| dc.description | This thesis explores the political economy of transformation in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, with a case study of Lithuania. The transformation processes in these countries have been dominated by the ideology of neo-liberalism, which corresponds to the trend observed in the evolution of international development theory and development economics. As such, the conceptual frameworks that have been developed by academics and policy-makers alike have prioritized the role of formal economic and political reforms. While critical voices in the transformation debates have pointed to the importance of other approaches, emphasizing in particular the roles and potential roles of civil societies in the formation/rebuilding of the 'new' countries of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, they too have developed a conceptual framework for understanding transformation in formal and largely institutional terms. In this thesis, I argue that the transformation processes throughout Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union entail not merely economic and political dynamics, but also, and more fundamentally, psychological dynamics. I therefore explore the status of state-society relations, first comparatively using data from all the countries undergoing transformation, and then in greater detail using data from Lithuania. Specifically, I explore the role of trust within the state-society relationships, and I argue that the transformation dynamics have given rise to conditions that promote distrust within that relationship. To the extent that distrust becomes entrenched within the psychology of the community/society, the dynamics of transformation are likely to reproduce themselves indefinitely, and thus generate a transformation 'condition' instead of a transformation 'process'. | en_US |
