Nicolas Hayoz Libri

Many recently democratized countries in Central and Eastern Europe, having escaped from communist rule and planned economies, face pressing problems related to the notions of tax evasion, trust and state capacities. Tax morale in changing political and economic contexts is of crucial importance. This raises a series of questions: What are the conditions under which people agree to pay taxes? Why do people avoid taxes? To what extent do the reasons for tax evasion vary from one region to another? The authors of this volume address these questions and try to assess the progress which has been made in Central and Eastern Europe with regard to improving tax morale through tax reforms and strengthening of extractive state capacities. A main insight is the complex causal relationship between the quality of fiscal institutions and tax morale. In addition, huge differences between countries of the former Soviet Union and central European countries, which are now members of the EU, can be observed not only at the level of democratic governance, of state capacities and the structures of trust, but also with regard to tax morale.

Since May 2004 the European Union borders countries that have not yet accomplished their transformation process or are still struggling for stability. These countries are now the neighbours of the European Union, but are they also candidates for accession? The European Neighbourhood policy is a policy that explicitly excludes the possibility of accession. However, possible future membership is the strongest implicit argument for pushing the new neighbours towards reform. How does the European Union deal with its new neighbours and how do they deal with the European Union? What plans and programs of cooperation exist? What prospects and risks does the new neighbourhood imply? Are there further attempts of cooperation and European integration besides these at the EU-level? The authors try to answer these questions by providing a critical perspective of the EU policy, regional overviews, and country reports from Eastern and South Eastern Europe.

The volume is an attempt to assess the meanings of 1989, in particular the multiple transformation processes and their effects in Eastern Europe. Obviously, the realities of the post-communist transformations have not met the expectations. Were the expectations too high? Did democratic institutions prove incompatible with local cultures? Was their implementation too fast to correspond to a genuine development of democratic culture? Whatever the reasons, the road to democracy has turned out to be steeper and the communist legacy heavier than expected. The authors of this volume seek to comprehend the intricacies of various aspects of the post-communist transition; looking at a broad array of countries that have followed different paths. The studies combine methods of different disciplines. ‘Insider’ perspectives are juxtaposed with external assessments. This comparative and problem based approach brings into focus the ambiguities of the unfinished transformations as well as their broader cultural contexts: the politics of history and the battles for new memory, the re-signification of past and present, and the problematic transformation of homo sovieticus into an autonomous and responsive subject.