This article evaluates the extent to which the transitional economic voting model that Tucker (
2006
) developed to explain voting behavior in young postcommunist democracies of Europe applied to ...Poland in the 1990s. According to Tucker, voting behavior depends on the transitional identity of the political parties and voters' status of winners or losers of transition. Using the Polish Panel Survey POLPAN and its data on the 1993 and 1998 parliamentary elections, I distinguish economic winners and losers of the transformation by tracing the socioeconomic situation of the same respondents through time. I find that the political situation in Poland during the first years after the transition was not as unstable and chaotic for voters as Tucker assumed. There is little empirical support for the transitional economic voting model in the first years after transition. Winners did not have a higher propensity to vote for reformist parties, and losers were not more likely to vote for old-regime parties.
The expertise of foresters has until recently been relatively uncontested in central and eastern European forest management, but political, economic and social changes are now challenging that, and ...create opportunities for understanding the relationship between expertise and context. Emphasising both the characteristics that central and eastern European countries have in common, and ways in which they differ, the paper outlines broad changes in forestry policy and practice in the region. It then explores constructions of foresters' identity, role and legitimacy, and the influence of context on their status as experts. The paper focuses on Romania and Poland, drawing on extended interviews, field observation and documentary analysis. Because forestry is tied into histories of power and institutional culture as well as science and political rationalisation, the evolution of forestry knowledge offers insights for wider debates about ‘expertise’ as a socially constructed alternative to lay knowledge. Foresters acquire expertise, both as it is conferred upon them (by law and education), and through their own authority (gained through experience, and the acting out of an emotional commitment to the forest). Post-socialist forestry offers rich potential for extending our understanding of contingency and subjectivity within the wider projects of empire and modernity.
Economy transition of Macedonia underlined the weak points of protected crop cultivation sector. Beside the others, high energy costs, decreased competitiveness of it to the import and stopped the ...development. By analysis of the composition of the energy costs, available, and applied heating technologies and heat sources on disposal, a trial is made to recommend a sustainable solution, which can enable to make the production more competitive and to initiate a new process of development. Geothermal energy has already been identified as optimal choice. Country is rich with this energy source, spread in the regions with long tradition of protected cultivation. Available technologies for geothermal heating of greenhouses enable to reach needed low price of used heat and prevent of negative environmental impacts, which are characteristic for the fossil fuels used for the same purpose, and increase employment in poor rural areas of the country.
Recreation benefits constitute a substantial part of the total economic value of forests, and are important for the choice of multi-functional forest policies. The application of methods valuing such ...benefits is in its infancy in transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), so value estimates for policy use are sometimes transferred from Western Europe proportionally scaled down by GDP. However, little is known about how recreation values vary with income, and one risks underestimating benefits in CEE. This paper reports the findings of the first comprehensive, national-level study in any CEE country estimating annual and per trip forest recreation values in Poland using the Travel Cost (TC) and Contingent Valuation (CV) methods. Two in-person interview surveys of forest recreation behaviour were carried out. The first was administered on-site in ten representative forest areas, and the other in the homes of a national sample of adult Poles. Results show that forest recreation is highly valued in Poland, at Euros 0.64–6.93 per trip per person, depending on the valuation method. Both trip frequency and per trip values are higher than the average in Western Europe, despite a lower income level. Thus, a simple GDP-adjusted transfer from Western Europe would substantially undervalue forest recreation in Poland. Further, a comparison of TC consumer surplus estimates and GDP/capita in Europe shows no clear relationship, indicating that a range of cultural, institutional and other factors may be important.
During the past two decades agrarian (‘land and farm’) reforms have been widespread in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA), following earlier ones in ...Asia (China and Vietnam). However, independent family farms did not become the predominant sector in most of Eastern Europe. A new dual (or bi-modal) agrarian structure emerged, consisting of large farm enterprises (with much less social functions than they had before), and very small peasant farms or subsidiary plots. The paper compares five case studies, looking at agrarian actors, property rights, state influence, and rural poverty. These are Russia, Armenia, Moldova and Uzbekistan in the EECCA region, and China's Xinjiang province in Asia. The paper concludes that state influence is still substantial, property rights regimes are quite diverse and rural poverty remains medium to high. State-led agrarian reform, in particular where a redistributive (or restitution-based) land reform was implemented led in some cases to land-based wealth redistribution, but policies and institutions were lacking to support the individual farm sector. More often the outcome was a rapid transfer of land in the hands of corporate farm enterprises, reversing the initial process of ‘re-peasantization’. It seems that the old ‘Soviet dream’ of mega-farm enterprises in the ‘transition to capitalism’ has regained prominence, with huge agro-holdings ‘calling the shots’, providing an insecure future for agricultural workers, peasants and farmers.
