Coercion, compliance, and the collapse of the Soviet command economy

Are command systems that rest on coercion inherently unstable, and did the Soviet economy collapse for this reason? Until it collapsed, the Soviet economy did not appear unstable. Why, then, did it collapse? A game between a dictator and a producer shows that a high level of coercion may yield a sta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Economic history review Vol. 55; no. 3; pp. 397 - 433
Main Author: Harrison, Mark
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Oxford, UK and Boston, USA Blackwell Publishers Ltd 01.08.2002
Blackwell Publishers
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Subjects:
Capital costs
Coercion
Collapse
Command guidance
Commands
Dictators
Dictatorship
Economic costs
Economic Crises
Economic History
Economic reform
Economic Systems
Economics
Game Theory
History
Labor Movements
Labor Relations
Monitoring costs
Planned economies
Planned economy
Reputations
State Power
Strikes
Surveys and Speculations
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics > USSR
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
ISSN:0013-0117, 1468-0289
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Are command systems that rest on coercion inherently unstable, and did the Soviet economy collapse for this reason? Until it collapsed, the Soviet economy did not appear unstable. Why, then, did it collapse? A game between a dictator and a producer shows that a high level of coercion may yield a stable high-output equilibrium, that stability may rest in part on the dictator's reputation, and that a collapse may be brought about by adverse trends in the dictator's costs and a loss of reputation. The facts of the Soviet case are consistent with a collapse that was triggered by the strike movement of 1989.
Bibliography:ark:/67375/WNG-G91LHJ22-B
istex:26A6931A1030AB5B16DFC1B110F4A873B74944C2
ArticleID:EHR226
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0013-0117
1468-0289
DOI:10.1111/1468-0289.00226