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Socio-Economic Review Features Book of Balint Magyar and Balint Madlovics

“A fascinating study of post-communist regimes,” Socio-Economic Review writes in its review symposium on the book of our researchers, Balint Magyar and Balint Madlovics.

The book, The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes, which is available in three languages, English, Russian and Hungarian, has been reviewed by four authors.

Oleksandr Fisun (V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University) argues that the volume is “an important contribution to the understanding of the dynamics and trajectories of post-communism,” and “is especially important for the comparative analysis of similar political–economic regimes of the world in general, and causes of their breakdown or persistence under internal and external shocks in particular.”

Andrey Ryabov (Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Moscow) thinks that the book is “a breakthrough in the studies of post-communist transformations,” and “it logically follows that the scientific language designed to understand liberal democracies and the transformation of authoritarianisms into liberal democracies is unsuitable for the study of post-communist regimes.”

Sonja Avlijas (University of Belgrade) writes that the “book’s analysis of mechanisms through which political and economic power interact in these places makes it read like an entertaining political–economic crime novel. This is an important asset, given the book’s substantial volume,” and “ it will be a point of reference that social scientists will be coming back to and exploring for years to come.”

Julia Kiraly (International Business School, Budapest) argues that “we are offered a refined interpretation of one of Magyar’s most important descriptive concepts, the ‘mafia state’. It is clearly detached from day-to-day criminality and attached to the principle of elite interest, appropriation of the state and systemic corruption organized by the state.”

Read the full reviews here.

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