The three principal Russian agrarian institutions are present in Russia beginning from the XVIth century up to now, undergoing transformations but preserving a “hard core”. They are the estate, the peasant farm and the rural community. Transformations of these institutions take place...

The concept of ‘mode of coordination’ captures the way economy is embedded in social relationships and influences the integration of society through an ‘instituted process.’ Three main typical or ideal modes of coordination have been identified in the literature, namely the market, the...

ABSTRACT & RÉSUMÉ & ZUSAMMENFASSUNG : A 'democratic recession' is to be observed, which is not restricted to Sub-Sahara Africa but spreads worldwide since the beginning of the 21st century. Instead of concentrating on the outward appearance of a democratic form of government, greater attention...

The purpose of this study is to analyse the genesis and the evolution of the econom­ ics of shortage in Janos Kornai's writings from 1980 (the date of publication of Economics of Shortage) up to 1996 (the date of publication of the trench edition of The Socialist System, the Political Economy...

Russian companies heirs of Soviet enterprises are not Western-style companies, a significant difference is that they represent the basic structures of social life in the USSR : cells. The Soviet cellular system itself has deep roots in the history of Russia. The principal social structure of...

The budget constraint as a bookkeeping identity is a fundamental concept of standard microeconomics. Clower reinterpreted this concept as a rational planning postulate. The notion of soft budget constraint (SBC), formulated for the first time by Janos Kornai (1979) in the context of a socialist...

Depuis les années 1990, l’histoire de la pensée économique s’intéresse aux « marges » de la discipline et notamment aux pratiques économiques, à la profession d’économiste ainsi qu’à l’économie appliquée et à l’économie empirique. Elle n’est plus cantonnée à une...

This paper presents the concept of articulation of modes of production in the works of the german africanist Georg Elwert born in 1947 and died in 2005. After the explanation of concepts of mode of production and articulation of modes of production, the paper analyzes how Professor Georg Elwert...

This paper surveys research on social capital with a specific emphasis on Africa studies. We explore deeply the definition and the main dimensions of social capital, following Bourdieu, Coleman and Putnam. We also question the formation of social capital and address the issue of measurement. We...

This essay mainly concerns the foundation of a method of inquiry appropriate to the study of social reality. It starts from a criticism of Boudon-Weber's cognitivist method, the lacks of which seem particularly qualified for underlining the methodologic difficulties afflicting social thought....