Transformation and the World Market. Western Integration and Eastern Transition

Abstract

It is a trivial statement that the transition to a market economy, a pluralistic society and political democracy is taking place in the environment of the world system. The consequences of this statement, however, are not at all trivial. For it means that Central and Eastern European economies (CEECs) have to adjust their economies to the functional prerequisites of the world market (dominated by the highly industrialised OECD world) and within a short period of time have to fit into an institutional frame-work which has developed over years, if not decades. Therefore, it makes no sense to regard transformation processes as purely national ones, taking place within the territorial limits of either an old (e.g. Poland, Hungary, Rumania etc.) or a newly formed nation state (e.g. the Baltic States, the Czech Republic or Slovakia). The nation states and the political classes ruling them can foster the processes of transition, but they have to be aware of the “conditionality” exerted implicitly by world market structures and explicitly by world market institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the institutions of the European Union.