Ivan Szelenyi - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Ivan Szelenyi

The Lancet. Global health, Jan 27, 2017

Research on the health outcomes of globalisation and economic transition has yielded conflicting ... more Research on the health outcomes of globalisation and economic transition has yielded conflicting results, partly due to methodological and data limitations. Specifically, the outcomes of changes in foreign investment and state ownership need to be examined using multilevel data, linking macro-effects and micro-effects. We exploited the natural experiment offered by the Hungarian economic transition by means of a multilevel study designed to address these gaps in the scientific literature. For this indirect demographic, retrospective cohort study, we collected multilevel data related to Hungary between 1995 and 2004 from the PrivMort database and other sources at the town, company, and individual level to assess the relation between the dominant company ownership of a town and mortality. We grouped towns into three ownership categories: dominant state, domestic private, and foreign ownership. We did population surveys in these towns to collect data on vital status and other character...

Choice Reviews Online

This engaged and engaging book by New Class analysts Lawrence Peter King and Ivan Szelényi can be... more This engaged and engaging book by New Class analysts Lawrence Peter King and Ivan Szelényi can be read in at least two ways. It is a comprehensive detailed survey of new class theories, Eastern European and Western, since Bakunin coined the phase in the 1870s. In this sense it is a unique combination of history of ideas, placing theories of the new class in historical context, and a sociology of knowledge, explaining why certain theories emerged from various social and political conditions. The book also makes some subtle yet intriguing prescriptive claims. King and Szelényi pursue several interesting ideas of their own-stated "tongue-and-cheek" they claim-as to who the next contender for New Class power will be. The main story is about three waves of New Class theorizing. The first wave, composed largely of anarchist theorists, began in 1870 with Mikhail Bakunin's book The Knoto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution. Proto-theories of the New Class, including Hegel, Saint-Simon and Comte, are dealt with in Chapter 1, laying the groundwork for the eventual disagreement between of Marx and Bakunin during the time of the First International over whether the proletariat or the intellectuals would take power. Other anarchists, the Polish-Ukrainian anarchist Jan W. Machajski for one, soon joined in. King and Szelényi describe well the complex and nuanced views of these theorists. They then point to a second wave beginning roughly in the 1930s and lasting into the 1950s and 1960s. Individual theorists like Georg Lukács, Karl Korsch, and Antonio Gramsci begin the wave, and Radovan Richta, Rudolf Bahro and Konrád and Szelényi come near its end. These theorists tended to focus on the intra-elite struggles taking place between the bureaucratic-technocrats and humanistic intellectuals vying for power in the republics that made up the former Soviet Union. These pitched battles lasted for several decades, eventually ending in 1989. The third wave is composed of knowledge-class theorists such as Alvin Gouldner, Daniel Bell, Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas, Here knowledge and power merge and it is believed that cultural critics will eventually emerge as powerful contenders for class domination.

The Lancet Public Health, 2017

Background Population-level data suggest that economic disruptions in the early 1990s increased w... more Background Population-level data suggest that economic disruptions in the early 1990s increased working-age male mortality in post-Soviet countries. This study uses individual-level data, using an indirect estimation method, to test the hypothesis that fast privatisation increased mortality in Russia. Methods In this retrospective cohort study, we surveyed surviving relatives of individuals who lived through the post-communist transition to retrieve demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of their parents, siblings, and male partners. The survey was done within the framework of the European Research Council (ERC) project PrivMort (The Impact of Privatization on the Mortality Crisis in Eastern Europe). We surveyed relatives in 20 mono-industrial towns in the European part of Russia (ie, the landmass to the west of the Urals). We compared ten fast-privatised and ten slow-privatised towns selected using propensity score matching. In the selected towns, population surveys were done in which respondents provided information about vital status, sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics and health-related behaviours of their parents, two eldest siblings (if eligible), and first husbands or long-term partners. We calculated indirect age-standardised mortality rates in fast and slow privatised towns and then, in multivariate analyses, calculated Poisson proportional incidence rate ratios to estimate the effect of rapid privatisation on all-cause mortality risk. Findings Between November, 2014, and March, 2015, 21 494 households were identified in 20 towns. Overall, 13 932 valid interviews were done (with information collected for 38 339 relatives [21 634 men and 16 705 women]). Fast privatisation was strongly associated with higher working-age male mortality rates both between 1992 and 1998 (age-standardised mortality ratio in men aged 20-69 years in fast vs slow privatised towns: 1•13, SMR 0•83, 95% CI 0•77-0•88 vs 0•73, 0•69-0•77, respectively) and from 1999 to 2006 (1•15, 0•91, 0•86-0•97 vs 0•79, 0•75-0•84). After adjusting for age, marital status, material deprivation history, smoking, drinking and socioeconomic status, workingage men in fast-privatised towns experienced 13% higher mortality than in slow-privatised towns (95% CI 1-26). Interpretation The rapid pace of privatisation was a significant factor in the marked increase in working-age male mortality in post-Soviet Russia. By providing compelling evidence in support of the health benefits of a slower pace of privatisation, this study can assist policy makers in making informed decisions about the speed and scope of government interventions. Funding The European Research Council.

