Is Transition Possible?
Leapfrogging Transition - Technology and Post Communism
Many of the nations of central and east Europe have spent most of their history as components of one empire or another. People in this region are used to be at the receiving end of directives and planning from the center. Though ostensibly fervid nationalists, they are ill at ease with their re-founded and re-found nation-states.
The identity of the denizens of these parts is more regional than national and evolving towards the supra-national. People are from this or that city, or district, or village. And they aspire to become citizens of Europe and the great experiment of the European Union. They are only hesitantly and tentatively Macedonians, or Moldovans, or Belarusians, or Kazakhs, or Yugoslavs.
The likes of the Czechs, the Estonians and the Slovenes are well-suited to become constituents of a larger whole. They make better Europeans than the British, or the Norwegians. They have survived far mightier and more bloated bureaucracies than Brussels'. They are unsurpassed manipulators of officialdom. In the long run, the new members stand to benefit the most from the EU's enlargement and to form its unwaveringly loyal core.
Not yet the full-fledged individualists of the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism - these nations are consensus-seeking team-players. Tutored by centuries of occupation and hardship, they are instinctual multilateralists. They are avid Westerners by persuasion, if not yet in practice, or geography.
Moreover, their belated conversion to the ways of the market is an undisguised blessing.
Though still a promise largely unfulfilled, the countries in transition could now leapfrog whole stages of development by adopting novel technologies and through them the expensive Western research they embody. The East can learn from the West's mistakes and, by avoiding them, achieve a competitive edge.
Technology is a social phenomenon with social implications. It fosters entrepreneurship and social mobility. By allowing the countries in transition to skip massive investments in outdated technologies - the cellular phone, the Internet, cable TV, and the satellite become shortcuts to prosperity.
Poverty is another invaluable advantage.