The Intangibles of Transition: Attitudinal Obstacles to Change

This chapter explores some of the underlying patterns that have so far shown considerable resilience in the post-communist world and which frequently impact on official reform by generating unintended consequences for change, which impede or distort adopted policies. Essentially, the problematic in this connection concerns unquantifiable and intangible factors, the tacit assumptions by which all societies are governed, but which are often enough excluded from identification by the actors because they are regarded as ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ (Kertzer, 1988).