ABSTRACT
The revolutions of 1989 tore asunder many a conventional wisdom. Cherished beliefs on both the right and the left had to be discarded. That totalitarian systems could indeed be overturned without mass bloodshed took some conservative intellectuals by surprise, just as the extent of the economic degradation in Eastern and Central Europe surprised many liberal intellectuals. One implication of the collapse of Communism that I want to focus on is the rethinking of economic development that must follow. The Soviet model of planned industrialized development no longer represents a promising path to the non-capitalist world. Government planning of economic development, not only in Eastern and Central Europe, but also in China, Africa, and India, has proven to be a chimera.1 Moreover, the interpretation of the experience of industrialization in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea must be rethought, given the general theoretical and practical difficulties that government management of economic development confronts.2
