Int. J. Management Concepts and Philosophy, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2011
159
The postsocialist experience and the resistible
learning process of economic science
Bernard Chavance
LADYSS,
University Paris Diderot,
UFR GHSS, 59 rue Nationale,
75013 Paris, France
and
CEMI, EHESS,
105 Bd Raspail,
75006 Paris, France
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: The paper gives a critical assessment of the reaction of various
trends of economics, when confronted with the diversified experience of
postsocialist transformation and accompanying surprises, like the initial
depression, the unexpected consequences of fast privatisation, or the
unconventional policies and performance of China and Vietnam. It discusses
the mainstream transition doctrine, and its gradual qualification, as well as
institutionalist and evolutionary approaches of the systemic transformation
problems. It concludes that this grand and painful historical experience has
until now failed to substantially modify mainstream economics, even though its
unfolding has strongly questioned the latter’s theoretical and methodological
premises.
Keywords: Eastern Europe; economic transition; economics; neo-liberalism;
learning; postsocialism.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Chavance, B. (2011)
‘The postsocialist experience and the resistible learning process of economic
science’, Int. J. Management Concepts and Philosophy, Vol. 5, No. 2,
pp.159–170.
Biographical notes: Bernard Chavance is an Economist and a Professor at the
University of Paris 7 (Paris Diderot). He has written and edited numerous
books on the economic transition in the former states of the Soviet bloc
and the wider processes of change in modern capitalism. His 2007 volume
on L’économie Institutionnelle has been translated into English, Japanese,
Italian, Korean and Russian. He has also translated books by Janos Kornai and
Wlodzimirez Brus into French. He is a member of the Centre d’études des
modes d’industrialisation of l’Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
1
Introduction
The 20 years that have gone by since the start of the postsocialist transformation, have
constituted a unique historical experience of organisational, institutional and systemic
Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
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B. Chavance
change in numerous countries. Such an experience has been a substantial challenge for
interpreting and orienting an exceptional and epoch-making process of economic and
social transformation. In this paper I propose a succinct survey and assessment of the
economists’ answers to the great challenge of postsocialism.
This seems all the more valuable a topic given the certainty in the past two decades
that there was no alternative to the neo-liberal ‘transition’ because of the apparent
successes of the western economic and business model. Now that this model has been
challenged by the current crisis its earlier failings in the postsocialist transition need also
to be integrated into any analysis. But this paper also suggests that there has been a
resistible process of learning in mainstream economic science and related discussions of
business that has limited a proper assessment of its weaknesses.
2
Transition doctrine and the convergence paradigm
The 1989–1991 period, when communist regimes disappeared and the great postsocialist
transformation began, corresponded to a specific context of evolution of economic
thought. In the West the neo-liberal and anti-interventionist trend prevailed that had
succeeded in gradually outdoing, from the beginning of the 1980s, the synthesis between
the neoclassical tradition and the Keynesian doctrine that had been prevalent after the
Second World War (Beaud and Dostaler, 1996). The teaching of Friedman and Hayek
had crowded out the declining legacy of Keynes’ children. In the East, the crisis
(Brus and Laski, 1989) or the conversion (Kornai, 1990) of reformist thought accelerated
at the end of the period of structural crisis that characterised the last decade of socialist
systems (Chavance, 2000a). Major international organisations, that were going to
strongly influence the orientation of transformation policies, represented the essential
channels of the period’s neo-liberalism. This was specially the case for the ‘Washington
consensus’ established between the IMF, the World Band and the American Treasury, but
the OECD and soon the EBRD shared the main orientations, and influential western
governments and European community followed as well. The UN organisations such as
the economic commission for Europe or the ILO were against the stream, still influenced
by the Keynesian tradition, but their impact remained limited. It was against this peculiar
background that there emerged what may be called the transition doctrine, that would
dominate the first years of system change in the postsocialist world.
The doctrine included multiple influences. There was for example the monetarist
view according to which inflation is the greatest of all evils and unemployment
constitutes an adjustment variable, that fluctuates around a ‘natural rate’ depending on
structural conditions of the economy; ‘rational expectations’ of economic agents that
thwart the state’s intervention drives, upheld by new classical macroeconomics; the belief
that demand is secondary (except when it is in excess) shared by supply economics; a
quite Hayekian confidence in the self-organisation of the spontaneous order of the
market, once the minimal State had been established; the Washington consensus based
on the ‘holy trinity’ of stabilisation-liberalisation-privatisation. But the doctrine’s
foundations lay in the neoclassical mainstream tradition, with individual rationality, the
equilibrium paradigm and concepts of efficiency and optimality of the competitive
market. This tradition is based on static allocative efficiency criteria, on an implicitly
normative approach that contrasts imperfect historical circumstances to ideal equilibrium
The postsocialist experience and the resistible learning process
161
states, and on a teleological and deterministic notion of change, understood as a process
independent of the path followed.
