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The study of (post)socialism has always had a complicated relationship with comparative education. Tracing the changing emphases of research on (post)socialism during and after the Cold War, this chapter highlights how (post)socialist studies moved from being highly politicized during the Cold War, to becoming subsumed by convergence and modernization theories after the collapse of the socialist bloc, to reemerging as a part of broader “post” philosophies reflecting the uncertainties and contradictions of social life. This chapter proposes to treat post-socialism not only as a geographic area, but also as a conceptual category that allows us to engage in theorizing divergence, difference, and uncertainty in the context of globalization. It is a space from which we can further complicate (not clarify) our understanding of ongoing reconfigurations of educational spaces in a global context, and ultimately challenge the evolutionary scheme of thought and established concepts of Western modernity. For comparative education and social theory more broadly, post-socialism can thus become a challenge (or an agenda) for future debates – whether theoretical or methodological – about global processes and their multiple effects on education and societies today, in the past, and in the future.

This chapter examines the changing state–university–student relationships in post/socialist China since the late 1980s. We begin with an introduction to four salient themes in scholarship on Chinese post/socialism that are highly relevant to higher education: globalization, gradualism, civic society, and a critique of holism. These themes help us explain interrelated educational trends that affect the state–university–student relationship: the globalization, “massification,” and stratification of higher education; the redefined role of the state in university governance and management; higher education marketization and privatization; and the quest for meaning and (e)quality in and through higher education. Our general argument is that during the “socialist” period the main relationship central to higher learning was between the state and students. Universities were agents of the state; from a legal point of view, indeed, universities did not have an independent status from the state. In the “post-socialist” era the university–student relationship has become more significant. We examine this reconfiguration through two case studies, one on the development of college student grievance and rights consciousness, and the other on reforms in higher education student services administration. When looked at from the point of view of the state, we see that appropriation and implementation of policies and regulations shaping student rights and services are in partial contradiction with state policies to accelerate economic growth and bolster party authority. From the point of view of universities, we see institutions grappling with how to deliver on forward-looking structures and actions while navigating between the state's policy mandates and growing expectations and demands of its student and business stakeholders. From the point of view of students, we see how constrained agency, uncertainty, and the power of the credential motivates social praxis. At all levels of the state–institution–student relationship actors are employing a kind of pragmatic improvisation (one of the salient features of post/socialism) captured by the well-known Chinese proverb “groping for stones to cross the river.” This saying is an apt metaphor for the tentative searching by state, institution, and individual for a safe foothold in the post/socialist world.

Purpose – In this chapter, we examine individual- and country-level differences in 4 work attitudes (work centrality, work commitment, job satisfaction, and autonomy) among 31 European countries in 1999 using a multilevel framework.

Design/methodology/approach – We utilize the 1999/2000 European Values Study to investigate individual- and country-level determinants of work values and job rewards. Our analysis contains 17 traditionally capitalist and 14 post-socialist countries. At the country level, we consider 11 institutional processes as possible explanations for variations in work values and job rewards: post-socialist status, continuous democracy, contentious politics, state capacity, socialist ideology, union density, economic integration, service employment, income inequality, linguistic heterogeneity, and population density.

Findings – We find that traditionally capitalist countries tend to score lower on work values and higher on job rewards than post-socialist countries. Our analyses show that each of the 11 institutional processes, especially continuous democracy and economic integration, has statistically significant effects on the four dependent variables.

Research limitations/implications – Of the 44 hypotheses we made, 23 were supported by statistically significant effects in the predicted direction, 16 were not significant, and 5 were statistically significant in a direction unanticipated by our theory. We discuss possible reasons for the results that did not conform to our expectations.

Originality/value – The study is one of the most comprehensive multination studies of work values and job rewards in that it examines the impact of 11 institutional processes on four different work attitudes among 31 European countries. It is the only study of this scope to rigorously examine the differences between traditionally capitalist and post-socialist countries.

The chapter identifies and analyzes scholarly discourses that framed understanding of change and directed further reforms in post-socialist education over the past two decades. It discusses the origins of these discourses, their theoretical underpinnings, evolution, and cultural biases. The analysis of scholarly texts published on post-socialist education draws on methods of discourse analysis and utilizes the concept of sensemaking and the lens of translation to deconstruct how educational change is framed. Most of the identified discourses – restoration, importation, revolution and evolution, transformation and innovation, crisis and survival, glocalization, educational borrowing, system convergence, education for social transformation – originated outside either education or the post-socialist region itself in transitology studies, dependency theory, world system theory, and social reproduction theory. The resultant discourses carried over or challenged the underlying theoretical assumptions, exposed cultural sensitivity, or otherized the post-socialist region. The chapter identifies emerging scholarship that deconstructs framing of the same post-socialist educational phenomena. These emerging approaches reflect local and national searches for identity rather than global agendas. Contrary to the earlier prediction that with the end of the cold war, economic, political, and social institutions would converge into one monolithic world order, the chapter argues that the contemporary world today has come to display diversity, particularism, multiple voices, and the beginning of new histories. This study identifies emerging lines of research that look into the construction of meanings and expose cultural biases, while offering original conceptualization of two decades of scholarship on post-socialist educational change.

