An analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies is developed in this analysis of economic structures.

The countries of Central Asia are increasingly the focus of intense international attention due to their geopolitical and economic importance as well as their unsettled transition processes. The region faced enormous challenges when the Soviet Union disintegrated, and this book focuses on the reforms of the institutional environment that have been largely neglected. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the book explores key aspects of institution building as well as economic and political governance in Central Asia. Contributors from a variety of disciplines, such as economics, political economy, political science, sociology, law, and ethnology, investigate the challenges of institutional transition in a non-democratic region. The book discusses how the lack of effective institution building as well as rule enforcement in the economic and political realms represents one of the key weaknesses and drawbacks of transition, and goes on to look at how crafting market institutions will be of utmost importance in the years ahead. Making an important contribution to understanding of political-economic developments in Central Asia, this book is of interest to students and scholars of political economy, comparative economics, development studies and Central Asian studies.

Policymakers around the world have increasingly agreed that macroeconomic discipline, microeconomic liberalization, and outward orientation are prerequisites for economic success. But what are the political conditions that make economic transformation possible? At a conference held at the Institute for International Economics, leaders of economic reform recounted their efforts to bring about change and discussed the impact of the political climate on the success of their efforts. In this book, these leaders explore the political conditions conducive to the success of policy reforms. Did economic crisis strengthen the hands of the reformers? Was the rapidity with which reforms were instituted crucial? Did the reformers have a "honeymoon" period in which to transform the economy? The authors answer these and other questions, as well as providing first-hand accounts of the politically charged atmosphere surrounding reform efforts in their countries.

Media, Development, and Institutional Change investigates mass media s profound ability to affect institutional change and economic development. The authors use the tools of economics to illuminate the media s role in enabling and inhibiting political economic reforms that promote development. The book explores how media can constrain government, how governments manipulate media to entrench their power, and how private and public media ownership affects a country s ability to prosper. The authors identify specific media-related policies governments of underdeveloped countries should adopt if they want to grow. They illustrate why media freedom is a critical ingredient in the recipe of economic development and why even the best-intentioned state involvement in media is more likely to slow prosperity than to enhance it. Scholars and students of economics, political science and sociology; policy-makers, analysts and others in the development community; and academics in media studies will find this book insightful and provocative.

Developing countries commonly adopt reforms to improve their governments yet they usually fail to produce more functional and effective governments. Andrews argues that reforms often fail to make governments better because they are introduced as signals to gain short-term support. These signals introduce unrealistic best practices that do not fit developing country contexts and are not considered relevant by implementing agents. The result is a set of new forms that do not function. However, there are realistic solutions emerging from institutional reforms in some developing countries. Lessons from these experiences suggest that reform limits, although challenging to adopt, can be overcome by focusing change on problem solving through an incremental process that involves multiple agents.

In this book, Federico Sturzenegger and Mariano Tommasi propose formal models to answer some of the questions raised by the recent reform experience of many Latin American and eastern European countries.

Applying the new economics of organisation and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross-national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterise the 'varieties of capitalism' worldwide.