SYNERGY OF NEOLIBERALISM, ALTERNATIVE INSTITUTIONS AND TRANSITIONAL CRISIS

The subject of this paper is a critique of the quasi-neoliberal violence of alternative institutions, which are the most problematic and most threatening brake phenomenon of transition. They have been produced, strengthened and reproduced by the authorities of most post-socialist countries in the last three decades. The aim of this paper is to demystify neoliberalism, its ideological, philosophical, and monistic absolutizations, as well as quasi-neoliberal manifestations, which in many post-socialist countries were carried out directly under the auspices of alternative institutions. Also, the goal is to shed light on the causes of the long-term crisis, chaos, institutional violence, and lawlessness, and to enable the recognition of too visible (albeit blurred), rhetorical and “messianic” recipes, which are, in fact, developmental shackles. The paper is based on two hypotheses: first, that alternative institutions have abused and enslaved formal and informal institutions in most transition countries, which has led to numerous economic and social problems, including threats to the rule of law, freedoms, and civilizational development, and second, that a transitional hindering mechanism was created, which generated a neoexploitative, apologetic, neo-totalitarian and crisis environment. The paper uses common methods of social and economic sciences, including the methods of generalization, description, abstraction, comparison, induction and deduction. In conclusion, it is stated that the phenomenological identification and critical demystification of the interest connections and conditioning of neoliberalism, alternative institutions, and the crisis have been carried out, and that their exponents (alleged reformers and new elites) had an extremely negative impact on social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural and institutional development, because they degraded and destroyed them.


Introduction
Neoliberalism as an ideology (and especially quasi-neoliberalism as its abuse) has many negative and dark sides, which its proponents have never pointed out or commented on. On the contrary, they knowingly (but clumsily) hid them. That is why we have tried in many works to prove that mysticism and simulacrum have no place in economics, and other social sciences, because civil behavior, rational choice, and competition are the essence of optimizing the social life. However, they have been distorted, reduced, blurred, and determined by a privileged minority, which has been politically, lobbyistically, and interestingly organized in most transition countries, subjected to social traumas. For three decades, this minority (the so-called new elites) has been directing, controlling, and exploiting the disorganized majority (broad masses of the people) in accordance with their networked interests, preferences, and goals.
If we view the the multiple crises in most post-socialist countries through the prism of basic causes (sophisticated forms of dictatorship, dogmatization, absolutization, ideologization, quasi-institutionalization (Draskovic, et al., 2019), neo-totalitarianization, and neoimperialization), it can be seen that all these processes were mainly based on monistic and privileged uncontrolled by people centers of power. In such a context, economic freedoms, competition, private property, and entrepreneurship (Panikarova, et al., 2000) as a desirable democratic phenomenon, remained just a slogan and a promise. They have been replaced by new and sophisticated forms of institutional and other violence.
The iterative reproduction of the multiple crises, including the transitional one, cannot be explained without critical light shed on alternative institutions as its main cause and instrument of governance and enrichment. For, they (as a specific form of informal and illegal rules of conduct) essentially denied and subordinated all formal and informal institutions to their influence. In this way, they directly weakened, denied, and/or relativized the corrective role of state regulatory institution. This is contrary not only to the logic of common sense regarding the possibility of implementing a consistent strategy of social and economic development, but also to the practice of developed countries. Due to all this, the paper attempts to explain:  relations of connection and interdependence between neoliberalism, alternative institutions, and the transitional crisis,  fact that neoliberalism in its pseudo form of manifestation has immorally legitimized egoism, i.e. individualism of narrow and privileged strata of society, and  phenomenology of alternative institutions.

Neoliberal ideology
The practice of post-socialist countries which have implemented neoliberal ideology, philosophy, culture and the alleged messianic recipe for development, has immorally legitimized egoism, individualism of privileged and alternative institutions, instead of legitimizing widely propagated individualism and freedom on a mass scale. On the other hand, it has ignored goodwill, sacrifice, commitment, solidarity, and many civilizational values, and rejected every form of collectivism, even the most positive and socially necessary forms. Privileged interests have been turned into the sole guide and motive for economic and every other behavior. This has turned society into a managerial organization in which all social values have been marginalized and adapted to the greedy culture of business (Horvathova and Mokrisova, 2020), that has produced new risks and vulnerabilities (Kravchenko, 2018).
