Offe, C.:
Capitalism by democratic design? Democratic theory facing the triple transition in East Central Europe

A survey of the most elementary problems faced by the countries of East Central Europe reveals the inapplicability of the theoretical model worked out in research on the transition from authoritarian rule. These societies must simultaneously master three formidable tasks of modernisation - create a nation state, a market economy, and a democratic society -, tasks which were mastered in the West successively and in sufficient time intervals. Moreover, the known solutions to the difficulties they face seem to mutually presuppose and, indeed, block each other: while a market economy is set in motion only under pre-democratic conditions, its introduction in the post-socialist societies is a "political" project which has prospects of success only if it rests on a strong democratic legitimation, etc. The author concludes that we are faced with a Pandora's box full of paradoxes, in the face of which every "theory" - or, for that matter, rational strategy - of the transition seems doomed to failure.
 

Kalleberg, A. L.:
Employment relations and work attitudes in Hungary and the United States

A conceptual framework is first presented in the paper that draws upon insights from sociological and economic approaches that are useful for a comparative analysis of employment relations. The second section discusses how some of the dimensions of employment relations differed between capitalist and state socialist systems. The third part presents some data on work attitudes in Hungary and the United States from a recent cross-national study. The findings suggest that Hungarians place greater importance on high incomes and having flexible jobs, while American workers value more advancement opportunities and intrinsic rewards. Hungarians also appeared to be less satisfied with their jobs than American workers.
 

Laky, T.:
Privatisation in Hungary and some of its perceptible social effects

Various, desirable and undesirable, social effects accompany the emerging processes entailed in the transition from a planned economy based on state property to a market economy based on private property. The paper surveys the (so far) perceptible effects of four decisive partial processes involved in the birth of private enterprise, which affect different social strata. These four processes are as follows: the natural growth of the private sector of the economy, the transformation of huge state enterprises shareholders' companies (often referred to as 'spontaneous' privatisation) and the establishment of joint ventures with their decentralised units,'little' and 'big' privatisation initiated and directed by the National Asscts Agency and, finally, reprivatisation. The analysis indicated the actual weights of those aspects of privatisation which Hungarian sociology had formerly predicted: workers' property, the survival of the old elite, etc.
 

Sik, E
The reconversion of social status in the course of emigration

The research on the strategies of immigrants from Rumania to Hungary (N=1367) was designed to learn whether the labour market position and level of well-being previous to emigration could be reproduced in the new country. Since emigration itself represents a kind of crisis situation, the maintenance/reproduction of the formerly enjoyed status can be regarded already as a success. The emigrants had three kinds of resources to rely on: human capital, social capital, and the returns of the investment in emigration. While legal immigrants could at best transfer their valuables (in most cases: a car) and count on social aid, illegal immigrants applied more successful strategies which, based on their involvement in the Hungarian informal economy, permitted the reconversion of their social capital.
 

Seligman, A.:
Arguments against 'civil society'

This article takes issue with current fashion - which sees in the idea of civil society a viable political concept for contemporary life. To better understand current uses of this idea, a distinction is posited between the political, social scientific and philosophical/normative uses of the concept. In this light it becomes clear that rather than a solution to contemporary dilemmas in either Eastern or Western Europe, the idea of civil society itself exemplifies the intractable contradictions between individualism and community which stand at the core of the modern world.
 

Gáti, T.-Á. Horváth:
The fate of the pre-war small town middle-class

The 'introduction' of socialism in Hungary took place with the declared objective to abolish certain social classes and to create a new elite. Our initial hypothesis has been, however, that social classes never completely disappear, for their specific sociocultural features - forms of behaviour, values, aspirations, and social networks, etc. - tend to persist and to be transmitted within the families.

Our research into the history of 60 pre-war middle class families from the thirties through 1990 revealed that after the shatteringly drastic changes in the late forties, the successive generations embarked on ever more successful careers, with two-thirds of the last adult generation attaining high social status in terms of educational level, occupational status and housing locality.
 

Tardos, K.:
A group on the margins of the labour market: people who have been refused unemployment aid

The statistical data of the National Labour Centre reveal that certain persons who used to receive unemployment aid have been excluded from its benefits. The official justification for this measure is that the persons in question have "failed to cooperate sufficiently with the Labour Centre". The paper presents the findings of research designed to explore what is behind the label of "not sufCicient cooperation", i.e., what are the causes of and reasons for refusing aid that hardly secures subsistence. The paper describes how the labour centre functions, how its employees treat their clients, the situations of crisis following the withdrawal of unemployment aid, and the outcomes of the various attempts of people to cope with this crisis.
 

Gal, S.-K. Kovács:
Ethnicity and local politics in Hungary: municipal elections in a Getman-Hungarian community in 1990

The authors studied the principlcs of political organization in a community with a mixed, ethnic German and Hungarian, population. Investigating the simultaneous effects of local traditions as well as national and cross-national influences, they focussed on the explicit and implicit standards of interpretation this community tended to apply in the course of the municipal elections. A particular point of their study was the assessment of the degree of autonomy revealed in this case of the 'people's choice'.