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... vatization that might have generated additional funds to saturate the first pillar that had been depleted due to the pension reform. Despite that, they introduced a ‘Christmas’ bonus for pensioners. Similarly, the third Vladimir Mečiar administration promised to complete highway D1 (Bratislava - Žilina - Prešov - Košice) by 2005 instead of the originally planned 2015; before the 1998 elections, cabinet officials accompanied by foreign celebrities opened half-profiles of highway sections, which was, in a word, embarrassing. The Robert Fico administration revived the issue in 2006 and again promised to complete the highway, this time by 2010, which is yet another unrealistic deadline. — They oppose privatization, particularly its transparent forms (i.e. selling property in international tenders to bidders who offer the best terms and the highest purchase price) and particularly in the case of large state monopolies from energy and transport sectors. The main reasons include losing all previously mentioned advantages state ownership offers, especially the liberty to allot state enterprises to their cronies and friendly entrepreneurs. A potentially important role may also be played by economic nationalism of populist parties and their voters, which guides their effort to keep ‘strategic’ state enterprises in the ‘national hands’ and oppose their sale to foreign investors. A partial exception in this respect is represented by Hungarian socialists who privatized a great number of large state enterprises during their term in office, provoking fierce criticism from the opposition Fidesz; in order to provide a full picture, though, one must add that the Hungarian government at this point was under mounting pressure of increasing public debt and was often forced to rely on privatization revenues to patch gaping holes in the state budget. — They often try to interfere with pricing, either via abusing state enterprises, pressuring private firms or taking steps aimed at controlling regulatory organs, primarily in order to score political points with their voters. — They oppose economic reforms that are inevitable to achieve a sustainable economic growth but are highly unpopular, especially introducing fees in the field of health service and (higher) education, jacking up prices (particularly regulated ones or those charged by state enterprises from energy and transport sectors), but also a pension reform (as it limits the scope of resources they may decide on) and already mentioned privatization. The following graph illustrates that populist, anti-reform and left-wing parties (judged by the type of economic policy they further) won every single parliamentary elections in Slovakia since 1992 and always obtained more than half of all cast ballots. 199
