Elite Opportunity in Transitions from State Socialism

2014
Author(s)
Publisher
Social Stratification: Class, Race and Gender in Sociological Perspective
Elite Opportunity in Transitions from State Socialism

There are today more than thirty independent countries that have abandoned state socialism for some form of a market economy, a process that began more than two decades ago. Early research on these developments was preoccupied with testing predictions about the generic impact of market competition on returns to political credentials and connections versus education, experience, and entrepreneurship. Would a market economy erode the privileges of the former political elite, devaluing political status and connections (Nee 1989)? Or would incumbent elites be well positioned to reap disproportionate benefits from their powers of office and connections (Róna-Tas 1994)? Because the first wave of research was about the initial stages of reform, analysts scrutinized survey data for hints about future trends. Debates focused on whether elite advantages were merely a symptom of “partial” reform, destined to shrink as a genuine market economy was more fully established (Bian and Logan 1996; Gerber 2002; Gerber and Hout 1998; Nee 1991, 1996; Walder 2002; Wu and Xie 2003; Xie and Hannum 1996). At one level, the debate appeared to be about who would win and who would lose. More fundamentally, it was about whether there were any predictable outcomes directly connected to the extent to which a market economy had been fully established (Walder 1996).