Suchergebnisse

Реформы 1990-х годов принято оценивать с точки зрения показателей экономического роста. Автор статьи, непосредственный участник преобразований в качестве разработчика программ, рассуждает о реформах как о процессе формирования институтов, о том, что решения начальных периодов трансформации, воздействующие на основы общества, определяли ее течение, открывая те или иные пути стихийного формирования реально действующих институтов. Автор помимо широко известных событий и фактов анализирует различные их аспекты и взаимосвязи, исходя из собственного понимания и оценки происходивших процессов. ; The reform of the 1990s is commonly evaluated from the standpoint of economic growth. In this article the author, who was, in fact, a direct participant of those events and one of the designers of the reform, discusses it in the context of institutional building and, particularly, develops the idea that decisions taken at the earlier stage of transformation affected the very foundations of society and thus predetermined the following sequence of events, as well as particular course of evolution of institutions. The more the country is involved in transformation, the more inertial its development gets, and the more power emerging institutions and interest groups accumulate. The reform of the 1990s and the reform of 2000s are two essentially different stories: they have different targets, yet similar goals. In the first case, the foundations of society are changed and primary economic institutions are formed; and the second case is an attempt to influence these institutions. The author tries to reconstruct the sequence of events in the 1990s by suggesting his own periodization, and highlights the most interesting details of the situation, in which Perestroika began. He also analyzes the circumstances, in which different programmes were developed and adopted, as well as their major consequences (default, the development of situation the in 2000s). Prior to the beginning of Russian transformation there was a fierce discussion as to which measures should be taken first macrostabilization, liberalization and opening of the foreign trade or privatization. The problem of building market institutions was, of course, insufficiently covered in the academic media of that time. The general prevalence of macroeconomists created a strange impression among experts that the primary task is macrostabilization, since everything else would follow and should resolve by itself. It was only ten years later that the discussion has been redirected towards institutionalism and the problem of institutions and liberalization in general. The situation of the 1990s has been vastly influenced by the two legal acts, which have been introduced earlier, i.e. 'Law on State Enterprise' and 'Law on Cooperatives'. In theory of property rights what this means is that managers of state-owned enterprises were allowed to control and dispose property without being accountable to the state. I.e. this has led to a process of latent privatization of state property by its managers. By 'switching off' the monitoring agent such as the state corruption was doomed to flourish. Being an absolute opponent to how the privatization was actually carried out the author claims that the major mistake was an excessive de-specification of property rights at the cost of its pace. And it was exactly this moment of the reform that shaped the particularities of the national economy, economic and political institutions, private property and corporate management for the years to come. It is important, in author's view, to understand that current capitalism in Russia has been shaped exactly in 1992-1994, during that 3-4-year period of hyperinflation, privatization and the issuing of the first laws. All that happened afterwards was influenced by particular property relations and corporate control from the most powerful interest groups, which won their first round at the very beginning. And today any further policy, be it right or wrong, can only be carried out by accounting for these interests. Since 1994-1996 there is no room for reform from the scratch. It is now a problem seriously constrained by existing interest groups. In the last two-three years it has become clear that the problem of country's development (i.e. infrastructure, education, innovation, etc.) cannot be solved by themselves even with favorable world prices for oil. The new challenge is to find new ways of development under the circumstances of growing bureaucracy

На примере исторического развития систем власти и управления в Великобритании в статье представлены возможности создания эффективной государственной системы путем эволюционных изменений за счет проведения своевременных конструктивных реформ, а не путем революционных преобразований. В исторической перспективе рассматриваются особенности функционирования британского парламента и британского избирательного права. Излагается хронология проведения парламентских и избирательных реформ, их суть и результаты. ; In the article the possibilities of construction of the effective state system by means of evolutional changes via the well-timed constructive reforms, and not by means of revolutionary changes are shown by the example of the historical development of the power and administration system in Great Britain. The specific features of functioning of the British parliament and of the British electoral franchise are considered in historical perspective. The chronology of the parliament and electoral reforms, their essence and results are developed.

История концептуальной эволюции российских экономических реформ практически оставалась вне поля внимания исследований. Авторы статьи проверяют гипотезу о том, что основные изменения программы реформ объяснялись в большей степени сменой команд реформаторов, нежели теоретическими факторами. На основании различных источников представлена хронология реформ 1985-1998 гг., в рамках которой выделены «узловые точки» процесса, выявлены ряды факторов, влиявших на формирование концепций реформаторов, оценена их сравнительная важность и характер влияния. В том числе исследование опиралось на ряд материалов, в частности, выступления активных участников этого процесса А.Г. Аганбегяна, Л.М. Григорьева, С.Ю. Глазьева, Я.М. Уринсона, Г.А. Явлинского на научном семинаре факультета экономики НИУ ВШЭ «Теория и практика экономических реформ конца ХХ века в СССР и России». ; The history of how the concepts of Russian economic reform evolved hasnt been a popular research subject until recently. What we attempted in this article is to test the hypothesis according to which the main factor of evolution was the replacement of different groups of reformers rather than their theoretical considerations. We reconstruct the chronology of Russian reform (1985-1998) and look into the key points of the process and the factors which affected the evolution of concepts, and further assess their relative importance and the nature of their influence. In our study we rely on such sources of information as personal attempts to reconstruct the logic of events by L. Grigoryev, A. Aganbegyan, S. Glazyev, Y. Urinson, G. Yavlinsky and some others, who participated in a special workshop on Theories and Practices of Economic Reform in USSR and Russia. The workshop was organized by the economics department of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. The improvement of socialism and acceleration of Soviet economy were the dominant ideas in 1985-86. In 1987-88 the agenda included the renovation of socialism and the gradual movement towards market socialism. It was also the time when the first voices to deny the socialist basis of the new economy have actually spoken up. In 1990-91 the economic problems have caused the immediate radicalization of reformers, and the focus of their discussions has quickly shifted towards the inevitability of transformation of planned economy into market system. This period may be characterized as a competition of programs, although both competing programs implied the liberalization of economy and privatization, and the major difference between them was the tempo and methods of change rather than the goal itself. In 1992 the Gaidars government has launched the radical reform and liberalized the prices, which was immediately followed by rapid inflation. After this moment it is rather hard to keep an accurate record of conceptual evolution as all the public theoretical disputes have been already closed by that time. The shifts in economic policy were rather attributed to the practical needs, as the economic crisis was deepening and the social pressure was rising. We have not found any decisive changes in the declared goals of reformers, rather their main concern during this period was to stabilize the situation. Later in 1995-1996 the political circumstances became unstable, and the much-criticized campaign of large-scale privatization has been launched. There were some alternative reform programs which typically included certain Keynesian or Marxist-style measures implying strong government intervention in the economy. However, B. Yeltsin won the presidential elections, and the team of reformers stayed in power for another period. The economic development of Russia in 1996-98 was more of an evolutional process, since no more radical reforms were implemented during that period. To conclude, we substantiate our initial suggestion that the main factor of the evolution of Russian economic reform concept was the change of reformers teams. The first period (1985-1991) was the period of discussions and gradual radicalization of programs, as the economic problems of Soviet Union deepened and the time was just being wasted. But by the end of this period the shock therapy has been accepted as the general strategy. In 1992-98 this initial ideology was preserved, but economic crisis prevented the government from consistent implementation of reforms. However, many researches stress the influence of political factors as well, since some economic measures were apparently taken to meet the political requirements of the situation