Equality, Participation, Transition: Essays in Honour of Branko Horvat

xxx Introduction
disciplines such as management, political science, or sociology, and
therefore point to some possible applications. Throughout the paper,
lessons are drawn from the experience with self-management in both
former Yugoslavia and Slovenia.
The last group of papers (Chapters 8–11) addresses systemic change,
whether in past attempts of fundamental economic reform or the most
recent historical example, namely the 1990s transition to a market
economy in Central and South Eastern Europe. The first of these papers,
by Jozae Mencinger (Chapter 8), discusses the emergence and disappearance
of both market socialism and Yugoslavia. He analyzes in detail
the various economic reforms undertaken in Yugoslavia from the 1950s
onwards, evaluating their scope, nature and limitations. Mencinger also
discusses Yugoslavia’s economic performance, and points to the key
factors and main developments which led to the collapse of the country
in the early 1990s. The numerous attempts of systemic change in
Yugoslavia remained half-hearted, primarily because they failed to
delimit political from economic power.
Saul Estrin (Chapter 9) focuses on self-management and employee
ownership in transition economies. The 1990s economic reforms and
the transition from plan to market have created unprecedented opportunities
for the development of a significant employee owned sector,
primarily through the privatization of state-owned enterprises using
the method of sale, or free distribution of shares, to employed workers.
In this context, Estrin tries to evaluate the opportunities for labourmanagement
in transition economies, and discusses what the most
appropriate policies for employee owned firms would be, particularly
in areas such as investment, incentives and productivity, and enterprise
restructuring. However, in spite of the diffusion of employee ownership
in many transition economies, labour-management has not, for
a number of reasons, emerged as a significant form. The most serious
problems that arise in cases of substantial employee ownership are also
discussed.
Derek Jones and Niels Mygind (Chapter 10) present privatization
results in Estonia. The paper provides fresh empirical evidence of the
effects of different forms of private ownership upon economic performance,
based on a new and large panel, representative of the whole
economy. Models which worked well for the Visegrad countries, surprisingly,
had low overall explanatory power in Estonia, consistent
with the hypothesis that the key factor influencing performance may
not necessarily be ownership (being thus in line with Horvat’s views).
Part of the results give mild support for the view that some attention