Vrijediti i koštati: sociokulturne pretpostavke tranzicije u novijim radovima hrvatskih ekonomista
To Be Worth and to Cost: Social-Cultural Prerequisites of Transition in the Recent Works of the Croatian Economists

Summary/Abstract: Three different approaches to social-cultural prerequisites of transition within a body of economic literature in Croatia are analysed: reductionist/neo-liberal, contextual/neo-institutional, and relativist/"third way". The first approach either ignores social--cultural facts or re-interprets them narrowly in the terms of homo economicus of the rational choice model. The second approach includes a variety of interpretations of social-cultural values (from a modified rational choice version to social constructionist approach). The third approach (where "relativism" epitomises an extreme version of neo-institutional concept of "path dependency", and the "third way" means an idea of socialist market economy) has no broader support in mainstream economics. Concurrently, the sociological approaches to transition are articulated more evenly in terms of neo-institutionalism and in terms of the "third way", whereas virtually no work exists in support to the economic reductionism approach; and the political science approach articulates its own variety of neo-institutional approaches, with an aim at explaining the adaptation of institutions of liberal democracy to the cleavage of traditional and modern values in the Croatian society. The author concludes that this constellation of the approaches of the three disciplines reflects not merely their theoretical and topical differences, but also the fact that economic models are highly applicable mainly due to their economic reductionism manner.

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