Les Annales de la recherche urbaine, 1988

BMC Public Health, 2016

Background: Previous research using routine data identified rapid mass privatisation as an import... more Background: Previous research using routine data identified rapid mass privatisation as an important driver of mortality crisis following the collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. However, existing studies on the mortality crisis relying on individual level or routine data cannot assess both distal (societal) and proximal (individual) causes of mortality simultaneously. The aim of the PrivMort Project is to overcome these limitations and to investigate the role of societal factors (particularly rapid mass privatisation) and individual-level factors (e.g. alcohol consumption) in the mortality changes in post-communist countries. Methods: The PrivMort conducts large-sample surveys in Russia, Belarus and Hungary. The approach is unique in comparing towns that have undergone rapid privatisation of their key industrial enterprises with those that experienced more gradual forms of privatisation, employing a multi-level retrospective cohort design that combines data on the industrial characteristics of the towns, socioeconomic descriptions of the communities, settlement-level data, individual socioeconomic characteristics, and individuals' health behaviour. It then incorporates data on mortality of different types of relatives of survey respondents, employing a retrospective demographic approach, which enables linkage of historical patterns of mortality to exposures, based on experiences of family members. By May 2016, 63,073 respondents provided information on themselves and 205,607 relatives, of whom 102,971 had died. The settlement-level dataset contains information on 539 settlements and 12,082 enterprises in these settlements in Russia, 96 settlements and 271 enterprises in Belarus, and 52 settlement and 148 enterprises in Hungary. Discussion: In addition to reinforcing existing evidence linking smoking, hazardous drinking and unemployment to mortality, the PrivMort dataset will investigate the variation in transition experiences for individual respondents and their families across settlements characterized by differing contextual factors, including industrial characteristics, simultaneously providing information about how excess mortality is distributed across settlements with various privatization strategies.

Amer J Sociol, 1996

... that socioeconomic change under postsocialism should be understood as a path-dependent transf... more ... that socioeconomic change under postsocialism should be understood as a path-dependent transformation, a ... the conditions of local markets, most of the predictions of market transition theory seem ... Economies In Eastern Europe between 1980 and 1989 and in China after 1985 ...

J Sociol, 1979

Whyalla, a city located almost 400 kilometres north-west of Adelaide, with a population of 34,000... more Whyalla, a city located almost 400 kilometres north-west of Adelaide, with a population of 34,000, is probably one of the largest one-company towns in the world and one of the largest publicly financed urban projects in Australia. In 1939, the largest Australian ...

Intersections, 2015

Most European post-communist societies after 1989-1991 appeared to be on the road to liberal demo... more Most European post-communist societies after 1989-1991 appeared to be on the road to liberal democratic capitalism. However, a quarter of century after the change of the system, at least some of the countries-Russia and Hungary in particular (arguably setting a trend for many other nations)-began to drift sharply away from liberal democracy. We treat liberalism and democracy as two distinct dimensions of "good governance". We interpret liberalism as separation of powers and security of private property rights. We interpret democracy as majoritarian rule. As the regimes shift to illiberalism, secure private property tends to be converted into "fief" (neo-patrimonialism-like during the rule of Yeltsin), or eventually into "benefice" (neo-prebendalism, this turn happened with the rise of Putin to power). While the principle of majoritarian rule is retained, it is also "managed". But as long as democratic institutions operate, as long as leaders are elected to office the ruling elites of illiberal democracies need a legitimating ideology which can appeal to a broader electorate. We call this post-communist traditionalist/neoconservative ideology. Post-communist traditionalism/neoconservatism emphasizes the value of patriotism, religion and traditional family values much like some of the socially conservative republicans in the USA do. Keywords: post-communist capitalism, managed and illiberal democracy, transition from communism to capitalism, neo-patrimonial and neo-prebendal forms of ownership, traditionalism/neo-conservatism.

Inequality and Social Structures During the Transition, 2003

Review of Sociology, Mar 14, 2015

This paper is based on data from the survey "Poverty, ethnicity and gender in transitional societ... more This paper is based on data from the survey "Poverty, ethnicity and gender in transitional societies" carried on in 2000 in six Central and East European countries. The paper focuses on three of them (Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania) with a significant Roma minority. The first part presents the recollection of Roma and non-Roma about their poverty experience before 1989, and the second part reviews evidence about the impact of the changes. The situation of the majority of both groups seems to have deteriorated but decrease is much stronger in case of the Roma. The third section offers an overview of cross-national and inter-ethnic differences in living standards in the year 2000. In a cross-national perspective both groups seem to fare better in Hungary than in the other two "neo-patrimonial" systems, but the difference between the Roma and the non-Roma is everywhere significant. The fourth section assesses how various new capitalist countries deal with the challenge of new poverty and under what circumstances-if ever-can one meaningfully apply the concept of the "underclass".