Hedlund examines the dimensions of Russian privatization on property without rights, including abuses in the transfer of assets and the expansion of unprosecuted contracts. In addition, the Western ...tradition and its Russian counterpart are compared.
Ongoing discussions between Russia and the EU on the formation of a Common European Economic Space bring back to mind Alexander Gerschenkron's classic essay on economic backwardness in historical ...perspective. This paper argues that the institutions that once produced a specific kind of catch-up economics in Czarist Russia still remain largely the same. Unless negotiations between Moscow and Brussels take into consideration such fundamental institutional incompatibility, attempts at harmonization, expressed by Brussels as an attempt to spread Western values, will be doomed to fail. A cynical conclusion views potential convergence as adaptation by Brussels to traditional Russian institutional patterns of rule evasion, rather than a Westernization of Russia. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
A decade after the introduction of economic transition in Eastern Europe it was starting to become clear that initial beliefs in one-size-fits-all reforms had been unfounded. While some countries had ...made the grade, others- notably so Russia- had failed to live up to expectations. This article explores the Russian roots of that failure, arguing that the Russian reformers failed to take into account a deeply rooted Russian path dependence. By focusing narrowly on changes in the formal rules of the game, they neglected pressing needs for broader institutional change, including a credible commitment by the Russian government to impartially enforcing a rules-based system. It is argued that the legacy left for Vladimir Putin in important respects is even more dire than that left by Gorbachev for the El'tsin team.
Although the numbers are improving, Russia's economy is far from healthy. Putin has yet to address the crumbling infrastructure and nightmarish population crisis, problems that will prevent Russia ...from becoming a great power.
