Hierarchy of governance institutions and the pecking order of privatisation: Central–Eastern Europe and Central Asia reconsidered

This article discusses property rights, corporate governance frameworks and privatisation outcomes in the Central–Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CEECA) region. We argue that while CEECA still suffers from deficient ‘higher order’ institutions, this is not attracting sufficient attention from international institutions like EBRD and the World Bank, which focus on ‘lower order’ indicators. We discuss factors that may alleviate the negative impact of the weakness in institutional environment and argue for the pecking order of privatisation, where equivalent privatisation is given a priority but speed is not compromised.

The Crisis, Economic Patriotism in Central Europe and EU Law

This contribution examines rising economic patriotism in Central and Eastern Europe, mainly in Hungary and Poland, after the global financial and economic crisis. A closer look at patriotism in these EU Member States seems warranted given the global shift towards more inward-looking national policies and the challenging of neo-liberal ideas of free trade and competition, where these ideas were taken on board by local elites rather keenly. Our overview and analysis do not claim to be exhaustive; we touch upon selected issues to give a fuller picture of the state of the European Union and its Single Market sixty years after the Treaty of Rome was signed, 28 years after the onset of post-communist transition, and more than thirteen years since Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries joined the EU. Space does not permit a complete comparative overview of economic policy developments in the entire CEE region. We focus instead on the two problem countries, which in the past years have been on a collision course with the EU institutions and other Member States