Socio-cultural Formula for Economic Modernization

Abstract

The social-cultural approach to economic modernization processes is studied in the article. It states that the specific country-based modernization formula is required for the successful modernization policy, which takes into consideration the informal rules of the concrete country and is based on the competitive advantages coming from the characteristics of social and cultural capital. This approach, being implemented to study Russia and Kazakhstan cases, allows to make some important conclusions: first, about the connection between long-term macroeconomic trends and features of the informal institutions; second, about the opportunity to define general directions for the modernization policy; third, about the possibility to design concrete normative structures based on specific features of social and cultural capital.