Determinants of political stability: explanation of the process of institutional change in post-communist countries (1990-2020)

This article examines the institutional changes in 22 post-communist countries during the 1990-2020 period. The objective of the study was to find out why some countries achieved democracy while others failed to establish or strengthen democratic institutions, and what factors influenced the political stability of post-communist countries. During the study, available statistical information on the functioning of the main institutions was collected and processed. The analysis shows that the most significant institutional changes were observed among the non-democratic countries and those that fell into the category of hybrid political regimes. The correction of the initially chosen form of government is evidence in support of the theory of endogenous change, indicating “path-dependency”. The influence of endogenous factors determines the quality of democratic change and the level of political stability in post-communist countries. Democratic changes in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were associated with a commitment to rapid reform in the early stages, and Euro-Atlantic integration only supported the democratic quality of the institutions. The institutional framework of the countries, that embarked on the path of European integration, was relatively stable during the period under the study, and did not deal with changes in the system of power distribution. While the countries of the former Soviet Union most often resorted to changes in the primary law of the country, and these changes were related to the redistribution of powers between the branches of power and the extension of the time in the office of the President. In addition to the overall level of democratization of the country, the level of emancipatory values and the weight of presidential power have the greatest impact on political stability.

Entangled Views of Exogenous and Endogenous Change

In keeping with identifying dialectics as one of four model of change, many of the chapters of this handbook identify various dualities as important to understanding organizational change. This chapter focuses particularly on the duality of exogenous and endogenous change (or external and internal change) and considers the various ways in which the two are entangled. It reflects on seven chapters of the handbook that provide a range of perspectives on the issue, and separates the range of orientations into three categories: chapters that take the difference between internal and external as an ontological fact and explore how separable entities interact with one another; chapters in which the difference between internal and external is an analytical process (and which are apparently agnostic about ontological differences); and chapters that reject an ontological distinction between exogenous and endogenous and explore the entangled nature of exogenous and endogenous within a single ontology.

La Problématique

An immersion in academic anthropology provides its own culture shocks. Anthropologists have long studied and celebrated indigenous ways of life, diversity, and endogenous change. Yet when asked how to apply that knowledge to make the world better, the question itself becomes the problematic. Whose knowledge, whose idea of better, and who exactly is doing the applying? At the same time, many development practitioners and economists wave away culture as beyond their purview and, anyway, not scientific. If culture is important for many practical reasons and people have been studying culture for many years in many ways, why have the practical applications been so meager and difficult?

On the selection of endogenous and exogenous signals

Alerting is one of the three components of attention which involves the eliciting and maintenance of arousal. A seminal study by Posner et al. (Posner MI, Klein R, Summers J, Buggie S. 1973 Mem. Cognit. 1 , 2–12 ( doi:10.3758/BF03198062 )) focused on how changing the interval between an alerting signal and a target would impact the speed and accuracy of responding. Participants indicated whether targets were presented on the left or right side of the fixation point. Auditory warning signals were played at various intervals prior to the target to alert participants and prepare them to make a response. Reaction times revealed a robust, U-shaped, preparation function. Importantly, a clear speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) was observed. In the current experiment, we replicated the methodological components of this seminal study while implementing a novel auditory warning signal (Lawrence MA, Klein RM. 2013 J. Exp. Psychol. General 142 , 560 ( doi:10.1037/a0029023 )) that was either purely endogenous (change in quality without a change in intensity; analogous to isoluminant colour change in vision) or a combination of endogenous and exogenous (change in both quality and intensity). We expected to replicate the U-shaped preparation function and SAT observed by Posner and colleagues. Based on Lawrence and Klein's findings we also expected the SAT to be more robust with the intense signal in comparison to the isointense signal.

Legitimacy Claims and Pre-Crisis Transatlantic Alignment

Chapter 4 focuses on soft law’s second-order consequences for rising regulatory powers. One of the key puzzles in the international regulation of finance is the persistence of cooperation even as the number of economic great powers increases. The emergence of the European Union as a financial rule-maker in the late 1990s and early 2000s, roughly on par with the United States, resulted in a transatlantic alignment of regulatory approaches, not conflict over the fundamentals. This chapter demonstrates how soft law was used by reform-minded factions in Europe to legitimize their claims and tip in their favor political contests over the modernization of internal regulation. International soft law served as a mechanism of endogenous change, helping to foster a great power preference alignment along market-friendly paths and setting the stage for the financial crisis.

Endogenous change: on cooperation and water availability in two ancient societies

We propose and test the theory of endogenous change in societal institutions based on historical reconstructions of two ancient civilizations, the Indus and Hohokam, in two water-scarce basins, the Indus Basin in the Indian subcontinent and the lower Colorado Basin in the southwestern United States. In our reconstructions, institutions are approximated by the scale of "cooperation", be it in the form of the extent of trade, sophisticated irrigation networks, a central state or a loosely held state with a common cultural identity. We study changes in institutions brought about by changes in factors like rainfall, population density, and land-use-induced water resource availability, in a proximate manner. These factors either change naturally or are changed by humans; in either case we contend that the changes affect the stability of cooperative structures over time. We relate the quantitative dimensions of water access by ancient populations to the co-evolution of water access and the socioeconomic and sociopolitical organizations. In doing so, we do not claim that water manipulation was the single most significant factor in stimulating social development and complexity – this would be highly reductionist. Nonetheless, we provide a discussion with the aim to enhance our understanding of the complexity of coupled human–hydrological systems. We find that scarcity triggered more complex cooperative arrangements in both Indus and Hohokam societies.