(European Trade Union Institute, Belgium)
JDrahokoupil@etui.org

The ‘neoliberal’ strategy of economic transformation: Where did it come from and what were the alternatives?

This paper discusses the policies of economic transformation as applied in Central and East European countries. It considers specific policy prescriptions and proposals that appeared in respective debates, their economic and political rationale, and traces back their intellectual origins. This provides a basis for assessing the political nature and intellectual origins of economic transformation and the extent to which it was ’neoliberal’ . It also allows considering the scope for alternatives and the degree to which they departed from the ’neoliberal’ mainstream. It is argued that there was no dispute about the broadest aims of economic transformation. However, there was a disagreement about details and implementation of each of the prescriptions, leading to the radical-gradualist divide. Neoliberalism was associated with the radical approach, but some of its key elements are difficult to classify. The emphasis on speed was motivated politically. Adaptations and departures from the neoliberal/radical blueprint were common. However, the strategies of economic transformation can be considered as neoliberal to the extent as the neoclassical perspective on transition as a simple exercise of introducing the price mechanism prevailed.