BOOK REVIEWS 1185 Martin Myant and Jan Drahokoupil: Transition Economies: Political Economy in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia Hoboken, NJ, 2010: Wiley-Blackwell, 391 pp. The task of describing and analysing two decades of post-communist transition on two continents is far from easy. Martin My- ant and Jan Drahokoupil, nevertheless, un- dertook this job and succeeded. Their book provides a compelling narrative of the changes this vast region has been exposed to on its path to a capitalist market econo- my. The book is structured into six sections. The first one deals with the historical peri- od of state socialism and outlines the re- form proposals from this period. The sec- ond section describes the shock of change from one politico-economic regime to an- other and how transitioning economies struggled through the transformation de- pression to recovery. Various policies and strategies adopted during the course of the transition are discussed in the third section of the book. The fourth section focuses on the state—its capacity, consolidation, eco- nomic role, and, last but not least, its wel- fare function. Developments in firms and businesses, including privatisation, are an- alysed in the fifth section. The last section concludes unconventionally by introduc- ing an original post-communist ‘varieties of capitalism’ category. Several specific points deserve atten- tion. The book discusses transition in the entire region, but two country-cases—the Czech Republic and Russia—are presented in the most detail. Chapter 5 provides a the- oretically and empirically eloquent critique of the Washington Consensus. What is, however, even more original is the informed discussion of the transition’s micro-level in the fifth section; the rise and fall of busi- nesses in the region, the failure of neoclas- sical predictions, and the major drawbacks of privatisation are topics that make fasci- nating reading. And finally, the crucial and emblematic part of the story is the discus- sion of how the Russian oligarchs came to their fortunes. The black market, illegal ac- tivities, and experiences in Komsomol be- fore the fall of the old regime were the start- ing points for wealth accumulation. Once major possessions were acquired in an ob- scure way, the men of means were ready and willing to accept and promote the rule of law, thus cementing inequality and—to adapt Chang’s [2005] phrase—‘kick away the ladder’. This personalised story epito- mises the essence of post-communist tran- sition; a point to which I shall come back at the end. The book can be assessed on three lev- els. On the first level, it provides a factually and empirically anchored account of the transition/transformation from a centrally planned to a market economy. This account is supported by massive statistical evi- dence; the amount of data in this book is indeed overwhelming. It is a book that eve- ry student and teacher of the post-commu- nist transition will be glad to have in his or her library. The book certainly has its high academic value, but the meticulously com- posed texts, tables, figures, boxes, statisti- cal appendix, and indexes make it a very good encyclopaedic course book, too. On the second level, the book seeks to review the whole body of literature that has been published on the subject. The au- thors systematise the sources, confront them with their own findings, and discuss what relevance they have in the light of the presented evidence. This exercise is espe- cially useful for the rather theoretical gen- eralisations and interpretations that were often found to be (partially) out of tune with the post-communist experience. The authors apply a political economy ap- proach and—based on available accounts and reports—try to reconstruct policy- making processes and analyse the role of various actors and institutions. This quali- tative element makes the publication cred-