Policy-reform experience and prior opposition negotiations gave elites portable skills later rewarded in democracy.

Evidence

The innovation and implementation of public policies produced further elite resources. Policy innovation reinforced the importance of cohesion and streamlining, without which ideas could neither be disseminated nor implemented. Implementing policy reforms gave the elites skill in overcoming internal opposition, and gave them the rhetorical tools and experience in convincing opponents and building coalitions. Even if these reforms did not prevent the economic slide or the popular resentment against the parties’ political monopoly, they gave the mid-level elites valuable experience in building internal consensus, publicly defending policy, persuading a reluctant society, and overcoming administrative hurdles. Since the economies of all these countries experienced their biggest downturn in the 1980s, the pressures for policy reform were then at their greatest. Those elites who withstood these imperatives to restructure would also resist the pressures to transform themselves in 1989. Negotiation with the opposition and society enabled the party elites to respond to public concerns and emphasized building broad public coalitions. The less adversarial this relationship, the more widely accepted the communist successor parties after 1989. Thus, these recent experiences in administration and politicking were readily portable to the new institutional setting after 1989. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 368

Categorization

• XREF: These organizational ‘practices as transferable skills’ against post-1989 acceptance parallel the reader’s communist-successor research and echo Milgrom/Roberts capability arguments about institutions bequeathing skills across regime change. — connects to: Skills that sustained authoritarian rule can be repurposed for democratic success afterward — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 122; Elite skills accumulate even when reform efforts fail — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 161; Negotiating experience gave Polish party cadres portable skills ahead of 1989. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 287 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Authoritarian party organizations paradoxically produced skilled elites that won democratic competition #corroborates (0.90) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 139
• Elite skills and party cohesion drive successful postcommunist transformation. #expands (0.85) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 72
• Suppressing democracy trained communist elites in the skills democratic competition later needed #expands (0.85) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 64
• Elite skill and pragmatism, not ideology, drove successful party transformation. #qualifies (0.80)