Local development in the rural regions of Eastern Europe: Post-socialist paradoxes of economic and social entrepreneurship

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight some paradoxes of the agrarian transformation in Hungary and Poland and the ways they impinge on the working of private and cooperative farming.The first section reassesses the debate on the specificities of cooperative management in the light of the de-collectivization of agriculture. The second addresses continuities and changes in the symbiotic relationship between big coops and rural households within the two ongoing processes of Europeanization and economic globalization. The final section discusses the 'cooperative difference' and concludes with some analytical insights on who makes it both in coops and households.