Mainstream theories of property rights formation focus on the self-interested, rationally calculated pursuit of wealth and power as the motivations behind the development of new ownership arrangements. Absent from these theories are the ideological and cognitive components in the creation of property rights systems. This lacuna is extremely problematic when considering the post-communist privatization experience in which ideas and beliefs have profoundly influenced the particular form that new property institutions have taken. This dissertation reexamines the determinants of property rights transformation and highlights the influence of ideas on the reformulation of ownership regimes in Eastern Europe through a detailed analysis of the mass privatization experiences in Russia and the Czech Republic. I argue that the beliefs held by policy makers and key groups, such as those regarding the efficacy of state ownership, the nation\u27s place in a post-Cold War international community, as well as attitudes toward the past communist regime determined the choice of transformative mechanisms and post-communist patterns of ownership. In analyzing post-communist property rights reform, my dissertation directly engages in the debate over the interplay of ideas and material interests in determining policy outcomes and participates more generally in discussions over the utility and applicability of the rational choice approach to political analysis. In this study, I do not assert that ideas supplant interests, but instead, argue first, that ideas help actors to interpret their interests and perceive material realities, and second, that ideas as the components of economic theories and of the prevailing ideological context limit the scope of property reform. In addition to exploring the role of ideas as intermediaries and as constraints, I take a neo-institutionalist approach in that I also consider the generative power of ideas. I argue that ideas, as ideological goals, motivate actors to pursue certain ends. In other words, I also examine ideas as interests--or in Weberian terms, ideal interests --which, like material interests, drive the reformulation of property rights
