What Determines the Path to Privatization?: A Comparative Case Study on Poland and Czech in 1989-1995.

Turing to the 1990s, Poland and Czech initiated the same rapid privatization policy in the economic transition process. However, regarding large state-owned enterprises, Poland, contrary to Czech, gradually implemented the policy thereafter. This paper examines what factors brought this discrepancy. The past studies on the privatization of East European countries were primarily focusing on the comparison between two types of the policy - rapid or gradual, and on the assessment of which type produced better performance. This paper aims to deviate from this mainstream by concentrating on the process of policy implementation, not on the policy itself. In this paper, I argue that political and social factors rather than economic factors affected the implementation of the privatization policy. To substantiate this argument, I operationalize: 1)economic factors as the extent of liberalization and stabilization, which are the key economic issues of a transition along with privatization, and 2)political and social factors as the extent of a state autonomy, which means the relations between government, parties, management and labor. This analysis will be expected to provide better understanding of what determines the path to privatization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]