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Follow Up on Post-Com Texts

- September 23, 2010

A while ago I posted a “request for a good text for a post-communist politics”:https://themonkeycage.org/2010/08/good_comprehensive_book_on_eas.html course from Monkey Cage Slovakia expert “Kevin-Deegan Krause”:http://www.pozorblog.com/. For those who are interested, here’s what he decided:

bq. Thanks to all of the suggestions I ended up choosing to return to an old standby on the historical questions–Rothschild and Wingfield’s Return to Diversity, 1999 edition (available inexpensively “online here”:http://product.half.ebay.com/Return-to-Diversity_W0QQtgZinfoQQprZ64021)–and for more contemporary questions choosing a Wolchik and Curry’s “Central and East European Politics: From Communism To Democracy”:http://www.amazon.com/Central-East-European-Politics-Communism/dp/0742540685.

Kevin also wanted to throw out this follow up question:

bq. It’s been four years since I’ve taught the Central and Eastern European Politics course and I’d love to know from the audience two things: 1) for the benefit of my students what are the best articles, papers or websites that have appeared in the past 5 years–either academic or popular press–that would help my students understand gain perspective on the region and recent developments therein, and 2) for my sake as I teach my students, what are the most interesting, most provocative academic works that would offer innovative frameworks for understanding the region and teaching about it. What recent writing about the region has put into words what you have always thought, or has inspired you to return to old issues with a fresh eye?

I’ll start off the discussion by throwing out G. Pop-Eleches’ 2010 _World Politics_ article on “Protest Voting”:http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7332264, which I think fits nicely into Kevin’s criteria of “put into words what you have always thought”. I expect this will be the opening salvo of a series of article trying to make sense of why incumbents lose so often in post-communist elections (see as well A. Roberts’ 2008 _Electoral Studies_ article on “Hyperaccountability”:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9P-4S92XH3-1&_user=142623&_coverDate=09%2F30%2F2008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1471785456&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000000333&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=142623&md5=3790690fa8cb8e471bc453abb250cfcd&searchtype=a).