The nine essays in this volume explore such topics as the characteristics and shortcomings of state socialist societies and of democratic capitalism, the role of ethnic politics in East European transitions, issues of retribution and restitution in the transition to a democratic society based on a private economy, and the effects the collapse of Communism have had on Western democracies and on the Left in particular.

Economics tends to teach that developed countries have good institutions while developing countries do not, and that this is the factor that constrains the latter's growth. However, the picture is far messier than this explanation suggests. Building on the varieties of capitalism framework, this book brings together the tools of institutional economics with historical analyses of institutional evolution of different kinds of property rights and legal systems, protected by different kinds of state, giving rise to distinct corporate governance structures. It constructs institutional development histories across leading liberal capitalisms in Britain and the United States, compared with continental capitalisms in France and Germany, and contemporary transitional capitalisms in China and Tanzania. This volume is innovative in combining both historical and economic insights, and in combining developed country with developing country institutional emergence, dispelling the prevailing sense of complacency about the inevitability of the path of institutional development for the developed areas of the world and the paths that developing countries are likely to follow. This volume will be of great importance to those who study international economics, development economics and international business.