Theoretical and Methodological Issues of Analyzing Digitization in Economic Management: The Case of The Late USSR

The article aims to test the new institutional theories of public choice and political markets for our analysis of the empirical evidence collected by the research literature on the realized and unrealized projects of the digital systems development for support of decision-making by the state management of the economy in the late USSR (mid-1950s – late 1980s.). We argue that their methodological instruments, developed on the basis of studies of economic and political phenomena of predominantly Western societies with market economy, can explain similar phenomena in industrial society of another type. Therefore the major contribution of the article is our interpretation of the economic history phenomena through the lens of the new institutional theories. We show how various forms of institutional competition led the way to development of departmental digital systems, while actually blocked the creation of nationwide ones. The following important factors of institutional interactions in the political market of the late USSR, which influenced the results of implementation of the digitization projects, are indicated. First, extra-expensive projects for creating national systems were largely a product of the technocratic thinking of the scientific and political elite of the late USSR, but institutional coalitions in favor of their development turned out to be unviable lacking explicit support at the highest levels of the state apparatus. Second, persistent disregard by the Soviet bureaucracy of the need for large-scale social changes, which inevitably accompany the change in technological structures. Third, technocracy of thinking by academic economists, who subjectively adhered to the principles of scientific rationality and maximization of public welfare, also hindered effectiveness of their interaction in the political market of the late USSR. We conclude that the new institutional theories of public choice and political market allow to adequately describe and analyze the practices of interaction between the political and economic spheres and the mechanisms of functioning of the centrally administered economy of the USSR, as a prerequisite for assessing possible influence of digital intelligent systems on management processes in the RF's economy.