2004. Vol. 5. No. 1

The end (look for the first part: Т. 4, № 5, 2003). The first part of the book has been devoted to the main approaches to the analysis of the social background of the reforms discussed in the previous research findings. This part provides the issues that have not been covered yet.  The reasons for taking the particular way of the reforms’ development of a country remain unclear as well as the ways out of the traps of partial reforms and political polarization. The author thinks that the significant role is played by the initial differences in social and institutional structures of the transition countries. The author tries to explain the elites’ evolution by the structural switches in the beginning of the 1990s. The paper deals with the analysis of the interaction mechanisms between the authorities and business (and business and political elites). The author assumes that at the same time several strategies for alternative ways of development are possible not only that dominating one. These strategies always depend on the particular interests of both the business and the state. Taking into account such strategies will let us answer the question of what social groups are able to support the reforms and the policy of economic growth under the conditions of the «bad equilibrium» – in the way of “state privatization” and “political polarization”.

By the XХ century the USA, France and UK had worked out the really different strategies towards industrial growth, those are followed nowadays as well even in spite of the considerable political changes. The author’s goal was to show the differences in the parallel of the industrial policy paradigms of these countries and their traditional paradigms of the political systems. He assumed that the discovering of their interdependence is the key to the understanding of why the differences in the current policies of the countries still take place. Studding the impact of the state institutions of the beginning of the XIX century on the following development policies in the area of railway industry the author tried to understand when and why the industrial cultures start to reshape in political cultures. He argues that underlining the social processes as constitutional ones for the social order and the other processes as destructive ones, the institutionalized political culture formed the types of industrial practices which the countries tried to construct and practices that they tried to prevent from appearing. In other words the political culture created the means that were used by the countries for the goal achievement of the industrial organization and growth by giving the symbolic meaning to the particular casual effects in the social life.  

The goal of the research was to study the social embeddedness of the entrepreneurial action on the basis of the analysis of the strategy for opening your own business. This issue is analyzed on the example of the private hospital in Magadan. The author makes the conclusion that social factors influence the formation of the entrepreneurial orientation. They are social-economic context, cultural norms, values, that were worked out before the entrepreneurial period and that defined the entrepreneurial action. Organizing your own business is the adaptive strategy that let us to implement valuable personal goals but at the same time the choice of this particular way is not casual and determined by the personal characteristics formed during the period of the initial socialization.   

The goal of the study is to identify the existence and the character of the interdependence between the innovativeness in everyday life (on example of leisure and consumption practices) and individual characteristics and household characteristics to which a person belongs to. In other words to analyze the link between innovation practices and income, age, gender, family type, education and place of living (capital or other city). Empirical basis for the research was the survey conducted within the project “Economic and social strategies of the middle class” in November 2000, which is representative for the whole Russia and regional city-centers.