From Phobias and Ideological Prescription

The article offers a comparative exploration of the variety and complexity of economic transition strategies. There is also a compelling need to focus on the weaknesses of putative market forces when "designing" appropriate strategies for transition and economic development. Attention is drawn to financial market failures and their impact on economic reconstruction and political liberalization experiences. Particular attention is drawn to the need for a critical assessment of developmental strategies and transition models, and their potential "shelf life, " in the broader spectrum of debate about complex patterns of regulation and deregulation in mixed economies. The Russian experience with economic and political development cannot be lightly dismissed as irrelevant to the management development agenda, especially in the face of the failure by Western social science to fully address the complexities of economic and political transition that need to go beyond much of the ideological, and recently more rhetorical, arguments sofar offered by Western management and economic specialists.