Abstrakt
My contribution will focus on the case of Czechoslovakia especially in the 80s. After an economically rather successful period of the 70s, the Czechoslovak state arrived at an economic crisis at the end of this period.
The communist leadership turned for policy advice to the Academy of Sciences. The Academy should have offered an analysis and a clear plan.
This role was assigned to the Forecasting Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in the end. The institute became a major reservoir of reform plans and ideas which should have averted the ongoing crisis.
While this effort began originally at the end of the 70s a clearer plan was presented only at the end of 80s. I will follow the development of this reform effort which is quite disconnected from the official perestrojka.
Foreshadowing the transformation which occurred in the 90s, the ideas coming from the Forecasting Institute which were presented to the communist leadership were already calling for a shift to a market economy, even e.g., calling for trade liberalization and the necessity to reach an equilibrium regarding the amount of East-West trade. At the end of the 80s, the Forecasting Institute presented a comprehensive market reform plan.
I will present and analyse this policy advice and also explain how the transformation of the 90s can be seen as a continuation of these socialist reform plans and in which was it cannot.