Doctoral Dissertation:
Toward an Explanatory Framework of the Changing Pattern of Soviet Involvement in the Global Economy
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University, 1986.
Abstract
This dissertation examines the changing role of the Soviet Union in the global economy in the post World War Two era. There are two major segments to the study. The first characterizes the changing patterns of Soviet global economic involvement, in particular with the industrialized West. The second presents an explanation of the factors that have contributed to these changes.
Two patterns of Soviet involvement have been identified and examined in the three major branches of the global economy, trade, production and finance. A traditional pattern, characterized by isolationism and economic autarky, preceded a more open pragmatic-integrative pattern. The latter is evidenced by the rising level of Soviet commercial activities in the global marketplace.
An analytic model is further introduced that offers an interpretation of the ordering and weighting of the international and domestic factors contributing to greater Soviet involvement. Several conclusions emerge. At the international level, greater Soviet global commercial presence has been facilitated by a combination of factors: 1) the decline of U.S. hegemony in the international economic system, which has partially resulted from the growth of the Japanese and Western European economies and the decline of GATT and Bretton Woods; 2) the spread of the multinational corporation and the concomitant internationalization of production; 3) Third World instability that has encouraged Western transnational cooperation with the Soviet Union; and 4) intra-bloc conflict among the Communist states that has promoted Soviet ideological flexibility on issues of the East-West relationship.
Domestically, ideological flexibility has, in turn, created the facilitative conditions for policy changes favoring closer East-West commercial ties. But it was the failures in domestic Soviet economic performance that have provided the direct causal impetus for the formulation of Soviet commercial policies that have led to Moscow's expanding presence in the global economy.
Deborah Anne Palmieri
Doctoral Dissertation, 1986
Copyright 1999 The Russian-American Chamber of Commerce®
|
