Dorothee Bohle

holds a chair in social and political change at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute. She was previously a professor of political science at Central European University, Budapest, and from 1995-2001 a research fellow at the Social Science Research Center, Berlin. Prof. Bohle’s research focuses on comparative political economy with a special emphasis on East Central Europe. Herbook Capitalist Diversity on Europe’s Periphery, written together with Béla Greskovits, was awarded the 2013 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research. She was winner of the 2014 CEU Award for Outstanding Research (with Béla Greskovits).

Articles

Staring through the mocking glass

Three misperceptions of the east-west divide since 1989

It was assumed after 1989 that eastern economies would easily take up western-style capitalism without a ‘third option’. Their transformation was far deeper and more brutal than if socialism had collapsed two decades earlier. As a result, the free movement of labour and capital after 2004 produced lopsided developments, and after the turbulence caused by the 2008 financial crisis the EU became unwilling to reign in new member states’ illiberal governments.