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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- The Political Economy of State-Society Relations in Hungary and Poland
- Introduction: Points of Permeable Contact
- 1 History and Theory in Practice
- 2 Precocious Reformer: Hungary
- 3 Injustice: Poland 1948–1980
- 4 Poland: From Solidarity to 1989
- 5 Hungary: Property Relations Recast
- 6 Schumpeter by the Danube: From Second Economy to Private Sector
- 7 Action and Reaction: Institutional Consequences of Private-Sector Expansion
- Conclusion: Despotism, Discovery, and Surprise
- Index
2 - Precocious Reformer: Hungary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- The Political Economy of State-Society Relations in Hungary and Poland
- Introduction: Points of Permeable Contact
- 1 History and Theory in Practice
- 2 Precocious Reformer: Hungary
- 3 Injustice: Poland 1948–1980
- 4 Poland: From Solidarity to 1989
- 5 Hungary: Property Relations Recast
- 6 Schumpeter by the Danube: From Second Economy to Private Sector
- 7 Action and Reaction: Institutional Consequences of Private-Sector Expansion
- Conclusion: Despotism, Discovery, and Surprise
- Index
Summary
… there is nothing … more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513On January 1, 1982, the Hungarian party-state institutionalized a property rights reform that made private enterprise a citizen's prerogative. Though radically at odds with communist ideology, and unparalleled in the communist world, the reform went largely unnoticed by outside observers. It was easy to miss. Hungarian reformers themselves downplayed the reform's importance. Martial law had been recently imposed in Poland. Perestroika and Glasnost had yet to appear on the Soviet stage. The Cold War was still on. And the Berlin Wall stood unperturbed, as if facing eternity.
In Hungary, however, the reform seized the imaginations and marshaled the energies of thousands of new entrepreneurs. It also incited resentment in state firms, and prompted resistance in a bureaucratic machinery that could not even fathom the practical, regulatory problems with which entrepreneurs presented them, first in a trickle and then in a flood. Finally, the reform provoked jealousy among a general population unaccustomed to sharp income differentials.
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- The Political Economy of State-Society Relations in Hungary and PolandFrom Communism to the European Union, pp. 37 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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