Transition Economies

Transition is a messy affair even in the best of times and the 1990s in Central and Eastern European (CEE) history have been by far the worst in the last 50 or so years. Politics mirrored this age of mayhem and upheaval. It unfolded along several axes of conflict.

It is logical but inadequate to blame the current government or the global financial crisis for the illiberal turn in Hungary as the corruption of the democratic political and market-oriented economic system had already been going on years before it. The article summarizes the main factors for the continuous downslide, the essence of which is that during the last 25 years politicians on the left and right have learned the lesson of how to be popular by being populists.

The transition to sustainable and equitable food systems is a complex project, that requires a mixture of innovation and resucitation of novel and traditional strategies for food production and distribution. Permaculture is an international sustainability movement with a strong focus on food issues, and a distinctive mix new and old strategies toward food system transition. Despite an increasingly high international and domestic profile, permaculture has remained isolated from scientific research. Permaculturists face serious political-economic barriers to food system transition from the prevailing neoliberal paradigm, which promotes capital-intensive commodity production and long-distance trade over other models. This paper focuses on the ways in which permaculturists, faced with hostile market and policy forces, work to create new counter-market hybrid social contexts to shelter and support alternative forms of production - including subsistence production, direct marketing and niche marketing, the inclusion of diverse revenue streams from 'information enterprises' such as education and consultation, and others. The paper reports on ongoing research that deploys mixed and participatory research methods at ~50 permaculture-identified farming operations across the continental US, and offers a preliminary assessment of the role of the permaculture movement in food system transition, and broader lessons from the permaculture experience for food system transition in general.

The preparation of a nationwide framework for Russian regional planning policy has been impeded by an ongoing conflict between two competing logics of territorial organization: that of “polarized” or “equalized” development. This paper analyzes the preparation of the nationwide framework for regional planning within the context of political authoritarianism and continuing neoliberal reforms. The findings indicate (1) a stalemate in the preparation of regional policy, caused by fundamental contradictions between authoritarian centralization and the need to stimulate growth; (2) that in the absence of coherent regional policy, the government and other actors employ ad hoc “unguided” approaches to regional development projects; and (3) that the main result is an increasingly polarized pattern of development.

A characterization of last hunter-gatherer occupations at Antofagasta de la Sierra (Southern Argentinean Puna) is presented (ca.5.500-3.000 years b.p.). Different lines of evidence are considered: technofactures, rock art, residential mobility, territoriality, wild and domesticated animal and plant resources exploitation and non local biotic and abiotic resource procurement. It is highlighted that at this moment important socio-economic changes related to the emergence of productive activities occurred in the study area. We consider that such changes took place inside of local hunter-gatherer groups and that they were not owed to transformer stimulus from “nuclear areas”. Besides, the local archaeological sequence studied is compared to contemporaneous information from Northern Argentinean Puna and Desert of Chile. The goal is to board the variability in local processes and possible relationships within them.

"ABSTRACT This paper is a monograph written for International Securities Consultancy in 2001. It traces the history and evolution of the private sector in the early reform era in China. The paper explores the definitional grey areas one encounters in the study of the private sector in China in the reforms era.
"

This paper analyzes the role of different forms of social capital in privatization in regions of Ukraine. Several recent studies linked regional government performance and economic development in Italy, Germany, Poland, and other countries to social capital, which is associated with different historical experiences. In post-communist Ukraine, regional political cleavages are also often traced to historical divisions. This paper examines whether different historical experiences in two groups of regions, those which were under Russian and then Soviet rule, and those which were under Austro-Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, and Czechoslovak rule until World War II, contributed to variations in the rate and quality of privatization. This study distinguishes between quantitative and qualitative aspects of social capital and privatization in industry and agriculture in Ukrainian regions. Statistical analysis of the 1995 World Values Survey data and aggregate data are used to analyze effects of historical experience and other direct and indirect measures of social capital, such as membership in voluntary organizations, interpersonal trust, importance of family and friends, and crime and divorce rates, on privatization in Ukraine. The role of social capital in privatization is compared to the role of other factors including economic policy, industrial structure, human capital, and ethnic cleavages.

