ABSTRACT
The implementation of reforms encompassing whole economic systems is the main feature of economies in transition. Transition, in this sense, is not seen as a historical process, but as a policy whose main purpose is the transformation of the economic system in the direction of a model named ‘market economy’. This transition requires certain conditions to be successful, in particular the existence of fundamental actors that are able to perform the key roles of the transition, like the state and entrepreneurs. Dependency theorists have highlighted the relationship between the state, foreign and local firms in promoting growth. The state, while being a political institution upholding a given order, is also the locus of action of the bourgeois élite and an entrepreneur engaged in production through state-owned enterprises. The interesting contribution of this theory is therefore translated in the effort to conceptualize dependency relations, among and within states, on foreign firms and foreign capital, in both sociological and economic terms.
