Abstract :
The rule of law has been studied by political philosophy, law, political science, sociology
and economics. The representatives of these social sciences have used
various approaches (including various mixtures of conceptual and empirical analyses),
for the study of this important problem. This also applies to research on
post-socialist transformation which provided a unique and powerful natural experiment
for students of institutions. In this paper I attempt to place the rule of
law within a broader context, that of institutional change after socialism. This is
why I start with a stylized description of this system and of what has happened to
it after the collapse of socialism in the former Soviet bloc (second section). Then
I try to link institutional change after socialism to the rule of law (third section).
This requires a minimal clarification of this concept. In the fourth section, I discuss
the rule of law after socialism in the light of empirical studies, mainly by
economists. The final section sums up the main findings: changes in the legal
framework take less time than institutional changes, including the transformation
of the enforcement apparatus. As a result, widespread implementation gaps have
emerged even in the most reformed transition countries.
