Compare and contrast Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia's transition to a market economy. What factors affected the ease or difficulty of this transition?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The simplest answer is that Yugoslavia was embroiled in a civil war, and Czechoslovakia underwent a relatively peaceful end to communism. In each case, however, the transition to the economy is directly linked with the success of political reforms. Within Yugoslavia, however, there were varied successes and speeds of adaptation. Slovenia did very well at making the transition to a market economy, whereas Croatia took much longer. In part, this was because of the war, but Croatia was also more conservative and had trouble embracing democracy as well as free-market principles, and so progress there was slower. In Czechoslovakia, the peaceful transition went a long way toward spurring success. The Czechs and Slovaks passed a national referendum in their respective countries that enabled a peaceful dissolution of the nation. The important difference between Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia was that the political leadership refused to pursue a violent path, even when nationalist enmities existed. Instead, leaders trusted the newly developed democratic institutions, even when these institutions turned them out of power.