Pathways from and crises after communism: the case of Central Eastern Europe

The transition from socialist redistributive economy to capitalist markets has proved to be a rockier road that anticipated. The degree and character of difficulties that the countries faced during the transition depended on the nature of the pathways taken. In this paper I distinguish three major trajectories various countries followed: Central European neo-liberalism; post USSR neo-patrimonial regime and the East Asian (Chinese and Vietnamese) transformation from below. Rather than distinguishing the “right way” from the “wrong way” I explore what the different costs and benefits of the various pathways were at various stages of the transformation

Kornai on the affinity of systems: Is China today an illiberal capitalist system or a communist dictatorship?

More than 40 years ago, János Kornai introduced his famous supermarket metaphor. Socioeconomic systems cannot be constructed from purposely selected features, similar to customers in a supermarket, who can freely put into their shopping trolley whatever they like. Systems constitute an organic whole. They contain good and bad features in fxed proportions. After 1990, Kornai and most Western commentators expected that as market integration and private property expand, China would eventually turn into a liberal democracy. Prior to the worldwide fall of communism, Kornai had three primary criteria to determine whether a country was socialist or capitalist; later he amended this with six secondary ones. The present paper introduces into this list an additional 11 criteria—i.e. 20 quantifable metrics altogether. Kornai was among the very frst to recognize that with President Xi Jinping taking charge, China made a U-turn. While capitalist elements remain strong, in the fnal analysis, the country is on its way back to where it was before 1978

2. Társadalom és térszerkezeti átalakulások

A kiadvány az Európai Unió támogatásával, az Európai Szociális Alap társfi nanszírozásával valósul meg, a TAMOP-4.1.2-08/2/A/KMR-0043 „A szociálpolitikus és szociális munkás képzés megújítása az ELTE és a BCE együtt működésében (SZOCMEG)” projekt keretében