When Ideas Fail
eBook - ePub

When Ideas Fail

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

  1. 144 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

When Ideas Fail

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

About this book

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. These patterns, did not render the emergence of capitalism in Russia impossible. But they entailed a deep intellectual division between adherents and opponents of Russia's capitalist transformation that made Russia's social evolution unstable and vulnerable to external shocks.

This study offers an ideational explanation of Russia's relative failure to establish a functioning market economy and thus sets up a new and original perspective for discussion. In post-Soviet Russia, a clash between imported foreground ideas and deep domestic background ideas has led to an ideational division among the elite of the country. Within economic science, this led to the emergence of two thought collectives, (in the sense of Ludvik Fleck), with entirely different understandings of social reality.

This ideational division translated into incoherent policy measures, the emergence of institutional hybrids and thus, all in all, into institutional instability. Empirically, the book is based on a systematic, qualitative analysis of the writings of Soviet/Russian economists between 1987 and 2012.

This groundbreaking book makes an important contribution to Central Eastern and Eastern European area studies and to the current debate on ideas and institutions in the social sciences.

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Yes, you can access When Ideas Fail by Joachim Zweynert in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Economics & Business General. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Year
2017
Print ISBN
9781138559271
eBook ISBN
9781351363839
Edition
1

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. List of tables
  6. Preface
  7. 1 Introduction
  8. 2 The role of ideas in great transformations
  9. 3 The legacy of the Brezhnev period: 1971–1986
  10. 4 Cracking the protective belt: 1987–1992
  11. 5 Towards a precarious consensus: 1993–1998
  12. 6 In search of a “Russian Way”: 1999–2006
  13. 7 A new transition debate: 2007–2012
  14. 8 Conclusion: from zastoi to zastoi?
  15. Appendix: biographical index
  16. References
  17. Index