The role of economists in social change: explaining the end of state socialism in Hungary

Abstract

I analyze articles in the Hungarian reform economics journal ACTA Oeconomica from the 1960s to the 1980s, to show the ways Hungarian economists reconstructed the economy and the economics discipline. Through such reconstructions, Hungarian economists created a large network with economists at its center as essential mediators between the economy, the party-state, and the rest of society. Economists expanded economics as a discipline and extended economics beyond its disciplinary realm, undermining the party-state's hegemony and making economic solutions a panacea for all of Hungary's problems. The spread of economic discourse and economic solutions along these networks is an important explanation of the fall of state socialism. This paper is an attempt to bring together the sociology of science, the sociology of economics, and studies of Eastern Europe from a historical perspective.