Publications of Greskovits, B.

Capitalist Diversity on Europe's Periphery

With the collapse of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance in 1991, the Eastern European nations of the former socialist bloc had to figure out their newly capitalist future. Capitalism, they found, was not a single set of political-economic relations. Rather, they each had to decide what sort of capitalist nation to become. In Capitalist Diversity on Europe's Periphery, Dorothee Bohle and Béla Geskovits trace the form that capitalism took in each country, the assets and liabilities left behind by socialism, the transformational strategies embraced by political and technocratic elites, and the influence of transnational actors and institutions. They also evaluate the impact of three regional shocks: the recession of the early 1990s, the rolling global financial crisis that started in July 1997, and the political shocks that attended EU enlargement in 2004. Bohle and Greskovits show that the postsocialist states have established three basic variants of capitalist political economy: neoliberal, embedded neoliberal, and neocorporatist. The Baltic states followed a neoliberal prescription: low controls on capital, open markets, reduced provisions for social welfare. The larger states of central and eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, and the Czech and Slovak republics) have used foreign investment to stimulate export industries but retained social welfare regimes and substantial government power to enforce industrial policy. Slovenia has proved to be an outlier, successfully mixing competitive industries and neocorporatist social inclusion. Bohle and Greskovits also describe the political contention over such arrangements in Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia. A highly original and theoretically sophisticated typology of capitalism in postsocialist Europe, this book is unique in the breadth and depth of its conceptually coherent and empirically rich comparative analysis.

Wirtschaftswunder und Staatsverschuldung. Zur Politischen Ökonomie Osteuropas

Manufacturing miracles, welfare pathologies and the accumulation of national debt. On the political economy of east central Europe 20 years of democracy and market economics in east central Europe have been a great success. This distinguishes Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary from almost all of the other post-Socialist states. Their model of success has two components. First, these four states succeeded in becoming the manufacturing site for trans-national companies. That creates jobs and brings capital into the region. Second, the governments softened the social hardships of the transformation by means of welfare state policies. The price is an enormous national debt. Since EU accession, it has been necessary to take action against this. Dissatisfaction is growing, and populist forces are increasingly supported.

Transnationalization, Social Integration, and Capitalist Diversity in the East and South

This article analyzes the deep and shallow modes of international integration, semicore, semiperipheral, and peripheral profiles of global insertion, and the presence and absence of transformative state capacity and social cohesion, as interacting dimensions of capitalist diversity in post-socialist Eastern Europe and Latin America. On these grounds, it is argued that Cardoso and Faletto’s dependent development paradigm maintains validity. When adapted to the new conditions, their approach is able to capture the overlapping and divergent aspects of capitalist development in both regions. Recent patterns of development demonstrate that although dependency, stemming from the unequal distribution of resources, roles, and opportunities, continues to be an important aspect of the international division of labor, it ceases to contradict even complex forms of industrialization. Similarly, notwithstanding the asymmetrical power relationships characterizing them, the new transnational integration regimes allow and sometimes help formation of new nation states with improved regulatory capacities. Finally, dependency does not necessarily undermine domestic social inclusion. Rather, it is up to the democratic competition to strike a balance between the requirements of promising international and socially acceptable domestic integration.

The Political Economy of State-Society Relations in Hungary and Poland : From Communism to the European Union

The article reviews the book "The Political Economy of State-Society Relations in Hungary and Poland: From Communism to the European Union," by Anna Seleny.

Economic Woes And Political Disaffection

The article explores why politics across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has been unstable since the accession of ten countries in the region in the European Union (EU) beginning in 2004. Since this expansion, the region saw increasing riots and mass demonstration, the shift of centrist parties to radicalized groups, dramatic drop in voter turnout and dissatisfaction with democracy and a lack of trust in its institutions, as revealed by opinion polls. The author believes that both external and domestic influences contribute to democratic stability in Europe. She argues that it is EU pressures for macroeconomic convergence that cause political imbalances in many countries in CEE, but EU accession also contributed to democratic stability in the candidate states.

