Invisible hands, Russian experience, and social science : approaches to understanding systemic failure / Stefan Hedlund.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hedlund, Stefan, 1953- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Economics.

Economic development--Russia (Federation).

Economic development.

Economic history.

Financial crises.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 307 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Invisible Hands, Russian Experience, & Social Science

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book investigates cases in which national and international activities have gone massively wrong, entailing seriously negative consequences, and in which the sophisticated analytical models of social science have ceased to be helpful. Illustrations range from the global financial crisis to the failure to achieve speedy systemic change in the former Soviet Union and the failure to achieve development in the Third World. The analysis uses as a backdrop long-term Russian history and short-term Russian encounters with unrestrained capitalism to develop a framework that is based in the so-called new institutionalism. Understanding the causes of systemic failure is shown to require an approach that spans across the increasingly specialized subdisciplines of modern social science. Demonstrating that increasing theoretical sophistication has been bought at the price of a loss of perspective and the need for sensitivity to the role of cultural and historical specificity, the book pleads the case for a new departure in seeking to model the motives for human action.

Contents:

Opportunity and self-interest

Scope and tradition of social science

Markets under central planning

Russia's historical legacy

Markets everywhere

Institutional choice

History matters

Concluding discussion

Implications for social science.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-21778-4

1-139-08872-6

1-283-12746-6

1-139-09250-2

9786613127464

1-139-09301-0

1-139-09199-9

1-139-09019-4

1-139-09110-7

1-139-00361-5

OCLC:

735595823