Search

Begin New Search Political Geography Hungary

121. Border Security Systems: The Hungarian Case Study

Author:
Zoltán Szabó
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
The Hungarian Republic is making significant efforts in trying to comply with European Union requirements. An efficient security policy that ensures the reliable surveillance of the borders, as well as the provision of the necessary access, is extremely important for Hungary, the "Visegrad region", and the EU. According to the EU, "Hungary is on the right track to adopt current and future union practices, if the pace of development remains constant and the development and training programmes of the most important institutions are realised".
Topic:
Security, Migration, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe and Hungary

122. Pathways of Property Transformation: Enterprise Network Careers in Hungary, 1988-2000 Outline of an Analytic Strategy

Author:
Balázs Vedres and David Stark
Publication Date:
10-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
This study analyzes the restructuring of a national economy by identifying the career pathways of its enterprises. This analysis is conducted in a setting strategically chosen as a case of rapid and profound economic transformation: the postsocialist Hungarian economy between 1988-2000. The goal of this study is to chart the multiple pathways of property transformation. Property pathways are conceptualized as the patterned sequences of change that firms undergo 1) in the composition of their ownership structure and 2) in their position within network structures of ties to other enterprises. These career pathways are neither unidirectional nor plotted in advance. The landscape and topography of the socioeconomic field are given shape and repeatedly transformed by the interaction of the multiple strategies of firms attempting to survive in the face of variable political, institutional, and market uncertainties. These different types of uncertainties will have different temporalities, and the study explores whether and how they increase or diminish in various periods. We develop and test specific hypotheses about how enterprise pathways along the compositional and positional property dimensions are related to the shifting contexts of these types of uncertainty. The core dataset for this study includes the complete ownership histories of approximately 1,800 of the largest enterprises in Hungary for a twelve year period, starting with the collapse of communism in 1989, recording each change in a company's top 25 owners on a monthly basis. Monthly entries for each enterprise also include changes in top management, boards of directors, major lines of product activity, raising or lowering of capital, and location of establishments and branch offices, as well as the dates of founding, mergers, bankruptcy, etc. Data on revenues, number of employees, and operating profit will be compiled from annual balance sheets. These rich data make it possible to map the life cycles of the business groups that are formed by network ties among enterprises, identifying not only when they arise, merge, or dissipate, but also the changing shapes of their network properties. To identify patterns of change, the study draws on sequence analysis, a research tool that makes possible the study of historical processes in an eventful way similar to historiography while retaining social scientific abstraction. Whereas sequence analysis has given us a perspective on careers as historical processes but has not been applied to business organizations, network analysis has been applied to business organizations but has not been done historically. The methodological innovation at the heart of this study is to combine the tools of sequence analysis and network analysis to yield a sequence analysis of changing network positions.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe and Hungary

123. Reshaping State-Society Relations Democratization in Southern and Eastern Europe

Author:
Rafael Durán
Publication Date:
07-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This comparative study attempts to analyze differences in populations' behavior during processes of transition from nondemocratic regimes to regimes democratic in intention. The central hypothesis is that the State—as reflected not only in its elites' preferences and strategies but also in its capacities—has to be considered if we are to understand mass behavior, whether transgressive or moderate, and even mass demobilization. The comparison includes two Southern European countries, Portugal and Spain during the mid-seventies, as points of reference and, as the main empirical cases, two Eastern European countries, Hungary and Romania, in which democratization began in 1989.
Topic:
Civil Society and Democratization
Political Geography:
Europe, Romania, Hungary, Spain, and Portugal

124. The Next Round of NATO Enlargement

Author:
Jeffrey Simon
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Since the revolutions of 1989–90 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO has emerged as the backbone of Europe's security architecture. In response to the demands of outsiders for collaboration, NATO has consistently adhered to a strategy of inclusion to create a Europe whole and undivided. This was a conscious effort at the July 1990 London Summit, where NATO invited the Soviet Union and non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members “to establish regular diplomatic liaison with NATO,” and at the November 1991 Rome Summit, where it launched the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) to include them. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in January 1992, NATO decided to include former Soviet republics in the NACC, thus attempting to ensure a Europe free and whole. The same strategy prevailed at the Brussels Summit in January 1994, which launched the Partnership for Peace (PFP) comprising members of NACC and those members of the Conference (now Organization) on Security and Cooperation in Europe that were able and willing to contribute. The July 1997 Madrid Summit decision to invite the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland to begin accession talks also was portrayed in terms of inclusion; the Alliance reaffirmed that it remained open to new members under Article 10, adding that “[N]o European democratic country . . . would be excluded from consideration.”
Topic:
Security and NATO
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Poland, London, Hungary, Brussels, and Czech Republic

125. Five Years To The Euro For The CEE-3?

Author:
Daniel Gros
Publication Date:
04-1999
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Abstract:
In terms of meeting the fiscal Maastricht criteria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland are better placed today than were some of the current euro area members from the “Club Med” (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) at a comparable point in time leading up to their joining EMU. The CEE-3 should thus be able to qualify for full membership by early 2006, following a decision by the EU as early as 2005.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Europe, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Spain, Italy, and Portugal

