Capitalism from Outside?: Economic Cultures in Eastern Europe after 1989

Have Polish Economists Noticed New Institutionalism?

Have Polish Economists Noticed New Institutionalism? Jacek Kochanowicz Introduction Institutional economics has risen in parallel with the decay of state socialism and the beginnings of the post-communist reform process. At first, an institutional approach appears highly relevant to the challenges the societies have faced emerging from state socialism, as it offers a perspective that allows an analysis of what was wrong with the old regime in terms of its economic performance and what might have been done to make its performance better. Surely, institutional economics and especially its new versions should have been welcomed in post-communist countries, as the fall of state socialism brought about the challenge of institutional reconstruction. But has institutional economics flourished in post-communist Poland? So far this does not seem to be the case since the number of related works are limited in comparison with the overall amount of academic works published in the field of economics in Poland. By no means has this approach been institutionalized in the form of journals, research projects, or teaching programs. How can this be? We shall try to answer this question by looking at the legacies and context of economic thought in Poland, at the character of institutionalism before and after the collapse of state socialism, and at the role of its new versions in the transformation. The thesis of this case study is twofold. First, it argues that a possible development of new institutional economics has been crowded out by the neoclassical /neoliberal approach, adopted for both intellectual and ideological reasons. Second, the relatively weak presence of new institutionalism in publications of academic character does not mean that it has not been present in other forms, as an institutional way of thinking showed itself in the practice of reforms. Legacies and Context Since the end of the 1940s, Marxism played a dominant ideological role in Poland. Apart from the Stalinist period (1949–56), intellectual life—in comparison with other countries of state socialism—was relatively open in Poland. Academics were allowed to travel abroad, albeit with restrictions. Western books and journals were available, although not without obstacles. A rigid, doctrinaire Marxism was often ignored, though rarely challenged openly. Rather, between 1956 and 1968, intellectuals flirted with an open version of Marxism emanating from the West. After 1968, Marxism ceased to play much of a real role, and only had a token symbolic value. Economic thinking in Poland did not evolve in isolation from the West. Certainly, a number of scholars who received formal economic training before the Second World War were still active until the end of the 1960s, and even made careers in the West, the two most wellknown being Oskar Lange and Michał Kalecki. Many other Polish economists were involved in the workings of international organizations like the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and in advising in the Third World. After the gradual post-Stalinist thaw, a number of academics were receiving scholarships to study in the United States. Meanwhile, many important authors like Arrow, Galbraith, Hicks, Keynes, Leontieff, Lewis, Leibenstein, Nurkse, Samuelson, and Solow were translated into Polish and published officially. As Professor Zbigniew Hockuba, himself an institutionalist and a representative of a generation of economists who started their careers in the late 1970s, notes: Poland perhaps was a unique case among the socialist countries, as [our] economists had numerous and close contacts with their Western colleagues… However… while in the scientific and theoretical [dimension] a certain influence of western economics was visible, in teaching we were working according to the earlier pattern until the end of the eighties. The knowledge of Western economics did not preclude the acceptance of socialism. Until well into the 1970s, a consensus among the majority of economists prevailed that some form of socialism was a viable and desirable solution, although the actually existing regime needed a far-reaching change. In this respect, Polish economists were in tune 204 Jacek Kochanowicz with opinions common in the West at that time, according to which governments should intervene, plan, and co-manage the economy in order to achieve sustained growth, full employment, and a fair distribution of income. In the West, this consensus started to erode in the 1970s when neoliberalism replaced Keynesianism. Also in Poland, belief in market socialism was on the wane, along with the revisionist versions of Marxism. Among the reasons for this was a disillusionment with “real...