Tutors and pupils: International organizations, Central European elites, and Western models

In the past decade, political elites in Central and Eastern Europe have oft en sought to imitate Western organizational and institutional models, while organizations like the EU and NATO have often acted as "institutional tuto rs" in the region. Using evidence from Hungary and the Czech Republic, this paper demonstrates why imitating Western structures has been both administ ratively Expedient and useful in building political coalitions. It also str esses that the short-term benefits of doing so are followed by longer-term costs. The paper answers four questions: How have certain models been held tip to CEE elites? Why might some such models be targets for elites to imit ate? How does such imitation occur? And what results from imitation? Contra ry to expectations that institutional modeling would be merely technocratic and used only early in the transformation, the paper's threefold heuristic of templates, thresholds, and adjustments shows that the process is both p olitically contentious and sustained.