the collapse of Communism has taught political economists several things:
first, that economic policy is always nested within a set of institutions—that there are economic/financial, political/legal, and social/cultural issues, which all must be taken into account;
second, that leadership matters throughout the transition process;
and third, that historical contingency can either work in your favour or cut against the successful transition.
And I would add a fourth one: that political power corrupts even the most informed and idealistic of individuals, such that you cannot count on ideological alignment to win the day. You have instead a small window of opportunity in which ideological alignment can be utilized to establish institutions that make it difficult for even bad men to do much harm.
In other words, the goal of our political/legal institutions should not be to ensure that the best and the brightest can govern, but instead that if the worst get in power, they can do little damage. This is the idea of a “robust political economy”.
What Have We Learned from the Collapse of Communism? by Peter Boettke
13 Apr 2014 Leave a comment
in Austrian economics, constitutional political economy, development economics, entrepreneurship, law and economics, liberalism, Public Choice Tags: collapse of communism
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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