LEGACY AND POLICY EFFECTS ON SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT IN HUNGARY AND BULGARIA A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by László Kulcsár January 2006 © 2006 László Kulcsár LEGACY AND POLICY EFFECTS ON SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT IN HUNGARY AND BULGARIA László Kulcsár, Ph.D. Cornell University, 2006 This dissertation investigates the relationship between socioeconomic and spatial development in Eastern Europe from a historical perspective. I examine how global and national processes affect localities, and what their impact is on the spatial distribution of population and economic activities over time. The backdrop for this study is the historical transformation of Eastern Europe from a predominantly agricultural region to a modern industrial one, even if this modernity can be labeled as "delayed", "distorted" or "dependent" when compared to the Western experience. When investigating socioeconomic and spatial development over time, I focus on the impacts of two fundamental processes, historical legacies and development policies. Legacies and policies must be connected in order to understand their impact on patterns of socioeconomic and spatial development over time, and to assess trends for the future. I approach the study of social and spatial development from an interdisciplinary standpoint, working at the intersection of development sociology, social demography, political science and population geography. The conceptual project of this study is to connect these disciplines' accumulated knowledge on Eastern Europe, and articulate causal links between processes described by these fields. Although each field has accumulated considerable knowledge on development in the region separately, there hasn't been a systematic effort to connect these findings in a historical perspective. I use a comparative framework to achieve this goal, and hence I discuss the Eastern European development trajectory vis-à-vis the Western experiences. The particular contribution of this study is to connect the political theory of Eastern European "backwardness" to an analysis of the region's socio-demographic change, population redistribution and urbanization in particular. The dissertation's empirical project is to examine population distribution and urbanization dynamics in Eastern Europe. I investigate how spatial development occurred in the context of broader socioeconomic development, and how various policies and legacies affected settlement morphology and population redistribution. This analysis will use the cases of Hungary and Bulgaria. Hungary will be the central analytical case of this study, and I will use Bulgaria to demonstrate the intraregional heterogeneity of Eastern Europe. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH László Kulcsár was born and raised in Hungary. In 1994, he earned an MS degree in Public Administration Studies at the College of Public Administration in Budapest. Four years later he received an MA degree in Sociology at the Eötvös Lóránd University in Budapest. During his college years he worked for a number of for-profit research firms and nongovernmental research organizations. In 2001, he moved to the United States with his family to begin his PhD studies at Cornell University. During his Cornell years he maintained strong professional ties to Eastern Europe, regularly conducted research in the region, and also contributed to the establishment of a new research institute in Hungary for the study of post-socialist transformation. László Kulcsár currently lives in Manhattan, Kansas with his wife and their two children. iii To my father, an exceptional and devoted scholar. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was funded by the Polson Institute for Global Development at Cornell University, and by the Echo Survey Sociological Research Institute in Hungary. Without these two organizations my research would have been not simply more difficult, but almost impossible. My dissertation fieldwork in Hungary and Bulgaria was also supported generously by the Polson Institute. My academic success during my Cornell years would have been impossible without the exceptional mentorship of my Committee Chair, David L. Brown. He has not only been a superb advisor, but also an important friend who patiently helped me through the steps of fulfilling the unwritten requirements of becoming an international scholar. I am also very grateful to have Valerie J. Bunce and Douglas T. Gurak on my committee, who generously supported my research, and significantly contributed to my academic development. I have benefited greatly from their guidance and advice. I wouldn't have been able to complete this research without those who offered their help on the field, especially in Bulgaria. I owe the success of my fieldwork to Mariana Draganova and the staff of the Institute of Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia, and to my dedicated colleagues, Nikolay D. Kolev, Daniel Y. Pavlov and Miglena T. Pencheva in Rousse. Credit goes to those local experts and officials in Hungary