Pinter on NATO "bandits"

[Brad De Long]

>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>At least when I look at east central and east Europe, I see that those
>>countries that have reformed the most (the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary)
>>are best off, those that have reformed partly (Slovakia, Russia) are at
>>least semi-stable, and those that have reformed least (Ukraine, Belarus)
>>are doing worst of all.
>
>A classification scheme that suggests that the capacity for "reform" isn't
>an exogenous variable. Those countries that have "reformed" the most are
>those that were fairly rich and industrialized before World War II, and
>those that have "reformed" the least were among the poorest and most
>colonized. So I don't see how much the degree of "reform" explains in
>itself, since the capacity for "reform" must itself be explained.
>
>Doug

I agree (as I said I think two paragraphs further down)...

Brad DeLong