Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:22:39.140Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité: Reflections on the Changes following the Collapse of Communism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2010

János Kornai
János Kornai*
Affiliation:
Collegium Budapest; Harvard University, Szentháromság utca 2, H-1014 Budapest, Hungary. E-mail: [email protected]; website: www.kornai-janos.hu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What happened 20 years ago in the region formerly ruled by a communist regime was a velvet revolution. And even if it was a revolution without bloodshed, it is a legitimate question to ask what was realized of the revolutionary motto: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité? Liberty is a bundle of rights, composed of at least three sets: (1) political rights; (2) rights of free entrepreneurship, free entry to the market; and (3) freedom of choice between alternative goods and services. There is great progress in achieving all three categories of liberty. As for egalitarian values, inequality rapidly increased, causing aversion against the new order in a large fraction of society. Fraternité, in other words solidarity, is a widely accepted value, but there are great difficulties in its implementation. Post-socialist countries inherited a premature welfare state. The majority of people would prefer universal social entitlements, while the necessary material resources are not sufficient for these ambitious goals. This paper concludes with a discussion of various policy options for easing the contradictions between conflicting and inconsistent objectives.

Type
Focus: Evolution
Information
European Review , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , July 2010 , pp. 379 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References and Notes

1. There was one exception. In Romania the hated tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were sentenced to death and executed in the first turbulent days of the uprising.Google Scholar
2.EBRD (2008) Transition Report 2008: Growth in Transition (London: EBRD).Google Scholar
3.EBRD (2009) Transition Report 2009: Transition in Crisis (London: EBRD).Google Scholar
4. Lucky for not knowing the shortage economy from their own experiences, the younger generations have other sources, not only the economic literature. They should read the novel The White King by György Dragomán (see Ref. 15), and then they will probably have an idea what queuing, bananas turning up in shops only on special occasions or electricity being unpredictably cut off meant in Ceausescu’s Romania.Google Scholar
5.Kolosi, T. and György, T. I. (2008) Rendszerváltás: Nyertesek és vesztesek. (Transition: Winners and Losers.). In: Újratervezés: Életutak és alkalmazkodás a rendszerváltás évtizedeiben (Re-planning: Life and Adaptation in the Transition Decades), edited by T. Kolosi and T. I. György (Budapest: TÁRKI) pp. 11–50.Google Scholar
6.Milanovic, B. (1999) Explaining the increase in inequality during transition. Economics of Transition, 7(2), pp. 299–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7.Milanovic, B. and Ersado, L. (2009) Reform and Inequality during the Transition: An Analysis Using Panel Household Survey Data, 1990–2005 (Washington, DC: World Bank).Google Scholar
8.Mitra, P. and Yemtsov, R. (2006) Increasing inequality in transition economies: is there more to come? World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4007, September (Washington DC: World Bank).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9. There is a strong feeling of disappointment and loss of trust in institutions as a reaction to the spreading corruption, tax-avoidance and massive violation of norms tolerated by the state (see Ref. 16). This public sentiment, among others, contributed to an increased and louder outcry against growing inequality.Google Scholar
10.Haggard, S. and Kaufman, R. R. (2008) Development, Democracy and Welfare States (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press) offers a comprehensive and profound description about the reforms of the welfare state in the post-socialist region, comparing them to the similarly directed changes in Latin-America and East-Asia.Google Scholar
11. Let me quote Isaiah Berlin’s words (in Ref. 17): For if the essence of man is that they are autonomous beings… then nothing is worse than to treat them as if they were not autonomous, but natural objects, … whose choices can be manipulated by their rulers … paternalism is despotic, not because it is more oppressive than naked, brutal, unenlightened tyranny, … but because it is an insult to my conception of myself as a human being. How sad it is that only few people can understand and recognize this thought.Google Scholar
12. An American and a German economist (see Ref. 18), in their remarkable research, found that people in the Eastern part of Germany (i.e. the ex-GDR) demand a paternalist welfare state much stronger than those in the Western part, where values and expectations are socialized in a different way.Google Scholar
13.Kean, M. and Prasad, E. (2002) Inequality, transfers, and growth: new evidence from the economic transition in Poland. Review of Economics and Statistics, 324–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14.Vanhuysse, P. (2006) Divide and Pacify (Budapest: CEU Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15.Dragomán, G. (2007) The White King (Garden City: Doubleday).Google Scholar
16.Tóth, I. G. (2009) Bizalomhiány, normazavarok, igazságtalanságérzet és paternalizmus a magyar társadalom értékszerkezetében (Lack of Trust, Anomy, Feeling of Injustice and Paternalism in the Value Structure of the Hungarian Society) (Budapest: TÁRKI).Google Scholar
17.Berlin, I. (1969) Two concepts of liberty. In: Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp. 118–172.Google Scholar
18.Alesina, A. and Fuchs-Schündeln, N. (2007) Good bye Lenin (or not?): the effect of communism on people’s preferences. American Economic Review, 97(4) pp. 1507–1528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19.Economist Intelligence Unit (1990–2008) Country Reports. www.eiu.com. Retrieved on December 12, 2009.Google Scholar
20.Gwartney, J. D. and Lawson, R. (2008) Economic Freedom of the World. Annual Report (Vancouver: Fraser Institute).Google Scholar
21.World Values Survey (1995) Official data file v.7. http://www.worldvaluessurvey.com/. Retrieved on December 12, 2009.Google Scholar
22.European Social Survey (2006) Round 3 (Oslo: Norwegian Social Science Data Services). http://ess.nsd.uib.no/ess/round3/. Retrieved on December 12, 2009.Google Scholar
23.Standard Eurobarometer 69 (2008) November (fieldwork Apr–May). http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb69/eb69_en.htm. Retrieved on June 11, 2009.Google Scholar
24.Czeglédi, P. and Kapás, J. (2009) Economic Freedom and Development (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó).Google Scholar