Schematising the transition doctrine, we had the kind of argument that follows: the
final equilibrium state, which was known beforehand, i.e. the ‘market economy’, strictly
determined the most direct and shortest way from the starting point, i.e., the inefficient
socialist economy. The transition state being inevitably in disequilibrium, and being
prone to backlashes, should be shortened as much as possible. The fast nature of change
was consequently deemed essential. As for the means of change, they were free of any
ambiguity too. Stabilisation would eliminate any perverse consequences of inflation,
privatisation would create correct incentives for economic agents and liberalisation would
allow competition to accomplish the necessary ‘creative destruction’ of industries and
enterprises bequeathed by the old system. A new disciplinary field, transition economics,
was thus formed by extending mainstream economic theory to this new domain. It
revealed an unprecedented form of the theory of systems convergence, especially as
international organisations, being influent actors in the process of change, spontaneously
embraced a global and uniform approach of transition in about 25 countries. The strategy
was consequently regarded as straightforward and, in the same manner as for earlier
structural adjustment plans, it had to be the same for all.
3
Institutionalist critiques and the evolutionary approach
In reaction to the initial hegemony of the transition doctrine, that was felt particularly
among international organisations and among western economists involved in advising
the new governments (while being less hegemonic in the academic world), different
authors or trends of thought criticised the finalist approach and the big bang thesis,
stressing the importance of institutions and the evolutionary character of economic
change in general. While neo-liberal and neoclassical references were fundamental in the
transition doctrine, the camp of criticism appeared more pluralistic, it included various
heterodox trends (as institutionalist or post-Keynesian economists, or economic
sociologists) but also authors linked to the Austrian tradition, to new institutional
economics or to information economics (these two theories themselves deriving from the
neoclassical tradition).
The different critical stances generally shared a refusal to forget history, and
scepticism of the wisdom of searching speed at all costs. While the transition mainstream
appeared as fixated on the final state and, in some cases, as advocating a tabula rasa as a
complement to shock therapy and mass privatisation, institutionalist analyses stressed the
legacy of the past, the dangers of voluntaristic revolutionary upheavals, and generally
argued for gradualism in the field of institutional change, as well as for more or less state
intervention in the transformation process. A new controversy between ‘teleologists’ and
‘geneticists’ seemed to occur, ironically echoing the debate that had taken place in the
Soviet Union around 1930. The new emergence of long term historical trends was
consequently stressed (Berend, 1996), as was the influence of the last period of socialist
systems (Kornai, 1990; Murre1l, 1993; Poznanski, 1995; Chavance and Magnin, 1996),
and the possibility of various political ‘extrication paths’ away from the communist
regimes (Stark, 1992).
162
B. Chavance
Some economists, following the Austrian tradition, criticised the ‘constructivist’ error
that lay in the attempt to construct capitalism in fashion symmetrical to the earlier
construction of socialism. North (1994) stressed that the change in formal institutions
raised no special difficulty, but that the mainstream approach neglected the inertia of
informal institutions, that explained that the actual evolution differed from initial
expectations.
A frequent theme in the anti-finalist theories was the importance of the process
concept as opposed to that of equilibrium. Change was understood as a process that
occurs in historical time, where circular and cumulative causalities are at work, where
irreversible alterations materialise and where there are plenty of surprises and unexpected
developments. Emergent phenomena were deemed critical. In these approaches the less
deterministic term of ‘transformation’ was often preferred to the conventional idea of
‘transition’, or the latter was simply used in the very general sense of the systemic shift
from socialism to capitalism (Kornai, 1999; Chavance, 2003).