What has long been called neoliberalism in literature and rhetoric was actually a cover for the plunder of the people (middle and lower classes) by the top authorities (as the leaders of the alleged new elites and big capital). Neoliberalism has proved to be very strong and resilient in the United States, Great Britain, and the EU. It was based on the economic dominance of financial capital, the instruments of globalization, the phrases and apologetics of some theorists, and the control of economy and society by the leading parties. Accordingly, the neoliberals were ideological employees of financial and corporate capital (Tomas, 2000).
In most transition countries, however, the seductiveness of neoliberalism was much greater in terms of ideological symbolism, rhetoric, and false promises, than in the real and chaotic life (results) of post-socialist civilization. Under the slogan of neoliberalism, a quasineoliberal project has been realized secretly or openly, with all its vices, which spread everywhere like weeds, not even bringing the illusion of happiness and welfare, but only negative phenomenology, which openly and repeatedly threatens to destroy many achievements of previous civilizations in most post-socialist countries (Draskovic, 2020).
Neoliberalism was and remains an ideological attempt to impose a universal and submissive concept of power, which Western elites exported to many post-socialist and other underdeveloped countries. They presented it as the only (non-alternative) solution to all social and economic problems. But in fact, it was only a temporary and palliative solution to the accumulated problems of global elites, who have been buying foreign resources cheaply for years. At the same time, it was the main problem of the vast majority of the world's population and an effective instrument for realizing the interests of the political, corporate, and financial elite of the Western world.
For reminders, neoliberalism has advocated that the Washington Consensus recommendations should be seen as the ultimate (absolute) truth. Neoliberal ideology has been presented as a supposedly scientifically based, socially, economically, politically, geopolitically and geoeconomically useful philosophyas the end of history. However, its basis was neither theoretical, nor consistent. It was an attempt of interest parties (organizations and individuals) to present this interest-driven and highly unjust ideology as sustainable and infallible.
There is no official state ideology in Western countries. But that does not mean that there is no quasi-state, a dominant ideology. This was and remains the illusion produced by many neoliberals. In the West (as a general term, and not specifically in each country) still dominates neoliberal ideology, which is persistently and sophisticatedly imposed on the rest of the world. Unlike culture as the most general social milieu, which essentially consists of many subcultures, different teachings and trends (multi-culturalism, which has no authoritarian inner core), each ideology strives for the privileged status of addressed social domination. Because of this, the attempt to impose neoliberal ideology as a neoliberal culture to the world is a great deception. A feature of every ideology is the desire of its bearers to spread concepts beyond the boundaries of the system ruled by that ideology.
The neoliberal aspiration to impose its value system as universal, which should be dominated by an unjust relationship between the center and the periphery (in the general sense), is a monistic-totalitarian and highly interest-driven project of the ruling elites (big capital). This project cynically implies the existence of (Draskovic, 2020):  freedom for privileged elites, as opposed to mass freedoms for the vast majority (peoples and states), All of the aforesaid drastically deforms not only culture (as a general social capsule and, conditionally, a synonym for informal institutions) (Alesina and Guliano, 2015), but also all value criteria, preferences, needs, and motivation, thus producing "normal anomie" (Kravchenko, 2014, pp. 3-10).

Destructivity of neoliberal philosophy and phenomenology
If countries and societies with implemented neoliberalism want to develop in the future, they must eliminate neoliberalism, not only in practice, but also in its intellectual basis. In other words, neoliberalism must be liquidated from the realm of the real and from the realm of the possible. For, the philosophy of neoliberalism enables and justifies a broad corpus of socio-economic destructions. It indoctrinates and cripples all segments of society, producing dehumanization and increasing effects of "normal traumas" (Kravchenko, 2020, pp. 150-159).
In order to prevent the spread of destructiveness, generated by neoliberalism, it is necessary to abandon this wrong and malicious concept, which proclaims the enormous damage it has proclaimed as good deeds! In order to get rid of neoliberal or quasi-neoliberal phrase called Amfiteatru Economic minimal state (or mockingly: market statea term by D. Stojanov, 2013, p. 295) and the consequent modern anti-civilization shackles, people must understand the vicious role of intoxicating privileged interests, which are contained in the foundations of neoliberal philosophy.
