Institutional Reform in East-Central Europe: Hungarian and Polish Contract Law1
East-Central Europe is awash in legal reforms. New constitutions, new property regimes, and new corporate laws clutter the legal landscape. Western commentators have tended to focus on the various means of "privatizing" state assets, while contract law reforms have been largely ignored. This study addresses that void. Hungarians and Poles significantly amended their contract codes in 1990, and now reform commissions in those countries are considering further changes. This article identifies and critiques the changes in contract law currently underway in Hungary and Poland. Sources include English translations of the relevant contract codes, both prior to and following the current reforms.2 In addition, the article draws upon interviews with Hungarian and Polish lawyers, academics, entrepreneurs, and government officials conducted during the author's July 1991 visit to Budapest and Warsaw. The most striking feature of contract law reform is the fact that relatively few contract rules need to be changed. In fact, a comparison of contract rules under central planning with analogous rules in market economies reveals a remarkable degree of convergence. Thus far, Hungarian and Polish reforms have centered on deleting the contract rules that supported central