Economic disintegration of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and its consequences for Central and Eastern Europe countries

Abstract

Disintegration is not a new phenomenon in the global economy and their observation may constitute a significant contribution for building theoretical concepts. In scientific literature, more and more attention is devoted to the processes of economic disintegration. The withdrawal of Great Britain from the European Union has led to the appearance of many publications emphasizing the importance of disintegration as a research problem, mainly in the EU context. The paper describes the consequences of Council for Mutual Economic Assistance’s (COMECON) disintegration for the member states in for the Central and Eastern Europe. On theoretical level, the collapse of COMECON is an interesting research field, enabling to build scientific knowledge about a course and the effects of disintegration processes for the member states and for the world economy. The article proposes an original division of the effects of disintegration processes because of the lack of theoretical classification of the effects of these phenomena. On the empirical layer on the consequences of disintegration, quantitative and qualitative data were presented that cover main economic and social indicators related to the effects of this process for COMECON member states. On this basis, an attempt was made to classify the effects of disintegration in theoretical terms. The literature query, the institutional and legal method, the analysis of existing data and the analytical-descriptive method were used, both for the theoretical and empirical layers. Specific analytical tools of economic disintegration were also applied as the research object is embedded in both political science and international relations.