Recruitment openness and internal pluralism determined which communist elites could later transform their parties.

Evidence

Patterns of elite recruitment and advancement had the most direct influence on the cohorts of elites that would progress in the parties and become the new party leadership in 1989. The more the party recruited from the outside, recirculated its elites, and allowed a measure of internal party pluralism, the greater the chances that pragmatic, experienced individuals could ascend in the party. These sorts of elites were most likely to be able to transform the parties in 1989. Ironically, then, the same policies of lax ideological standards and cooptation of the capable that allowed the parties to rule as monopolists also enabled the parties to transform and compete successfully when democracy arrived. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 367

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘same capabilities that sustain a monopoly also enable later reinvention’ inversion speaks directly to the reader’s question of whether threat-hardened organizations can flexibly repurpose after their constitutive enemy vanishes. — connects to: Deep party penetration of society forced reform to originate from within the party. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 196; Hungarian party relaxed ideology and adopted internal pluralism after 1956 — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 313; High initial legitimacy made a communist party repressive and rigid rather than responsive. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 330