Institutionalist theories have often underlined the way that the Chinese experience has
called into question the transition doctrine. In China, a protracted reform process, based
on a pragmatic attempt of the unreformed communist regime to accelerate economic
modernisation, gradually induced a process of cumulative systemic change, associated
with a high and sustained growth and an exceptional increase in income per head and a
decrease of absolute poverty. The Chinese strategy was a kind of antithesis to the
Washington consensus, and the trajectory followed by this country conflicted with the
main theses of the mainstream, like those of the unsustainable character of any reform of
the socialist system, the perversity of gradual change, the necessity to open the economy
and to shift to convertibility at one stroke, the priority that has to be given to privatisation
and the extension of financial markets, the inevitability of a ‘transformational recession’,
etc. (Chavance, 2000b).
4
Transformation surprises
Frequent unexpected developments, or ‘transition surprises’, called into question the
arrogant self-confidence of the initial transition doctrine. Such prediction failures should
not, as a matter of fact, represent a problem when addressing extraordinary and
wide-scale transformations such as a system change. However, the positivist
methodology tradition of economic science regards correct predictions – as opposed to
realistic hypotheses – as the genuine test of a theory’s scientific nature. The most
troublesome surprise was that of ‘transformational recession’ (Kornai) or, to eschew
understatement, the ‘great postsocialist depression’, that struck all transition countries.
The expected ‘supply response’ appeared everywhere to be negative rather than positive
in the first years that followed stabilisation and liberalisation. Another significant surprise
was the industrial collapse of the former East Germany, even though the country
benefited from a wholesale institutional transfer and from a massive and protracted
financing from West Germany’s state budget.
High
Multiples forms: insiders
ownership, investment funds,
banks, State. Frequent crossownership, fuzzy property
rights
Strong expansion of private
Limited expansion of private
SMEs (often micro-enterprises), SMEs, slow restructuring of
restructuring of former SOEs
former SOEs
Reshaped and transformed in
the new environment
Emerging ownership forms
Organisational change
Networks
Resilient, expanded role as a
coordination mechanism
Insiders ownership,
financial-industrial groups
Fast, very low legitimacy
Rather fast, rather legitimate
Wide-scale and fast change; soft
rules, very unstable
Very high, tendency to
fragmentation
Privatisation of the economy
(privatisation of states assets; extension
of new private
enterprises)
Regional differenciation
Wide-scale and fast change;
rules rather hard but unstable
Corruption, criminality
Weak
Weak
Institutional change (new formal rules,
legislation)
Extension, but limited
Limited (small or medium
countries)
Administrative and tax capacity of the
State
Sham democracy
Sudden break (destruction of the
political pillar)
Reshaped but significant role in emerging
capitalist forms
Strong expansion of ‘non-state’
SMEs, slow restructuring of former
SOEs
Large expansion of ‘non-state’ but
not strictly private forms, fuzzy
border between private and public
ownership
Gradual, no ‘large scale
privatisation’ of state assets
Wide-scale but gradual; semi-hard
rules, limited but growing
formalism
High but no fragmentation
Significant
Rather strong
Rather strong
Authoritarianism (single party) with
elements of informal pluralism
Gradual change (erosion of the
ownership pillar, ideological
accommodation)
High growth gradualism
(Asia: China, Vietnam)
Notes: SMEs – small and medium enterprises, SOEs – state-owned enterprises, FDI – foreign direct investment, HDI – human development index
Source: Chavance (2003)
Institutional and
organisational
change
Rather strong
Rather strong
Legitimacy of the State
Democratic consolidation,
alternating coalitions
Sudden break (destruction of
the political pillar)
Political evolution
Mode of disaggregation of the
institutional base (exit from socialism)
Depressive state crisis
(former Soviet Union)
Table 1
Politics and the
state
Euro-centred social-liberalism
(Central Europe)
The postsocialist experience and the resistible learning process
163
Stylised trajectories in the first decade of postsocialist transformation (1990s):
a comparison
Fast initial increase, stabilisation
near ‘European’ levels
High initial surge in prices,
followed by decrease of inflation
rates, but still relative high levels
Fast reorientation of trade to the
West (mainly EU). Significant FDI
in manufacturing, but concentrated
in advanced countries
Big increase of inequality and
poverty in the early transformation,
followed by relative decrease
Decline in fertility, increase in
morbidity (also deterioration of
HDI index in most cases)
Socialised (externalised from enterprises).
Significant level of protection, decreasing
Unemployment
Inflation
Opening to the international
economy
Inequality, poverty
Demography
Social protection for
wage-earners
Relation between political and Differentiation
economic elites
Initial depression of about
three years followed by resumption
of fragile but lasting growth
Growth
Increase of inequality, reduction
of absolute poverty
Gradual but intensive opening,
strong expansion of foreign trade.
