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Published in:
Introduction: Informal Economies as Varieties of Governance Read chapter Read first chapter

2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Why Read Informality in a Substantivist Manner? On the Embeddedness of the Soviet Second Economy

Author : Lela Rekhviashvili

Published in: The Informal Economy in Global Perspective

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Existing literature tends to see informality in Soviet times as a rational response to deficient socialist institutions. In contrast, informality in post-socialist times is explained by the stickiness of culturally embedded norms. This chapter examines the reasons and implications for these inconsistent interpretations of Soviet and post-Soviet informality using the example of Georgia. It suggests that two influential schools of thought on post-Soviet informality, new institutionalist economics and economic sociology, both fail to overcome this theoretical inconsistency. The chapter then elaborates how a Polanyian substantivist approach can overcome identified theoretical pitfalls and establish continuity in interpreting socialist and post-socialist informality. The importance of recalling this seemingly forgotten substantivist approach is illustrated using the changing institutional context and reproduction of informality in the Georgian case.

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previous chapter Introduction: Informal Economies as Varieties of Governance
next chapter Informal Economy: The Invisible Hand of Government
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Metadata
Title
Why Read Informality in a Substantivist Manner? On the Embeddedness of the Soviet Second Economy
Author
Lela Rekhviashvili
Copyright Year
2017
Book
The Informal Economy in Global Perspective

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-40930-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-40931-3

Copyright Year: 2017

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40931-3_2