Divergent Learning and the Failed Politics of Soviet Economic Reform

Attempts at economic reform in the late Gorbachev years suffered from a critical lack of consensus among top leaders on the desired direction of change. As the crisis worsened, top leaders did not band together but instead fell back upon their underlying organizational interests, adopting new economic programs largely to promote their own political constituencies. This article critiques the “collective learning” literature that has been applied widely to explain the Gorbachev reforms, and it suggests a typology to account for its strengths and weaknesses in both foreign and domestic policy settings. In examining the politics of the late Soviet economic crisis, it proposes a model of divergent (rather than collective) learning and suggests the new concept of “borrowing” to explain the instrumental use of foreign economic models by rival Soviet politicians.