291 GEOGRAFICKÝ ČASOPIS / GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL 75 (2023) 3, 291-311 THE TRADE-OFF BETWEEN NATIONAL GROWTH AND INTERREGIONAL INEQUALITY: THREE DECADES OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN SLOVAKIA Jaroslav Rusnák*, Pavol Korec*, Martin Plešivčák* * Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Ilkovičova 6, Mlynská dolina, 842 15 Bratislava, Slovakia, jaroslav.rusnak@uniba.sk, pavol.korec@uniba.sk, martin.plesivcak@uniba.sk The trade-off between national growth and interregional inequality: Three decades of regional development in Slovakia The article deals with regional development in Slovakia during the last 30 years. In the overview part, we elaborate on the theoretical framework and contextual conditions of regional development in the transformation and integration period. In the empirical part, we discuss the trade-off theory of national growth and regional inequality in the context of the Kuznets-Williamson inverted U hypothesis (if growth is maintained, inequalities increase in the initial stage and decrease in the advanced stage of econom- ic development). The aim of this paper is to uncover the trend and scale of regional inequalities. The results of our work confirm that Slovakia has entered the second stage of regional development, in which regional inequality decreases, but at the cost of falling behind the EU27 and decline in economic performance of Bratislava. Key words: regional development, trade-off theory, national growth, regional inequality, economic aggregate, Slovakia INTRODUCTION Basic characteristics of regional development of Slovakia were understandably not ‘born’ 30 years ago in 1993. It was the period of the Austro-Hungarian compro- mise in 1867, when the construction of railways infrastructure and industrialisation began on the territory of Slovakia. However, we extend the original idea proposed by Novotný et al. (2016) on evolutionary trajectories of post-socialist countries, which were hit by specific forms of transformations called „tsunamis“ during the last 70 years. Our view of evolutionary trajectories goes back to the period after the end of the First World War in 1918. The first “tsunami” is associated with the dis- solution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, on whose territory the former Czecho- slovakia, Austria and Hungary were formed. The second ‘tsunami’ hit Central Eu- ropean (CE) countries after the Second World War, when the centralist regime of the planned economy was established. The third “tsunami” struck after 1989, caus- ing a return to the natural (evolutionary) trajectory based on market principles. The generally accepted conclusion is that the regional development of Slovakia in the period after 1993 took place in the background of four new processes of systemic settings: – the emergence of an independent state, including the creation of local and re- gional self-government, – economic and generally societal transformation towards the democratisation of society and the market economy, – the transition from the industrial to the post-industrial stage of social develop- ment and the impact of globalisation processes, ISSN 0016-7193 © Geografický ústav SAV / Institute of Geography SAS DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/geogrcas.2023.75.3.15