The transition process from a centrally planned to a market economy followed a very different path in East Germany compared to all other former communist countries. The German Democratic Republic acceded the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990, while other former socialist countries in Central...

This paper explores the sources of labour’s bargaining power in a weak institutional environment, by focusing on the answers that public sector employees gave to crisis-induced austerity and the atrophy of collective bargaining in East Central Europe. As a result of ever tighter budgetary...