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1998 | Buch

Industrial Transformation in Eastern Europe in the Light of the East Asian Experience

herausgegeben von: Jeffrey Henderson

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Buchreihe : International Political Economy Series

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Über dieses Buch

Since 1989, the postcommunist societies of Eastern Europe have been subject to policy advice and political and economic pressure which assumes that the development of 'free market' economies is the best route to economic growth and prosperity. The contributors to this volume take issue with this proposition. Though working from different theoretical perspectives, with different interests, they collectively argue that there are better ways to build dynamic and prosperous industrial economies in Eastern Europe than encouraging the respective societies of the region to ape the contents and swallow the myths of the Anglo-American form of capitalism. The contributors to this volume are among the leading authorities on economic transformation in Eastern Europe.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Introduction

Frontmatter
1. On Appropriate Models for Transformation in Eastern Europe
Abstract
The historical rupture of 1989–91 in Eastern Europe, occasioned by the collapse of state socialism, placed on the agenda of those societies the possibility of capitalist forms of economic transformation and development. In societies that become abruptly disconnected from the relative certainties of their past — usually through war or revolution — it has often been the case that attempts to re-cast the future have involved a collective search for models of political and economic organization that promise liberation from the strictures of the past. The influence of the US political settlement subsequent to the War of Independence on the French Revolution is well known, as is the influence of the latter on liberation movements and nation-building in nineteenth century Europe, Latin America and elsewhere. For much of our own century it has been the Leninist model and the various Stalinist forms of state socialism which it engendered that has provided the guidelines for political and economic reconstruction in parts of what used to be called the ‘third world’, as well as, of course, Eastern Europe. Given their experience of state socialism, however, it was no surprise that the preferred pathway to the future for the vast majority of the post-socialist societies of Europe, involved, as fundamental components, capitalist economies and liberal-democratic state forms. From the vantage point of over a hundred years of mature industrial capitalism what was surprising, perhaps, was that the release from state socialism seems not to have been accompanied by serious reflection on the fact that capitalism, economically and politically, is far from monadic.
Jeffrey Henderson

Transformation in Comparative Perspective

Frontmatter
2. Social and Political Dimensions of Economic Transformation: Eastern Europe and Pacific Asia
Abstract
The extent to which one experience of development can be seen as capable of providing a model for others is associated not merely with questions of formal policy, but with the historical, social and institutional contexts within which the various experiences arise. Consequently in this chapter we identify and discuss the significance of a number of processes and institutional arenas through which the political economies of Eastern Europe and Pacific Asia can be compared. At the territorial level our focus is not these regions in their entirety. Rather our concerns are with the smaller economies of East-Central Europe — essentially the Visegrad group (Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics and Hungary) — on the one hand, and the newly industrialized countries of Pacific Asia — particularly South Korea and Taiwan — on the other. The chapter consists of an identification of five arenas in which the East-Central European societies appear, at first sight, to be similar to their East Asian counterparts. This is followed by a discussion of six other arenas in which there appear to be significant differences. Finally we assess the implications which these similarities and differences have for the mobilization of aspects of the East Asian experience in the interests of Eastern European development.
Jeffrey Henderson, Richard Whitley
3. Industrial Transformation in East-Central Europe and East Asia: Should the State Wither Away?
Abstract
In the 1960s, the rate of economic growth was already higher, on average, in the East Asian countries (EACs) than in the Central-Eastern European (CEECs) members of former Comecon. Later on, the gap between the two areas grew. While economic growth was hardly affected by crisis in the EACs during the 1970s and 1980s, it slowed down in the CEECs, dramatically so in the 1980s. The break-up of the communist system first worsened this economic crisis in the latter region in the early 1990s and since then only a few former socialist countries have recovered a positive, though rather low, rate of economic growth: Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. On the other hand, after a period of slower economic growth in 1985–90, the newly industrialized countries (NICs) of East Asia enjoyed a nice recovery, with growth rates ranging between 5.5 and 9.9 per cent in 1993.
Wladimir Andreff
4. Privatization and the State: Russia, Eastern Europe, East Asia
Abstract
A comparison of the economic transformation of the Soviet Union and East Asia (for the purposes of this chapter, the newly industrialized countries — excluding Hong Kong — China and Vietnam) produces an impression of clear similarity and radical contrast. The aim of transformation seems to have been similar in both sets of cases: the transformation of a militarily inspired, state-run economy into a market-oriented one. The outcomes of the process have been vastly different — an ‘economic miracle’ on the one hand, decline and collapse on the other.
Nigel Harris, David Lockwood
5. The Starting Point of Liberalization: China and the Former USSR on the Eve of Reform
Abstract
The contrast in performance of China and the former USSR under reform policies has been dramatic. In China there was explosive growth, a large reduction in poverty and a major improvement in most ‘physical quality of life indicators’ (Banister 1992, World Bank 1992a). The economy of the former USSR collapsed, alongside massive psychological disorientation and a large deterioration in physical quality of life indicators, including a huge rise in death rates (Ellman 1994). The contrast in reform paths is well known. China’s approach to economic reform was experimental and evolutionary, under an authoritarian political system. The USSR followed the ‘transition orthodoxy’ of revolutionary political change under Gorbachev, followed by shock therapy and rapid privatization in the Russian Federation under Yeltsin.
Peter Nolan
6. Institutional Change and Economic Development in East-Central Europe and China: Contrasts in the Light of the ‘East Asian Model’
Abstract
The contrast in institutional transformation between Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the former Soviet Union (FSU) on the one hand, and China on the other, is often characterized as one of shock therapy versus gradualism, although recently Sachs and Woo (1994) have argued that ‘structural’ differences make comparisons between the two cases problematic. This is part of a more general debate among economists concerning the pace and irreversibility of change towards a ‘market economy’. But at the same time, the predominant neoclassical approach of most economic analysts allows the divergent experience of the CEE/FSU and China to support a common standpoint on the desirability in particular of ownership change. In this view, the continuing poor macro-economic performance of the CEE/FSU is at least in part due to the failure to carry through the shock therapy logic fully, for example in allowing the continuation of soft budget constraints for large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and ex-SOEs; while the good performance of the Chinese economy is partly because despite the continued existence of a soft-budgeted state sector, the private and local-state firms (township and village enterprises — TVEs) have been ‘free’ to respond to market forces.
Dic Lo, Hugo Radice

