Suchergebnisse

The process of European integration resulted in a marked increase in transnational economic flows, yet regional inequalities along many developmental indicators remain. We analyze the unevenness of European economies with respect to the embedding of export sectors in upstream domestic flows and their dependency on dominant export partners. We use the WIOD dataset of sectoral flows for the period of 1995-2011 for 24 European countries. We found that East European economies were significantly more likely to experience increasing unevenness and dependency with increasing openness, while core countries of Europe managed to decrease their unevenness but increased their openness. Nevertheless, by analyzing the trajectories of changes for each country, we see that East European countries are also experiencing a turning point, either switching to a path similar to the core or to a retrograde path with decreasing openness. We analyze our data using pooled time series models and case studies of country trajectories.

In this article, we explore the ways in which partnerships with the state within state-led developmental programs might effect the autonomy of civic organizations (COs) and their readiness to enter in political action. To identify the relationship between collaboration with the state and civic autonomy we draw on data from a survey of 740 Hungarian regional civic associations. We did not find support for the theses that mixing with the state might undermine the autonomy of COs and lead to their political neutralization. Also, we did not find support for the hypotheses that political action is solely about money or it is the property of non-autonomous NGOs. We have identified several mechanisms that allow COs to combine participation in partnership projects with maintained autonomy and political activism.

This study analyzes the restructuring of a national economy by identifying the career pathways of its enterprises. This analysis is conducted in a setting strategically chosen as a case of rapid and profound economic transformation: the post-socialist Hungarian economy between 1988-2000. The goal of this study is to chart the multiple pathways of property transformation. Property pathways are conceptualized as the patterned sequences of change that firms undergo 1) in the composition of their ownership structure and 2) in their position within network structures of ties to other enterprises. These career pathways are neither unidirectional nor plotted in advance. The landscape and topography of the socioeconomic field are given shape and repeatedly transformed by the interaction of the multiple strategies of firms attempting to survive in the face of variable political, institutional, and market uncertainties. These different types of uncertainties will have different temporalities, and the study explores whether and how they increase or diminish in various periods. The authors develop and test specific hypotheses about how enterprise pathways along the compositional and positional property dimensions are related to the shifting contexts of these types of uncertainty. The core dataset for this study includes the complete ownership histories of approximately 1,800 of the largest enterprises in Hungary for a twelve year period, starting with the collapse of communism in 1989, recording each change in a company's top 25 owners on a monthly basis. Monthly entries for each enterprise also include changes in top management, boards of directors, major lines of product activity, raising or lowering of capital, and location of establishments and branch offices, as well as the dates of founding, mergers, bankruptcy, etc. Data on revenues, number of employees, and operating profit will be compiled from annual balance sheets. These rich data make it possible to map the life cycles of the business groups that are formed by network ties among enterprises, identifying not only when they arise, merge, or dissipate, but also the changing shapes of their network properties. To identify patterns of change, the study draws on sequence analysis, a research tool that makes possible the study of historical processes in an eventful way similar to historiography while retaining social scientific abstraction. Whereas sequence analysis has given us a perspective on careers as historical processes but has not been applied to business organizations, network analysis has been applied to business organizations but has not been done historically. The methodological innovation at the heart of this study is to combine the tools of sequence analysis and network analysis to yield a sequence analysis of changing network positions.

To study technologies of political participation in the era of internet we examine how civic associations in Eastern Europe create socio-technical platforms of civic participation. The creation of socio-technical platforms combines specific technological features with actors and types of acts. Based on data we collected on 1,585 East European civil society websites we identify five emergent genres of online platforms of civic participation: newsletters, interactive platforms, multilingual solicitations, directories, and brochures. In contrast to the utopistic image of a de-territorialized, participatory global civil society shaped by the new technology, our examination of civil society websites finds that the transnational are not inclined to be participatory and the participatory are less likely to be transnational.

How do civic associations in Eastern Europe organize themselves online? Based on data collected on 1,585 East European civil society Web sites, the authors identify five emergent genres of organizing technologies: newsletters, interactive platforms, multilingual solicitations, directories, & brochures. These clusters do not correspond to stages of development. Moreover, newer Web sites are more likely to be typical of their genre, suggesting that forms are becoming more distinctive. In contrast to the utopian image of a de-territorialized, participatory global civil society, the authors' examination of the structure of hyperlinks finds that transnational types of Web sites are not inclined to be participatory. Whereas other paradigms focus on inequality of users' online access, the authors probe inequality in the accessibility of Web sites to potential users through search engine technology & show how this varies across different types of civil society Web sites. 4 Tables, 1 Figure, 18 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2005 The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]