Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Zsolt Gál: Argentina on the Danube - Populist Economic Policy as the Biggest Enemy of Sustainable Economic Growth
Argentina on the Danube... rating costs are considerably higher than in the case of comparable private corporations. A typical example is served by state-run railroad companies that rank among the largest employers as well as the largest losses ‘producers’ in CEE countries.- ‘Maecenatic’ jobs. Politicians use a significant share of available lucrative jobs in the government (or public) sector to ‘reward’ their party cronies, political supporters and ‘friendly’ businessmen who are appointed to lucrative management posts shortly after elections. Most of these political appointees subsequently serve partial (i.e. partisan, government or their own) interests instead of the public one. A direct result is treating state enterprises as gold mines and siphoning off public funds to line one’s own pockets and/or party coffers. A perfect example of this practice is Lesy SR, a state enterprise that administers a vast majority of Slovakia’s forests. Shortly after the 2006 elections, the incumbent ruling coalition of SMER - SNS - HZDS divided the corporation’s management, supervisory board and particular regional branches along party lines. The political appointees did not take long to bring the previously profitable enterprise to its knees; eventually, they were forced to ask the cabinet for a 67 million loan under the pretext of staving off the global economic crisis.15- Supporting regions. State enterprises often transfer their production capacities to regions where ruling parties enjoy high voter support. This way, government investments become the means of rewarding voters regardless of the region’s economic attractiveness.14 A good example of this practice was an orchestrated effort by the third Vladimir Mečiar administration (1994-1998) to relocate several state enterprises’ headquarters from Bratislava to Banská Bystrica, i.e. from the country’s capital that was a traditional stronghold of opposition parties into one of ruling parties’ bastions.- Meddling with pricing. Control over large state monopolies provides politicians with possibilities to adjust certain prices in order to fit their political goals. The case in point of this practice may be MAV, Hungarian state railroad company that introduced ‘socially acceptable’ prices for its customers. Before the reforms introduced in the period of 2007-2009, MAV offered 46 various discounts including ‘free’ travelling for people over 65, company employees and members of their families, a 67.5% discount for students and a 50% discount for public servants. According to available estimates, up to 85% of all passengers travelled for free or for discounted prices while even full-price tickets covered only about one third of real costs. Government meddling with pricing regularly appears also in energy corporations; however, politicians’ 197
