From Reform and Transition to ‘Coloured Revolutions’

Peaceful revolutions known as ‘coloured revolutions’ have overthrown the previous paradigm known as ‘transition’: rapid privatization and democratization reforms, to move post-socialist societies to a Western model of governance. In a number of post-Soviet countries, transition did not lead to the promised results. To understand this failure, the economic side of transition – mass privatization – should be contrasted with the political side – democratization and political pluralism. The coloured revolutions reflected the rehabilitation of political change after a decade of change driven by economic priorities. Yet the recent wave of revolutions, in their turn, are led under neo-liberal banners, promising more privatization, restructuring, and cutting of social spending, an ideology that seems anachronistic when set against the needs of our times.