifestation of European Enlightenment rationalism, and many communist leaders were in fact engineers; still the USSR was embedded in Russian historical traditions as well, with an attitude of ambiguity towards foreign impulses, be it Peter the Great’s modernization, Marxian doctrines or liberal economics. All full scale experiments in modernization from above met with only limited success: ‘The neo-liberal strategy … underestimated the capacity of the old nomenklatura and of organized criminals to act efficiently in taking over privatization processes in the Russian Federation or in the Ukraine’ (p. 72). They usurped state property and took advantage of weak institutions in monitoring of rule of law. Die Wende entailed a return to history, meaning that several ‘late children of 1848’ could now cultivate a ‘frozen’ form of nationalism, the nation being seen as a natural stage for post-Enlightenment modernization processes and mass democracies, even if both Weber and Parsons overestimated the relevance of the nation-state as the natural unity for analyses. As Ulrich Beck has argued, we have today transcended the nation as a natural entity for analysis and a ‘cosmopolitan’ dimension has become indispensable.
However, post-Soviet transformations entailed that conceptualization of modern nation-building become more urgent, and Genov’s work is dedicated to this task. That is because modernization is taken to be path-dependent although it is also impacted by globalization, which has now reached a level unforeseen by Parsons, Stein Rokkan and others. The communist states had not fully adopted some technical globalizing achievements, a failure that makes their path a little more rocky: ‘The economic and social organization of Eastern European societies used to neglect and even suppress the motivational power of commercial mechanisms’, Genov emphasizes (p. 126). This is one explanation for why Eastern Europe remained at best a technological semi-periphery, despite some military and aerospace breakthroughs. The Soviet ambitions to become the leading world site for the scientific revolution simply failed, largely due to value-normative factors.
One of my few critical remarks on Genov’s book is that Rokkan is neglected, perhaps the most relevant and influential stage theorist, and a natural point of reference to any discussion of modernization. However, since Rokkan’s concepts were developed on the basis of northwestern European experiences, their relevance for the study of kleptocratic clan systems without modern institutions and low literacy remains limited. As Genov points out, everyday life in the region is beset with cases of illegal enrichment, political clientelism, ethnic discrimination and so on (p. 173). Yet, there is no mention of religion. Estonia stands out as a case here, but so does Poland: one Evangelical-Lutheran and one a Catholic country. This is food for thought concerning the relevance of the famous 1054-divide, as a fault line also for political culture and civil society. Other factors seem to play more of a role. For example, in exploring mass migration, Genov notes that in the case of Poland (p. 87), there is a brain drain and a net loss for the country. On the other hand, there is a strong transformative capacity in returning young Poles, e.g. from the UK, who are no longer likely to accept arbitrary bureaucratic rules. He also sees a large role for trust in society and its institutions in a path of development characterized by prosperity and democracy.
Genov’s overall ambition is to operationalize and systematize various dimensions of transformation processes, overcoming the limitations of ‘methodological nationalism’. He summarizes his structural principles in a chart comparing long-term rationality vs short-term rationality, and collective rationality vs individual rationality. This in itself may not appear as a great new revelation, but is most useful for grasping actual developments in various areas, based on empirical findings. To accommodate individualism with common good (individual vs collective rationality) is an old theme in western welfare societies, theoretically elaborated by Mancur Olson Jr (in several works), and in a way still relevant in new democracies with little consensus in their political culture regarding the rules of political life and negotiation.
Genov offers a comprehensive mapping of empirical realities, including surveys of expectations about the future, in addition to key empirical data. What he writes about the Eastern European value-normative puzzle and ethnic divides in Chapter 5 is intriguing: Ponzi-scheme scandals alter expectations and provide fertile soil for populism when the population is facing an uncertain future, and when the move from egalitarian values to liberal meritocracy generates frustration and value-normative disorientation. The new non-egalitarian social order has a fragile legitimacy, since it challenges established value patterns in what was sometimes called ‘real existing socialism’.
The alternative is unclear. The late Daniel Bell is mentioned (p. 179) as an example of a scholar profoundly aware of the tensions within a capitalist system which were to serve as a prototype for new large-scale experiments East of the Elbe. But as yet there are no obvious new alternatives: they have to be invented. There is, however, an active normative creed in Genov’s policy-oriented work, which offers no surprise, other than the advice that sociological conceptualization has to be adjusted to new realities. The book provides an account for the main literature on problems of transformation processes in post-Soviet space. Genov most ambitiously contributes to developing our tools for the investigation of a crucial research area. The book could therefore be considered one step in a multi-step rocket launch.