When Ideas Fail: Economic Thought, the Failure of Transition and the Rise of Institutional Instability in Post-Soviet Russia

ISBN-13: 9780367891121 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 144 str.

Joachim Zweynert

Opis

In the history of Russian economic ideas, a peculiar mix of anthropocentrism and holism provided fertile breeding ground for patterns of thought that were in potential conflict with the market.

This study offers an ideational explanation of Russia’s relative failure to establish a functioning market economy and thus sets up a ne

Spis treści

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

2 The Role of Ideas in Great Transformations

Transition as functional differentiation

Constructivist institutionalism and the structure/agency-problem

What is special about Russia

What is special about Russia I: Lack of liberal underground discourses

What is specific about Russia II: The struggle between two thought collectives

What is Specific about Russia III: Deep ideational backgrounds

3 The Legacy of the Brezhnev Period: 1971-1986

Why deal with the Brezhnev period?

Self-organization versus mobilization

The economics of developed socialism

The origins of the concept

The economic mechanism

Base and superstructure

Commodity-money relations

Conclusion

4 Cracking the Protective Belt: 1987-1992

Back to the 1960s and taking it further

What was Soviet ideology?

Perestroika and the Soviet telos

Early debates in Voprosy ekonomiki, and the new textbook on political economy

The inflow of Western liberal ideas

The MEiMO debate on Western reforms

The Debates in the general interest press

The decline of Soviet ideology

Paradigm shift or continuity?

5 Towards a Precarious Consensus: 1993-1998

Western textbooks, Russian reality

The intellectual background to shock therapy

Post-industrial society and the comeback of slavophile ideas

Regulation, economic security, and the "Russian economic school"

The rise of Russian institutionalism

A new consensus?

6 In Search of a "Russian Way": 1999-2006

Taking stock of post-socialist reforms

The discussion about the stabilization fund

The nationalist turn

O autorze

Joachim Zweynert is Professor of International Political Economy at Witten/ Herdecke University, Germany. He studied economics and political science at Hamburg University, Germany.