Civilizations, Cultures, Institutions in Economic History (on the Book by R. M. Nureev and Yu. V. Latov)

• Main Author: Dmitry V. Didenko
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ltd. "Humanities Perspectives" 2018-06-01
• Series: Журнал институциональных исследований
• Subjects: methodology; economic historiography; national economy; modernization; civilization; institutions; power-property; institutional competition; path dependence; centralized economy
• Online Access: http://hjournal.ru/files/JIS_10_2/JIS_10.2_8.pdf

The book by R. M. Nureev and Yu. V. Latov is valuable as a rare case of theoretically reflected systematized selection of the available evidence on historical development of the national economy from the emergence of the Russian statehood. Its content stimulates the author of the article to make reflections on methodological issues of economic history research as well as on characteristic features of the selected periods of the national economy development and its subjects. The author shares the approach to economic history as the process of global competition of economic systems that results in selection of efficient set of institutions. Moreover, the book confirms high cognitive value of the modernization multi-disciplinary paradigm for understanding regularities and peculiarities of development of the Russian economy. The author also discusses strong and weak points of civilization approach which is frequently utilized in social sciences. It is stressed that specific features of Russia, which is attributed to “catch-up” type of modernization, under strong “path dependence” in the immediate future it is more important to give priority to the tasks of catching up rather than the tasks of innovation per se.