ABSTRACT
Japan and Russia are different in many respects, but they share a tradition of a strong state and a weak market. State-market relations is a topic of long-standing controversy in the social sciences. There are inherent tensions between the state and the market because they follow different logic. “The logic of the market is to locate economic activities where they are most productive and profitable; the logic of the state is to capture and control the process of economic growth and capital accumulation.” Transition to the market is likely to be a more difficult and painful process for the post-Soviet states than it was for Japan. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of independent states finally provided the republican leaders such as Russian President Yeltsin with the opportunity to move substantially and decisively toward the market. The relationship between politics and the economy has been discussed by scholars from different perspectives and with different approaches.
