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
Zsolt Gál manoeuvring space in this area was curbed significantly by their privatization as well as by adoption of the common European legislation. Besides fiscal expansion and inefficient state ownership, a (less important) part of the self-destructive populist economic policy was repeated attempts to regulate or influence prices (especially prices of gas, electricity but also of heat and rent) and related pressures on independent regulatory bodies or even efforts to control them in order to force them to enact ‘socially acceptable’ prices. During the third Mečiar administration’s tenure, energy monopolies were state-owned and independent regulatory organs did not exist; therefore, this administration’s meddling with pricing also belong to described forms of abusing state enterprises. Sources of Populisivi on tIhe DemancI Sick: Voters' RatíonaIíty ANČÍ iRRATÍONAÜTy Economic populists and their parties in CEE countries comply with the following profile:- They promise and carry out grandiose projects that lead to a substantial increase in public expenditures or strong fiscal expansion. Regardless of whether these expenditures appear immediately or belatedly, whether they are explicitly or implicitly included in public budgets, whether they are channelled to large infrastructure projects or to social security system, they always cause external and internal macroeconomic (and often microeconomic) imbalances, high double deficits and ballooning indebtedness, i.e. unbalanced and unsustainable growth. But populist politicians are not too concerned about it because they prefer short-term political goals (i.e. popularity) to which they are prepared to sacrifice the country’s long-term sustainable economic development.- They promise and pursue programs they know they do not have funds for and they know are completely unrealistic from the very outset. For instance, Hungarian socialists (MSZP) promised and introduced the 13th annual pension although they were perfectly aware that revenues generated by pension contributions were not enough to cover even pensions disbursed in 2002 and that they had to make additional contributions from the state budget. Fidesz not only supported the proposal in parliament but it even promised to introduce the 14,h annual pension in the 2006 election campaign. Also, the Robert Fico administration must have been aware that the pension fund of the Social Insurance Company was running a deficit, especially since it refused to increase the retirement age and halted pri198
