Has the recent illiberal surge altered the neoliberal orthodoxy prevailing in post-1989 Hungary and Poland towards a more developmental modus operandi, or has it just camouflaged embedded neoliberalism with a developmental narrative? This article, trying to contribute to answering the aforementioned question, is structured as follows. First, we provide a general overview of the comparative capitalism approach. We extend the original conceptualizations by the framework of varieties of illiberal capitalism and present two ideal types of illiberal capitalism. Then, we assess five institutional areas of the political economy of contemporary Hungary and Poland. We conclude that although Hungary remains faithful to the neoliberal economic orthodoxy so far with illiberal political forces merely camouflaging its true essence due to political and utilitarian reasons, the post-2015 government in Poland managed to move its economic model closer to a more developmental modus operandi.
New Keynesian form of the Phillips Curve assumes a shortterm trade-off between inflation and real economic activity, either in unit labour cost or output gap specification. Extending the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) with a backward-looking price setting, our aim is to examine the impact of the inflation expectations, lagged inflation, unit labour cost, import prices and real effective exchange rate on the inflation dynamics in the Czech Republic between 2000M1 and 2020M12. Dealing with non-stationary and cointegrated time series, we opted for an Error Correction Model (ECM) and an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model with the variables integrated of order I(1). ARDL model in differences was also compared with an ARDL model in levels. The main findings of our analysis can be summarized as follows. Firstly, our analysis indicates that the ARDL model using non-stationary time series generates spurious regression results. Secondly, the results from the ECM model and the ARDL model with first order differencing find the inflation expectations and unit labour cost statistically significant, confirming the existence of a small open economy NKPC for the Czech Republic. Thirdly, even though the backward-looking inflation setting represents a cornerstone of the hybrid NKPC, we have found no evidence for lagged inflation to have an impact on the inflation dynamics in the Czech Republic between 2000M1 and 2020M12. We thereby reject the hybrid version of the NKPC. Lastly, in spite of the Czech Republic representing a small open economy, we observed weak statistical evidence suggesting that external factors (exchange rate, import prices) influence the inflation dynamics in the Czech Republic.
Principal determinants of territorial allocation of the Slovak Republic's bilateral development aid: Path-dependent trajectory? Slovakia started to provide bilateral official development assistance (ODA) in 2003 and became a fully-fledged member of the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD in 2013. This paper empirically examines the main determinants influencing the territorial selection and allocation of the Slovak Republic's ODA during the period 2003 -2019.To reach the aim of this paper, we apply regression analysis with Probit and Tobit models and variables approximating recipient needs, donor interests as well as recipient merit. The results indicate that the allocation of Slovak aid is significantly determined by closer historical ties, geographical proximity, the existence of a Slovak embassy, quality of social policies and the size of population in the recipient countries, as well as the inertia in policy decision-making on aid allocation. This suggests that the Slovak Republic's ODA follows a path-dependent trajectory as most of its assistance traditionally flows to geographically closer countries with similar historical experiences from the communist and subsequent transition period, regardless of developmental needs of the poorest countries.
In his recent book, Capital and Ideology, French economist Thomas Piketty devotes the final chapter to the changing dimensions of political conflict in Western democracies. The goal of this article is to confront some of his findings with mainstream political science. Piketty’s arguments are confronted with the findings of scholars within political science. To begin the article, we establish two research questions in the introduction. We then delineate the gradual reversal of the educational cleavage and subsequent emergence of the multi-elite system according to Piketty. He demonstrates how the classist conflict prevailing in the 1950s and 60s morphed into the Brahmin Left versus the Merchant Right system, with the “Left” being supported by the more educated electorate and the “Right” being supported by the relative well-offs. In the following two sections, we deal with his arguments regarding the causes and the outcomes of this gradual shift. Firstly, he proposes two hypotheses regarding the metamorphosis of the Left: the social and nativist hypotheses. We argue that neither of the two hypotheses is actually a comprehensive explanation and we propose alternative that takes into account the changing structure of social classes. Secondly, with regards to the outcomes of the reversal of the educational cleavage, Piketty considers one of the consequences of this shift to be a social-nativist trap, a combination of pro-redistribution policies and cultural nativism. We have concluded that the social-nativism is not a trap per se as much as an inevitability resulting from the less advantaged class feeling abandoned in the multi-elite political conflict.
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