Hungary on the road to the European Union. Transition in blue

Book abstract:

The view presented in this book suggests that the so-called transition process in Eastern Europe has been largely misguided and thus unable to fulfill the expectations created during the destruction of the state socialist regimes. Despite being relatively successful in crisis management, Hungary has been no exception from this rule. The author, László Andor, claims that the promise of EU accesssion has become a second edition of false promises and that the enlargement of the European Union will be unable to achieve what was claimed by its promoters. Nevertheless, Andor believes that, as a project of international cooperation and regional unification, the eastward enlargement of the European Union should be seen as a vital and immediate task for the states and societies of the continent, even if it cannot satisfy half of the euphoric expectations of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The chapters are: Prologue: a heritage of extremes; Away from Eastern Europe: the crisis of state socialism; Transition politics: running the new democracy; Transition policies: building the new capitalism; Toward Western Europe: the test of capitalist democracy; Epilogue: the dependent democracy.

The text of this book is largely based on two courses taught by the author at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey: Hungary and the European Union, and Transition policies in Hungary. The intention is to provide a comprehensive and critical view on the so-called transition and integration process of the 1990s and to create a volume that is useful to foreign experts, students, experts and visitors to Hungary, and also for courses in history, political science, sociology, economics and international relations.

László Andor is an Associate Professor, Department of Economic Policy, Budapest University of Economic Sciences. He has published widely in scholarly journals and his latest English-language book is Market Failure: a guide to the East European Economic Miracle with Martin Summers in 1998.