Horizontal “checks and balances” in the socialist regime: the party chief and mayor template

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-82
Author(s):  
Yang Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Probability Function ◽  
Graphical Model ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
Socialist System ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Party Chief

AbstractJános Kornai's pioneering scholarship examined the mechanisms of the socialist system. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kornai's main focus was on the transition process in former socialist countries in central Eastern Europe. This paper builds on Kornai's work on the socialist system by analyzing horizontal bargaining within every political branch in contemporary China. I argue that this horizontal bargaining within the party is enhanced by the vertical bargaining. Incorporating Kornai's work on socialism, the “party chief and mayor” template extends the bargaining model from one key figure and one group in the “king and council” template to two key figures and their respective confidants. In addition, it incorporates institutional constraints into the graphical model. It also defines a “collective decision probability function,” which shows how the party chief and mayor model reaches “checks and balances” that limit the policy space, regardless of whether the policy is exogenous or endogenous.

“The East Asian Frontier of the Socialist World: North Korea in the 1950s”

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 160-183
Author(s):  
Avram Agov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
East European ◽  
Socialist System ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The 1950S

The decade of the 1950s was a formative period for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (dprk), one that shaped its integration into the international socialist system. This article examines the interaction between North Korea’s internal (institutional) and external (international) integration into the socialist system that, at this time, the Soviet Union and its East European bloc allies dominated. It argues that North Korea was more integrated into the socialist world than its nationalist ideology implied. The 1950s marked the culmination of the dprk’s connectivity to the international socialist world. The narrative begins in the second half of the 1940s with the building of North Korea’s socialist system. It then focuses on East European bloc aid to North Korea during and after the Korean War, as well as the dprk’s reactions to this fraternal assistance. By the second half of the 1950s, North Korea came to associate integration with dependency, generating nationalist impulses in dprk policy and laying the foundation for the juche (self-reliance) paradigm. North Korea’s nationalist ideology was part of a broader post-colonial nation building drive, but socialist interdependency also played a role in the dprk’s divergence, after the early 1960s, from the Soviet bloc and the People’s Republic of China.

Committee Decision Making in the Soviet Union

1984 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Jones
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Organizational Participation ◽  
Committee Decision ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
International Stability ◽  
Committee Decision Making ◽  
The Cost

Most Soviet committees, from Politburo to local government executive committee, use procedures designed to encourage broad organizational participation in policy making. These procedures help to minimize capricious policy making and ensure the cooperation of officials responsible for implementing policy. Most importantly, the broad representation of institutional interests in collegial forums reflects the need for institutional checks and balances. The cost of committee procedures is inefficiency. Committee decision making also tends to produce policy that works well in an era of economic prosperity and international stability, but less well during periods of economic shortfall or foreign crisis.

Protest for National Rights in the USSR: Characteristics and Consequences*

1980 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kowalewski
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
Soviet People ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Party Chief

The Soviet regime's contention that the nationalities problem has been solved can no longer be taken seriously. At his speech honoring the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Soviet Union on December 21, 1972, party chief Leonid Brezhnev claimed:By now … solving the nationalities problem, overcoming the backwardness of previously oppressed nations, is … habitual for the Soviet people. We must remember the scope and complexity of the accomplishments, in order to appreciate the wisdom … of the party, which took upon itself such a task — and accomplished it.

scholarly journals Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Rita Kaša ◽  
Inta Mieriņa
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Birth Rates ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Hard Evidence ◽  
The Government

Abstract This volume contributes to research on migration from Latvia, a country in Central Eastern Europe (CEE), following the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991. The experience of independent Latvia with borders opening up to the world and more specifically to the West has turned out to be both a rewarding and wounding experience for communities in the country. On the rewarding side, individuals have gained liberty – an ability to travel the world freely, to see and live in the countries which were beyond the closed doors of the Soviet Union just some decades ago. This freedom, however, has also brought the sense of cost to the society – people are going abroad as if dissolving into other worlds, away from their small homeland. The context of decreasing birth rates and ageing in the country seems to amplify a feeling of loss which is supported by hard evidence. Research shows a worrying 17% decline in Latvia’s population between 2000 and 2013. One third of this is due to declining birth rates and two-thirds is caused by emigration (Hazans 2016). This situation has turned out to be hurtful experience for communities in Latvia causing a heightened sense of grief especially during the Great Recession which shook the country at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. By 2013 the feeling of crises even larger than the economic downturn came to a head in Latvian society, pushing the government for the first time in the history of independent Latvia to recognise the migration of the country’s nationals and to acknowledge diaspora politics as an important item on the national policy agenda.

scholarly journals Central‑Eastern Europe in the European Political and Historical‑Geographical Context

Politeja ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (6(57)) ◽  
pp. 49-63
Author(s):  
Nikolai Baranov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Russia

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe were singled out from the European context because of their cultural and historical background. These states, historically parts of empires, after the World Wars were located between the great powers and served as the watershed between the West and Eastern Europe, with which Soviet Russia was associated. After the collapse of the socialist system, and then the Soviet Union, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were oriented toward European integration structures. Despite the queue for entry into the European Union, the dividing lines in Europe have not disappeared, which indicates the political nature of the processes on the continent, even though the need for cooperation to solve urgent European problems is high.

scholarly journals Musical Representations of the Past in Children’s Cartoons Produced in Central-Eastern Europe under Communism

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Lidia Babulewicz
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Animated Films ◽  
Musical Representations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Central Eastern

The subject of this article are the composition strategies employed to represent the past in animated films produced in the integrated cultural space which Central-Eastern Europe constituted during the communist era. Productions made in two countries, the Soviet Union and in Poland, have been considered. Film examples have been discussed in approximate chronological order, according to the time of production of individual cartoons. By selecting specific movies I do not intend exhaustively to analyse these audio-visual works. I have limited myself to reviewing thematic threads related to the past and, in this context, ideas and tendencies in film music composition.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document