The difference between small and large nations, underdeveloped and developed countries, post-socialist (institutionally hybrid) and Western (civil) societies is, among other things, in a very noticeable, widespread, and negative phenomenon. Namely, the former glorify, advocate, and respect the opinions of unruly alibi-economists and classic interest-driven party switchers, who have transformed from one monism to another, from socialist planners through neoliberal ideologues to alleged returnees to institutional frameworks. In latter, they are (very rare) simply marginalized.
Hayek's idea that neoliberalism (embodied in the free market) is the main weapon against the elements of neototalitarianism has been turned by false (alibi) reformers through alternative institutions into the ideology of neototalitarianism! In that sense, they used not only this new invention (alternative institutions) for controlling political, economic and social processes, but also the latest information and communication technologies, the socalled tools of soft power, smart power strategies, methods of organizing pink and velvet revolutions, information, network and hybrid wars.
The entire civilized, developed and democratic world is fighting resolutely and consistently against privileges with all its might. The existence of alternative institutions and other forms of institutional monism is inconceivable there (Popovic, et al., 2020). Due to this fact, normal people must ask themselves: why exemplary models of developed countries were not an inspiration in most post-socialist countries, but quasi-institutional, quasineoliberal, non-market, and illegal enrichment at any cost, which led to the functioning of the economy and society under the limited access to resources regime (North, et al., 2009)?! The neoliberal story on structural reforms (without real institutional reforms) has always been and continues to beillusion, fiction, absurdity, mere mask and farce. For, everywhere politics dominates over the economy. This is not only a problem of economics, but also of history, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and culture, without which economics cannot be understood and functions successfully.
In the three-decade period of transition, alternative institutions were active. They were closely linked to neoliberal recipes. This negative synergistic connection has constantly deepened the destructive economic, social, legal, ethical, and cultural phenomena, which have turned into a negative trend of breaking without building, and have significantly contributed to the overall crisis environment of transition. The mosaic of this general crisis picture was completed by the following problems:  lack of political consensus with very pronounced internal political, religious, identity, and other divisions, as well as intensified political struggle for power,  conglomerate inconsistency (organizational, institutional, and normative vacuum),  mutant recombined order, which contains many anachronistic structures of the old system, and outdated rigid elements of the capitalist system,  strategically meaningless, inconsistent, and palliative reforms,  pronounced negative (usually party) selection of staff,  expensive, interest-driven, and unsuccessful improvisations of economic reformers,  replacing the former ideals with vices,  ignoring successful role models and competition at all levels and in all areas,  interference of state-political bodies in making economic decisions, etc.
These problems have been accompanied by a personality cult, the development of autocracy, concentration of power and economic power, long-term unchangeable government, populist rhetoric and arrogance, unjust and irrational growth of party intellectuals, nepotism, demagogic promises, imitation of democratic standards, mass apathy, controversial conditioning of employment by party membership, spreading the paradoxical superiority of superiors and subordinates, endangering human existence and dignity, degrading the educational system, hampering the development of the knowledgebased economy, etc.  We hypothesized that there are four basic areas that have predominantly influenced the generation of so-called new shackles: international community, culture, institutions and knowledge. In that sense, only the neo-imperialists shackles were generated in all of the mentioned areas. In three areas (culture, institutions and knowledge), five types of shackles were generated: neo-totalitarian, ideological and political, apologetic, quasi-neoliberal and alternative institutions. Finally, in two areas (institutions and knowledge), four types of shackles were generated: non-market, system, monistic and anti-development.
Starting from the criteria of the so-called systemic paradigms (Kornai, 2002), all analyzes of practice in most transition countries clearly show that this is a quasi-neoliberal concept of interest, as a new, disastrous and dogmatic experiment. Through the formation and strengthening of alternative institutions, it contributed to the emergence of new shackles, i.e. great abuses, turmoil, and anti-development issues problems in many transition countries. Therefore, this paper indicates the need to reconsider and eliminate the aforementioned socially unjust order.

