Itäisen Saksan järjestelmämuutos : kriittisiä huomioita transitiotutkimuksesta

Authors

• Kimmo Elo

Abstract

Since the collapse of the Soviet-type regimes, there has been a paradigm change in political science towards ”transition studies”. However, there is no single ”transition theory”. Further, the so-called ”transition problem” has an obvious similarity to the old ”stability problem” of political systems: both focus on the establishment of a stable political system. Although developments in Germany’s new Länder are highly interesting and challenging both for the people living there and for researchers, there seems to be – in the very core of this problem – no need for special transition studies. Rather, the change of system in Germany seems to justify a transition-critical approach. The old research tools seem quite sufficient for explaining the developments and for analysing possible outcomes. Therefore, wasting both energy and rare resources on establishing an almighty transition theory seems questionable.