Konyaev S.V., Fel'dman P.Ya. Should developing countries be following a global leader?

Abstract: This article deals with the issue of global leadership in the context of universalization and liberalization of institutional structures of developing countries. The authors discover the reasons of economic and political elevation of the USA in XX-th century and evaluate its importance in the context of establishing liberalism as the universal standard for building the state. The focus of the research is to answer the question if developing countries are capable of following a global leader while preserving centuries-old local and national traits that define the function of informal institutes within society. This article relies on a set of research methods that include normative-value, institutional, systemic and other approaches. It reflects concept research of Jean Blondel, Douglass Cecil North, Andrew Heywood. The authors reach the conclusion that the basis of the ontology of leadership is the strategic capability of social systems for self-organization that is exercised by the most management-capable actors, using the authority resources at their disposal. Along with this, the efforts of certain developing countries to reproduce formal institutes that successfully function in the USA may lead into an administrative trap. Attempts to reproduce Western liberal model on post-Soviet space leads to emergence of dissonance between formal and informal institutes. Voluntarist attempts at liberalization of the economy and politics of modern Russia appear as lacking promise and justification.

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