The transformation of the Slovak economy went through stages of varying quality over time. The current second stage of depoliticization of economy is rounding up along with reforms undertaken typically not only by transforming countries but also by economically more advanced states. Having analyzed the criteria for a completed transformation process one may conclude that despite a substantial shift towards the standard market economy model the transformation has not been entirely completed by the time Slovakia became a member of the European Union. The Slovak economy, on the other hand, has already managed a critical mass of changes and would be considered by the economically more advanced countries as a peer in the economic area. Notwithstanding this advance the authors of the economic policy need address the convergence task along with the removal of the remaining transformation deformities
The article attempts to identify the most significant areas of conflict in the crucial period of transition of the Lithuanian economy. The author focuses on the conflicts of interests within the administrative field, ignoring those characteristic for the spheres of politics, business or culture. However, he stresses that it is often difficult to precisely distinguish between types of conflicts as the boundaries dividing the particular spheres are vague and overlapping. Importantly, the author points out that the sources of conflict can be found not only among civil servants and public sector staff members, but also among a wide group of stakeholders of public organisations. From the analysis offered in the paper it can be concluded that despite numerous regulatory efforts undertaken by the Lithuanian authorities, corruption indicators and public opinion polls regarding the functioning of state institutions demonstrate that the problem of conflicts of interests is still unresolved. Among the dire consequences of this situation are lack of trust in the government, loss of sense of justice, submission to the rules dictated by more adroit players. This shows that there is a need for further endeavours to eliminate the sources of conflicts of interests.
The article aims to provide a review of the currently most accepted models explaining transition and adjustment to retirement, which include role theory, continuity theory, life course perspective, and the resource-based dynamic model for retirement adjustment. One of the main theories explaining adaptation to retirement is role theory. Based on this theory, retirement can be characterized as a role transition (Riley & Riley, 1994), when a job role is weakened or even lost, and roles associated with family and community are strengthened (Barnes-Farrell, 2003). Research suggests that an individual can maintain continuity even through part-time employment (Feldman & Beehr, 2001) or by maintaining leisure activities (Pushkar et al., 2011) after retiring. Continuity theory, therefore, suggests that a retired person is directly responsible for creating an adaptation strategy which may help them in their transition. Life course perspective theory, on the other hand, discusses two main factors influencing retirement: a) individual history -including past life transitions, working and recreational habits (Carr & Kail 2013), and b) individual attributes -such as demographics, health and financial status and transition capabilities (Griffin & Hesketh 2008; Wang, 2007).
We compare the welfare effects of government credit subsidies and guarantees in transition and post-transition economies in the conditions of asymmetric information. We show that the guarantees and subsidies targeted to low risk borrowers decrease efficiency while those targeted to high risk borrowers increase efficiency both in transition and post-transition economies. The uniform non-targeted guarantees improve welfare. The uniform subsidies may be used to improve welfare in the economy subjected to credit rationing, but they do not have any effect on the size of collateral required in post-transition economy.
In recent years it has been possible to observe a historical and cultural turn in the studies of transition in Central and Eastern Europe. Whereas until the late 1990s the field was dominated by 'transitology', which endorsed the convergence of the post-communist countries with Western Europe (both in a normative and an analytical sense), more recently there have been an increasing number of studies dedicated to obtaining an understanding of political and cultural diversity in the region. The two publications reviewed in this essay significantly contribute to the latter and are reviewed here with a view to their contribution to the understanding of the cultural, ideational and historical aspects of transition (such as collective identity formation, nation building and state formation, and discursive legacies). It is noted in conclusion, however, that although there is increasing sensitivity towards the diversity of post-communist societies, major steps are still required in order to overcome modernisationist, Western-centric and economic-determinist thinking.
This paper explores moral and social-psychological objectives important to the functioning of the market system in the new Eastern and Central European democracies. The aim is to analyse the new economic and social relations established by the Eastern European transition, especially how they differ from Western structures and how they evolved during the transition period. The analysis uses data from cross-national surveys on attitudes taken in 1991 and 1996. These focused on attitudes towards and views about justice, a just society, and the principles of just distribution, and touched, albeit indirectly, on the general lack of confidence and envy. Based on this empirical data our study examines attitudes towards economic actors, but the findings are interpretable both at the system level and within wider social relations. Operationalizing attitudes towards economic actors is one way to examine attitudes towards the rich under market circumstances. Wealth is a manifestation of economic success in a market situation and exemplifies the extent of social inequalities. Public attitudes towards the rich are not independent of people's judgments of economic institutions or the guiding principles of the market economy. The analysis was extended to the socio-psychological inclinations and preferences of the new Eastern European market economies at the time of the transition. Comparing East and West for acceptance and rejection of market rules and the attitudinal background allows testing for embeddedness and legitimation of market systems in post-socialist societies.
