130 Years of Catching up with the West: A Comparative Perspective on Hungarian Industry, Science and Technology Policy‐making since Industrialization

Citation

Simonyi, A. (2002), "130 Years of Catching up with the West: A Comparative Perspective on Hungarian Industry, Science and Technology Policy‐making since Industrialization", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 23 No. 5, pp. 493-496. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijm.2002.23.5.493.1

Since the fall of the Berlin wall, libraries’ bookshelves dedicated to East Central Europe studies have been overflowing. The early 1990s was the period of “transitology” when social sciences and literature focused on the East‐, Central‐ or Central‐East European political, economic and social tranformation. The best of these analyses have looked at two key elements of this process; the element of rupture and change and the elements of continuity, tradition and inheritance. The theoretical approach used by the author of “path‐dependency” has helped economists and sociologists give a differentiated overview of the East Central European changes and their social outcome embedded in the complex and varied histories of these countries’ industrialization and/or modernization efforts (Ferge, 2000; Chavance and Magnin, 1996; Stark and Grabher, 1997). After a decade – researchers have once more begun to utilize this approach (Western authors with more skill than the local ones!) to enlarge the historical as well as comparative perspective of the analysis of the recent East Central European transformations. These specific experiences can be utilized for deepening our knowledge on the dynamics of social change.

Biegelbauer’s book is an excellent result of such an effort. Though the book seems to avoid using the concepts of “modernization” or “development”, both difficult to operationalize because of their shifting content, the author instead puts technical and scientific innovations at the centre of the analysis. This leaves the possibility for the reader to judge the character of changes as “development”, “modernization” or simply – as the author does – “catching up with the West”.

In my reading, Biegelbauer is presenting a “modernization story” traversing through two world wars and revolutions, through the rise and fall of European powers – at the West and at the East – since the late nineteenth century. His work documents the different periods of Hungarian industrialization, political system changes and economic developments in the past 130 years, shows the political, social, economic and cultural motivations of the several transitions of this period and identifies the international and local social actors of modernization efforts. At the same time it puts emphasis on the rapid and radically changing international scene and regional context of the economic and social development for such a small country as Hungary. The availability of changing patterns, methods and resources – which are utilized in the course of industrialization, as well as the specificities of Hungarian society and policy‐making to adapt them, are the issues that enlarge the analysis into a comparative perspective. It is the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann which forms the author’s theoretical basis for his approach. This helps him provide a more general interpretation of the Hungarian case and to draw conclusions on the “intertwined nature of the different forms of innovations, in science, technology, economy and politics” (p. 8).

Technological innovations, the course of industrialization and the development of the science and research institutions of Hungary are well documented and presented in the changing political and social context of four historical periods of this country’s past 130 years. These are distinguished by three transitions according to Biegelbauer. Being aware of the fundamental differences between absolute‐ and enlightened monarchical, fascist, pluralist‐democratic, Soviet‐style, realsocialist‐reformist and the transforming democratic political and social systems of this country, the author demonstrates that this science and technology policy, as a social sub‐system, had its relative autonomy. This may explain both the continuity of its development in changing national and international political contexts and ruptures during seemingly stable political regimes.

Within this framework, the author shows how Hungary’s S&T system was established, more than seven decades since the establishment of the Dual Austro‐Hungarian Monarch in 1867 until the Second World War. Not “only” did political systems change during this period, but with the fall of the Monarchy and the rise of nation states in the region Hungary lost huge territories, industrial capacities, raw materials, higher education and research institutes. This halted its dynamic development and fostered stagnation after the First World War. The book at the same time presents convincing data about the role of state support and about the – somewhat weakening – Austrian and the growing German influence in industrialization, in the education and research system and in technology transfer, all of which helped establish the country’s higher education system, its academic and industrial research institutions and the acceptance of technological innovations.

The chapters on the “three transitions” since the Second World War follow the same logic of analysis which present the interdependence of Hungary’s political and economic history, international environment and its S+T system. The role of such changing paradigms like “science push” and “demand pull” is connected to shifts from a centrally planned and controlled industrialization model of the 1950s to decentralized and market oriented patterns of development from the 1960s until the late 1980s. The author links these transitions to changes in the origin and in the availability of innovations, ideas and notions, and development patterns. He then goes on to describes how the Hungarian S&T system went through its “first transition”, the Soviet, then through other “transitions” since the 1970s and 1980s which incorporated US and German S&T concepts and innovations. At the same time he calls attention to the originality of the Hungarian S&T system which introduced as early as the 1970s institutional and financial solutions that combined state and market‐based ressources in research and development, several years before such Western paradigm changes (pp. 85‐7).

The sixth chapter of the book gives a wide overview of how the different initiatives of the 1990s were made to renew the Hungarian S&T system, higher education, R&D organizations and technology transfer mechanisms in accordance with the new political institutions and market structures at the time. Also mentioned were the sometimes controversial effects of speeding up foreign investments in frame of the country’s “catching up” efforts.

The systematic collection of historical data on research expenditure and on its composition, on the structure of R&D insitutions and on their personnel, on productivity, on sectoral shifts within the European and the Hungarian economy, on the international mobility of students and academics, on international economic and scientific exchange processes, is an extermely valuable contribution of the author to further research not only in the field of S&T systems, but also in terms of economic history and economic sociology. The underlying “catching up” efforts behind and together with political and S&T policy moves of the East Central European countries on the one hand, and the ways and means of the economic, scientific and technological influences of the West have been realized on the other hand, resulting together in a diversity which enriched the dominant European development pattern (that of the “West”). This diversity within the actual dominant model is demonstrated by the comparative data of the seventh chapter describing the specificities of the S&T systems of the East Central European countries in the context of their other social and economic sub‐systems and international relations. However the past ten years are too short to come to a more definitive conclusion concerning these differences, though they permit the author to show the different degree of centralisation and varied presence of corporatist institutions in the S&T systems of these countries as well as the different division of S&D functions between universities and research organisations (especially in the case of Austria, Slovenia and Hungary).

The arguments of the last chapters show that the success of the latest transformation of Hungary in these 130 years was and remains dependent on the whole of its S&T system: “… to build economic and political structures and achieve growth and living standards comparable to the economically most highly developed countries …” as Biegelbauer defines success (p. 214) “… will be a direct function of the ability of government to facilitate an interaction between a variety of social interests … unthinkable without an S&T system producing ideas for the solution of problems of society, in its economic, political and social subsystems”. Drawing lessons from the historical and comparative analysis he is arguing for functioning communication structures for Hungarian public policies, for better coordination of economic and S&T policies, for facilitating knowledge transfer, for maintaining and reinforcing the country’s excellent education system and – last but not least – putting accent on R&D activities while promoting foreign investments.

The author has successfully integrated into his study all the important Hungarian research experiences of the past 20 years in the field of S&T systems, and the works of such experts as Balázs, Darvas, Inzelt, Mosoni‐Fried, Nyíri, Péteri, Pungor, Tamás, Vámos are basic elements of his book. The abundance of this Hungarian literature underlies one of Biegelbauer’s findings about the strength of self‐reflection and the importance of underlying ideas and notions behind S&T policies. It also indicates the contribution of Hungarian social science analysis in the past decades to innovations in “catching up with the West”. Let’s hope that – despite several immediate problems and serious social consequences of the radical transformation – these efforts of the different sub‐systems, among them science and technology, will result in a better society to live in.