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This volume provides a radical and timely corrective to received
wisdom about the seemingly inevitable transition from communism to
democratic capitalism. Arguing against popular misconceptions that
portray collectivized agriculture as an unqualified failure that
followed a monolithic Soviet model, the contributors draw upon
newly available local sources to illuminate the costs, benefits,
successes, and failures of cooperative agriculture. They highlight
the wide variety of state policies, local responses, and economic
outcomes, as well as the influence of local geography, political
structures, and economic institutions in each region. Meurs
provides an institutionalist analysis of both the causes and
impacts of policy differences, drawing lessons of continuing
relevance to the many countries in which agrarian reform remains a
controversial issue. Contributions by: Victor Danilov, Carmen Diana
Deere, Stanka Dobreva, Veska Kouzhouharova, Imre Kovach, Justin
Lin, Mieke Meurs, and Niurka Perez.
"Nice idea, but it doesn't work in practice." How often have
socialists had this claim thrown back at them? And now, after the
events of 1989, many of the Left are openly wondering what a
defensible idea of socialism would be. This work addresses this
question, taking as its point of departure John Roemer's model of
"coupon socialism". Roemer's model aims to combine the market with
a commitment to equality through a simple, yet starkly radical,
proposal: all citizens would receive an equal number of coupons
with which to buy ownership rights (voting, dividends) in
companies. These coupons would constitute a second, separate form
of currency, but could not be exchanged for ordinary money, nor
transferred to other people. Not all the contributors to this
collection endorse Roemer's working model of market socialism, but
they are all stimulated by his foray into a "real utopia".
The Evolution of Agrarian Institutions studies the unexpectedly
slow and uneven growth of private agriculture in postsocialist
East-Central Europe. Comparing developments in Hungary and
Bulgaria, Mieke Meurs offers an explanation for this slow growth
and examines its implications for efficiency and income
distribution in postsocialist agriculture.
With the collapse of the state socialist regimes in East-Central
Europe, it was widely expected that collectivized agriculture would
quickly be remade in the glowing image of China--a patchwork of
small, privately run farms yielding rapid increases in output and
incomes. However, the European experience has been quite different;
while socialist collective farms have disappeared, collective forms
of organization have persisted, and private farming has been slow
to emerge. Meurs argues that an understanding of the causes of the
slow emergence of private farming is essential to effective policy
intervention in agriculture. This book contributes to such an
understanding through analyzing variations in farm organization and
rural market development and comparing agricultural restructuring
in Hungary and Bulgaria.
"The Evolution of Agrarian Institutions" is unique in its
combination of original survey data, published data on land use,
and published historical data. It also tests two institutionalist
explanations for the pace and direction of change in agricultural
organization. This book will be of interest to economists,
political scientists, sociologists, scholars working in the area of
rural development in emerging countries, and anyone with an
interest in transitional economics.
Mieke Meurs is Associate Professor of Economics, American
University.
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