The Opportunity Structure of Large-Scale Reforms: Good News from Post-Communist Central Europe.

After a decade of, by and large, successful thoroughgoing reforms in several Post-communist countries, it has to be recognized that the results of change contradict certain assumptions commonly held valid in political science. The paper outlines major theoretical premises of what might be summarized as the ?impossibility theorem of holistic reform? and examines the discrepancy between theory-based expectations, on the one hand, and rather successful en-deavors of policy reform and institutional policy over the course of transition. Thorough in-stitutional changes have been implemented through demanding policy programs concerning fiscal stabilization, structural reforms and privatization. Reform governments proved apt to strategic planning as well as policy-oriented learning when they identified windows of oppor-tunity and adapted to the international environment. They secured the feasibility of the re-form packages by choosing a proper way of sequencing as well as creating pre-emptive forms of conflict resolution. In this paper, some empirical findings are confronted with the theory-based propositions. Relative to the discrepancy between theory and practice, suggestions are made concerning the validity of the skeptical theoretical assumptions. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]