This chapter offers a survey of education development in the Baltic region and the dynamics of global forces in the three Baltic states’ contexts. First, a brief overview of the incoming new-liberal global trend that impacted the education in the Post-Socialist European region will be provided, followed by a discussion of similarities and differences in the development of education in Baltic states as co-shaped by contextual contours of the post-socialist region at whole. It shows that the contextual social and cultural realities of Estonia-Latvia-Lithuania not only have a powerful mediating role on the impact of global forces but are in their own right an agency in shaping the education response of Post-socialist societies of this region. Second, the knowledge of the interrelationship between education and societal cultural contexts in the Baltic region will be explained, stressing the lack of research on informal settlements or the informal economy and its intersection with education. The International Comparative Education research agenda will not only be of significance for the Baltic states but to the entire world. Many aspects of the contextual architecture of the region are becoming increasingly evident world-wide tending the neo-liberalism in education as distinct from liberalism insofar as it does not advocate market-economic policy but instead is highly constructivist and approve a strong state to bring reforms in every aspect of society transforming the education and teaching labor market.

In this chapter, we advance an understanding of entrepreneurial resourcefulness in relation to context by focusing on challenging and sometimes outright hostile environments and the way they shape, and are shaped by, entrepreneurial resourcefulness. Drawing on selective evidence from several projects in post-socialist countries in both Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia and other published research covering these countries, we argue for contextualized conceptualizations of resourcefulness. More specifically we emphasize that temporal, historical, socio-spatial, and institutional contexts are antecedents and boundaries for entrepreneurial behavior, while at the same time allowing for human agency. This is visible in individuals’ actions to negotiate, reenact, and cross these boundaries, and as a result, intentionally or inadvertently contributing to changing contexts. We suggest that resourcefulness is a dynamic concept encompassing multiple practices, which change over time, and it results from a close interplay of multiple contexts with entrepreneurial behavior. We also propose that from a theoretical point of view, resourcefulness not only needs to be contextualized, but it also needs to be explored together with its contextual outcomes – the value it creates and adds at different levels of society.

This chapter examines Cuba's unique experience of socialism/post-socialism in the two decades since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Cuban case of post-socialist transformation is extremely instructive, both for what is anomalous about Cuban post-socialism and for what is similar to other post-socialist contexts. Cuba's experience raises a set of questions regarding how social science and education researchers should conceptualize “transformation” and it also suggests that considerable attention to be paid to the ways that change and transformation are represented and contested in the local political discourse. Cuba's unique position vis-à-vis neoliberal and state socialist modes of governance puts lie to any claims that there are any necessary and predetermined “paths” of post-socialist political and economic transition. Cuban education has changed over the past two decades in connection with regime legitimation strategies, projects of national self-determination, and global economic pressures – a combination of interests, actors, and institutions that suggests that it is the particular intersections and trajectories of both “local” and “global” transformations that demand analytic attention in post-socialist, as well as in any other, political, cultural, and social setting.

This chapter analyzes the building of environmental governance in two post-socialist countries of Southeastern Europe, Albania, and Croatia, with a focus on forest policy reforms. After the end of the socialist era, the countries have rapidly adopted new policies and legislation directed at sustainable forest management. The main driver of policy reform is the European and international influence. Yet the developments in the countries cannot be adequately described as a mere adoption of Western-style methods and solutions, as suggested in arguments on the catch-up development of transition states. The capacities needed in post-socialist countries to deal with environmental issues differ from those in industrial societies. On the contrary, there is no essentialistic link between environmental problems and solutions to these problems in post-socialist countries. The outline of the policy reforms in Croatia and Albania reveals very different approaches to sustainable forest management and different paths in the post-socialist transition process. It is argued that capacity development in forestry in transition states needs to be based on country-specific socio-political, economic, and cultural features to be successful.

This chapter focuses on meanings of decentralization in the context of post-socialist reforms in Romania. The main purpose is to examine the circulation of decentralization reform in what is generally considered to be a highly centralized country. Drawing on policy analysis and in-depth interviews and focus groups with teachers and school administrators, the findings reveal contrasting perspectives and hybridized ideas about the meanings of decentralization reforms in Romania. These reforms should be seen in the context of larger trends toward marketization (McGinn & Welsh, 1999). With the emergence of discourses on modernization and a “return to Europe,” Romanian political culture has offered a complementary, legitimizing base to the decentralizing reform of administration and education. In line with the recent history of these reforms, most interview participants view 1998 as the peak of real “institutional autonomy,” followed by a decline or even a slow recentralization in subsequent years. They also refer to “self-assigned” or “reclaimed” autonomy, which every teacher can adopt “in their own class, once the doors are closed.” Significantly, most agree that the latter type is essentially the same as in the communist period, prior to the 1989 political changes. We will thus investigate the contrasting perspectives expressed by scholars, teachers, and in policy documents, as well as the hybridized ideas which together result in various visions of reform. The analysis of post-socialist changes, both as real and imagined processes, leads us to conclude that the Romanian education transition should be seen as a complex process which has followed unanticipated trajectories and has led to multiple destinations (Silova, 2009).

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to scrutinize the apparent alliance between international and local disability rights movements by contextualizing the process in which the disability rights model is being diffused globally. It seeks to critically examine the transplantation and promotion of the international disability rights movement's rights-based model in China.

Approach: This chapter draws from 18 in-depth interviews with local and international disability rights activists through multisite ethnographic fieldwork in China in 2019.

Findings: This chapter finds that despite opening up spaces for resistance and emancipation locally, the international disability rights movement nevertheless constitutes what I call an enclave of rights that insulates the international rights model from the political, social, and economic realities on the ground. In the case of China, the authoritarian politics that define the relationship between the state and civil society, as well as the economic vulnerability of people with disabilities in the post-socialist market economy, limit, if not invalidate, the rights model espoused by the international disability rights movement.

Implications: The findings of this chapter challenge and complicate the current scholarship of the transnational disability rights movement beyond its normative claims of emancipation. They also explore potential spaces and direction for building a new transnational alliance that takes into account the local experience of disability in a rapidly globalized world.