Remaking The Economic Institutions Of Socialism

To what extent can contemporary socialist economies be reformed by the introduction of markets? The question is usually debated in either a Chinese or an East European context; this collection of eleven essays is unique in taking the first steps toward a comparative analysis. Twenty years of experience with reforms in Hungary and a decade of experimentation with reforms in China proivde a critical mass of evidence for analyzing the problems endemic to cnetrally planned economies and the dilemmas faced in efforts to reform them. In reflecting on the Chinese and East European experiences, these essays trace the shift from a conception of reform as a mix of planning and makrets within the state sector to a socialist mixed economy with implications for the emergence of new social groups and autonomous social organizations. The essays exemplify a new perspective in the study of state socialism that changes the focus from ideologies to economic institutions, examining how the activities of subordinate groups place limits on the power of state elites. The authors include scholars who have shaped debates in Eastern Europe and whose work is now stimulating much discussion in China, as well as representatives of a younger generation of economists, sociologists, and political scientists writing on the basis of field research recently conducted in factories, cities, and villages in China and Eastern Europe. The contributors are: Wlodzimierz Brus, Walter D. Connor, Zhiren Lin, Victor Nee, Susan Shirk, David Stark, Ivan Szelenyi, and Martin King Whyte. An introductory essays surveys recent theories and research on state socialism and outlines a new institutional perspective for understanding the dilemmas of partial reforms, the political cycles of reform and retrenchment, and the role of subordinate groups in stimulating changes outside the state sector.

Bringing together the work of economists and sociologists, this collection analyses how social institutions contribute to an understanding of development.

"This book will be essential and challenging reading for political scientists and economists as well as policymakers in NGOs. such as aid agencies and the institutions of the EU."--BOOK JACKET.

This book tackles different aspects of the adaptive and transformative process in communist and post-communist systems in Eastern Europe, offering competing models, which locate the explanatory variable in different places and account for the unfolding of change in different ways.

David Lane outlines succinctly yet comprehensively the development and transformation of state socialism. While focussing on Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe, he also engages in a discussion of the Chinese path. In response to the changing social structure and external demands, he outlines different scenarios of reform. He contends that European state socialism did not collapse but was consciously dismantled. He brings out the West’s decisive support of the reform process and Gorbachev’s significant role in tipping the balance of political forces in favour of an emergent ascendant class. In the post-socialist period, he details developments in the economy and politics. He distinguishes different political and economic trajectories of countries of the former USSR, the New Member States of the European Union, and China; and he notes the attempts to promote further change through ‘coloured’ revolutions. The book provides a detailed account not only of the unequal impact of transformation on social inequality which has given rise to a privileged business and political class, but also how far the changes have fulfilled the promise of democracy promotion, wealth creation and human development. Finally, in the context of globalisation, the author considers possible future political and economic developments for Russia and China. Throughout the author, a leading expert in the field, brings to bear his deep knowledge of socialist countries, draws on his research on the former Soviet Union, and visits to nearly all the former state socialist countries, including China.

This book brings together some 15 papers drawn from the 330 papers presented at the Third Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics in Stockholm, Sweden in June 1991. Part 1 outlines a basic theory of institutional change; Parts 2 and 3 examine case studies in international experience with institutional change. The authors of the original papers include Douglas North, Amitai Etzioni, Oliver Williamson, as well as eminent scholars from Eastern and Western Europe, representing views and analyses from ten different countries.

The end of the Cold War should have been an occasion to reassess its origins, history, significance, and consequences. Yet most commentators have restated positions already developed during the Cold War. They have taken the break-up of the Soviet Union, the shift toward capitalism and electoral politics in Eastern Europe and countries formerly in the USSR as evidence of a moral and political victory for the United States that needs no further elaboration. This collection of essays offers a more complex and nuanced analysis of Cold War history. It challenges the prevailing perspective, which editor Allen Hunter terms "vindicationism." Writing from different disciplinary and conceptual vantage points, the contributors to the collection invite a rethinking of what the Cold War was, how fully it defined the decades after World War II, what forces sustained it, and what forces led to its demise. By exploring a wide range of central themes of the era, Rethinking the Cold War widens the discussion of the Cold War's place in post-war history and intellectual life.

This title was first published in 2000: This work provides a new insight into china's township and village enterprises (TVEs). It views the governance structure of TVEs as effectively combining the comparative advantage of local government officials in external management and of dual firm managers in internal management to overcome imperfections in both market and government during the transitional period. Through extensive field investigation analysis and case studies, this work shows that the governance structure of TVEs has been evolving during the past fifteen years. To adapt to the changing environment, TVEs have continuously innovated firm contractual form from a government official dominant fixed-wage form to a partnership style profit-sharing form, then to a privatization oriented fixed-rent form. This work develops a complete model to explain how the central government’s partial reform efforts in market liberalization have become the driving force to induce the contractual form innovation, and to explicate how heterogeneity in firms’ technical structures and in local economic settings may affect local government’s decisions regarding contractual form innovation. Using the author’s unique data set, the model simulations predict that the development in the whole market system will result in the diffusion of contractual form innovation and lead to an 'induced privatization’ in this sector. The following empirical studies show this to be a powerful prediction and the progress toward such ’induced privatization' can be expected in China in near future. This research work provides a rich empirical study on China’s institutional transition towards a market system. It explains how a bottom-up endogenous, instead of top-down exogenous, property rights reform can be realized in transitional economies. This work will serve as a valuable reference for researchers and students in economics, economic development and institutional economics - and especially for those interested in research.