The Importance of Entrepreneurship for Democratic Development in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

Analysis of the transformation processes in Central and Eastern Europe has been through various phases and evaluations. If, at the start of the 1990s, debate concerned the right transformation strategy – shock therapy, founded on macroeconomics, opposed to a political/economic gradualism connected to microeconomic measures – then this was followed by a rather programmatic vision, originating from the observation that neither of the two projects in absolute form could be successfully completed (Quaisser 1997; Heering et al. 1998). A central element of the strategies for overcoming the transformation process in Central and Eastern Europe was the privatisation of previously State enterprises, i.e. the conversion of “Kombinat” (large-scale entities) into legally autonomous enterprises. An independent entrepreneurial system certainly already existed in Central and Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, but in any event was not in tune with the socialist economic programming. As a consequence this entrepreneurial system was systematically repressed for political/ideological reasons. With the end of the socialist ideology, it was sought to utilise the dynamic deriving from the incorporation of new enterprises for the economic reconstruction of Central and Eastern Europe. With regard to the speed and method of privatisation, there were clear differences. In some countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, privatisation was carried out with great speed, to be then widely concluded at the end of the 1990s. Other countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Romania initially had difficulties, and at the end of the last century they were still at the beginning of privatisation. After some progress at the beginning of 2000, these countries have taken various paths. A series of States including the three Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Poland, Slovenia, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Hungary and, recently, Bulgaria and Romania have become part of the European Union (EU). Although the transformation process in