Development Trap? Unequal Territorial Patterns of EU-funds Allocation in Hungary

Abstract

In this paper we introduce some results about the appropriateness and effectiveness of the Hungarian regional development policy: our main goal is to examine empirically its regional inequalities. After a brief outline of the theoretical frame based on (new) economic sociology, we analyse several databases on more territorial levels and explore some opinions about the issue from personal interviews. According to the results of the empirical analysis, the question of preferred status seems to be counter-final due to the complex combination of the lack of resources. The respecting relationships imply a kind of development trap, as it is worth becoming beneficiary on the project level, because it means higher support rate and higher amount of support, but being in the preferred status has a negative effect aggregated on the micro-regional level, i.e. it is disadvantageous.

Keywords

• Regional inequalities
• development policy
• EU-funds