Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic Reform in Russia

Recent commentators on Russia's economic reforms have almost uniformly declared thema disappointing and avoidable -- failure. In this book, two American scholars take a new and morebalanced look at the country's attempts to build capitalism on the ruins of Soviet central planning.They show how and why the Russian reforms achieved remarkable breakthroughs in some areas but cameundone in others. Unlike Eastern European countries such as Poland or the Czech Republic, to whichit is often compared, Russia is a federal, ethnically diverse, industrial giant with an economyheavily oriented toward raw materials extraction. The political obstacles it faced in designingreforms were incomparably greater.Shleifer and Treisman tell how Russia's leaders, navigating inuncharted economic terrain, managed to find a path around some of these obstacles. In successfulepisodes, central reformers devised a strategy to win over some key opponents, while dividing andmarginalizing others. Such political tactics made possible the rapid privatization of 14,000 stateenterprises in 1992-1994 and the defeat of inflation in 1995. But failure to outmaneuver the newoligarchs and regional governors after 1996 undermined reformers' attempts to collect taxes andclean up the bureaucracy that has stifled business growth.Renewing a strain of analysis that runsfrom Machiavelli to Hirschman, the authors reach conclusions about political strategies that haveimportant implications for other reformers. They draw on their extensive knowledge of the countryand recent experience as advisors to Russian policymakers. Written in an accessible style, the bookshould appeal to economists, political scientists, policymakers, businesspeople, and all thoseinterested in Russian politics or economics.

Daniel Treisman is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.