“Homo Europeanus is still waiting to be made”
i
Introduction
The dominant view of the early 1990s was that monolithic post-communist states would
be stripped down, as these countries moved from command to market economies. Such
was the logic of the “shock therapy” recommended to CEE policymakers by western
economists (Gillingham, 2003: 432-433). More recently, scholars have noted that the
post-communist states of central and eastern Europe (CEE) have followed a different
path. Gregyorz Ekiert points out that since 1989 the post-communist Polish state grew in
terms of employment, and in terms of the number of specialised agencies created by the
state. Employment in public administration rose from 69,319 in 1989 to 171,246 in 1998.
At the same time, the Polish welfare state grew, with the share of social expenditures as a
percentage of GDP rising from 17% in 1989 to 32% in 1995. The expansion of the state
was also reflected in the territorial reforms of 1998, which led to the creation of two new
tiers of local government (gminas and powiaty) and a transfer to them of budgetary
powers (Ekiert, 2003:291-320).
However, whilst there may be agreement that, in the post-communist period, CEE states
have been “re-invented” rather than down-sized, there is little consensus on what has
driven this process. Ekiert points to the multiplicity of possible influences, which include
historical legacies and initial conditions, institutional design, the timing and sequencing
of reforms, the quality of new elites and their policies, and the extent of external support
(Ekiert 2003:298). Elsewhere, in writing on the transition process, Ekiert has claimed
that external support only ever serves to facilitate transformation, rather than being its
cause. In his words, “integration [e.g. into the EU, or NATO] is only possible when the
progress of political and economic reforms is already secured” (Ekiert 2003a:106). This
privileging of endogenous transition-related factors over the international dimension is a
common feature of post-communist studies, and reflects a tendency for post-communist
and European studies scholars to talk past each other. Dimitrova describes the problem
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