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Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2011

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Summary

My initial interest in Poland was stimulated by the events that took place on the Baltic Coast during December 1970. At that time the fruits of several research projects on East European politics were just coming into print. As the discipline of Comparative Communist Politics was of relatively recent origin and begged for empirical investigations, these studies helped to fill the gap and draw attention to the very different identities of East European states and the contrasts between them and the USSR.

It was my own concern for that twilight area between political and economic science that led to the subject of a Ph.D. thesis on which this book was initially based. I felt that the analysis of the process of economic reform in state-socialist societies is never satisfactorily treated by either discipline alone. On the one hand the economist, while able to elicit the goals of economic policy and their achievement, makes a trite distinction between economic policy and reform and dismisses as exogenous to his analysis the recruitment of management and workforce and the articulation of their interests through a Marxist–Leninist party. On the other hand, the political scientist, while mindful of the interaction between industrial management, the working class and the Party, tends to reduce economic policy and reform to the simplistic dimensions of centralisation versus decentralisation, plan versus market and production versus consumption.

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The Socialist Corporation and Technocratic Power
The Polish United Workers' Party, Industrial Organisation and Workforce Control 1958–80
, pp. ix - x
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1982

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  • Preface
  • Jean Woodall
  • Book: The Socialist Corporation and Technocratic Power
  • Online publication: 07 October 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511895807.001
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  • Preface
  • Jean Woodall
  • Book: The Socialist Corporation and Technocratic Power
  • Online publication: 07 October 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511895807.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • Jean Woodall
  • Book: The Socialist Corporation and Technocratic Power
  • Online publication: 07 October 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511895807.001
Available formats
×