Consolidating Economic Reforms: the Hungarian Experience with Lessons for Poland

How to assess Hungary's present situation in the broader context of overall economic and political developments in post-socialist Eastern Europe? The regional perspective suggests that in terms of parting with state socialism and building market democracy Hungary - and a few other countries including Poland - represents the maximum any former socialist state could achieve between 1989-98. While in this respect no country succeeded in getting farther, most other states have struggled with the peaceful or forceful formation of national identity or a new, independent state, which often dominated over and conflicted with, the issues of economic reforms and democratization on the transformation agenda. Another key to success is that Hungary - similar to Poland, but to a much larger extent - became a major target for foreign direct investment. This is due to a number of factors: from Hungary's strategy for debt, macroeconomic management and privatization, to the foreign investors' and creditors' own expectations. However, the resulting large capital inflow had a major impact on the features of Hungarian capitalism. While everywhere in East the new ownership structure displays various combinations of foreign owners, "national capitalists", and the scattered property rights of workers, the proportions dramatically differ. In much of the East the cohort of foreign investors is entirely missing, while national capitalists of often doubtful origin, skills and strategies acquired overwhelming share and influence. At the other extreme, in former GDR virtually the whole business elite is "foreign": West-German or of other Western origin. On this scale Hungary, with a one-third of its largely private economy in foreign hands [Hegymenet, 1998: 163] in 1997 is closest to the former GDR - and at the same time farthest from the other extreme exhibited by Eastern "national capitalisms". This location makes the Hungarian case specific and hints both at the risks the country avoided and the ones it took.Hungary, Poland, economic reforms

Die Suche nach dem „wahren" sozialistischen Sozialprodukt

The articles explores how the way in which wars are being waged has changed since the 19th century. Its main focus is on ground warfare. Warfare, according to the thesis advocated in the article, has become industrialized within a few decades. One of the consequences was that since then only rarely battles have been lead face to face. Another result was a change in the way the military had to prepare for war. After presenting a short overview the articles proceeds to deal with objectification tendencies in regard to death, which also began to develop in pre-industrial periods

Capital, Labor, and the Prospects of the European Social Model in the East. CES Central & Eastern Europe Working Paper, no. 58, 2004

During the past decade of European economic integration vastly worse standards have emerged in work conditions, industrial relations, and social welfare in Eastern Europe than in the West. Area scholars explain this divide by labor weakness caused by the ideological legacy of communism, and do not problematize the impact of transnational capital. In contrast, this essay argues that the reason why the European social model has not traveled to the East is that its socio-economic foundations, the industrial building blocks of the historical compromise between capital and labor, have not traveled either. In the West, the compromise had been rooted in capital-intensive consumer durables industries, such as car-manufacturing, and their suppliers. These sectors brought together organized and vocal labor with businesses willing to accommodate workers’ demands, because for them labor had been less a problem as a cost-factor and more important as factor of demand. However, the main driving force of the eastward expansion of European capital has been the relocation of labor-intensive activities where business relies on sweating masses of workers, whose importance as consumers is marginal, and who are weak in the workplace and the marketplace. With this general conceptualization of how the emerging new European division of labor constrains the social aspects of East European market societies as a background, the essay studies the cases of Hungarian electronics and Slovak car industries in order to better understand how particular features of various leading sectors mediate the general pattern

Založba Vega Vega Press Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor: PhD. Uroš Pinterič | 1 International Editorial Board:

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Slovenian Association for Innovative Political Science – SIDIP Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor: PhD. Uroš Pinterič International Editorial Board:

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Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor: Andrej Kovačič International Editorial Board:

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