Creating Capitalist Institutions: Labour Market Governance in Hungary in the 1990s (original) (raw)
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A delay in the emancipation of labour: bourgeois paternalism, workers' insurance and labour law in Hungary from the end of the nineteenth century to the Second World War In most countries in early twentieth-century Europe, labour, which had merged into privacy in the liberal configuration of the nineteenth century, distinguished itself as an independent area structured by laws. Along with this took place the social emancipation of the working class and some kind of integration of the labour movement into the political system. One manifestation of this was the development of labour law, as well as the recognition of trade unions and the appearance of workers' insurance or other, non-insurance-based welfare policies. During this process, while a triangle of the interested parties of employers, employees and the government was formed, there took place a transformation by which the handling of problems arising from industrialization was lifted out of the local logic of the former poor relief and entrusted to organizations which handled the issue on an all-society level. These organizations endeavoured to make the people available and manageable by new bureaucratic techniques, thus ensuring the integration of society. However, compared with the earlier bourgeois paternalism this still meant the emancipation of the lower classes of society. 1 In this article I attempt to sketch out the nature of the bourgeoisie's personal, not institutionalized paternalism, which fitted in with the classical liberal view and was characteristic of labour relations in late nineteenth-century Hungary, and to present how the birth of workers' insurance and social security laws and the failure of the development of labour law had preserved this paternalism and transformed it by the inter-war period into some sort of corporate paternalism. In the second half of the nineteenth century, after 1848, the dismantling of the legal structure of feudal society in Hungary was followed by fairly rapid commercial and later industrial development. This took place, after 1867, within liberal political frameworks and,
2014
The completion of this research project would not have been possible without the support of many to whom I would like to express my gratitude. To begin with, I would like to thank Gareth Dale, my first supervisor, whose continuous encouragement, critical insights, and patience, has been invaluable throughout this period. I am also grateful to Peter Thomas, my second supervisor, whose comments and suggestions have been very helpful in improving the drafts of several chapters. In editing and revising previous chapters of this thesis, I was also fortunate to draw on comments and insights from Alexander Anievas,
Usurping Social Policy: Neoliberalism and Economic Governance in Hungary*
Journal of Social …, 2006
This paper takes issue with arguments emanating from the global social policy literature that neoliberal policy agendas have been largely a consequence of the interplay of international agencies with indigenous reform interests. While relevant, such arguments grasp only ...
Hungary: Towards a Socialist Market Economy?
Studies in Political Economy, 1985
he recent decades of Marxist social science, particularly political economy, have been characterized by an intense theoretical defensive. The shortcomings of Eastern European socialism and its ideological reflections have been revealed gradually. However, the "ruthless criticism of all that exists" has not been accompanied by an alternative socialist theory. The image of the society to be achieved is missing or mystically superficial. For the most part, we only know what we do not want. In this context every attempt at building a coherent vision of socialism must have particular importance for Marxist scholars.
The Neoliberalism as a Legal Project in State Socialist Hungary
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In this paper, it has been argued that an inevitable factor in the spread and hegemony of neoliberalism is the transformation of the legal system, and more specifically the restructure of law in line with neoliberalism. In the first part of the paper, which sets out the theoretical framework, I will explain how capitalism and the legal system are interconnected, since the legal system reflects the interests of the ruling classes of the time. I apply the theoretical frameworks to the Kádár regime in part two, where I examine its gradual neoliberalization in the context of the legal system. State socialist regimes have become a kind of "laboratory of the East" for neoliberalism, which is not to say that neoliberalism came from the West as some kind of "conquering" ideology, but rather that it has its roots in a transnational network of Western and Eastern
Labor Law Reforms after the Populist Turn in Hungary
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The characteristics of Hungarian populism and its effects on labor and social policy are rather different compared to those of western Member States of the EU. These differences are due to the different experiences related to inter- and intra-EU migration and to the difference in how the EU’s austerity measures were imposed during the economic crisis. The two distinctive elements are the workfare regime which replaces the welfare state, and anti-pluralism. In the workfare model, ‘hard-working people’ are pictured as an idealized mass of employees who are disciplined and striving for betterment every day; and whose jobs and wellbeing are jeopardized by illegal migrants and the idle poor. However, labor law does not strengthen the rights of ‘hard-working people’ or support them in asserting their rights against their employers. While the Roma have been described as the undeserving poor and mainstreamed in everyday politics and practice, guarantees and protective measures have been sev...
Labour market institutions in Hungary with a focus on wage and employment flexibility
2008
It is widely believed today, that the operation of the labour markets is influenced by institutional factors, affecting macroeconomic adjustment in response to shocks. In this way, labour market institutions affect both cyclical and long-term growth and inflation performance of an economy. The aim of our paper is to review the operation of Hungarian labour market institutions from the point of view of labour market flexibility and find its place in international comparison in the light of existing stock of knowledge on the subject. We describe the institutional setup of the labour markets through seven dimensions (unemployment generosity, tax wedge, active labour market policies, employment protection legislation, product market regulation, union density and coverage and wage bargaining institutions) for which internationally comparable data are available. We conclude that the Hungarian labour market institutions are rather flexible in EU-comparison. However, tax wedge is high and t...
Neo- instead of post-Fordism: the transformation of labour processes in Hungary
The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2005
The paper consists of two parts, the first focusing on the institutional heritage of an innovative work organization (teamworking) that emerged in state-socialist firms in Hungary in the 1980s. The second part of the analysis concentrates on the impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) on work organization, with special regard to the employees' role in task structuring in the post-socialist economy during the 1990s. The experience with the so-called 'Inside Contracting Groups' (Hungarian acronym: VGMK) in the 1980s actually meant an innovative attempt to mobilize human resources by letting employees establish their autonomous working groups after their regular working time. Almost a tenth of the industrial workforce participated in this nationwide social experiment. The technical-professional and social-cultural learning processes in these autonomous working groups have produced the following 'spill-over effect': these 'proto-entrepreneurs' within the state-socialist firms became micro-or small business owners after the collapse of the state-socialist political and economic regime. During the 1990s, the first decade of the emerging market economy in Hungary, massive FDI arrived in the country and had a strong impact on the diffusion of organizational innovations in labour processes, too (e.g. teamworking, cost centres, TQM, IT use, ISO 9000, etc.). 'Leading-edge' management practices in foreign-owned firms play the role of 'external benchmarking' for Hungarian firms, but, beside the transfer of some organizational innovations in labour processes (e.g. increasing employee participation in the quality assurance), it is hard to identify in the indigenous firms innovative practices like that of the VGMK in the 1980s. Keywords Institutional heritage; inside contracting groups; autonomous working groups; technical-professional and social-cultural learning processes; employee participation; new-Fordism; leading-edge management practices. Introduction: short historical overview According to the most widely shared mainstream view, enterprise management in large state-socialist firms became p ar excellence 'Homo Administrative', whose production function was directly to control and coordinate labour. Lacking ownership and innovative functions-in contrast to capitalist firms-managers badly needed such 'social-organizational skills', which guaranteed them maximum financial resources via fighting with central actors in the 'mega-hierarchies' of the communist party and state (bureaucracies) in the course of the redistribution of resources (Chavance, 1995).