The Political Economy of Asian Transition from Communism

Guo (San Francisco State U.) provides a comparative analysis of economic transition processes in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. He's particularly interested in why the elites in these countries adopted the gradualist approach to reform, as opposed to the "shock therapy" approach seen in Russia and Eastern Europe. While acknowledging the value of structural analysis for explaining how particular choices played out, he argues that strategic choice analysis is needed for describing why those choices were made in the first place. In this case, he points to the leadership's perception of the necessity for economic growth and the need for the maintenance of the communist party's power and preservation of party-state interests as the driving force for the path of economic transition. He also assesses the extent to which these Asian reforms could be considered examples of an economic model that is neither capitalism nor state socialism. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)