Selling the State or Building a Society: Private Property Reforms in West and East zyxwvutsrqpon O VE K. PEDERSEN” Copenhagen Business School and Roskilde University Center ABSTRACT: The history of property reforms in an advanced capitalist country is used as an analytical framework for identifying the magnitude involved in establishing conditions for market economies in East and Central European countries. The Danish case is developed to distinguish between three aspects of property rights: the concrete, the formal, and the normative. It is argued that only in the case of homology between the three is it possible to talk about a society organized according to the principle of a market economy. The Danish case shows that forms of ownership can be complex and that the establishment of homology is much more than a question of how to distribute legal protection and economic incentives. Privatization programs in five post-socialist countries are compared. Variations in processes and strategies are pointed at and the shortsightedness and simplicity of strategies in relation to lessons learned from the Danish case are underlined. INTRODUCTION Reading the debate on the process of privatization going on in East European countries, it is easy to get the impression that the whole move from state to private assets is only a question of how to dismantle state monopolies-selling the state so to speak. * Direct all correspondence to: Ove K. Pedersen, Copenhagen Business School and Roskilde University Center, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark. The Journal of Socio-Economics, Volume 22, Number 4, pages 395-415 Copyright 0 1993 by JAI zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 1053-5357