Alternative institutions
The challenge of transitional (reform) changes in post-socialist countries appeared long ago, at a time when they were burdened by the ballast of the past and the uncertainty of the future. Most of them have not yet found a rational and effective response to that challenge. We believe that the main cause is insufficient and unsuccessful institutional change, i.e. the act of alternative institutions. There are very few articles in the economic literature which directly determine the existence and/or analyze the functioning of alternative institutions. This is understandable for Western authors, due to the absence or negligible importance of alternative institutions in developed countries. But, the authors from transition countries unjustifiably neglect the existence, functioning and great social and economic impact of alternative institutions.
They are always associated with quasi-institutional actions (from the shadow, criminal, opportunistic), therefore, they are not easy to investigate and explain. However, there are institutional and other indicators, which directly or indirectly indicate existence and negative impact of alternative institutions. These include the rule of law index, economic freedoms, innovation capacity, perceptions of corruption, global competitiveness, degree of inequality, non-market redistribution of resources, etc.
The existence of alternative institutions is a characteristic of underdeveloped countries. This has been proved by many socio-pathological phenomena (corruption, non-market and legal enrichment, interest-lobbying log-rolling, monopolies, and various forms of market restrictions . The reasons for this are numerous, from dependence on path dependency (work habits, mentality, achieved level of industrial development, way of regulating economy, level of investment in science, democratic achievements and traditions, economic, market and other freedoms, party monopoly, deficit of economic, legal, and other institutions, inherited cult of leader, effects of cultural factors (mentality, education and social consent) and the effects of social capital), through foreign economic and political influences (war environment, integrations, globalization, geopolitics, and geoeconomics) to reduced and selective application of neoliberal economic policy. The latter has ignored the Pareto principle and enabled the domination of uncontrolled and privileged economic freedoms over institutions (instead of complementarity of mass freedoms and institutions). This has led to the institutionalization of the privileges of rare (politically selected) individuals, procedural forms of domination and sophisticated forms of neototalitarianism, which imposed modern forms of social and economic "shackles" (development barriers).
Western authors distinguish between good and bad institutions (e.g., Rodrik, 2007), extractive and inclusive regimes (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012), as well as limited access to resources and open access to resources (North, et al., 2009). In this way, they emphasize the objective conditions in which alternative institutions can exist and operate. Undoubtedly, the protection of property rights is the main factor, which serves to distinguish good institutions from bad institutions. North, et al. (Ibid.) noted and described in detail the existence of anti-competitive economic institutions in societies with limited access to resources. They attributed them to the conscious action of elites (especially those in government structures). Although they do not mention the existence and functioning of alternative institutions, they state and analyze in detail social violence, privileges, ballasts of feudalism, political rent-seeking, non-market redistribution, rule of law in favor of elites, and other negative social phenomena.
They conclude that the actions of the elites lead to the creation of violence in society (which is carried out precisely through the mechanism of alternative institutionsauthor's note). The institutional violence analyzed by the mentioned authors has the character of anti-institutional, and it comes from elites, and not from ordinary people (nations). This directly leads to redistributive effects, which benefit the ruling elites. Some Western authors emphasize the negative role of elites and government nomenclatures (Acemoglu, et al., 2004), as well as privileged individuals (Clark, 2009). Amfiteatru Economic

Figure no. 2. Environment of the alternative institutions
Source: Draskovic, 2018Draskovic, , 2020 Figure no. 2 shows that the environment of alternative institutions is very complex, composed of diverse elements. However, what all these influencing factors have in common is the fact that they all stem from path dependency, while mostly derive from the behavior of the authorities. This is logical, given that the authorities are taking the initial impulse to create a system of alternative institutions, with their decision to abuse and subjugate formal and informal institutions for a long time.
In the period of the strongest waves of neoliberalism (more precisely: quasi-neoliberalism as an ideology of alternative institutions and a specific form of quasi-institutional monism), we criticized it sharply and argumentatively (hopefully competently), to the same extent as dirigisme (another polarized form of institutional monism). We have always advocated institutional pluralism, which objectively exists in various combinations in all developed countries. We have pointed out that every futile theorizing, which is aimed at any monistic glorification of a certain institutional order, is doomed to failure, because practice convincingly denies it.