National Specificities

Frontmatter
7. Institutional Foundations of Robust Economic Performance: Public-Sector Industrial Growth in China
Abstract
China’s economic reform was launched by fiscal decentralization, the gradual delegation of decision-making from the central state to local authorities and enterprises. The reform resulted in prodigious economic growth. From 1978 to 1991, the deflated growth rate of China’s national income was more than 10 per cent per year. By 1991, its national income was nearly three times as large as that of 1978, transforming China into the third largest economy in the world after the United States and Japan. This sustained economic growth is difficult to explain. China lacks many of the conditions that economists look for in accounting for sustained economic growth. No plan for the privatization of public property was implemented as in Eastern Europe and Russia. Private property rights remain insecure and poorly enforced. The state does not serve as a neutral third party enforcer of contracts. The monitoring and enforcement of laws and regulations are often arbitrary and inconsistent. Economic markets are intertwined with political markets in which officials secure rents in exchange for administrative favours. Such features of the institutional environment in China ought not to promote sustained economic growth according to orthodox economic reasoning (North and Thomas 1973, Eggertsson 1990). Why then has the Chinese industrial economy maintained such a spectacular rate of sustained growth?
Victor Nee, Sijin Su
8. The Developmental Alliance for Industrialization in East Asia: State and Business in South Korea and Taiwan
Abstract
The East Asian NICs of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore have attained some of the most rapid rates of economic development in the world in the last three decades. South Korea recorded 7.1 per cent in average annual growth rate of GNP per capita between 1965 and 1980, making it the second fastest growing economy in the world — after Botswana — during that period (World Bank 1992). Between 1980 and 1992, South Korea was the fastest growing economy in the world with an impressive 8.5 per cent in average annual growth rate of GNP per capita.
Eun Mee Kim
9. Enterprise Strategies and Labour Relations in Central and Eastern Europe
Abstract
The majority of contemporary discussions of transformation in Eastern Europe are focused around either political changes or macroeconomic developments; enterprise-level labour relations have received considerably less attention. The institutionalization of new patterns of labour relations is highly contingent upon the prevailing economic and political conditions and this may lead some to argue that it is too early to try to study labour relations at the enterprise level. The function of this chapter, however, is to argue that developments at this level are a constituent element in change processes. The discussion draws upon research on processes of change in labour relations in Bulgaria, Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Poland and the Novosibirsk region of Russia. It has been a basic hypothesis of our research that privatization of large state enterprises, and the resulting weakening in centralized control of the economy, would radically alter the context for labour relations in Eastern Europe and in particular, would greatly enhance the opportunities for strategy formulation at enterprise level.
Sarah Vickerstaff, John Thirkell, Richard Scase
10. Ideologies, Economic Policies and Social Change: the Cyclical Nature of Hungary’s Transformation
Abstract
By the end of the 1980s, a general crisis had developed in Hungary. It was not only a crisis of the state socialist system, as the change of that system did not solve it. It was not only an economic crisis, since it affected other spheres of social life. In this chapter it will be argued that the central issue of this crisis was the incapability of the elites to put Hungary back into the mainstream of technological and economic development.
Laszlo Czaban
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Industrial Transformation in Eastern Europe in the Light of the East Asian Experience
herausgegeben von
Jeffrey Henderson
Copyright-Jahr
1998
Verlag
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN
978-1-349-26520-6
Print ISBN
978-1-349-26522-0
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26520-6