In this paper, we study the corporate transparency choices of firms operating in a weak institutional environment. We argue that in relationship-based systems, high levels of corporate transparency and strong political connections are alternative means to create firm value. Firms can try to commit to more transparency by issuing securities abroad. However, the expanded disclosures and additiona...

The processes described under the misleading term “privatization” have been part of a major social restructuring in both the political and economic spheres. Most notably, widespread state failures have resulted in significant changes in the form and functions of the state. This reform encompasses not only the collapse of state socialism, but also crises and radical reforms in developed capitali...

The stability and functioning of any kind of political regime—including democratic or representative ones—relies on the combination of the capacity of rulers and government officials to use coercion and the development of political legitimacy. Political legitimacy can be described as people's recognition and acceptance of the validity of the rules of their entire political system and the decisi...

The crisis of the Eurozone has severely tested the political authority of the European Union (EU). Questions of normative legitimacy are raised by the crisis, both because the EU in general is a normative order and because the construction of economic and monetary union rested upon an explicit normative theory that stressed the importance of the depoliticisation of money. However, this theory n...

he financial crises that swept across Asia and Russia in 1998 are reshaping the leadership politics of the former communist countries. In Russia, the financial crisis has marginalized President Boris Yeltsin and brought to the political forefront a previously disenfranchised coalition of traditionalists. Ukraine’s political leadership is leaning in the direction of Europe. The leaders of the co...

This article examines the role played by varieties of capitalism in the Euro crisis, considering the origins of the crisis, its progression and the response to it. Deficiencies in the institutional arrangements governing the single currency are linked to economic doctrines of the 1990s. The roots of the crisis are linked to institutional asymmetries between political economies. Northern Europea...

This paper discusses the key political, anthropological and socio-cultural functions of political myths in the appearance and functioning of totalitarian regimes. A special emphasis is put on structural elements of the myth (mythemes) and the mythic content (narratives) in the processes of artificial construction of a new society (community) based on the myth-inspired ideological postulates. Th...

Numerous conferences organized in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 1997–98 offered analyses of what went wrong in the crisis countries. The immediacy of the crisis prompted a number of reform proposals directed toward reducing the risk of future crises. However, now that the crisis has abated, reform appears to be much lower on most political agendas, and the progress that countries are...