A New Symbiosis: Municipalities, Private Contractors and Non-Governmental Organisations for the Provision of Local Public Services"

This project considered the second stage of transforming local administration and public service management to reflect democratic forms of government. In Hungary in the second half of the 1990s more and more public functions delegated to local governments have been handed over to the private or civil sectors. This has led to a relative decrease of municipal functions but not of local governments' responsibilities, requiring them to change their orientation and approach to their work so as to be effective in their new roles of managing these processes rather than traditional bureaucratic administration. Horvath analysed the Anglo-Saxon, French and German models of self-government, identifying the differing aspects emphasised in increasing the private sector's role in the provision of public services, and the influence that this process has on the system of public administration. He then highlighted linkages between actors and local governments in Hungary, concluding that the next necessary step is to develop institutional mechanisms, financial incentives and managerial practices to utilise the full potential of this process. Equally important is the need for conscious avoidance of restrictive barriers and unintended consequences, and for local governments to confront the social conflicts that have emerged in parallel with privatisation. A further aspect considered was a widening of the role of functional governance at local level in the field of human services. A number of different special purpose bodies have been set up in Hungary, but the results of their work are unclear and Horvath feels that this institutionalisation of symbiosis is not the right path in Hungary today. He believes that the change from local government to local governance will require the formulation of specific public policy, the relevance of which can be proven by processes supported with actions.

Private Publishing in Moscow and St. Petersburg: Historical Background, Present Situation and Trends"

This research was a complex study of the economic and socio-cultural aspects of the development of Russian private publishing in the second half of the19th and early 20th centuries, during the periods of 'war communism' and the New Economic Policy of 1917 to 1930, and during the reform of book publishing in 1986-1999. Conclusions about private book publishing in Moscow and St. Petersburg were extrapolated to Russia-wide problems of the development of this field. Svichenskaya sees her main achievement as having identified the economic and legal concepts behind the development of private book publishing over the period in question in the context of state and corporate regulation of publishing. Here the state was the main influence on its development and there was a paradox in the relations between the state authorities and private publishers, in that the latter constantly suffered from repression by the former but at the same time were dependent on state support. The research identified the administrative process of the liquidation of private publishing at the end of the 1920s and showed that its present flourishing is closely linked with the establishment of a preferential mode for the development of this sector. Private publishing now represents around 80% of domestic publishing, in terms both of the number of publishing houses and of the number of volumes published, and so plays the major role in satisfying the demand for books in Russia. Svichenskaya predicts that in the coming years private publishing will see a further concentration of growth and a tendency to monopolies and also the increasing specialisation of the publishing repertoire. She outlines a suggested concept of state management in publishing and ways to optimise this. In the transitional period of adaptation to the market regulation of publishing, these include a continuing degree of state protectionism, the creation of a favourable investment climate, privatisation of the printing companies with the aim of modernising these, and the development of coordinated corporate policies.