Leading Sectors and Leading Regions : Economic Restructuring and Regional Inequality in Hungary since 1990

This article examines factors accounting for persisting regional inequality in Hungary during the regime change from socialism to a market economy in 1990. We examine the determinants of regional inequality through the lens of leading sector theory which has been used to explain why some ex-socialist countries have done better than others during the transformation. In other words, we ask whether some regions of Hungary are doing better than others for the same reasons that some ex-socialist countries have outperformed their counterparts. We use county level data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office to examine whether the quantity and types of foreign direct investment counties have received since 1990 are associated with regional inequality in per capita GDP. We find that foreign capitalists concentrate human-capital-intensive investment in already well performing locations because they have similar supply structures to their home economies. We also contend that no measure of institutional modernization is likely to make lagging regions attractive candidates for human-capital-intensive investments in the near future. Hence, regardless of the national state's efforts to target development to lagging areas, or the effectiveness of local institutions, lagging regions are likely to remain underdeveloped. We recommend that future field-based research be conducted to examine the nexus between FDI, the nation state and localities. Unraveling interrelationships between these three political economy sites will expose the causal forces sustaining regional inequalities during post-socialism. Cet article analyse les facteurs qui expliquent l'inegalite persistante entre regions hongroises lors du passage du socialisme a une economie de marche en 1990. Nous examinons les determinants de l'inegalite regionale a travers la theorie du secteur moteur qui a servi a expliquer pourquoi certains ex-pays socialistes ont mieux reussi que d'autres pendant la transition. Plus precisement, nous cherchons a savoir si des regions de Hongrie font mieux que d'autres pour les memes raisons que certains ex-pays socialistes ont eu de meilleurs resultats que leurs homologues. Nous utilisons des donnees departementales provenant du Bureau central hongrois de la statistique afin d'examiner si la quantite et les types d'investissement direct a l'etranger que les departements ont recu depuis 1990 sont associes a une inegalite regionale en termes de PIB par habitant. Nous etablissons ainsi que les capitalistes etrangers concentrent leur investissement a fort capital humain dans des sites qui presentent deja de bons resultats, les structures d'approvisionnement etant similaires a celles de leur economie nationale. Nous soutenons egalement que, dans le court terme, aucune mesure de modernisation institutionnelle ne va sans doute transformer les regions en retard en candidates interessantes pour des investissements a fort capital humain. En consequence, quels que soient les efforts de l'Etat national en vue de developper specifiquement les zones en decalage, ou l'efficacite des institutions locales, les regions en retard resteront sans doute moins developpees. Nous conseillons d'entreprendre a l'avenir des etudes de terrain afin d'analyser le lien entre IDE, Etat national et regions. Demeler les relations entre ces trois centres de l'economie politique revelera les forces en cause dans la durabilite des inegalites regionales pendant l'apres-socialisme. Adapted from the source document.

A transnacionális kapitalizmus változatai Kelet-Közép-Európában

Cikkünk tárgya a szocialista rendszer bukása után Kelet-Közép-Európában kialakult háromfajta kapitalizmusnak, a balti államok tisztán neoliberális, a visegrádi országok beágyazott neoliberális, és Szlovénia neokorporatista rendszerének elemzése. Bemutatjuk, hogy a három országcsoportban az eltérõ mértékû és arányú állami beavatkozás különbözõ intézményi szerkezetre és teljesítményre vezetett négy fontos szférában: a piaci intézmények, az ipar növekedése és szerkezetváltása, a társadalmi kohézió fenntartása, és a makrogazdasági stabilitás területén. Az eltérõ rendszerek kialakulását két tényezõ összjátékával magyarázzuk. E gyrészt kulcsszerepet tulajdonítunk a szocializmus összeomlását közvetlenül követõ idõszak politikai döntéseinek. E lemezzük, hogy hogyan befolyásolta e döntéseket a szocialista rendszer öröksége, és az, hogy a politika szereplõi az örökséget a nemzeti függetlenség és a gazdasági fejlõdés zálogának vagy inkább akadályának tekintették-e. E különbségek azt is érthetõbbé teszik, miért volt más és más mértékû a három kapitalista rendszerrel szembeni társadalmi ellenállás, és miért tért el a politikai verseny és a kialakuló demokrácia jellege. Másrészt kiemelt fontosságot tulajdonítunk a nemzetközi és transznacionális tényezõk, különösen az Európai Unió és a nemzetközi nagyvállalatok hatásának.

