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Using the Stage Model of
Policy-Making to Measure Economic Reform in the Transition
Economies |
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| Abstract | Word Stems | Keywords | Association | Citation | Get this Document | Similar Titles |
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Abstract:
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The past decade witnessed an
explosion in the scholarly research on economic transition in Eastern
Europe. Yet, the discipline of political science is still lagging
behind in developing measures of economic processes. This paper aims to
address this gap by presenting an innovative approach, as a first
attempt, to quantify three separate aspects of economic transition in a
way that reflects the political process of economic policy-making. I
use information published by international organizations, and in the
news media, to develop measures for three aspects of economic reform,
price liberalization, privatization, and institutional reform, for 26
former communist countries for 1976-2000 time period. For each measure
I identify its major components and quantify government activities with
respect to each component. In order to measure processes, which are
rather difficult to quantify, I adopt several assumptions about
economic reform. First, I assume that economic transformation does not
differ from other policy processes, and could be discussed using a
basic framework of policy-making. Then, from the literature on public
policy, I borrow a framework, based on the stage model of
policy-making, to explain the process of economic transition in Eastern
Europe. The main advantage of this model is that, because of its
simplicity, it could be universally applied across cultures and could
easily fit any type of political system. Thus, this model is especially
relevant to cross-country comparison. Another advantage of this model
is that it is a very logical one and, most often, policy makers do
follow a similar series of steps before a policy is implemented.
Another assumption I make is that each of the reform components has the
same political importance across space and time. Thus, the same weight
is assigned to each product group and reform component for each country
and every year. It is conceivable that undertaking certain aspects of
reform is politically more difficult than that of other reform aspects.
In fact, none of the countries in the dataset has liberalized the
prices of all goods and services, reformed all aspects of institutional
reform, or privatized fully. Yet, assigning arbitrary weights to
different groups of products, without theoretical justifications and
other research to back it up, is more controversial than giving the
same weight to all goods and services. The indexes presented here are a
first attempt to construct objective measures of political processes
that are intrinsically difficult to quantify. In order to determine the
validity of the proposed measure I perform several validity tests.
First, I compare my measures to existing measure of economic reform.
Next, I compare the new measures with indicators estimating the
outcomes of economic reform policies. Put differently, if my measures
adequately capture the process of economic transformation at government
level, they should be correlated with independent measures of the level
of economic transformation in the economy. I conclude that the new
measures of economic reform proposed in this paper are closely
correlated with existing measures while exhibiting higher degrees of
variation. |
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Association:
Name: The Midwest Political Science Association
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~mpsa/
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Citation:
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MLA Citation:
| Kostadinova, Petia. "Using the Stage Model of
Policy-Making to Measure Economic Reform in the Transition
Economies" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois, Apr 15, 2004 <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p84189_index.html> |
APA Citation:
| Kostadinova, P. , 2004-04-15 "Using the Stage Model of
Policy-Making to Measure Economic Reform in the Transition
Economies" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p84189_index.html |
Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The past decade witnessed an
explosion in the scholarly research on economic transition in Eastern
Europe. Yet, the discipline of political science is still lagging
behind in developing measures of economic processes. This paper aims to
address this gap by presenting an innovative approach, as a first
attempt, to quantify three separate aspects of economic transition in a
way that reflects the political process of economic policy-making. I
use information published by international organizations, and in the
news media, to develop measures for three aspects of economic reform,
price liberalization, privatization, and institutional reform, for 26
former communist countries for 1976-2000 time period. For each measure
I identify its major components and quantify government activities with
respect to each component. In order to measure processes, which are
rather difficult to quantify, I adopt several assumptions about
economic reform. First, I assume that economic transformation does not
differ from other policy processes, and could be discussed using a
basic framework of policy-making. Then, from the literature on public
policy, I borrow a framework, based on the stage model of
policy-making, to explain the process of economic transition in Eastern
Europe. The main advantage of this model is that, because of its
simplicity, it could be universally applied across cultures and could
easily fit any type of political system. Thus, this model is especially
relevant to cross-country comparison. Another advantage of this model
is that it is a very logical one and, most often, policy makers do
follow a similar series of steps before a policy is implemented.
Another assumption I make is that each of the reform components has the
same political importance across space and time. Thus, the same weight
is assigned to each product group and reform component for each country
and every year. It is conceivable that undertaking certain aspects of
reform is politically more difficult than that of other reform aspects.
In fact, none of the countries in the dataset has liberalized the
prices of all goods and services, reformed all aspects of institutional
reform, or privatized fully. Yet, assigning arbitrary weights to
different groups of products, without theoretical justifications and
other research to back it up, is more controversial than giving the
same weight to all goods and services. The indexes presented here are a
first attempt to construct objective measures of political processes
that are intrinsically difficult to quantify. In order to determine the
validity of the proposed measure I perform several validity tests.
First, I compare my measures to existing measure of economic reform.
Next, I compare the new measures with indicators estimating the
outcomes of economic reform policies. Put differently, if my measures
adequately capture the process of economic transformation at government
level, they should be correlated with independent measures of the level
of economic transformation in the economy. I conclude that the new
measures of economic reform proposed in this paper are closely
correlated with existing measures while exhibiting higher degrees of
variation. |
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