Delineations of private and public: Emerging forms of agri-environmental governance in Central and Eastern Europe

Two narratives permeate the literature about the genesis of the transformations in Central and Eastern Europe. The first narrative is about powerful, unitary states exercising significant leverage on rural actors. The states direct rural affairs through land reforms (Swinnen 1997), effecting broad shifts in farm structures from collective and state to private units (Lerman 2000). Where problems remain, states are called upon to remove legal impediments (Prosterman and Hanstadt 1999) and to adopt strategies for natural resources management (World Bank 2000). In relation to this logic, the challenges of rural transformation can be best addressed by designing suitable new systems of governance to accomplish the ‘second big transformation’ from socialism to capitalism.