The work consists a comprehensive analysis of the structure and change in the realm of the Indian education based on research study in India (Delhi, Benares, Bangalore). The autor is mainly interested in the transition of modern India and its implications in the dimension of contemporary didactics. He also emphasises the dynamic development of Indian universities combined with IT revolution. He maintains that the new face of Indian education is shaped in accordance with the development of high technologies in India. Considering some similiarities of the Indian Federation and EU, the emphasis on the transformation of human resources into highly qualified 'secret weapon' of modern India, the author maintains that the Indian model of informatic revolution in the dimension of the academic education can be the inspiration for the new members of EU.
The study analyzes the potential impact of implementation of the Lisbon strategy on Slovenian economic performance. The focus of our work is the recommendation of the strategy that the EU members should invest 3 percent of their GDP in research and development (R&D). We analyze this recommendation using comparative descriptive analysis and a simulation of research output with the neural networks. On the example of Slovenia we show that the Lisbon targets, especially the goal of investing 3 percent of GDP in R&D, are not necessarily a part of an efficient economic policy. There is no necessary connection between increases in R&D spending and economic efficiency. The investments in R&D are strongly related to the interactions between the research sector and businesses and depend on the market players while the economic policy makers should do their best to support R&D activities through the structural reforms. This policy prescription applies primarily for the transition countries.
From Pregs Govender's autobiography published under the title 'Love and Courage. A Story of Insubordination', by Jacana in Johannesburg 2007, we get to know a lot about the South African political elite in the process of building democracy. The authoress is a ANC activist. Ever since her teenage days she was politically active. In 1994 after the fall of apartheid she became an MP. Fighting for many causes she tried to remaind members of ANC what they stood for when still in opposition. She considered that their main aim ought to be creating conditions for better life and enrichment of the South African society. That was the reason for coming up with the Women's Budget, and also of her stand against HIV/AIDS denialism. She voted against the ANC government when it asked the parliament to consent to an arms deal, stressing that this money ought to help the deprived. Pregs Govender underlines the importance of insubordination for a politician, and the value of compassion and integrity. The book addresses the most important essential problems facing politicians in many countries, but also annalists who noticed the drawbacks of party loyalism and the contemporary party system.
It is argued in the article that the peaceful transition to capitalism in communist countries was not possible without the co-action of the nomenklatura, whose interest was to transform their informal access to state-owned capital into an authentic 'grand entrepreneurship'. The necessary acquisition of physical capital was achieved by means of mass privatisation schemes in which the nomenklatura took advantage of their social capital and information asymmetries. In the Czech case, there were three social groups competing for a position among the new entrepreneurial elite. The initially large gains of the nomenklatura gradually eroded when new businesses opened to domestic and international competition, where competitiveness depended on endowments of human (entrepreneurial) and economic capital. In the subsequent wave of ownership restructuring, initiated after 1994, the former nomenklatura was partially squeezed out of the tradable sector, which was occupied by better skilled foreign and domestic entrepreneurs. The exiting entrepreneurs converted their holdings into consumer goods, or defected to sectors less open to competition, where the alignment of social capital and bureaucracy persisted. Their position depends now on the pending reforms of public administration and the search for a more efficient social model.
In the paper we try to introduce an alternative framework of post-socialist study, which includes the knowledge of evolutionary and institutionally economy. We aimed at issues of terminology of post-socialist transformation and an overview of opinions on its development including spatial aspects. Specifically, the question how to define and date the final stage of transformation process was emphasized. We assumption that, post-socialist transformation is considered to be a temporary stage divide into several period, which is followed by societal development in conditions of post-industrial society.
