Economic Liberalism and Its Rivals

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.

Spis treści:
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.