ABSTRACT
The processes of innovation diffusion in the context of development are explored to illustrate and validate concerns over contemporary institutional interpretations as “rules of the game.” Regulative barriers to micro and informal sector entrepreneurship are emphasized, referencing potential for innovation as a function, in part, of cultural and elite attitudes and power imbalances preventing decentralized experimentation and market processes. The idea of development models is critiqued, exploring the so-called paradox of China. Liberalism, defined in its broadest terms and untied to any particular nation, tradition, or ideology, is reemphasized for its practical relationship to individual voice and the landscape of decentralized experimentation its ideal promises to protect.
