The study investigates how power relations influenced governmental structures between 1988 and 1994. The author explaines the institutional changes following the disintegration of the one-party state then the main features of the governmental structures of the 1990-1994 period and finally, those created by the coalition of Socialists and Free Democrats.

The Development Economics Division of the Hungarian Economists' Society run a series of debates on between early 1995 till the end of 1996. These debates focusing on a scientifically based economic policy that could be an alternative to neoliberalism have been published in a volume introduced here.

The correction of the fundamentally neoliberal economic policy of Hungary is not just possible but inevitable and necessary too. In the current situation, both external and internal conditions facilitate a change in the course of economic policy.

The well-known author looks back on the ideas and activities of left-wing Transylvanian Hungarians. He outspokenly criticises his early dogmatism as well as the monstrous alliance of Stalinism and Romanian nationalism. Finally, he introduces the dilemmas of the existing Transylvanian left-wing intelligentsia after the period of system change when right-wing influence was a daily experience among Hungarians in Romania.

The last fifty years did not lead towards an equalization between the development levels of national economies. This is not only a consequence of market imperfections, as it claimed by neoclassical economics, but a natural impact of the operation of market mechanisms. The authour explains what mechanisms in the economic relations between developed and underdeveloped countries create uneven development.