Captured by Business? Romanian Market Governance and the New Economic Elite

Young Patricia T
Additional contact information
Young Patricia T: Rutgers University, New Brunswick and Piscataway

Business and Politics, 2010, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-40

Abstract: In the 1990s, there was a lot of concern in studies of post-communism about communist-era managers stalling institutional reforms due to their ability to gain long-term advantages through institutional capture. By influencing market governance rules (corporate governance, bankruptcy, competition laws), managers could protect and amplify initial economic gains from liberalization, entrenching economic inequality. Yet in the 2000s, even the laggards of transition have implemented significant market governance reforms and have enjoyed rapid economic growth. Moreover, business perceptions of state capture (from BEEPS) have dropped substantially. The paper examines this surprising turnaround with evidence from the Romanian case. I argue that contrary to expectations, business interests have failed to capture market governance institutions. In spite of benefiting from shady privatization deals and other advantages based on political connections, the new Romanian entrepreneurs were not threatened by sophisticated market governance laws. This argument based on the preferences of business actors is a necessary addition to explanations of institutional reforms that rely on international conditionality or on economic crisis.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1469-3569.1255 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:buspol:v:12:y:2010:i:1:n:4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.cambridg ... usiness-and-politics

DOI: 10.2202/1469-3569.1255

Access Statistics for this article

Business and Politics is currently edited by Vinod K. Aggarwal

More articles in Business and Politics from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().