In the article, we review recent literature on fiscal sustainability with a particular reference to the problems that are specific to the transition countries. While the original literature on fiscal sustainability is chiefly focused on the industrial countries there are by now few works that have focused on fiscal sustainability in the transition countries. Consequently, the article's purpose is to assess the short-, medium- and long-term sustainability of fiscal policy (under set assumptions) on the national level in the great majority of the transition countries which we divide into three main groups, i.e. Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), Southern and Eastern Europe (SEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Based on the mainstream theory measures of the fiscal sustainability, the results indicate that fiscal sustainability seems to be a problem in many transition countries, particularly in the Visegrad group countries (in CEE region) and in Albania and Croatia (in SEE region).
The centrally planned GDR (German Democratic Republic) economy obtained a complete institutional framework of a capitalist economy of the FRG at the moment of reunification of Germany in 1990. According to the social-economic approaches to the growth theory based on formal conception of institutions, conditions for a dynamic economic development in East Germany were created. However, the author´s case study shows that the economy of East Germany got stuck in a long-term stagnation. The growth theory of the new institutional economics based on the North's path dependency concept offers more plausible explanations of the failure of East Germany transition: important causes of the long-lasting decline in productive activities lie in the incompatibility between West Germany formal institutions and East Germany informal institutions. He believes that this approach is the most general approach to the growth theory.
Sociologists had been facing tremendous difficulties in conceptualizing the changes in Eastern Europe after 1989. The politically attractive concept of transition turned out to be a scientific blind alley. It only superficially took the varieties in societal development into account. The fashionable concepts of cultural trauma or civilizational deficits neglected the structural dimensions of change. A return to long neglected concepts of society and societal change became unavoidable. Concepts of societal transformation took the lead in the efforts to describe, explain and eventually prognosticate the ongoing processes. However, it became increasingly clear that the focus on the transformation of particular societies did no more correspond to the social situation and the needs of social sciences. Methodological societalism had to be replaced by methodological globalism. The present paper exemplifies this methodological and theoretical shift by focusing on conditions, manifestations and effects of four global trends: upgrading the rationality of organizations, individualization, spreading of instrumental activism and universalization of value-normative systems.
The article explores the political-economic mechanisms that lead to economic reforms even if the state is 'captured' with the rent-seeking interests, as was the case in Ukraine in 1990th. The authors argue that unless the social capital is strong enough to solve the coordination problems, the rent seeking can be sustainable for a long time only if the players are coordinated forcedly by an authoritarian arbiter. Such arrangement is mutually associated with peoples' passivity, and inability of comprehending the virtues of market coordination based on the private property rights. Until this public consciousness will change such way, that already emerged market institutions will start crowding out the rent-seeking ones, the deterioration of authoritarian control and coordination due to the technical and societal progress remains the main long-term factor of reforms. Although such deterioration does not cease the rent seeking and can even release it, a lack of control makes it unsustainable, so replacing of the forced coordination with the market one based on universal protection of the property rights is required. Due to this mechanism the market reforms may occur despite absence of either a benevolent reformist government, or even vested group's interests.
The transformation of reproductive behaviour in Slovakia after 1989 brought several historically unique and dynamically ongoing changes. One of them is the increase in the number and share of children born out of wedlock. In less than three decades, their representation has increased from less than a tenth to 40%. The historically valid model of reproduction realized almost exclusively in marriage received serious cracks, and Slovak society had to face this important pluralizing factor in reproductive and family behaviour. However, this is in contrasts with the almost minimal scientific interest in this issue. Therefore, the main goal of the paper is to try to analyse some selected aspects associated with the process of extramarital fertility and birth out of wedlock. On the one hand, we tried to point out some major developmental changes on the other hand we tried to identify some differences that could be associated with more frequent births of children of unmarried women, as well as to identify some internal demographic factors behind the increase in the share of illegitimate children since the early 90s. As our findings show, the youngest women, Roma women and people with low education have a higher chance of having a children out of wedlock in Slovakia. In terms of space, this phenomenon is more often present in women from medium-sized and small settlements, somewhat more often from the rural environment and districts of southern central Slovakia. The main demographic factor behind the increase in the proportion of children born out of wedlock is the growth in the number and proportion of unmarried women, and to a lesser extent, the growth of extramarital fertility.
