Path dependency, global economy and post-communist change

Continuity has marked the political economy of the former Soviet states within the Commonwealth of Independent States. This chapter describes that what constitutes political influence upon post-communist political economy needs to be broadened out. It argues that a crucial factor influencing reform has been the type of state formed by the interaction of communist system and the international economy before the collapse of communism. The chapter shows that different forms of state emerged during the communist period as elites tried to balance the failings of central planning and the classic form of communist state with external assistance. The way that small-N comparisons of path dependency write phenomena such as global economy and the state out of the picture make it difficult to be sure that small-N path dependency arguments have properly identified 'which elements of the past matter, and exactly how they matter’.