Economic Liberalism and Its Rivals
The Formation of International Institutions among the Post-Soviet States

Darden traces the decisions that shaped the entry of post-Soviet states into the world economy.

Keith A. Darden (Author)

9780521156257, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 12 July 2010

366 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2 cm, 0.51 kg

'The book has a clear and strong argument about the role of ideas in economic policymaking. The author traces how elites in the states to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union adopt different ideas and then make choices about how to interact with international institutions based on these ideas. The simultaneous creation of 15 states is a near perfect test of this kind of theory. This book fits into a much needed and growing literature on the role of actors and ideas as important independent variables in explaining political, social, and economic outcomes of any sort. It is particularly good at stressing the role of contingency in producing outcomes. This book could become a major text in shaping this academic debate and in teaching this kind of argument.' Michael McFaul, Stanford University

Examines the critical role that the economic ideas of state leaders play in the creation and maintenance of the international economic order. Drawing on a detailed study of the fifteen post-Soviet states in their first decade of independence, interviews with key decision-makers and the use of closed ministerial archives, the book explores how the changing ideas of state officials led countries to follow one of three institutional paths: rapid entry into the World Trade Organization, participation in a regional Customs Union based on their prior Soviet ties, or autarky and economic closure. In doing so, the book traces the decisions that shaped the entry of these strategically important countries into the world economy and provides a novel theory of the role of ideas in international politics.

Part I. Theory and Methodology: 1. A natural experiment
2. A theory of international order
3. Three international trajectories
4. Liberalism and its rivals: history, typology, and measurement
Part II. Contingent Selection and Systematic Effects: Country-Level Analyses of Elite Selection, Ideational Change, and Institutional Choice, 1991–2002: 5. The Baltic states and Moldova
6. Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine
7. The Caucasus
8. Central Asia
Part III. Comparing Cases: 9. Alternative explanations and statistical tests
10. Smoking guns: a causal history of institutional choice
11. Conclusions and implications of the analysis.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], International relations [JPS], Comparative politics [JPB]