Social Sciences and Political Change - Promoting Innovative Research in Post-Socialist Countries

The Research Support Scheme (RSS) operated for over a decade as a programme to help researchers from Central and Eastern Europe and from Central Asia. With the conclusion of the programme in 2002 the opportunity presented itself to take stock and reflect on how academic research had evolved in the immediate post-socialist period. In this book, former RSS grantees have been invited to discuss what they see as the main changes and challenges that emerged in their fields during the process of social and economic transformation.
Some basic issues like the de-ideologisation of research, the impact of the Western influx of ideas on particular research fields, and the question of "importing" new ideas and policies from abroad are discussed. Selected researchers present the outcome of their own work as examples of the progress and changes which took place during the last decade of the century. The result is a look at the East-West dialogue on ideas that is emerging, as well as a discussion on where academic research is heading in the future.
This book proposes a panoramic view of the trends in thought and research going on today in the region related to some important fields of social sciences.