and Bulgaria who contributed to the success of this research with their time and opinion. I would also like to acknowledge the generous help of Dennis J. Donahue in the US Census Bureau who supported my research with an incredible amount of data. During my Cornell years, I've been surrounded by many exceptional people both in the United States and in Eastern Europe who were colleagues and friends at the same time. Among these people, contributing to my academic success, are Florio v Arguillas, Joy Arguillas, Cristina Bradatan, Alvaro Cabrera, Nina Glasgow, Andreas Hernandez, Naoko Mizuno, Bharat Pathak, Tsveta Petrova, Sara Rzayeva, Kai Shafft, Chong-Ae Yu, and especially Tamás Domokos my long time friend and research comrade. I owe great deal of gratitude to Tania Vásquez who provided not only useful insights for my academic work, but continuous intellectual inspiration as well. My sociological imagination was shaped by my father, who also supported my career through many years in Eastern Europe and in the United States. He did this with great devotion under all circumstances, hence this study is dedicated to him. Credit should also go to my mother without whom I could not be here today. My academic career in the past years was fully supported by my wife, Rozi. Her devotion and generous willingness to take as much burden off my shoulder as possible while going through the academic program was a fundamental component in my success. She also gave me the greatest gifts possible: our daughter, Emese and our son, András who hopefully will be able to benefit from my academic contribution to social science. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 1 1.1 General overview and objectives 1 1.2 The structure of the dissertation 4 1.3 Methodological issues 7 1.3.1 Case selection 7 1.3.2 Defining the “West” 9 1.3.3 Research design 11 1.3.4 Case study sites 14 2. The historical and geographic context: modernization and politics in Eastern Europe 18 2.1 The evolving concept of Eastern Europe 19 2.2 Diversity in backwardness: Eastern European development patterns in historical perspective 31 2.2.1 Defining backwardness 31 2.2.2 Development and backwardness in the periphery 35 2.2.2.1 Diverging trajectories: Eastern Europe before the 18th century 35 2.2.2.2 The impact of Ottoman conquest 40 2.2.2.3 Modernization from above: absolutism and empires 46 2.2.2.4 The interwar period 52 2.2.2.5 The big leap: the state socialist experiment 54 2.2.2.6 Socialism after Stalin: return to heterogeneity 61 2.2.2.7 The impact of socialism: one step forward, two steps back 66 2.2.3 Post-socialist challenges 69 2.2.3.1 Political changes 69 2.2.3.2 Economic and social transformation 73 2.2.3.3 EU integration 81 2.3 Summary: ferryboat countries of the periphery 85 3. Conceptual approaches to population distribution and spatial development 90 3.1 Migration 90 3.1.1 Migration as a component of demographic change 90 3.1.2 Migration theories 93 3.1.3 Internal vs. international migration 96 3.2 Urbanization 100 3.2.1 The definition of urbanization 100 3.2.2 The urban-rural axis 105 3.2.3 Suburban sprawl 110 3.2.4 Population deconcentration and counterurbanization 114 3.3 Spatial inequalities 118 3.3.1 Spatial inequalities as development issues 118 3.3.2 Development perspectives on spatial inequalities over time 120 3.3.2.1 Early perspectives 120 vii 3.3.2.2 Modernization, development economics and the rise of the international order 123 3.3.2.3 Critics and perspectives from political economy 129 3.3.2.4 Globalization and neoliberalism 132 3.3.3 Spatial inequalities through the lens of urbanization 137 3.3.3.1 Cities and modernity 137 3.3.3.2 The notion of rural development 141 3.3.4 A systematic approach: spatial development in the EU 146 3.4 Policy approaches to population redistribution and spatial development 150 3.4.1 The definition and classification of policies 150 3.4.2 Population and economic policy considerations over time 156 3.4.3 Theories behind population distribution policies 160 3.5 Summary 162 4. The spatial development trajectory of Eastern Europe 165 4.1 State socialist perspectives on spatial inequalities and development 166 4.1.1 Ideology and the early Soviet experiences 166 4.1.2 Postwar spatial development perspectives in Eastern Europe 168 4.1.3 An example: changes in the tanya system in Szentes 173 4.2 Population distribution policies during socialism in a comparative perspective 175 4.2.1 Theoretical considerations 175 4.2.2 Operational comparison 181 4.2.3 Evaluation of policy performances 188 4.3 Post-socialist spatial change 191 4.3.1 The impact of globalization 191 4.3.1.1 The new global order 191 4.3.1.2 Székesfehérvár and the winding road of FDI-induced growth 196 4.3.2 The influence of the European Union 201 4.3.3 Rural development in Eastern Europe 206 4.4 Eastern Europe: lagging behind or going on a separate way? 213 4.4.1 The academic debate 213 4.4.2 European urbanization trends in the late 20th century 214 4.4.3 Conclusion of the analysis 229 4.5 The characteristics of population redistribution and urbanization legacies 231 4.6 Summary 240 5.