Abstract
Employers’ associations, and their influence on the economic transformation in Eastern Europe, have been largely ignored. In spring 1994, the Hungarian Parliament passed a law on Chambers which will render three new Chambers the supreme regulating source for all entrepreneurs’ licensing, training and economic actions; membership will be compulsory. Drafters of the law claim the Austrian/German system as a model, but it is more reminiscent of the socialist structure of authoritarian/state corporatism. What prompted this development in a society with long exposure to market forces? As old normative patterns disintegrate, associations motivated by financial survival compete with the state for the power to dictate new norms. Co‐evolutionary theory demonstrates the complex interaction of actors at the macro, organizational and micro levels of this competition and how it is translated into policy.

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