ABSTRACT
In 1996, an OECD report on the transition from a state socialist, centrally planned economy in perhaps the most liberalised and westernised country in Eastern and Central Europe-the Czech Republic-raised the possibility that the ‘transition’ is at an end (OECD 1996). A year later, the western business press was full of reports about the failure of the Czech Republic to establish the conditions for competitive growth, largely as a result of the continued dominance of the economy by large, institutional investors (such as banks) with close ties to the state. Through mimicking the old relations of state socialism in a new guise the past had returned to haunt the postcommunist scene. By contrast, in Bulgaria since 1989 almost annual changes of government, electoral reversals from communists to democrats to reformed communists and back again to democrats have typified the process of political democratisation. Industrial restructuring has been occurring in Bulgaria through loss of Eastern markets, plant closure and mass unemployment. Financial and fiscal instabilities permeate all institutions and had led, by 1996, to hyperinflation, as the value of the currency (the lev) fell precipitously against all other currencies: from around 60 leva to the US $ in June 1996 to around 3,500 leva to the US $ by February 1997. Over the same period, Vietnam, with an economic growth rate of around 9 per cent per year, was witnessing a partially agrarian-based economic restructuring centred around the reconfiguring of the role of the party-state, in complete contrast to the apparent liberalism of the Czech transition.
