International Symposium "Institutions, Development and Interest Groups"

The international Symposium "Institutes, Development and Interest Groups" organized by National Research University "Higher school of Economics" with the participation of the Russian school of Economics was held on May 22-24, 2012. The Symposium aimed to explain the process of modernization and institutional changes in developing countries and countries with economies in transition through the concept of "limited access orders" proposed by Douglass C. North, John Wallis and Barry R. Weingast in their book "Violence and social orders". It was proposed  to expand geographically and thematically the scope of that new approach to the analysis of social development, extending it to transitional economies – including Russia, which faced serious challenges to modernization.

The Symposium was attended by the well-known foreign researchers – specialists in the institutional economics, political economy and economics of development, as well as leading Russian experts.  Symposium contributed to a better understanding of the mechanisms and trajectories of movement to the "open access orders", as well as stimulate and structure discussions in the Russian academic and expert community.