[PEN-L:3852] how to teach comparative economic systems now

[ROSSERJB@xxxxxxx]

[moderately long, delete immediately if not interested]
     Having been involved deeply in thinking about this
topic I thought that I would throw out a few observations
on how to teach comparative economic systems now.
     1)  Although the old "capitalism versus socialism"
comparison has changed dramatically since the end of the
Cold War and the breakup of the former Soviet Union, presenting
the respective competing theoretical frameworks remains a good
way to go.  A new twist on this in practice is to compare North
and South Korea.  BTW, despite all its Stalinist repressiveness
and current food shortage problems, the physical quality of
life in the DPRK is not all that far behind that in the ROK and
many of the traditional "virtues" of classic command socialism
are still evident in North Korea such as a relatively equal
income distribution, much better position of women, free access
to medical care and education, and basic macro stability, if not
currently dynamic performance.  In the 1950s and 1960s North Korea
was even well ahead of South Korea in per capita GDP.  South Korea
is of course a somewhat odd case of capitalism having a lot of state
intervention with probably the strongest indicative planning of any
major capitalist country, thus not exhibiting some of the ills of more
standard laissez-faire type market capitalism.
     2)  Another reason for presenting the traditional framework is
that an obvious topic is "economies in transition," an important issue
even for those who do not think there should be any transition.  There
is enormous variety out there of these paths, the number of them made
even greater by the breakup of the FSU and the great variety of paths
of the newly independent republics, with a full range in the former
Soviet bloc from variations on big bang shock therapy strategies (Poland)
to almost no change in policy except for the dissolution of the old Soviet
level central planning (Turkmenistan).  Some of these countries may even
"backslide," an obvious such possibility being Russia if Zyuganov is elected
President.  Indeed this variety is so great that some schools now have
courses just on "Economies in Transition."  In some cases these have replaced
former "Soviet Economy" courses.
     3)  As was noted by someone else, of course one can engage in comparing
different kinds of essentially market capitalist systems.  The list of
usual suspects includes the US, UK, France, Sweden, Germany, Japan, which
can be added to or subtracted from depending on one's tastes.  Actually, this
is probably the part of the course that has changed the least in the last
several years and can be taught as before, more or less, with a few changes.
     4)  Closely related to that are old chestnut issues about integration
into higher level entities such as the EU versus disintegration as happened
with the CMEA.  This has often been covered in old fashioned comparative
systems courses in the capitalism section and continues to be of interest.
     5)  Although the dominant text in comp sys (Gregory and Stuart, our
great rival [if you don't know what I'm now referring to, contact me offlist
at as I have already done too much advertising here]) eliminated
coverage of Yugoslavia in its latest edition, just out last spring, no
doubt on the presumption that the breakup of Yugoslavia meant the end of
its famously unique system and any reason to study it, we strongly
disagree.  The former Yugoslavia's worker-managed market socialist system
was justly famous and long a favorite topic of comparative systems types.
It remains relevant to study because a) it persists to a surprising degree
in reasonably successful Slovenia, b) it is serving as a model to a surprising
degree in several of the "transitioning" economies, many of which have
emphasized substantial workers' ownership in their privatization schemes
or have developed significant workers' management, and c) elements of this
system have been showing up even in the established market capitalist
economies in the form of workers' ownership or cooperatives, e.g. the
worker buyout of United Airlines and the recent studies by Craig and
Pencavel of the relative success of the plywood coops in Northwest US.
Also there is a lot of "current events/international relations" interest
in the events in Bosnia, etc.
     6)  Finally, there is the rise of the Islamic economic system, both
as an ideology and in practice as in Iran, which can be studied with
considerable interest.  More broadly we argue that there is a more general
category involved here, that of the "new traditional economy," using a
modification of the old Karl Polanyi category.  This is an economy in
which economic decisions are embedded within a broader social/cultural
framework, usually one of fundamentalist religion, but which seeks
simultaneously to use modern technology and have a "modern economy."
Although Islam has the most worked-out such system/ideology, many see
it appearing in other great world religions from Hinduism and Buddhism
through neo-Confucianism to even Judaism and Christianity.  The idea
that the East Asian economies can be viewed through the prism of neo-
Confucianism has achieved the status of almost a cliche, although it
has some validity to it in some cases.  Even though it does not have a
fundamentalist religion, the Japanese economy can be viewed as partly
a "new traditional" one given the significance of "familistic groupism"
as a distinguishing characteristic of its economy.  Obviously this whole
conceptualization has a strong institutionalist aspect to it.  But then
people teaching comparative systems are more likely to be open to such
an approach than most other economists, whether radical or not.
     7)  Post-finally , of course one can emphasize a variety of policy
issues such as medical care or the environment and see how different
countries/systems deal with them.
Barkley Rosser
Department of Economics
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807 USA
tel:  540-568-3212
fax:  540-568-3010
e-mail: rosserjb@xxxxxxx