126. Social Rights Under State Socialism? Pensions & Housing in Hungarian Welfare State Development

Author:
Phineas Baxandall
Publication Date:
01-1995
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
Social rights are different in Eastern Europe than in the West. Their legacy reflects the very different relationship between state and citizen, and the more instrumental use of law under state socialism. This paper develops a model for distinguishing between different forms of social rights, not only in the West, but also as the concept might be applied to different periods of state socialism. A typology of different social rights is offered, and the lasting legacies of such rights are examined in Hungarian pension and housing policy since 1949. The paper is organized in four parts: 1) There is discussion of previous approaches to interpreting social rights in Eastern Europe. 2) A rough model is suggested to distinguish between varying conceptions of social rights along two dimensions: their relative emphasis on substantive or procedural justice, and on the negative or positive definition of the state's obligation to fulfill these rights. The result is four classifications of rights. The reigning Anglo-Saxon conception of social rights is thereby distinguished not only from the view employed by western welfare state advocates, but also from the Classical Communist logic and a Late Socialist form that is most relevant to contemporary Hungary. 3) It is argued that the informality of rights that was so central to the Late Socialist welfare state has in many ways been reinforced by the process of transformation from state socialism. 4) Housing and pension policy are used to illustrate the Hungarian rights legacy and how it continues to influence social policy.
Topic:
Welfare, Housing, Pension, Social Rights, and State Socialism
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, and Hungary

127. Defensive Military Structures in Action: Historical Examples

Author:
Carl Conetta, Charles Knight, and Lutz Unterseher
Publication Date:
05-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Project on Defense Alternatives
Abstract:
Examines three major cases in the last 80 years where defensive preparations, structures, and tactics were of decisive importance in major military operations. Originally published in Confidence-Building Defense: A Comprehensive Approach to Security & Stability in the New Era, Study Group on Alternative Security Policy and Project on Defense Alternatives, 1994.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Cold War, Armed Forces, Military Affairs, and History
Political Geography:
Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, and Belarus

128. Confidence-Building Defense: a comprehensive approach to security and stability in the new era

Author:
Carl Conetta and Lutz Unterseher
Publication Date:
05-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Project on Defense Alternatives
Abstract:
Originally, this primer was written and then published in spiral-bound book format for a series of seminars sponsored by the Study Group on Alternative Security Policy (SAS) and the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA). These seminars were held in 1994 in several of the newly sovereign states of Europe: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Belarus. The primer remains one of the most comprehensive presentations of the concepts of Confidence-Building Defense including details of their application to the structuring and operations of national armed forces. It totals 116 pages with 94 charts and tables. Although some details of arms and tactics change over time, the fundamentals remain relevant to present-day international security and military planning. Unfortunately, in 1994 no suitable seminar host was found in Ukraine. Although not a panacea, confidence-building defenses could improve Ukraine’s defenses and national morale in the present crisis.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Armed Forces, and Strategic Stability
Political Geography:
Europe, Ukraine, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Belarus

129. Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism

Author:
David Stark
Publication Date:
01-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
In contrast to the problematic of transition, this paper sees social change not as the passage from one order to another but as rearrangement in the patterns of how a multiplicity of social orders are interwoven. From that perspective we see organizational innovation not as replacement but as recombination. The findings of field research in Hungarian firms. data on ownership of the largest Hungarian enterprises, and interviews with key policy makers in government. banking. and industry indicate the emergence of new property forms that are neither statist nor private, in which the properties of private and public are dissolved. interwoven. and recombined. Recombinant property is a form of organizational hedging, or portfolio management. in which actors are responding to extraordinary uncertainty in the organizational environment. For enterprise actors the question is not simply, "Will I survive the market test?" but also, under what conditions is proof of worth on market principles neither sufficient nor necessary to survive. Recombinant property is an attempt to have resources in more than one organizational form-or similarly-to produce hybrid organizational forms that can be justified or assessed by more than one standard of measure. The clash of competing organizational principles that characterizes post-socialist societies produces new organizational forms; and this organizational diversity can form a basis for greater adaptability. At the same time, however, this multiplicity of ordering principles creates problems of accountability. Accompanying the decentralized reorganization oj assets is a centralization of liabilities. Both processes blur the boundaries between public and private. On the one hand, privatization produces the criss-crossing lines of recombinant property; on the other, debt consolidation transforms private debt into public liabilities. Whereas in the state socialist economy paternalism was based on the state's attempts at the centralized management of assets, in the first years of the post-socialist economy paternalism is based on the state's attempts at the centralized management of liabilities.
Topic:
Capitalism, Property, Social Change, and Post-Communism
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, and Hungary

130. Work, Worth, & Justice in a Socialist Mixed Economy

Author:
David Stark
Publication Date:
01-1990
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
A French translation of this essay appears as "La valeur du travail et sa retribution en Hongrie," in Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, no. 85, November 1990, pp. 3-19. An earlier version of this paper was presented in a seminar of the Group de Sociologie Politique et Morale, November 1986. It benefitted from conversations with Pierre Bourdieu and from lengthy discussions with Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot while their book, Les economies de la grandeur (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1987), was in progress. My thanks especially to Monique Djokic Stark for her helpful criticisms and suggestions.
Topic:
Justice, Socialism, Work, and Mixed Economy
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, and Hungary