In most so-called transition countries, the motivation of the reformers and the nomenclature of power have resulted in their enormous enrichment, which from the very beginning was accompanied by the strengthening of alternative institutions, quasiinstitutional violence, and appropriate control. All this was possible only in the conditions of immoral and obscure abuse of formal and informal institutions. The rhetoric on economic freedoms sounded demagogic, primitive, vulgar, and underestimating. It has led to their mass marginalization. As a result, abused liberalization dominated real institutional change and turned into quasi-institutionalization. Quasi-neoliberal macroeconomic recipes had a purely ideological character (a market mask for non-market appropriation).
Objectively, this could not create a healthy micro and macro economic environment, nor solve the problem of harmonizing the freedom of choice of individuals with collective interests. It was only a quasi-theoretical and ideological basis for the creation and strengthening of quasi-institutional monism, the natural result of which was the gradual and growing dominance of alternative institutions. In this way, real institutional changes were prevented, and they can be achieved only in the conditions of quality and legal institutional control, and institutional competition (key drivers of economic and social development). The dominance of alternative institutions has enabled the promotion of anti-institutional activities and the blockade of real institutional changes. Delibasic (2019) rightly states that many theoretical analyzes of institutional models have shown that socio-economic development includes not only economic factors (as a subsystem), but also a wide range of non-economic variables, including formal and informal institutions, cultural and other value systems, as well as all forms of opportunistic behavior, which have been established by alternative institutions (as a cultural-institutional subsystem).
In figure no. 3 we adapted the scheme created by Y. Hayami and Y. Godo (1997). We believe that this is completely justified when it comes to most post-socialist states, whose social system is very much created by alternative institutions, even more than legal (formal and informal) institutions.

Figure no. 3. Interrelated developments in the social system
Source: adapted from Hayami and Godo, 1997, p. 10 Neoliberalism as the ideological foundation of alternative institutions in transition countries has failed to satisfy any element of the lowest common denominator of economic success: integration into the world economy, high labor mobility (Radukic, et al., 2019), large savings, significant investments, strengthening government competencies, commitment to economic development and social welfare, etc. Even the most liberal countries in the world are not in favor of an uncontrolled market, institutional monism, and non-market appropriation. Not to mention their extremely negative attitude towards quasi-institutional monism and the role of alternative institutions. If the former is true, then, clearly, underdeveloped countries cannot be dominated in global relations if developed countries recommend their own recipes to them. Late acknowledgments (M. Spence, A. Grispen, J. Williamson, etc.) after the 2008 global financial and economic crisis for misconceptions about free market efficiency seemed cynical.
Alternative institutions have an illegal, personified, socio-pathological, and destructive character. Their consequences are symptomatic and indicative. In that sense, it is necessary to analyze and explain the functional connection (relationship) of individuals and collectives, through the prism of their joint responsibility for creating favorable conditions for the emergence, operation, and strengthening of alternative institutions. We believe that the uncivilized, primitive, and dogmatic deformation of this relationship has significantly contributed to the institutional fiasco in many transition countries, resulting in the dominance of alternative institutions.
Institutional pluralism is a rational combination (synergy) of complementary conditioned individualistic and collectivist institutional actions, arrangements, efforts, and choices. It enables healthy and productive institutional competition. Ignoring institutional pluralism and forcing any form of institutional monism leads to the creation of a perverted individualism of interests (rare and privileged). During the transition period, quasi-neoliberal dogmas, utopias, Amfiteatru Economic and illusions about individualism were applied in many countries. They were methodologically, epistemologically (understood as the difference between truth and faith), and ontologically in constant (inevitable) conflict with neo-institutional economic theories and practices of developed countries, which promote institutional pluralism.
The mentioned monistic dogmas were based on the so-called market fundamentalism. That corresponded to the abstract, amoral, and unfounded story about the so-called minimal state. We have long ago proved the methodological unsustainability of this primitive, futile, vulgar, and orchestrated story, stating that it is not clear whether it refers to a social, economic, political or legal state?! Minimizing each of these state functions would realistically mean its collapse (Figure no. 4).
