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What Happened in East European (Political) Economies?

A Balance Sheet for Neoliberal Reform

Johns Hopkins University

Assessing the results of neoliberal reform remains controversial even twenty years after 1989. While neoliberal reform programs appeared to have finally produced rapid economic growth in the 2000s after a long transitional recession, the 2008 global economic meltdown plunged Central and East European countries back into crisis. This article offers a mixed assessment of the results of neoliberal economic reforms and questions the easy compatibility of democracy and radical reform observed during the 1990s. Since the 2000s, both democratic and authoritarian countries in Eastern Europe have experienced rapid growth. Geopolitics, more than reform or democracy, seems to separate the winners from the losers. Successful countries are those that either joined the European Union or developed close political and economic relations with Russia. Those betwixt and between and those suffering internal strife (or both) still have not reached 1989 levels of economic production.

Key Words: neoliberal • economic • reform • Central and Eastern Europe

This version was published on November 1, 2009

East European Politics & Societies, Vol. 23, No. 4, 479-490 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0888325409342109


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