Capitalism from Outside? Zentai, Violetta; Kovács, János Mátyás
2012, 20120620, 2012., 2012-06-10
eBook
Does capitalism emerging in Eastern Europe need as solid ethnic or spiritual foundations as some other “Great Transformations” in the past? Apparently, one can become an actor of the new capitalist ...game without belonging to the German, Jewish, or, to take a timely example, Chinese minority. Nor does one have to go to a Protestant church every Sunday, repeat Confucian truisms when falling asleep, or study Adam Smith’s teachings on the virtues of the market in a business course. He/she may just follow certain quasi-capitalist routines acquired during communism and import capitalist culture (more exactly, various capitalist cultures) in the form of down-to-earth cultural practices embedded in freshly borrowed economic and political institutions. Does capitalism come from outside? Why do then so many analysts talk about hybridization? This volume offers empirical insights into the current cultural history of the Eastern European economies in three fields: entrepreneurship, state governance and economic science. The chapters are based on large case studies prepared in the framework of an eight-country research project (funded by the European Commission, and directed jointly by the Center for Public Policy at the Central European University and the Institute for Human Sciences) on East-West cultural encounters in the ex-communist economies.
Post-communist welfare regimes are frequently portrayed as a hybrid consisting of the relics of communist social policy and a neophyte imitation of the US model of welfare. Both components of that ...hybrid are regarded as incompatible with the 'European social model'. At the same time, most welfare reformers in East-Central Europe try to avoid falling into the trap of first, conserving the statist, inefficient and pseudo-egalitarian character of the old system of social policy; second, seeking new forms of welfare collectivism along the national-conservative/populist 'third roads' between capitalism and communism; third, triggering popular discontent by dismantling the old welfare regimes too rapidly, or in a haphazard way; and fourth, targeting an end-state which has become unsustainable in the Western world during the past two decades. Meanwhile, the emerging welfare regimes in the region are far from being identical and the reformers do not find stable institutional arrangements in the West to copy. In an effort to make sense of this complex picture, the paper examines what has 'really' happened in the welfare sectors in the region during the past decade by presenting three dominant narratives of the social transformation: 'leaping in the dark', 'marking time' and 'muddling through'.
The paper begins with the unease one feels witnessing the pride taken by the former agents in serving the communist secret police in Hungary. In retrospect, many of them refuse to regard themselves ...as perpetrators or, at least, accomplices, and prefer the role of the victim or even that of the hero. In analysing the roots of moral relativism, first the phenomenon of 'fast forgiving' will be discussed. Then, turning to the profession of economists, it will be shown how profoundly this métier, normally disregarded in studying transitional justice, contributed to making collaboration with the old regime a legitimate mode of behaviour. Finally, after introducing the term 'academic remembering', the paper will ask whether that contribution has reached its end by now.
First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Contributors: Leszek Balcerowicz , Central School of Planning and Statistics, Warsaw and former Deputy Prime ...Minister of Poland; Raimund Dietz , Vienna Institute for Comparative Economic Studies; D. Duff Milenkovitch , Columbia University, New York; Irena Grosfeld , DELTA, Paris; Helmut Leipold , University of Marburg, Germany; J. Michael Montias , Yale University; Alec Nove , University of Glasgow; Petr O. Aven , Advisor to Stanislav Shatalin, Chief Economic Advisor to Gorbachev, Institute of System Research, Moscow and IIASA, Austria; Wodzimierz Brus , St Antony's College, Oxford; Robert W. Davies , University of Birmingham; Tadeusz Kowalik , Institute of the History of Science, Warsaw; Pekka Sutela , University of Helsinki; Xiaochuan Zhou , formerly Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, People's Republic of China; Alexander Bajt , University of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia and advisor to Markovich, Prime Minister of Yugoslavia; Ellen Comisso , University of California, San Diego; Jerzy Osiatynski , Minister of Planning, Poland and Institute of the History of Science, Warsaw; Leon Podkaminer , Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw; Márton Tardos , Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Chief Economic Advisor to the party of the Free Democrats in Hungary
Ten years after . . . After what? The Czechs and Slovaks say Listopad (November), the Germans Wende (turnaround), the Hungarians rendszervdltds (systems change), the Poles Okrogly Stol (round table), .... . . or they simply mention the date with a bit of resignation: 1989. Or they put up with dry generalizations such as "the changes" and "the events." As usual, the Russians do not even have adequate understatements. "After the putsch" is perhaps the least value-laden expression they can use. Or they-like all of us-reach for the evergreen and dilatable terms of "reform" and "transformation" in order to avoid saying something like the Great October Revolution or perestroika again. Probably, the citizens of the nation-building new states are in the best linguistic position. After all, they can refer to their newly acquired independence. ...
Beyond Basic Instinct? János Mátyás Kovács
Capitalism from Outside?,
06/2012
Book Chapter
In planning our study of East–West cultural encounters in economics, we were looking for a school of thought that is popular enough in our region to provide us with a sufficient amount of empirical ...information for a meaningful comparative analysis, and at the same time, identifiable enough to target our inquiry as precisely as possible. New institutional thought seemed to guarantee a large set of scientific theories of rapid expansion that have been “doomed” to flow in Eastern Europe during the past few decades. By new institutional thought we mean, first of all, what is usually called “new institutional
Examines the social and political history of the Jews of Miskolc-the third largest Jewish community in Hungary-and presents the wider transformation of Jewish identity during the eighteenth and ...nineteenth centuries. It explores the emergence of a moderate, accommodating form of traditional Judaism that combined elements of tradition and innovation, thereby creating an alternative to Orthodox and Neolog Judaism. This form of traditional Judaism reconciled the demands of religious tradition with the expectations of Magyarization and citizenship, thus allowing traditional Jews to be patriotic Magyars. By focusing on Hungary, this book seeks to correct a trend in modern Jewish historiography that views Habsburg Jewish History as an extension of German Jewish History, most notably with regard to emancipation and enlightenment. Rather than trying to fit Hungarian Jewry into a conventional Germano-centric taxonomy, this work places Hungarian Jews in the distinct contexts of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Danube Basin, positing a more seamless nexus between the eighteenth and nineteenth century. This nexus was rooted in a series of political experiments by Habsburg sovereigns and Hungarian noblemen that culminated in civic equality, and in the gradual expansion of traditional Judaism to meet the challenges of the age.