Building a Democratic Market Society in Hungary

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The Postsocialist Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe

What is attempted in the East is catching up with the West from a recent position of worse-than-Latin-American economic backwardness. Until now, populations that were sentenced to political patience by the logic of poor democracies have reluctantly backed this enormous effort. Central and Eastern Europe's post-socialist path is characterized by an increasingly discredited ideology of a return to Europe and a non-European combination of substitute institutions of development: radical opening towards the world economy, damaged institutions of labor representation, eroded state capacity, and often strong private and foreign dominance in the financial and other strategic sectors. There is a chance for a few countries to succeed. Yet various development traps may be more likely in the end than a "Great Spurt" in the Gerschenkronian sense.

Les analyses concurrentes de la societé de marché postcommuniste : retour sur le passé d'une controverse

Rival Views of Postcommunist Market Society. Retake on the Past of a Controversy Dependence of TransitologyAn examination of scholarly debates on the results of capitalist expansion & the influence of communism on the emerging market societies of Eastern Europe illustrates the commonalties between social scientists' views on postcommunist approaches to capitalism & earlier views on the adoption of capitalism by previously noncapitalist societies. Rivalry in the earlier approaches is said to have transformed itself into the current debate. Social scientific understanding of system changes typically involves the hashing out of rival theories, but contemporary competing explanations for postcommunist market society are also tied to the new institutional, political, & psychological ideas that have characterized social science during the end of the 20th century. 4 Tables, 57 References. D. Weibel

Kétarcú demokratikus kapitalizmus Magyarországon

The two faces of democratic capitalism in Hungary

Populista átmenetprogramok Magyarországon

Populist Transformation Programs in Hungary

Válságtűrő demokráciák

Crisis-Proof Democracies

Latin-Amerika sorsára jut-e Kelet-Közép Európa?” : Gazdasági reform és politikai stabilitás az új demokráciákban

Is Latin America the Fate of East Central Europe? Economic Reform and Political Stability in the New Democracies

Demagogic Populism in Eastern Europe?

Using Latin America for comparison, examines the factors why economic populism has not yet emerged in Eastern Europe. It is contended that while a demagogic populism has surfaced, economic policy has remained within the neoliberal mainstream. The reasons for populism's development in Latin America, but not in Eastern Europe, include the structural differences in postcommunist Eastern Europe, including a more balanced income distribution, a stronger economic interconnection with the export sectors, & an unprecedented recession. Also cited are the existing populist-like features of communist central planning including: an appeal to organized labor, import substitution policies aimed at regional autarchy, a preference for the public over the private sector, & an emphasis on growth & income redistribution. It is consequently argued that Eastern Europe could not afford economic populism after 1990 because of macroeconomic conditions. M. Greenberg

Külföldi kereskedelmi reformprogramok és hatásuk a gazdaságra

Foreign Trade Reform Programs and their Economic Impact

A gazdasági alkalmazkodás vesztesei és a kompenzáció

The Losers of Economic Adjustment and their Compensation

Western Technological Policies and the Approach of Hungarian Industrial Policy

Tamás Földi, ed. World Economic Environment and the Hungarian Economy, Special Volume of Acta Oeconomica.The management of Hungarian industry attentively watches the trends of western industrial development, but experience shows that the foreign tendencies of development only influence the ideals visualized by Hungarian industrial policy, not its practice. As well as reviewing some tendencies appearing in the technological policies of advanced countries, this paper attempts to analyze whether or not the ideals of development influenced by western examples are tailored for, and should be followed by, Hungary. The author arrives at the conclusion that not only is the practice of Hungarian industrial policy untenable, but also its ideals for development are inadequate.

A nyugati technológiapolitikák és a magyar iparpolitikai szemlélet

Western Technology Policies and the Approach of the Hungarian Industrial Policy