ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a useful introduction to some of the major issues involved in socio-economic change. It suggests that dualistic divisions are an over-simplification of a complex reality comprising divergent transformatory pathways. The chapter looks at the metropolitan cores, especially the Bratislava region, one of the striking developments that make these areas the most dynamic is the development of a model of growth based upon finance and trading. Bratislava, for example, has the highest concentration of new firm formation, and many of these firms are involved in banking, business services and trade. Contrasted to the relative dynamism is the selective collapse of the more peripheral, branch plant regional economies. The major dynamic at work is not the growth of a local capitalism but the shedding of branch plants by core enterprises as the structure of industrial integration collapses, and the painful adaptation to market conditions.
