Designing the Strategies for Socio-Economic Development: Science vs. Ideology

V. Polterovich
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V. Polterovich: Central Economics and Mathematics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Виктор Меерович Полтерович

Journal of the New Economic Association, 2017, vol. 35, issue 3, 198-206

Abstract: Strategies for socio-economic development in "catching-up" countries are designed on the basis of ideologies dominated in the society and, as a rule, fail. Until recently, economic science could not offer an alternative basis for designing strategies, but over the past twenty years the situation has changed. Nevertheless, scientific results are still weakly demanded by society. In this paper, the conflict between economics and dominant ideology is explored. On the one hand, ideology restrains the development of scientific research, and on the other hand it is changing under its influence. However, these changes are very slow for a number of reasons, analyzed in the paper. Ideology is inevitably connected with the interests of economic agents. The old elite prevents the emergence of a new ideology, since new concepts reveal the mistakes of past projects. In addition, the implementation of new ideas may require institutional changes that weaken the power of existing high-ranking officials. Meanwhile, in modern societies there are no regular mechanisms providing such transformations, and the probability of rational volitional decisions, which confront the dominant ideology, is small.

Keywords: catching-up development; radicalism; Washington Consensus; gradualism; institutional reform; interim institution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 B52 D02 O25 O29 P21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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