The book, The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes by Balint Magyar and Balint Madlovics (CEU Press, 2020) introduced a new descriptive language for political-economic systems, a key concept of which is “relational economy.” Characterized by the informal collusion of power and ownership in the form of patronal networks, such an economy cannot be captured adequately by the concepts developed for Western market economies, nor by the economic indicators developed along the assumptions of Western concepts. In our project, we elaborate on this problem, and offer alternative quantitative measures for different aspects of informal patronalism.

A theoretical paper on alternative methodologies have been accepted for publication by Acta Oeconomica. Currently, the authors are working on an empirical paper of the Hungarian economy. In the future, they would like to expand the project to other post-communist countries.