К общей теории социально-экономического развития. Часть 1. География, институты или культура?

A new approach to understanding socio- economic development is proposed, based on consideration of the evolution of coordination mechanisms. The work consists of two parts. In the first part, a critical analysis of four recently proposed theories of development, focusing on geographical, institutional, or cultural factors, is given. These theories have greatly enriched our understanding of the evolution of society. However, as our analysis shows, none of them provides a satisfactory description of the driving forces and mechanisms of this evolution; the main reason is rooted in their common shortcoming — monocausality. It is proposed to distinguish between two types of development, catching-up and leading one. Basic ideas of the theory of catching-up development are presented. It explains the phenomenon of the “economic miracle” as a result of mutually conditioned changes in culture, institutions, technological progress and well-being in the context of interaction of competition, power and collaboration mechanisms. The second part is devoted to the theory of leading socio-economic development.