Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
Analytically, privatization and pluralization may be treated as separate economic and political phenomena, but in the actual conditions of a post-Communist society they are integrally related to the development of a middle-class society that was absent due to ‘deprivatization’ in a one-party state. The creation of a society of plural interests and private enterprise represents a shift from Sovietization to Europeanization. However, the process is extremely difficult, for there are many paradoxes in the logic of privatization. In addition, issues of ownership – past as well as future – are major political battlefields. Political strategies of privatization include a grand coalition; a new state-party; Latin-Americanization; creating a broad entrepreneurial class and/or a European working class; and a wide coalition. These complexities are examined with particular reference to the experience of contemporary Hungary.