THE YOUNG and THE NEW versus THE TIRED and THE TRIED
The cult of youth in central Europe was an inevitable outcome of the utter failure of older generations. The allure of the new and the untried often prevailed over the certainty of the tried and failed. Many senior politicians, managers, entrepreneurs and journalists across this region are in their 20's or 30's.
Yet, the inexperienced temerity of the young has often led to voter disillusionment and disenchantment. Many among the young are too identified with the pratfalls of "reform". Age and experience reassert themselves through the ballot boxes - and with them the disingenuous habits of the past. Many of the "old, safe hands" are former communists disingenuously turned socialists turned democrats turned capitalists. As even revolutionaries age, they become territorial and hidebound. Turf wars are likely to intensify rather then recede.
THE TECHNOCRATS / EXPERTS versus THE LOBBYIST-MANAGERS
Communist managers - always the quintessential rent-seekers - were trained to wheedle politicians, lobby the state and cadge for subsidies and bailouts, rather than respond to market signals. As communism imploded, the involvement of the state in the economy - and the resources it commanded - contracted. Multilateral funds are tightly supervised. Communist-era "directors" - their skills made redundant by these developments - were shockingly and abruptly confronted with merciless market realities.
Predictably they flopped and were supplanted by expert managers and technocrats, more attuned to markets and to profits, and committed to competition and other capitalistic tenets. The decrepit, "privatized" assets of the dying system expropriated by the nomenclature were soon acquired by foreign investors, or shut down. The old guard has decisively lost its capital - both pecuniary and political.
Political parties which relied on these cronies for contributions and influence-peddling - are in decline. Those that had the foresight to detach themselves from the venality and dissipation of "the system" are on the ascendance. From Haiderism to Fortuynism and from Lepper to Medgyessy - being an outsider is a distinct political advantage in both west and east alike.
THE BUREAUCRATS versus THE POLITICIANS
The notion of an a-political civil service and its political - though transient - masters is alien to post communist societies. Every appointment in the public sector, down to the most insignificant sinecure, is still politicized. Yet, the economic decline precipitated by the transition to free markets, forced even the most backward political classes to appoint a cadre of young, foreign educated, well-traveled, dynamic, and open minded bureaucrats.
These are no longer a negligible minority. Nor are they bereft of political assets. Their power and ubiquity increase with every jerky change of government. Their public stature, expertise, and contacts with their foreign counterparts threaten the lugubrious and supernumerary class of professional politicians - many of whom are ashen remnants of the communist conflagration. Hence the recent politically-tainted attempts to curb the powers of central bankers in Poland and the Czech Republic.