Stuart Shields teaches International Political Economy at the University of Manchester

• 1. Introduction: Contextualizing post-communist transition. 2. Theorizing the international political economy of post-communist transition. 3. Towards passive revolution: The making of modern Eastern Central Europe. 4. The emergence of neoliberal social forces in the struggle for hegemony. 5. From shock therapy to Europeanization: Neoliberalization through depoliticization 6. Counter hegemonic social forces in post communist transition 7. Conclusion: Beyond transition? Beyond the transnational?

This book is shortlisted for the 2013 BISA IPEG Book Prize "This book is a must read for all those people interested to know why Poland is such a success story - a ‘rising star’ according to international financial media - in the current, crisis-ridden European Union. And why Poland, and other East Central European member states, may very well become next in line in the ongoing sovereign debt crisis." - Otto Holman, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands."With his careful historical-structural research, Shields responds in the best of possible ways to stylized transitology and IPE canons. Changing the world may be hard, but neo-Gramscians can most certainly interpret it." - Magnus Ryner, King’s College London, UK."Stuart Shields' new book provides an exemplary model of how to formulate and use a critical IPE approach to understanding significant contemporary developments. Although the subject of his book is the political economy of post-communist transition in central and eastern Europe, the context is the deep-seated transformations currently underway in the global political economy. His book is empirically rich and theoretically insightful. It takes the debate over the future of neoliberal forms of capitalism to a new level, and will be mandatory reading for all scholars interested in advancing a critical understanding of IPE." - Randall Gemain, Carleton University, Canada.