ABSTRACT
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick assailed liberal theorists of modernization for taking a determinist view of authoritarian regimes; she criticized them for thinking that reform is inevitable and therefore deserting dictators friendly to the United States whenever they come under political challenge. From all the perspectives, the movement toward privatization and economic liberalization in both the Western and the Eastern bloc comes as something of a surprise—gratifying in all respects to some, unwelcome at least in some respects to others, but an unexpected turn from virtually every perspective. London remains a center of international finance, and its investment banking firms have turned their homegrown expertise in privatization into a service for export. The trend toward privatization and deregulation might be explained in straightforward political and ideological terms if these developments had been limited to Britain under Margaret Thatcher and the United States under Ronald Reagan and George Bush.