High level of FDI in
manufacturing
Middle-range inflationary
tendencies
High actual level
High and lasting growth
High growth gradualism
(Asia: China, Vietnam)
Strong overlapping
Still partially internalised in large
enterprises. Low level of protection
Overlapping, partial differentiation
Internalised in large enterprises,
gradual externalisation. Significant
but decreasing level of protection
Decline in fertility, increase in
(Increase of HDI index)
morbidity, sharp increase in mortality,
decline of life expectancy
(deterioration of HDI index)
Explosion in inequality, high level
of poverty
Foreign trade strongly affected
by depression. Low level of FDI,
concentrated in energy sector
Prolonged mega-inflation followed
by decrease to unstable levels. High
proportion of economic barter
Low registered unemployment (but
actual level higher: 10%–15%),
increasing
Persisting depression (cumulative
reduction of GDP of about one half)
Notes: SMEs – small and medium enterprises, SOEs – state-owned enterprises, FDI – foreign direct investment, HDI – human development index
Source: Chavance (2003)
Social tendencies
Macroeconomic
trends
Depressive state crisis
(former Soviet Union)
Table 1
Euro-centred social-liberalism
(Central Europe)
164
B. Chavance
Stylised trajectories in the first decade of postsocialist transformation (1990s):
a comparison (continued)
The postsocialist experience and the resistible learning process
165
Problems and delays in the privatisation process appeared as another disturbing trend.
Mass privatisation programs in the Czech Republic and in Russia were successes in terms
of speed, but caused worrisome arrangements in the field of ownership distribution and of
corporate governance; privatisation legitimacy was strongly questioned in the Russian
case. In many countries a trend observed after privatisation was the extension of
ownership by the members of the enterprise, either employees or managers, – a suspect
outcome in the eyes of mainstream economics. Banking or financial crises occurred
(Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Russia). A striking variety of macroeconomic and
institutional paths of change became apparent, and emergent national forms of
postsocialist capitalism revealed markedly different patterns. If we take a more
comprehensive outlook, the diverging trajectories of Central European economies and of
Russia and Ukraine became increasingly manifest (see Table 1). In these two countries,
the weakening of the state, the extension of barter, the role of mafias in significant parts
of the economy, as well as substantial increase in inequalities and poverty, contrasted
with the revival of growth and the relative capacity of the state in Central European
countries. During the same period, China and Vietnam sustained their path of gradual and
cumulative reforms (contrary to economic mainstream prescriptions) under communist
rule, and experienced high growth, external opening and an increase in the average
standard of living, in spite of the expansion of inequalities. Some unexpected political
events also took place during the 1990s, like the electoral comeback of former communist
parties that had been converted into social-democratic parties; a further surprise was that
they did not reverse the strategy of transition to capitalism nor economic policies
followed until then, but rather maintained them by and large.
By the late 2000s, a moderate assessment of the transition doctrine would have the
following characteristics:
!
the case of Central Europe and the Baltic states is controversial: some think it has
vindicated the mainstream approach, others believe that it has proved it false; we see
an example of such a dispute in the paradigmatic case of Poland (see for example
Balcerowicz, 1995; Kolodko, 2000)
!
the case of Russia was such a massive failure (Sapir, 1998, 1999), that even the
former director of IMF, Michel Camdessus, was forced to acknowledge it
!
with China, the transition doctrine was faced with an aberrant experience in
contradiction to its paramount principles, an experience that contrasted in a
favourable manner on important economic dimensions with the rest of the
postsocialist world.
5
The qualified doctrine
In the second half of the 1990s, it became difficult for its exponents to sustain the initial
approach, taking into account the various and unexpected developments that had taken
place in the process of system change, and also the criticisms addressed to this
perspective, that frequently put it into question. A harsh critique of the Washington
consensus, as applied to transition, was even made by the chief economist of the World
Bank (Stiglitz, 1998, 2000)1. Qualifications and shades of meanings were thus introduced
in the transition doctrine, often integrating heterodox ideas about the role of the state and
166
B. Chavance
the law, the importance of institutions, the actual diversity of national trajectories of
change, the concern for the social dimension of systemic change, for its political
legitimacy, etc. Sometimes the dividing line between the mainstream approach and its
institutionalist or evolutionary opponents became somewhat blurred. But most of the
time, changes remained limited.
