ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 of this book argues that ‘the flexibility of national economies is a distinctive concept worthy of separate study which is not adequately treated within the existing literature on market efficiency or long-run development’. We start from the same premise, but examine the determinants of flexibility from a political perspective. While for economists, economic flexibility will be considered as an independent variable in the explanation of economic success, for the political scientist the question is rather what political factors determine the flexibility of a national economy and its overall success in terms of development; economic flexibility becomes a dependent variable to be explained.
