The rapid political changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union have had repercussions for many elements of the socialist system. Housing provision, always an important part of the socialist agenda, has undergone extensive changes. These have solved some problems but given rise to others. The studies in The Reform of Housing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union highlight the various aspects of housing reform, including such issues as rehabilitation, private initiatives, housing quality, welfare requirements and home ownership. While in some countries policy-makers have adhered to the older methods of housing provision, in others the number of massive state-run projects has declined in favour of smaller privately-funded enterprises. The latest changes reflect the socio-economic restructuring of the countries in general and thus housing can be seen as a spearhead for reforms throughout the system. The contributors are active researchers in the former Eastern Bloc who analyse the latest reforms and academics from Western Europe who supply a context of broader housing issues. They analyse the external factors that have influenced the reforms and assess the outlook for the future.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

OECD's 2000 review of regulatory reform in Hungary. It finds that after ten years of determined reform, Hungary has constructed the legal and policy frameworks consistent with market democracy, and is nearing completion of an historic economic transition. This challenging process required extensive regulation and institution building, as well as massive deregulation, and has generated significant economic benefits. Today, convergence with the EU and achievement of OECD best practices still represent daunting tasks. But in most areas, Hungary faces challenges much like those of other OECD countries in establishing the quality regulatory regimes needed to support good government and sustainable economic growth. Hungary's main objectives now are to bring market performance into line with its peers through strengthening competition and improving regulatory governance and social protections. Further reforms will bring important gains in creating jobs, improving sectoral and regional performance, and reducing the costs of public policies.

OECD's 2000 review of regulatory reform in Hungary.

Defining real property rights and creating the conditions for free and fair competition and efficient exit of firms are perhaps the most contentious and confused areas in Hungary's current legal landscape - largely because they tread so heavily on vested interests. Other areas of law - including intellectual property, company, foreign investment, and contract law - are less problematic.

Lying on the political fault line between East and West for the past seventy-five years, the significance of Hungary in geopolitical terms has far outweighed the modest size of its population. This book charts the main events of these tumultuous decades including the 1956 Uprising, the end of Hungarian communism, entry into the European Union and the rise to power of Viktor Orbán and the national-conservative ruling party Fidesz.

Brave New Hungaryfocuses on the rise of a “brave new” anti-liberal regime led by Viktor Orbán who made a decisive contribution to the transformation of a poorly managed liberal democracy to a well-organized authoritarian rule bordering on autocracy during the past decade. Emerging capitalism in post-1989 Hungary that once took pride in winning the Eastern European race for catching up with the West has evolved into a reclusive, statist, national-populist system reminding the observers of its communist and pre-communist predecessors. Going beyond the self-description of the Orbán regime that emphasizes its Christian-conservative and illiberal nature, the authors, leading experts of Hungarian politics, history, society, and economy, suggest new ways to comprehend the sharp decline of the rule of law in an EU member state. Their case studies cover crucial fields of the new authoritarian power, ranging from its historical roots and constitutional properties to media and social policies. The volume presents the Hungarian “System of National Cooperation” as a pervasive but in many respects improvised and vulnerable experiment in social engineering, rather than a set of mature and irreversible institutions. The originality of this dystopian “new world” does not stem from the transition to authoritarian control per se but its plurality of meanings. It can be seen as a simulacrum that shows different images to different viewers and perpetuates itself by its post-truth variability. Rather than pathologizing the current Hungarian regime as a result of a unique master plan designed by a cynical political entrepreneur, the authors show the transnational dynamic of backsliding – a warning for other countries that suffer from comparable deadlocks of liberal democracy.