The Third World Experience in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

In the preceding case studies I have identified the major changes in economic and food policy which characterized the shift from orthodoxy to reform in four dependent transitional economies. In this concluding section, I summarize the principal similarities and differences in policy approach and outline briefly the component features of the crisis with which the reforms attempted to deal. I then examine the nature of the contradictions which accounted for the crisis. Finally, I outline the types of changes which occurred in social structure, at the level of civil society and in ‘participation’, which affected the capacity of different social groups to influence the policy process.