Abstract
Unlike the rise of capitalism in Western Europe and the USA, which was largely a spontaneous autonomous process, the transition from state socialism was predicated on the decisions of the political elite which came to power after the exit of the communist leadership. A feature of the transformation of state socialism to market type societies is the role of human agency in creating a form of capitalism by institutional design1. The new governing elites had a vision of a transition to a Western type of market capitalist society: the catchwords of the reformers were market, private ownership, democracy and civil society. Western thinking about the structure of capitalism has played a dominant role in early policy formation, not only were the successful capitalist societies working models of what the post-communist states aspired to, they also defined the conditions under which the new states entered the global market and received financial and political support.
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Lane, D. (2000). The Transformation of State Socialism in Russia. In: Dobry, M. (eds) Democratic and Capitalist Transitions in Eastern Europe. The GeoJournal Library, vol 55. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4162-8_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4162-8_9
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