Reconstruction or Destruction?

This book deals with the transition from planned to market economy, in a series of transition economies, with an emphasis on the implications for science and technology policies. This transition has been, and in most countries still is, quite painful. The restructuring of the economies, as a result of globalization, the demise of the Soviet Union and their abandoning of the 'command' economy strategy, has not yielded the results that many in the West had expected. The transition has, instead, implied serious social problems and widening income gaps. This book addresses these dramatic changes in nine former centrally planned economies (CPEs): three former Soviet Republics (Russia, Belarus and Ukraine); three Eastern European countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia); and three Third World economies (China, Cuba and Vietnam).