Béla Greskovits

Capitalism without compromise: Strong business and weak labor in Eastern Europe’s new transnational industries

This paper contributes to the debate on the social impact of globalization. It focuses on the mediating role of the sectoral pattern of transnational production relocation to the postcommunist economies of Eastern Europe. We argue that the collapse of the socialist heavy industries and the eastward relocation of traditional light industries initially forced the social conditions of the East European countries to converge at the bottom and deepened the gap between the West and the East. Later, the east-ward migration of high-skilled labor and capital-intensive industries and jobs led to decreasing social disparity between the West and some of the former socialist countries. However, convergence appears uncertain, costly, and uneven, and coincides with increasing social disparity within the group of East European new members and candidates of the European Union.

The State, Internationalization, and Capitalist Diversity in Eastern Europe

This article contributes to the debate on varieties of capitalism in Eastern Europe in three ways. First, four types of capitalist regimes that differ in particular institutional configurations and performances are empirically identified: the state-crafted neoliberalism of the Baltic States, the more directly world-market driven neoliberalism of the CIS countries, the embedded neoliberalism of the Visegrád countries, and neo-corporatism in Slovenia. Second, the diversity of capitalist regimes – is explained as a result of the complex interplay of external factors – specifically world commodity and financial markets, international institutions and foreign direct investment – and different state capacities to implement reform choices. Third, caution is given against an uncritical application of the dominant approach of comparative political economy, varieties of capitalism, since it is ill suited to study the emergence of institutions, their international embeddedness, and the semi-peripheral character of East European capitalisms.

Varieties of Capitalism and Capitalism « tout court »

The article reviews the ‘‘Varieties of Capitalism’’ (VoC) approach and its large impact on the field of comparative political economy. It situates the approach within the field, and stresses its specificities. The article argues that VoC’s firm-centeredness, parsimony, and reliance on conceptual tools borrowed from economics, fit better than other approaches to a Zeitgeist formed in the context of the demise of Western capitalism’s alternatives, and the globalization-induced shift of societies’ center of gravity away from politics towards firms and markets. The article then revisits major debates that have followed the publication of the seminal Hall-Soskice book. The debates have revealed that VoC’s greatest strengths, in the end, turn out to be obstacles when it comes to analyzing problems of contemporary capitalism.

Leading Sectors and the Variety of Capitalism in Eastern Europe

State socialism is widely seen as a system that had been remarkably successful in creating and maintaining uniform economic and political structures and institutions in a large number of initially very different societies. From this perspective it is puzzling that, once the system fell apart, its pieces, which shared its unifying legacy as a point of departure and were exposed to the same exogenous shocks of the collapse, entered, in a patterned rather than random way, radically different trajectories of capitalist development. Thus, instead of a single post-socialist economy, diverse forms of capitalism have been emerging.

East-Central Europe's Quandary

Abstract:The article discusses strategies the Central-East European EU member states have applied to protect their populations against the social risks stemming from transformation, foreign-led development and the current economic crisis, and asks how they came about. Some governments spend relatively little on social protection, but employ a high share of their workforce in the public sector. Others offer the most generous support for pensioners and other underemployed groups. As shown in detail in the Hungarian and Latvian case, divergent welfare strategies can be traced back to different socialist legacies and perceptions of the past.

Ten years of enlargement and the forces of labour in Central and Eastern Europe

This article introduces the individual contributions to this issue, which takes stock of the results of the first decade of eastern enlargement of the EU. Combining the insights of the study of industrial relations and social movement theory, the analysis focuses on what Central and Eastern European trade unions have done to benefit from new opportunities and mitigate new risks in good times and bad. The article proposes that while during the first decade after enlargement the hollowing and backsliding of industrial democracy made it difficult for organized workers to make their voices heard via collective bargaining, there have been tectonic shifts in labour’s typical voices of discontent. Aggrieved employees have protested less through strikes at the workplace in their capacity as workers empowered by labour’s collective rights and in alliance with fellow workers. Instead, the repertoire of contention has been dominated by demonstrations in the public space by public sector employees, who have relied on their citizenship rights shared with fellow citizens and have sought the support of civil society organizations.

Demagogic Populism in Eastern Europe

In the first years of post-communist transition in Hungary, populism emerged as a hot topic academically and a veritable curse politically. No party has claimed to be populist, and none has avoided charges of populism levelled by one or another competitor. A demagogic populism seems to be always on the agenda, yet never actually present. In the East European context, however, populism has a peculiar meaning — similar to what it means in Latin America, but very different from what it means in the US. Far from referring to, e.g., Christopher Laschs small proprietorship or an ethic of individual responsibility, it refers to a political strategy that seeks easy popularity by making unrealizable promises to the lower classes and frustrated domestic business interests.

Hungary's post-communist development in comparative perspective

The essays in this volume describe, analyse and compare the achievements and the failures of societies that adopted market-based economies within a democratic polity after a long period of communist rule (Russia and Eastern Europe) or military authoritarianism (Latin America). Together, they also trace the rocky course of liberal economic policies over the whole twentieth century.

Rival Views of Postcommunist Market Society

This is an essay in the short history of social thought on East European transformations1. I shall present the structure of the discourse on the likely economic, social and political dynamics under postcommunism. I shall also point to the historical and theoretical roots of the competing concepts and assess the contribution of transitology to our understanding of social change2. While reviewing various interpretations of Eastern Europe’s transformation I identified two important axes of the debate: the political consequences of capitalist expansion and the impact of the communist legacy on the viability and specificity of East European democratic market societies. I shall use these axes as a simple framework to analyse the nature of the discourse. Specifically, I shall structure the transformation debate according to the participants’ answers to the following questions. (1) Is economic liberalism a prerequisite of, or a threat to political freedom and democracy? (2) Is the communist legacy a liability, or an asset from the viewpoint of the emerging market society? In section 2, I shall introduce four frequently advocated but mutually contradicting theses on the perspectives and the sources of viability of the post-communist market society. Studying the origins of rival views I argue that they are not entirely new, rather in essence each of them had been advocated earlier in different historical contexts. Based on Albert O. Hirschman’s tableau of theories3 in section 3, I shall demonstrate that the manner social scientists think about postcommunism has much in common with the ideas of their predecessors who faced the emergence of capitalism over the past centuries.

Resilient Neoliberalism? Coping with Housing Booms and Busts on Europe's Periphery

Historically, major economic crises have also always been turning points for policy paradigms. Crises were moments for critical choices, when established paradigms collapsed, and alternatives were tested. In this respect, the Great Recession seems to differ. A growing literature tries to grapple with the surprising resilience of neoliberalism even after its spectacular failure as manifested in the financial crisis. The paper seeks to contribute to the debate on economic crisis, policy change, and the resilience of neoliberalism by comparing the policy responses of a selected group of peripheral European countries (East and West). Looking at recent reforms targeting indebted house owners and the housing regime, as well as the financial sector, we identify two policy responses to the Great Recession. Some countries (Ireland and Estonia) have embraced neoliberalism either enthusiastically or at least without much debate, while others have others have rejected neoliberal solutions (Iceland and Hungary). The paper gives evidence of the similar built-up of the crises and the different policy responses.