Property Rights, Liberalism, and the Transition from “Actually Existing" Socialism
Property Rights, Liberalism, and the Transition from “Actually Existing" Socialism

Summary/Abstract: While the introduction of democracy to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is highly desirable for many reasons, it is unfortunately unclear if enacting a major economic transformation is one of them. On the contrary, it would seem that the basic preconditions required for the creation of self-regulating markets in the economy are not so much "democratic" as they are "liberal." That is, the political requirements of economic reform lie less in the introduction of institutions for popular control of the state than in the establishment of mechanisms that would limit the use of political authority in the economy regardless of who exercises it. As such, the use of markets as the basic regulator of economic transactions appears much more closely related to the creation of limited sovereignty than to the introduction of popular sovereignty, desirable as the latter may be. [...]

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