In some cases, alterations in the doctrine remained utterly superficial. This was
specially observed in international organisations, that have displayed an astonishing
capacity to neutralise the ideas of their critics – a tendency being also observed about
objections to the neo-liberal globalisation. In the EBRD (European bank for
reconstruction and development) Transition report 2000, we could read, for instance, that
‘one important lesson of the past decade has been that there is no unique process or
‘time-line’ of transition from central planning under communism to a unique, easily
identifiable, familiar form of market capitalism under democratic political institutions.(...)
It seems a safe prediction that most of the EBRD’s countries of operation will develop
their own distinct brand of capitalism’ [EBRD, (2000), pp.3–4]. Following this
enlightened statement, the report proceeded to examine extensively the EBRD ‘transition
indicators’, that have been the main instrument to measure per annum the
country-specific progress, since 1994, under different dimensions (percentage of private
sector in GDP, price liberalisation, reform of banking and financial institutions, ...), on a
scale between 1 and 4+. National economies consequently appeared explicitly as more or
less advanced or behind time on this one-directional scale2. What remained to be
explained was how to reconcile the previous ‘lesson’ with such teleological and
normative approach of the final convergence toward a terminal equilibrium state.
We see here a caricature example of the amended transition doctrine, that pays lip
service to alternative views without altering its basic axioms. A genuine comparative
analysis of the process of systemic transformation in different countries was therefore
ruled out. Interdependencies between diverse modes of institutional or organisational
change, that generate ‘specific varieties of capitalism’ remained concealed. Moreover, the
lack of systemic analysis hindered the comprehension of the fact that alleged virtue in
one dimension may have been associated with perversity in another dimension
(for instance, the advance of privatisation that was linked to financial fragility).
This kind of approach was even more overly simplistic than the old unilinear theory
of the ‘stages of growth’ (Rostow, 1960), that assumed a single pre-established path for
any national trajectory of modernisation, but which at least considered different
qualitative phases in such process.
Transition doctrine, in its original or qualified form, insisted on success stories, that
were held to illustrate beneficial consequences of its approach. Alas, such stories were
frequently modified or reversed, resulting in astonishing turnarounds – the causes of
which were seldom precisely explained. First, there was Poland with its commendable
shock therapy (Sachs, 1993), that experienced an unexpectedly slow privatisation and a
surprising return of reformed communists to the government; there was the valiant
neo-liberal attempt of Russia, that received immoderate praise of many experts (Aslund,
1995; Layard and Parker, 1996; Boycko et al., 1995) and that culminated in a massive
disaster (Sapir, 1998); there was the ‘Czech miracle’ (good macroeconomic performance,
accelerated privatisation, low unemployment) that was reversed after 1997 and
became the very illustration of what ought to be avoided… At the same time,
great efforts were made to evade any comparison between the apparently paradoxical
experiences of China (and Vietnam), and the evolution of Eastern Europe and the former
The postsocialist experience and the resistible learning process
167
Soviet Union, or to downplay their unconventionality, and to predict their inevitable
future ‘convergence’ with Eastern Europe (Sachs and Woo, 1994, 2000). The drive for a
quick legitimation of current policies, the lack of historical and comparative analysis and
the focus on short term changes are tendencies deeply rooted in the dominant tradition of
economic thought and policies.
6
Limits of evolutionary theories: ruptures and futurity
Institutionalist theories in economics generally emphasise change as an evolution process
and the role of cumulative causation (Hodgson, 1999). Importance given to time
sequences, to actual continuities that sometimes predominate over historical breaks, the
stress they put on interdependent partial changes in emergent processes, have given to
their critique of the transition doctrine a patent accuracy. Nonetheless, these theories have
been essentially developed to analyse incremental and progressive changes: they face
here their own limits in interpreting systemic disruptions like postsocialist transformation
(or, symmetrically, the initial formation of socialist systems). They often lack a concept
of crisis, or a concept of revolution (as opposed to the concept of evolution). While
dealing with mutations, innovations, – they generally do not examine the structural
remaking of large economic systems. The Schumpeterian tradition may be more relevant
to deal with such revolutions, from a technological or organisational point of view. But
what is lacking here is a concept of institutional and organisational revolution as an
integral part of an evolutionary theory of economic change (see Dockès, 1998).