This paper empirically investigates the relationship between contractual arrangements and their enforcement in Chinese agriculture. Based on an analysis of a survey of 100 agribusiness firms engaged ...in contract farming in Zhejiang province of China, we find that private contract enforcement mechanisms play an important role in influencing smallholders’ decisions to breach or fulfill contracts. Contract arrangements such as floor pricing, or requiring smallholders to make specific investments facilitate self-enforcement and significantly improve the smallholder’s contract fulfillment rate. This is particularly important in Chinese agriculture since the business environment is characterized by an absence of effective public enforcement institutions.
The growing distrust of consumers in the safety of food is widely documented in both developed and transitional economies. This is related to the growing intensification and industrialisation of food ...production and processing, as well as the growing distance between food production and food consumption sites. Farmers commonly complain about the increasing marketing power of modern distribution, which often imposes unfavourable terms of exchange and discourages efforts to implement quality assurance systems. In the literature, proximity between producers and consumers - be it geographical or relational - is said to be advantageous in many respects. Geographical proximity is economically more efficient in perishable commodity supply chains compared to more distant supply areas. Regular interaction between producers and consumers and between buyers and sellers promotes trust, the sharing of information, joint investment and risk-taking, with a sense of responsibility on both sides. An alternative to proximity is standardisation and certification, but these processes generate costs that are difficult for smallholder farmers to bear. On the other hand, the literature is increasingly challenging the so-called superiority of proximity over distance as regards food chain sustainability. When distant supply areas are characterised by specialisation and large-scale production, this may result in economies of scale and lower costs in terms of production and transport. Trust cannot circumvent all risks of moral hazard. Regular interaction combined with some form of control and certification is desirable, even if based only on some minimal process of documentation. It is better to promote complementarities between personal trust and standards, and between short and long chains, rather than to consider them as opposites.
As consumers become more concerned about the environment and their health, food quality, food safety and their interest in organic food becomes more apparent. Several researchers have examined the ...behaviour of consumers of organic produce in western economies but little is known about the consumer of organic vegetables in the transitional economies. This paper uses a blend of interviews with key players in the supply chain for organic vegetables in Hanoi, Vietnam, as well as the results of a small scale survey of consumers to develop a better understanding of the organic vegetable buyer. The typical organic vegetable buyer emerges as being female, between 25 and 40 years old, well educated and earning an above average income. She is married with children, or pregnant, but is not very knowledgeable about certification. The organic vegetable buyer associates organic vegetables with better health, quality and safety. This paper recommends more control at the point of sale and better consumer education about the benefits of organic vegetables.
Using survey data from three Polish parliamentary elections, we provide the first systematic micro-level test contrasting a standard incumbency-based model of economic voting with a transitional ...economic voting model in the post-communist context. To do so, we introduce a novel temporal component to micro-level studies of economic voting that supplements standard short-term retrospective economic evaluations (e.g., “do you feel the economy has improved in the past 12 months?”) with longer “transitional” retrospective economic evaluations (e.g., “do you feel the economy has improved since the collapse of communism?”). Our analyses reveal a nuanced picture suggesting multiple paths for economic influences on voting in Poland. We find evidence consistent with the standard incumbency-based approach, but only for the specific set of evaluations to which the theory is most appropriately applied: short-term retrospective economic evaluations and the vote for incumbent parties. By contrast, the transitional model is strongly supported by evidence that evaluations of changes in economic conditions since the collapse of communism (“long-term economic evaluations”) have an effect on the vote for a range of parties. We demonstrate as well that these results are robust to model specification and generational effects.
PDF