Changes in social, economic, and institutional dialectics, as well as civilized norms of behavior by methods of neoliberal rhetoric and practice  A paradoxical discrepancy between the promise of massiveness and its denial in practice  Dominance of "good players" (elite) over "good rules" (institutions)  Ignoring perceptions: a) J.S. Mill on the balance between the independence of the individual and the need for social control, b) R. Nozick that "minimization" of the state cannot be limited to "narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement, etc.", c) A. Smith that "each individual promotes public interest best when promoting his/her self-interest", and d) Pareto optimum and Popper's paradox by restricting the freedoms of all individuals with regard to legality, morality, and unpunished harm to others  Reducing the "normal" boundaries of the state regulatory institutions has created the conditions for neo-totalitarianism, economic reductionism, and the crisis Turning greed into an ominous urge for rapid illegitimate and non-market enrichment (and strengthening power and influence in society)  Abuse and subordination of institutions and economic policy, which began to serve private and party interests  Creation and strengthening of alternative institutions, which strive for domination and complete control Unlimited quasi-neoliberal demagoguery and the dynamics of experimental deregulation have violated all moral and institutional limitations of economic reality and rational human behavior. As a result, reforms have not been successfully implemented in most transition countries. Government structures have decided to recombine institutions. This has directly and indirectly enabled the establishment of various forms of quasi-institutional relations. In fact, forcing of institutional monism (market type) has caused enormous consequences, the flourishing of uncontrolled market and non-market forms, and a protracted crisis. Such a factual situation is characterized by an insurmountable gap between repressed mass and privileged individualism, which exists in parallel with the growth of public debt, inefficient governance models, systemic corruption at all levels, pronounced social apathy and economic demotivation, and many other social costs caused by anti-development strategy.

Conclusion
This descriptive analysis has clearly shown that alternative institutions are the result of systemic and institutional fiasco, which in a paradoxical and organized way (through abuse and manipulation) enabled the domination of privileged elections, as well as interest-driven individualism over institutionalism. The alternative institutions are a weird transition child. Their domination over freedoms, knowledge, institutions, and truths is certainly the result of the influence of traditional culture and dogmatic thinking, susceptibility to some anachronistic cults, myths and prejudices, but also the actions of neoliberal ideology. To overcome them, it is necessary to accept the civilizational and pluralistic paradigm of development of humanistic type, as well as scientifically consistent and well-argued critiques of all monistic conceptions and illusions, especially neoliberal and dirigistic ones, which have always been an integral part of the braking mechanism, due to their restrictiveness and exclusivity.
Instead of individual greed and fraudulent neoliberal grail, socio-economic development must be sought in the civilizational adjustmentto political, economic, institutional, geopolitical, geo-economic, environmental, and etic norms. For decades, on all meridians, it has been lived on paradoxical and ironic consensus of fear, domination, blackmail, interests, stratification, division, integration, identity, greed, negative selection, apologetics and much more that confuses common sense. And all this under the thick and blurry layers of apparent democracy, doomed to betrayal by the dirigistic forces of power, alienated from the people (who elected them)! For the success (sustainable development) of any country and/or nation, it is necessary to have a critical culture and humanistic thinking, rule of law, education, knowledge, science, institutions, patriotism, morality, freedom of choice, competition, control, transparency, security, solidarity, employment, work habits, entrepreneurship, private property on a mass scale, and innovation. Otherwise, the significant influence (and especially the dominance) of alternative institutions, opportunity and redistributive behavior, social pathology and all other traumatic trends, which are pointed out in this textwill not enable social and economic progress and will juristically lead to multiple crises.
Aggressive neoliberal values have been established for 30 years in society, economy and impersonal market, flooded with vanity, egoism, monism, ideology, politics, anachronism, monopoly, paradoxes and privileges. Freedom, democracy, sustainable development, rule of law, strong and efficient institutions, knowledge and other civilizational achievements, i.e. elimination of greedy nomenclatures of power and privileged abuse of state and people's interests are needed for a better, fairer and more humane order. This is the only way to realize in practice the acceptable world (term by H. Simon), which implies the parallel construction and improvement of the state and society.