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Buying and Selling the Istrian Goat: Istrian Regionalism, Croatian Nationalism, and EUEnlargement. By John Ashbrook. Regionalism and Federalism, no. 13. Brussels: RLE. Peter Lang, 2008. 157 pp. Notes. $49.95, paper.

Horak acknowledges that postcommunist changes have been shaped by the interplay between the legacies of the past and postcommunist institutional transformations. Yet his main attention is devoted to mechanisms through which new institutions and practices were established. Institutional elements of the new political system could not change at once. Postcommunist transformations are necessarily multistage processes; and the sequence of reforms matters. Most important, the substance of early reforms influences transformation trajectories and longer-term political outcomes. Horak argues that local government performance during the 1990s was significantly shaped by decisions that local political leaders made during the first years after the fall of communism. In the early 1990s, political leaders faced a myriad of critical decision points. They had an unprecedented opportunity to shape future outcomes by pursuing strategic reforms. At the same time, the complexity of social change, the difficulty of assessing long-term outcomes, and the incoherence and fluidity of the institutional context made the pursuit of strategic reforms based on long-term views difficult and unattractive. Furthermore, opportunities for immediate material gains emerged as an alternative to defending broader and longer-term public interests. These conditions discouraged political leaders from pursuing strategic reforms and encouraged the privileging of simple short-term solutions. Thus at the very moment that political leaders could have had maximum influence over future outcomes, they were discouraged from making the necessary strategic long-term choices. The initial period of rapid and radical reform was decisive for further developments. Early decisions limited the scope of choice for later decisions. Institutional forms and political practices introduced early on tended to resist the considerable forces of inertia. Although the role of communist legacies is generally acknowledged, Horak emphasizes the new postcommunist legacies and the path dependencies formed in the initial phase of transition. The question is whether suboptimal outcomes of postcommunist transformation processes could have been avoided. Horak argues that even shock therapy could not change the social and political system at once. There are limits to how fast things can proceed during complex societal transformations. This book presents a very precise analysis driven by the desire to understand all the peculiarities of postcommunist transformations. At the same time, it is highly conceptually innovative, pointing to the new path dependencies formed during the first years of transition and to the structural limits they pose on the development of former communist societies. Unfortunately, the analysis ends in 2000 and cannot thus reflect the major institutional and political changes associated with the accession to the European Union. Nevertheless, the book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the transition from communism to capitalism.