BOOK REVIEW: „Zona urbană. O economie politică a socialismului românesc” (“Urban Zone. A Political Economy of Romanian Socialism”) by Norbert Petrovici. Cluj-Napoca: Tact Publishing House and Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2017, 331 pages

Abstract

With Zona urbană, Norbert Petrovici wrote a necessary, informative and theoretically dense book about the political economy of industrialization and urbanization during Romania’s experience of state socialism. Indeed, this is the first scholarly attempt to unpack the regional (rather than the conventional firm) dynamics of the centrally planned economy in Romania as the ambitions of its political-administrative apparatus experienced a number of domestic limitations (productivity crises; innovation lags etc.) as well as unexpected international shocks (the oil price hikes of the 1970s, the debt crisis of the 1980s) and opportunities (the exceptionalism of the Romanian rapprochement with Washington and key West European States).