SOVIET VENALITY - A RENT-SEEKING MODEL OF THE COMMUNIST STATE

While the recent Fall of Communism has focused the interest of economi sts on the admittedly fascinating problems associated with the ongoing economic reform process, the study of the functioning of actual commu nist economies still seems mired in the conventional model of central planning. This model is predicated on the assumption that communist ru lers are unselfish drones who single-mindedly maximize the public inte rest. Our article proposes an alternative, public choice model. We sug gest that the Soviet-style system represents a modern incarnation of t he mercantilist economies of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Europe, and that venality, not ideology, drives these economies in practice.