Regional Development Trends and the Regional Development Institutions in the Visegrad Countries – Enabling or Hindering Institutional Environment?

Abstract

Different regional development patterns and processes have emerged in the Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) since their accession into the European Union, in the past ten years. The reasons behind these different regional development trajectories mostly have been contributed quite rightly to the economic transformation processes where these post-socialist countries have to reorganize and to reconstruct their economies. The aim of this paper is to highlight the possible linkages between the individual countries’ particular central and territorial development institutional settings with the different regional development process trajectories: the two types of regional development systems in the Visegrad countries (centralized and decentralized) and the two main regional development processes (growing and non-growing regional disparities).

Keywords

• Regional Development
• Institutions
• Regional Disparities
• Subsidiarity