Prior administrative experience and a usable past equipped MSzP elites to regenerate

Evidence

Other new Hungarian party representatives had similarly high experience in government and in administration. Of the forty-three representatives of the MSzP in the first freely elected Hungarian parliament, five were former ministers and three were former state secretaries. Given their administrative reform experience as mid-level communist elites (state positions were second in rank to equivalent jobs in the party), these new elites were well positioned to transform the party, and had the skills and experience to do so. Moreover, they had at their disposal the most favorable usable past in the region: a record of the “social contract” between society and a relatively responsive party. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 362

Categorization

• XREF: Horn’s notion of a usable past and favorable social contract directly serves the reader’s question about which successor parties found resources to survive rather than decay. — connects to: Organizational transformation hinged on elite skills and a usable past — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 389; Rapid adaptive change can preserve an underlying fixed identity — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 649; Elite skills accumulate even when reform efforts fail — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 161 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Organizational transformation hinged on elite skills and a usable past #corroborates (0.95) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 389
• Elite skills accumulate even when reform efforts fail #expands (0.82) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 161
• Rapid adaptive change can preserve an underlying fixed identity #qualifies (0.75) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 649
• Elites gain status through effortless inherited cues while others must craft personas #complicates (0.75) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 286