IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/copoec/v6y1995i1p5-20.html

Democracy, dictatorship, and transformation: A proposal for a constitution-guided systematic change in formerly Soviet republics

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Apolte

Abstract

A system transformation contains complicated social dilemmas and special-interest problems. Thus it is frequently suggested that democratic decisionmaking is inappropriate for introducing a market economy in the former socialist countries. In this paper I argue that this view rests on a nirvana approach, because it neglects the dynamics of authoritarian governments. It is shown that dictatorships tend to serve even narrower special interests than democracies and are therefore usually less likely to pursue a consistent transformation policy. However, a dictatorship could, under certain cultural and social conditions, have some advantages over democracies. But those conditions are barely present in the formerly socialist countries. Moreover, a dictatorship can by its very nature not be committed and cannot even commit itself to a certain public policy. Hence, there is only one instrument to mitigate social dilemmas in transformation countries: a set of constitutional rules. Some basic properties of a constitutional approach of system transformation are introduced in the last section of the paper. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1995

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Apolte, 1995. "Democracy, dictatorship, and transformation: A proposal for a constitution-guided systematic change in formerly Soviet republics," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 5-20, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:6:y:1995:i:1:p:5-20
    DOI: 10.1007/BF01298373
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF01298373
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF01298373?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adam Przeworski & Fernando Limongi, 1993. "Political Regimes and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 51-69, Summer.
    2. Brennan,Geoffrey & Buchanan,James M., 2006. "The Power to Tax," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521027922, January.
    3. Cass Sunstein, 1991. "Constitutionalism, prosperity, democracy: Transition in Eastern Europe," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 2(3), pages 371-394, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Apolte, Thomas & Peters, Heiko, 2009. "Governance, Demokratie und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in den ehemals sozialistischen Staaten," IÖB-Diskussionspapiere 1/09, University of Münster, Institute for Economic Education.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stefan Voigt, 2011. "Positive constitutional economics II—a survey of recent developments," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 146(1), pages 205-256, January.
    2. Susan-Rose Ackerman, 1997. "Corruption, Infefficiency and Economic Growth," Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, vol. 24, pages 3-20.
    3. Keita Kouramoudou, 2017. "Does Corruption Affect Total Factor Productivity? An Empirical Analysis," Working Papers 1714, Tampere University, Faculty of Management and Business, Economics.
    4. Stefan Voigt, 1996. "Pure eclecticism—The tool kit of the constitutional economist," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 177-196, September.
    5. Kessing, Sebastian G. & Konrad, Kai A. & Kotsogiannis, Christos, 2006. "Federal tax autonomy and the limits of cooperation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 317-329, March.
    6. Dwight Lee, 1985. "Reverse revenue sharing: A modest proposal," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 279-289, January.
    7. Bryan Caplan & Edward Stringham, 2005. "Mises, bastiat, public opinion, and public choice," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 79-105.
    8. Nahapetyan Yervand, 2019. "The benefits of the Velvet Revolution in Armenia: Estimation of the short-term economic gains using deep neural networks," Central European Economic Journal, Sciendo, vol. 6(53), pages 286-303, January.
    9. Sobel, Andrew C., 2002. "State institutions, risk, and lending in global capital markets," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 11(6), pages 725-752, December.
    10. Lewkowicz, Jacek & Woźniak, Michał & Wrzesiński, Michał, 2022. "COVID-19 and erosion of democracy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    11. Jian-Guang Shen, 2002. "Democracy and growth: An alternative empirical approach," Development and Comp Systems 0212002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Cao, Chunfang & Li, Xiaoyang & Xia, Changyuan, 2021. "The complicit role of local government authorities in corporate bribery: Evidence from a tax collection reform in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    13. Myint Moe Chit, 2018. "Political openness and the growth of small and medium enterprises: empirical evidence from transition economies," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 781-804, September.
    14. Zodrow, George R, 2003. "Tax Competition and Tax Coordination in the European Union," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 10(6), pages 651-671, November.
    15. Georg Vanberg & Michael Brooks, 1996. "Reviews," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 63-71, March.
    16. Boockmann, Bernhard & Dreher, Axel, 2003. "The contribution of the IMF and the World Bank to economic freedom," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 633-649, September.
    17. D W Jones & C R Morrow-Jones, 1984. "Effects of Revenue Distribution and Income Distribution on the Impacts of Local Taxation," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 2(2), pages 135-148, June.
    18. Kantorowicz, Jarosław & Köppl–Turyna, Monika, 2019. "Disentangling the fiscal effects of local constitutions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 63-87.
    19. Stephen Billings & Thomas Thibodeau, 2011. "Intrametropolitan Decentralization: Is Government Structure Capitalized in Residential Property Values?," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 416-450, May.
    20. Jan Schnellenbach, 2023. "The concept of Ordnungspolitik: rule-based economic policymaking from the perspective of the Freiburg School," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 195(3), pages 283-300, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • P51 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:6:y:1995:i:1:p:5-20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.