The Transformation of East-European Economic Elites: Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria [antikvár]

FOREWORD -------- Although the idea of this volume is reiativeiy new, the plan of the researches at the back of it date from 1990. The authors met that yesir at a Dubrovnik seminar where they realized that apart from their research interests, their approaches and research programs also considerably overlapped. Mone of them believed the category of the elites was to be confused with that of the best, or that elites were to be eiidowed with a deterministic significance in social reproduction. Th^ all agreed that in the deep currents of socieil changes the transformation of em economic elite had salient importance as it was more capeible them any other group of influencing the direction, pace and quality of economic changes. Also, that institutional circumstances were just as important in explaining the composition of an elite as were the recruitment and attitude of em elite in e?q>lEtining institutioneil changes. The first part of the book contetins studies summarizing former research results, reviewing the varieties of selecting leaders in plarmed economies and describing various circimistemces of institutional changes. In 1989-90 an elite survey was conducted in all three countries, but their coordination as to sampling emd the questiormaire was only partial^ possible - in Bulgaria and Himgary. (The Yugoslav survey, on the other hand, enabled researchers to compare the Croat and Serb data.) In plarmed economies, the recruitment emd composition of economic elites - that is, the top leaders of large enterprises, bemks and economic policy institutions - displayed some basic siinilarities: the party affiliations, education and distribution by gender of leaders conspicuously coincided, and so did the dominemt ceireer patterns. Significant differences were also pinpointed, e.g. in intergenerational mobility, migration, attitudes and especialfy in the institutional conditions. The attempt at investigating the economic elites of the three countries was propelled by the assumption that the economic and cultural patterns would draw up three different schemes. These models were defined in the sphere of reality by shortage emd the size of extemeil debt, in society by latent tensions, emd in economic ideology by the nature of reform orientation. The Hungarian model was characterized by the early emergence of reform altematives, the moderateness of shortage and latent tensiorxs, and at the same time, by the accumulation of external debts. The Yugoslav pattern was defined by the dominance of the ideology of self-rule and the streiining of social tensions, while the Bulgarian version showed the deepening of shortage and the late and stunted appearance of a reform discourse. In addition, in the Bulgarian and particularly in the Yugoslav elite the rate of leaders promoted from i