Institution Building and Decentralization in Formerly Socialist Countries: The Cases of Poland, Hungary, and East Germany

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Abstract
The author aims at a comparative analysis of the institutional transformation, particularly in the central, regional, and local dimensions, of formerly socialist countries by looking at Hungary, Poland, and East Germany. Elaborating the different institutional arrangements with which the three countries came out of the founding period after the collapse of the communist regime, the author attempts to identify the specific constellation of forces and ideas that essentially shaped the institution-building process and its underlying institutionalizing logic in each country. Turning to the subsequent consolidating period the author tries to relate the different rates and paces of the following institutional adaptation and of the ‘reform of the reform’ primarily to the different arenas, issues, and strengths of the party-political competition that has emerged in these countries.