Naslov
Uhljeb – a post-socialist homo croaticus : a personification of the economy of favours in Croatia?

Autori
Šimić Banović, Ružica

Izvornik
Post-communist economies (1463-1377) 31 (2019), 3; 279-300

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Radovi u časopisima, članak, znanstveni

Ključne riječi
Informality, post-socialism, economy of favours, clientelism

Sažetak
Party patronage combined with a collectivist culture appears to present a very resistant socialist legacy in Croatia. In-group favouritism and an overly bureaucratised system provide a fertile soil for uhljebs. An uhljeb is a public sector employee whose main ‘competence’ is membership of a political party or a nepotistic relationship. They now already count in the thousands, and often contribute to the further multiplication of uhljebs, and to an increase in clientelist arrangements. The practice of employing uhljebs both undermines and underpins the existing system. That ambivalence is one of the characteristics of the Russian sistema, and that is one of the important links to compare blat users and uhljebs, in addition to the practice of ‘pulling strings’. As key protagonists, uhljebs and blat users illustrate their own and society’s modus operandi: an intense ‘economy of favours’. Recent studies increasingly show that cultural variables influence economic outcomes and this article presents an extension of the ‘economy of favours’ into Croatia’s paradigm. Based on primary sources and international benchmarks, it provides a comparison of the cultural contexts of Eastern and Western European countries, and portrays a rising informal practice that, despite its omnipresence, has been under-researched in the academic literature.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Ekonomija, Politologija

Napomena
Dodatno je rad/casopis indeksiran u bazama: Sage Human Resources Abstracts, Sage Public Administration Abstracts i Social SciSearch.

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