In the article I discuss the work of visual artist Tanja Ostojić and experimental poetry produced by the Awin’s group of feminist poets in the context of globalism and Serbian transition. Pointing to the transformations of the field of art and field of poetry in the last tree decades, I outline the broader artistic contexts by Nicolas Bourriaud’s term “relational aesthetics” and Miško Šuvaković's term “art in the age of culture.” Considerig the broader concepts of the “body,” I refer to the body as object, body as subject, and body as performance, which includes considering the power relations and dominant social discourses. Focussing my attention at Ostojić’s work Looking for a Husband with EU Passport I deal with the migrant body which symbolizes “otherness” of democracy. Shifting the focuss to the work of Awin’s group of poets, I discuss the possibilities of experimental poetry practice in postsocialism, and the figural/textual body as an index of identity and ethnicity (Jelena Savić), procreative body and technologies of motherhood (Ljiljana Jovanović), procreative body and surveillance technologies (Snežana Roksandić-Karan), body of the Muse of a female poet as hybrid body (Danica Pavlović), and the function of dirty words in the postsocialist feminist poetry (Maja Solar).
The following paper concerns the topic of cross-cultural transition of Third Culture Kids and its determinants: personality, attachment style and religiosity. Third Culture Kids are understood in accordance with David Pollock and Van Reken as those who at least part of their childhood spent abroad. The results of the conducted research suggest that personality, measured by the Rorschach Inkblot Test, strongly determines emotional, cognitive and behavioral aspects of the process. Factors such as: anxiety and lack of emotional stability seem to be of great importance. Moreover, during cross-cultural transition the attachment style, developed in relations with parents or other attachment figures, strongly determines the building of relationships abroad. High distress, part and parcel of the process, brings out dysfunctional character of attachment style. Other typical traces mentioned in monograph devoted to Third Culture Kids by Pollock and Van Reken, as: problems with decision making and identity, lacking sense of belonging, unresolved grief, were also evidenced in my research. Religion and spirituality might be used as a coping strategy during cross-cultural transition. However, it seems very often not to be perceived as such or neglected by interviewees in the research.
For Asante our “battle is intense, the struggle we wage for status power is serious and we cannot communicate as equals when our economic position is that of servants” (2008, p. 49), words that resonated with the author throughout her research with Sudanese Australian young women about their educational experiences, as captured in co-created short films. While the work moved between social science and arts-based research the author questioned the basis of her relationship with the co-participants, and the possibility of fluid status positions within educational contexts. This paper interrogates the impossibility within neoliberal secondary school contexts for activist educational research (Giroux, 2005) to be the kind of the ‘interchange’ of which Asante speaks, a source of creative understanding for researchers and co-participants, if it cannot address co-participants’ (and teacher/student) unequal material conditions. In the case presented in this article, materially-influenced communication challenges reflect current curricular and pedagogical tensions, especially for refugee-background students. Where racial, cultural and socio-economic marginalities intersect, pedagogical and curricular possibilities are sometimes foreclosed before students even enter ‘neoliberal’ classrooms.
The article starts from the premise that the legitimacy of the post-socialist order is strongly related to its ability to generate a level of happiness among the lower social strata that is not significantly lower than the happiness enjoyed by the privileged social strata. We used three waves of the Slovenian Public Opinion Survey and seven waves of the European Social Survey to explore the hypothesis that the average level of happiness in Slovenia is higher in the post-socialist period than during the socialist period, due to Slovenia’s relative prosperity and new democratic circumstances. World-wide happiness analyses by Inglehart et al. (2008) also addressed the link between levels of life satisfaction and system legitimacy. The authors conclude that society’s level of well-being is intimately related to the legitimacy of the socioeconomic and political system. In addition to examining the general trend, we set out to explore the social distribution of happiness over time, i.e. the happiness (trend) distinguished by two basic social strata. In light of the transition effect, we explored another explanatory factor; namely optimism. In times of rapid social change an important mediating factor for personal happiness is likely to be the perception of future opportunities. Our analysis confirmed that optimism plays an important role in the subjective self-assessments of happiness. With the exception of health, optimism is the strongest predictor of happiness, which suggests that an optimistic outlook does have the potential to compensate for the current lack of material standards among the ‘losers’ of transition. However, during the period of economic recession which began to affect Slovenia in 2009, the gap has shown a peculiar dynamic. Moreover, even with the recent recovery of economic growth and the cessation of the austerity measures law, some of their elements remain in place and they are precisely those that target primarily the middle class.
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