One Way or Multiple Paths: For a Comparative Sociology of East European Capitalism.

The book "Postsocialist Pathways, is written as a critique of neoliberal orthodoxy just at the height of its ascendancy in academic and policy circles. It is argued that neoliberalism was a poor guide to policy because its rejection of diverse types of capitalism threatened to shut the door to social exploration almost immediately after it had been opened. The task was to develop middle-range concepts capable of translating this social experimentation, of understanding its problems and prospects, and of charting diversity in the patterns of interacting political and economic institutions across the countries of East Central Europe. The authors carry out the comparative analysis of capitalism after the fall of socialism. What sets the postsocialist transformations apart is that they created a class of property holders at the same time that they extended political rights to the propertyless. These are the problems of transforming economies-no less for sectors of market volatility and rapid technological change in the developed West than in the inchoate social orders of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.