It is essential to stress that the weight of the past has often been underscored in the
mainstream approach, as the institutionalist analyses of path dependency have rightly
shown (Stark and Bruszt, 1998). It remains the case, however, that the role of
anticipations, of futurity (to quote J.R. Commons’ term) has often been revealed as
critical in actual transformation trajectories. The path shaping (i.e., opening a new
course) character of anticipations (Hausner et al., 1995), or the role of ‘anticipated
institutions’ (Federowicz, 1995), (understandably stressed by Polish researchers), in other
words individual or collective actions based on futurity, should not be forgotten in
understanding national pathways of transformation, have they been perverse, positive or
even virtuous at times. While calling into question the approach focused on equilibrium
and the final state, emphasis should be put on such elements. Postsocialist systemic
change implies that specific parts of the national economic system, their
interdependencies and reciprocal relations, the system as a whole as its distinct essence,
and even the environment of the system, are all transformed in a rather condensed
historical period. In such temporality, individual and collective action faces a new kind of
uncertainty, systemic uncertainty. While individuals and organisations often fall back on
habits or established routines, on behaviours or relations previously learned, they also
turn to anticipations of the emergent order, or to short term opportunities. Such
anticipations have creative consequences, often unexpected, sometimes self-fulfilling.
Another aspect of the legacies of the past is their ambivalence. Some play a role of
constraints for accelerated change, others on the contrary facilitate transformation. Some
have detrimental consequences, others have beneficial effects, such duality appearing
differently according to the individual or social actors. Any assessment of this complex
and changing role of the legacies of the past must take into account the ‘historical
specificity’ of a national or regional transformation path, and the role of contingent
168
B. Chavance
events – rightly stressed by the path dependency approach. This raises a methodological
problem with reference to a general theory of transition. Various generalisations have
been attempted in this direction, but they are often questionable as they may be refuted by
one or more national counter-examples. If one wishes to draw ‘general lessons’ of the
transformation process as it has occurred until now, the challenge of the diversity of
national experiences has to be confronted, and one has to undertake an inductive analysis
of the variety of national trajectories; mainstream economics is not well prepared to such
an exercise, being strongly inclined to hypothetical-deductive analysis. Without such
inductive moment in research, there is a serious risk of unsound generalisation made on
the basis of a partial experience or of a limited period, without taking into account
historical specificity as a necessary constituent of a general theorisation (Hodgson, 2001).
7
Conclusions
Postcommunist experience has indeed challenged the different trends of economic
thought but, as a matter of fact, it did not result in a paradigm revolution. A conceptual
change that took place since 1989 has nonetheless been the return of the concept of
institution. It would be difficult to find today a theoretical school that would not agree
that institutions matter for economics. The title of the World Development Report 2002 of
the World Bank was building institutions for markets – which was initially an exclusively
institutionalist and minority theme3.
In the field of economics however, the mainstream when confronted to critics has
developed numerous protective or neutralising tactics – as may be seen in the case of
neo-liberal globalisation. The irony is that such methods to avoid criticism, particularly
the one that refers to historical experience, are used by a tradition that advocates in the
abstract the Popperian refutability as a standard of scientificity in the field of
methodology; but it fails to apply it to itself.
The dominant tradition in economics retains hegemony after a historical experience
that actually appeared quite cruel for it (not to mention the societies where its influence
was imposed). But economics is a discipline that has a specific relation with politics and
power relations; in addition, its mainstream has deliberately divorced from other social
sciences one century ago. This state of affairs may not be eternal; but time will be
needed, and perhaps also other painful historical episodes like the great capitalist crisis of
the late 2000s for economics to assimilate such complex experiences and to genuinely
theorise them. It will also depend much on dissident trends and their capacity to illustrate
the authentic status of economics as a discipline: not a quasi ‘hard’ science emancipated
from social sciences (or trying to colonise them), but a region or a sector of the social
science.
The postsocialist experience and the resistible learning process
169
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Notes
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2
3
This was before he was pushed out of the bank as a consequence, and before paradoxically he
got the ‘Nobel’ prize of economics some time after. This episode extends the catalogue of
transition surprises... Joseph Stiglitz has recapitulated in an important book his critique of
concepts and policies followed by international organisations about globalisation and
transition (Stiglitz, 2002).
We have here an early example of the benchmarking paradigm that has invaded mainstream
economic literature since the turn of the century.
The report’s title furthermore suggests how much the centrality of the market is preserved.