Introduction: (Re-)constituting the State and Law during the ‘Long Transformation of 1989’ in East Central Europe

0531101 - ÚSD 2021 RIV DE eng J - Journal Article
Kopeček, Michal - Richardson-Little, N.
Introduction: (Re-)constituting the State and Law during the ‘Long Transformation of 1989’ in East Central Europe.
Journal of Modern European History. Roč. 18, č. 3 (2020), s. 275-280. ISSN 1611-8944. E-ISSN 2631-9764
Institutional support: RVO:68378114
Keywords : socialism * democratization * 1989 * liberalism * constitutionalism * law
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)
Impact factor: 0.247, year: 2020
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1611894420924944

The article is an introduction to a journal special issue devoted to long term transformation of state and law in East Central Europe since the 1970s. The contributions situate the revolutionary changes ushered in by the events of 1989 into the longer history of the post-war era. They illuminate how law shaped the nature of authoritarian rule under communist dictatorship, how economic reforms could prompt legal reforms towards strictly authoritarian ends, how constitutional transformations were not the result of the natural unfolding of progress, but strongly ideological liberal projects, and how that resulted in some cases, such as Hungary and Poland, in distinctive ‘counter-constitutional’ projects.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0310021