Does Palermo Represent The Future For Moscow?

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Abstract
This article addresses and expands on two points made by Robert Putnam in his recent study Making Democracy Work. The first concerns the observation that in order to find the cultural roots of Italian institution building, we may have to go further back in history than the 12th century, where Putnam stopped, and the second relates to the possible implications of this historical approach for the current transformation in the former Soviet bloc. The theoretical presentation revolves around the concepts of path dependence and multiple equilibria, finding much common ground between several of the social science disciplines. In conclusion it is argued that there may be cases of ‘pathological path dependence’, where public policy can have positive effects only if preceded by careful study of the anatomy of the pathological institutions that cause development traps.

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