|
Showing 1 - 6 of
6 matches in All Departments
Douglass North once emphasized that development takes centuries,
but he did not have a theory of how and why change occurs. This
groundbreaking book advances such a theory by examining in detail
why England and Spain developed so slowly from 1000 to 1800. A
colonial legacy must go back centuries before settlement, and this
book points to key events in England and Spain in the 1260s to
explain why Mexico lagged behind the United States economically in
the twentieth century. Based on the integration of North's
institutional approach with Mancur Olson's collective action
theory, Max Weber's theory of value change, and North's focus on
dominant coalitions based on rent and military in In the Shadow of
Violence, this theory of change leads to exciting new historical
interpretations, including the crucial role of the merchant-navy
alliance in England and the key role of George Washington's control
of the military in 1787.
Democratization and Revolution in the USSR, 1985-91 presents a
strikingly new view of the Gorbachev era and the reasons for the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Written by one of America's most
distinguished specialists on the former Soviet Union, this is the
first comprehensive overview of the Gorbachev period and describes
it as a real revolution, not mere " reform." According to Hough,
despite Mikhail Gorbachev's talk of a regulated market, he never
understood that a market must be created on a solid institutional
and legal base. He was determined to use democratization to free
himself from party control, but he saw democracy as a way of
achieving near- universal consensus, not a mechanism for forcing
through difficult choices. The many memoirs that have become
available in the last few years, including those of Gorbachev
himself, show that Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov and the " bureaucrats"
in his government actually were the serious economic reformers in
the leadership. Gorbachev opposed the key transitional steps at
every stage and was far closer to the assumptions of shock therapy
than he or his opponents ever recognized. Hough explains that
Gorbachev was not alone in thinking that the destruction of old
institutions was enough to unleash a market. Westerners also talked
of leaping a chasm in a single jump as if democratic and market
institutions existed pre-created on the other side. But, precisely
because Gorbachev (and later Boris Yeltsin) was encouraged in all
his worst mistakes by Western advice, his failure has crucial
implications for Western thinking about the process of
democratization and marketization. This unprecedented book explores
those implications indepth. Selected by Choice as an Outstanding
Book for 1998
The Russian Federation on December 12, 1993, held its first
national election since the collapse of Soviet Communism. The
election, to a new, two-chamber parliament, was accompanied by a
constitutional referendum. It followed months of wrangling over
political and economic reform and a violent showdown in Moscow
between President Boris Yeltsin and his opponents. After a bitter
campaign in which the government frequently changed the rules of
the game, Russians narrowly endorsed Yeltsin's draft constitution,
but turned out in large numbers for nationalistic and socialistic
opposition parties, leaving Russia's Choice, the party favored by
the president, with a small minority of the seats. The contest,
with its deeply contradictory results, was a watershed in the
evolution of Russia's fledgling democracy. Growing Pains is a
detailed study of the 1993 election and of its implications for
Russian development and for the country's relations with the West.
Several chapters, relying on comprehensive surveys of the Russian
electorate, analyze the election process and how social structure
and citizen opinions shaped voter choice. Others examine the
campaigns of the major parties, the nature and consequences of
electoral rules, and the roles of the mass media. Still others
examine the campaign and its outcome at the grassroots in ten
regions of Russia, from the western provinces to the Pacific coast,
demonstrating the significance of local context and local elites
and power structures in Russia's transitional politics.
Douglass North once emphasized that development takes centuries,
but he did not have a theory of how and why change occurs. This
groundbreaking book advances such a theory by examining in detail
why England and Spain developed so slowly from 1000 to 1800. A
colonial legacy must go back centuries before settlement, and this
book points to key events in England and Spain in the 1260s to
explain why Mexico lagged behind the United States economically in
the twentieth century. Based on the integration of North's
institutional approach with Mancur Olson's collective action
theory, Max Weber's theory of value change, and North's focus on
dominant coalitions based on rent and military in In the Shadow of
Violence, this theory of change leads to exciting new historical
interpretations, including the crucial role of the merchant-navy
alliance in England and the key role of George Washington's control
of the military in 1787.
|
|