Könyv

Privatization as a ?Learning Process?: The Case of Hungary

Hungarian privatization is considered as a process which has been dominated by standard methods. Most of the firms were sold via public tenders, private placement or public offerings and state budget generated significant cash income from selling. A detailed analysis, however shows that the course of privatization has neither been direct nor uniform even in this country. Every conceivable approach occurred on the scene during the last decade, including free distribution to individuals and institutions or preferences to different types of buyers as well as loosely controlled movements and centralized governmental decisions.
The intention of this paper is to show some reasons behind these fluctuations. Privatization is regarded here as a learning process. Learning process not in a technical sense but rather a trial and error approach, an adjustment of all main actors (governments, enterprise management and potential new owners) led partially by constraints, partially by changing opportunities.

In: Successful Transitions, Political Factors of Progress in Post-socialist Countries, Jürgen Beyer, Jan Wielgohs, Helmut Wiesenthal eds., Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2001. 139-152.

Privatization in Central East Europe: can it be designed?

According to general understanding, privatization in Central East Europe does not simply mean the transfer of individual firms from state hands to other proprietors, but it is the precondition and the main instrument of rebuilding the whole economic system. Thus, the task is not to fit in state owned enterprises into a functioning market but to create this new integration mechanism parallel with and by the mean of a wide-ranging change of ownership structure. One of the basic dilemmas of the transformation is, whether it is possible to build up the frameworks of a decentralized market mechanism applying a comprehensive, homogeneous privatization strategy, carried out by centralized governmental institutions. In other words: can privatization be designed?
Based on the Hungarian experience, in comparison with Czech-Slovakia and Poland, this paper will argue that all governments have tried to do so. Nevertheless, their attempts to design ownership changes have been successful at a different degree - not (only) in terms of privatized assets or enterprises but in terms of the impact of programs, guidelines and centralized decision making on the transformation of the proprietary structure. The degree of "design" will be characterized by the stability versus shifts of governmental privatization policies and the relationship between the programs declared and the empirical changes.

In: Institutional Design in New Democracies, A. Lijphart, C.H. Waisman eds., Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1996. 177-194.

Centralization, renationalization, redistribution

(Government's role in changing Hungary's ownership structure)

The paper discusses the shifts in Hungarian privatization strategies and in the role of the government in changing the ownership structure. Analyzing the forms of transformation, the goals and motivations of the participants (enterprises and government organizations) and the reasons for changing the main direction, it argues that the five years history of Hungarian privatization indicates the mixed and unstable character of the process. There has never been a uniform, homogeneous method of changing the ownership structure: market type techniques have been accompanied by central distribution of property.
The often changing governmental strategies, motivated predominantly by purely political considerations, show a clear tendency towards the re-establishment of centralized control of state organizations over the firms. The coming years can see an emergence of redistribution type solutions with highly dubious social and economic implications.

In: Strategic Choice and Path-dependency in Post-socialism, Jerzy Hausner, Bob Jessop, Klaus Nielsen eds., Edward Elgar, Brookfield 1995. pp. 287-308.

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