This paper studies public welfare preferences in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Generalised ordered logistic regression models and predicted probabilities are employed to analyse comparable attitudinal survey data. The results vary considerably among the countries, but age is the most important covariate of welfare preferences, followed by individuals’ socio-economic characteristics. The findings also indicate that transitional perceptions, notably in Ukraine and Moldova, are most strongly linked to preferences concerning the state’s involvement in reducing the gap between the rich and the poor rather than to preferences regarding the main welfare state programmes such as pensions and healthcare.

The paper analyzes the divergence of economic growth in post-communist countries along geographical lines. It examines the role of culture, manifested in the form of civil society, social capital, trust, religious and business ethics, and historical experience, in the economic growth. Multivariate regression, a path (structural equation) model, and sensitivity analysis are used to determine direct and indirect effects of culture, policy, corruption, war, initial economic conditions, and ethnicity on the economic growth in 28 post-communist countries in 1990-1998. The statistical analyses show that a cultural index, which reflects civil society strength, the proportion of Catholics and Protestants in the population and historical experience, has the strongest effect on growth, economic reform, macroeconomic stabilization policy and corruption.

Poland has become a part of Western Europe – for better or for worse. In the face of the escalating Ukrainian conflict it definitely seems for worse. The Poles have become wealthy enough to forget where they were 25 years ago. The memories of our own poor condition are so faded that we can no longer empathize with the Ukrainians’ violent struggle. And yet it seems so easy to keep convincing everyone in Brussels that Poland will teach its European partners to think in terms of solidarity.

"SSCB’nin dağılması sonrasında eski cumhuriyetlerde yaşanan ekonomik dönüşüm süreci, genel olarak “transition” (geçiş) süreci olarak adlandırılmaktadır. Ekonomideki bu değişimin de “Merkezi Planlama Ekonomisi”nden “Piyasa Ekonomisi” ne bir dönüşüm olarak değerlendirildiği görülmektedir. Kırgız Cumhuriyeti de 1991 yılından bu yana, 20 yılı aşkın bir süreden beri, bu dönüşümü yaşayan ülkelerden biridir. Bu çalışmada, Kırgız Cumhuriyeti vatandaşlarının,  geçiş dönemi ile ilgili genel değerlendirme, algı ve beklentileri; “piyasa ekonomisi ve özel mülkiyete yönelik tutumları”, “eski ekonomik modele bir özlem bulunup bulunmadığı”, “demokratik ve diğer kurumlara yönelik tutumları”, “Devletin ekonomideki rolü ve Devlet müdahalesi hakkındaki kanaatleri” çerçevesinde ölçülmeye çalışılmıştır. Sonuçlar; yaş, milliyet, eğitim, istihdam vb. çeşitli demografik gruplar açısından değişiklik göstermektedir. Ancak en temel ve belirgin sonuç; Devletin ekonomideki rolü ve Devlet müdahalesi konusunda önemli bir beklenti olduğu yönündedir.

The process of economic transformation, after the collapse of the USSR, in the former republics, is called, in general "transition". This change in the economy is perceived as a transformation from "the Centrally Planning Economy" to "the Market Economy". Also the Kyrgyz Republic, since 1991, for over 20 years, is one of the countries that are trying to perform this transformation. In this study, perceptions and expectations of citizens of the Kyrgyz Republic, with the overall assessment regarding the transition period, has been measured, within the framework of “attitudes towards the market economy and private property”, “is there a longing for the old economic model?”, “attitudes towards the democratic and other institutions”, “opinions about the role of the State in the economy and the State intervention”. Results are varying in terms of various demographic groups like age, nationality, education, employment, and so on. However, as the most basic and obvious result, expectations of Kyrgyz citizen, about the role of the State in the economy and the State intervention, said to be very powerful and high."