The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes

"Magyar's new book, co-authored with Bálint Madlovics, is The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes: A Conceptual Framework. It contains, among other insights, a critique of how we usually talk about and measure corruption. Magyar and Madlovics write that the problem with measurements used by, say, Transparency International, which produces an annual index of perceived corruption, is that the index assumes that corruption represents a departure from a norm: 'They understand the state by its formal identity: as dominantly an institution of the public good, with some subordinates who deviate from that purpose and abuse their position by requesting or accepting bribes and appointing cronies without a legitimate basis.' This view of corruption fails when confronted with a government to which corruption is central, or in which corruption is not voluntary but coercive—where the corrupt relationship is forced by one partner upon the other."—New Yorker

"This book, over 800 pages, is one of few serious attempts to offer a systematic and massive 'anatomy', as Magyar and Madlovics rightly call it, of all the possible variations between the oversimplistic dualist opposition of communist dictatorship and liberal democracy. A key feature of this book is that it is structured in a way that can be easily integrated into teaching. The book comes with its own dedicated website offering extensive online resources including a draft seminar that can be adopted for a course on post-communist regimes, and a 3D interactive model of post-communist regime trajectories that can be studied using desktop software and a mobile app. A large number of topologies, analytical models, quotes of important ideas clarifying tables and figures facilitate a variety of teaching methods in classroom settings."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09668136.2021.1951024—Chi Zhang

"This thought-provoking and comprehensive volume comes at a propitious time. Thirty years following the Soviet Union's collapse, it asks fundamental questions about the nature of the post-communist transition, the quality of governance in the post-Soviet world (and beyond), and the sources of regime variation. With the benefit of hindsight, Bálint Magyar and Bálint Madlovics reflect on an extensive literature in a context of some abject democratic failure and increasingly consolidated corrupt networks in select countries, alongside more positive evelopments, including, variously, sustained economic growth (including in China—a perhaps surprising case for inclusion in the study) and/or increased freedoms in particular regions. For such an extensive investigation, the authors do an admirable job of sustaining the argument. Like all great studies, this one tries to answer some key questions while also provoking pressing new ones."—Rachel A. Epstein, The Russian Review

"I would advise any scholar entering this field to begin by reading this book, and diving into any of the particular areas they illuminate so powerfully—stubborn structures, the state, actors, politics, economy, society, corruption, regimes, and others. Indeed, the next time I teach about (de)democratizations, this volume's diagrams of regime transformations for twelve postcommunist countries will supplement the diagrams Charles Tilly's Democracy (2007) offers. If I headed a foundation I would assemble for six months those dedicated to figuring how power works in culture and society, within the postcommunist world and beyond it, to engage this volume and these scholars."—Michael D. Kennedy, Slavic Review

"Reading this book feels like having the curtains opened, letting the bright light come in. Everything becomes visible and clear. The experience of living in mushy political reality gives way to unsparing, exact analysis. What comes into focus may not be pretty, but having it illuminated, ordered, and explained is incomparable."—Masha Gessen

"This ambitious book provides not only a better vocabulary, but a whole new grammar for describing the political regimes that emerged in communism's wake. Exposing how conventional frameworks continually mislead, Magyar and Madlovics demonstrate the potential for innovative theory to yield piercing new insights into the reality of politics in the postcommunist world and, indeed, beyond."—Henry Hale

"The authors adopt a structuralist approach, driven by language. They tackle complexity and multidimensionality of post-communist regimes not simply by cataloguing existing concepts but by relating them to each other and constructing a broader, overarching framework: a new language for post-communist regimes. () The conceptual, methodological and semantical innovations will undoubtedly produce an abundance of reactions among scholars, students and readers yearning for orientation in the complex world of post-communist realities."—Alena Ledeneva

"Many social scientists and historians have been puzzled by what is now often called a 'global democratic recession'. This conceptually highly innovative analysis provides terms and theories that are crucial for making sense of our historical moment."—Jan-Werner Mueller

"I have been in the business of 'varieties of post-communist countries' since the early 1990s. Nevertheless this book is better and more important than anything I have done during the past 30 years in two important respects: 1) it carries a far greater number of countries with the most impressive empirical knowledge of their changes of the past decades; 2) it has a far more sophisticated theoretical framework than anything I could develop."—Iván Szelényi