![]() ![]() Let the market and nongovernmental organizations-a new society-take government's place. Leave us alone, the people seemed to say. Those first moments after communism's collapse were filled with antigovernmental passion-with a surge of anger directed against the state and against What we saw was striking, if understandable. ![]() Our aim was to watch and gather data about the transitions and how they progressed. The center's mission, however, was not to advise. These Americans came from a nation where constitutionalism had worked, yet apparently had no clue why. Some of these visitors literally sold constitutions to the emergingĬonstitutional republics the balance had innumerable half-baked ideas about how the new nations should be governed. Over the next five years I spent more hours on airplanes, and more mornings drinking bad coffee, than I care to remember.Įastern and Central Europe were filled with Americans telling former Communists how they should govern. ![]() ![]() Of the emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe. Chicago had a center devoted to the study I had just graduated from law school in 1989, and in 1991 I began teaching at the University of Chicago. Was a new political regime, the beginnings of a new political society.įor constitutionalists (as I am), this was a heady time. Born in its place across Central and Eastern Europe No war or revolution brought communism to its end. A DECADE AGO, IN THE SPRING OF 1989, COMMUNISM IN EUROPE DIED-COLLAPSED, AS a tent would fall if its main post were removed. ![]()
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