The 1989 as an opportunity for a new economic order. Expectations and disillusionments in the Czechoslovak postcommunist ownership transformation
Abstract
In the late 1980's, many economists and other experts were hoping for substantial market reforms that could transform the up-to-then rigid socialist economies into more liberal and market-oriented ones. The democratic revolutions in 1989 offered a unique window of opportunity to various interest and opinion groups, which aimed at shaping the new emerging economic order according to their own preferences and visions.
The political struggle over the privatization scenario (one of the key reform policies adopted in the early 1990's in the post-communist countries) was, in Czechoslovakia, soon dominated by the radical liberal/libertarian vision of "market without adjectives", which succeeded in overshadowing the previously popular concepts of "economic democracy". However, even the first years of reform showed the radical free-market ideas to be too ambitious (which was visible especially in the organization of the voucher privatization) and the original expectations of their proponents had to undergo a substantial revision.
The late 1990's saw, at least on a discursive level, a further departure from the previous free-market utopia. The radical democratic disillusionment from the loss in the early 1990's to the liberals was quickly followed by the disillusionment of the radical liberals from the reality of emerging "European capitalism".