Path Dependency Regarding Forms of Ownership through the Conception of Political Capitalism

Abstract

Major argument of the article draws on the perspective of institutional economics according to which post-communist privatizations were not symmetrical to communist nationalizations and for this reason it was not possible to conceptualize economic reforms in terms of the big bang claimed by liberals. More concretely, adherents of institutional economics have claimed that post-communist transformations should be seen through the perspective of formal rules and informal constraints; while formal rules could be changed relatively quickly by political mechanisms, informal rules have been rooted in social habits and routines and they cannot be changed very quickly due to their ʻpath dependency tendenciesʼ. The article highlights the notion of political capitalism elaborated by Polish researcher Jadwiga Staniszkis as a theoretical framework that could elucidate dissolution of nomenklatura system as well as explain transformation of economic domain in last decades of posttotalitarian regimes. Later on argumentation proceeds to explanation of institutional conceptualization of early post-communist property changes by differentiating among notions of ‘institutional privatizationsʼ, ‘spontaneous privatizationsʼ and ‘political capitalismʼ in order to provide a framework for the adoption of the more elaborated model that could contribute to insight in recent privatization processes.