Marx is reputed to have said that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory.” Seventy-odd years of Soviet theorizing have left little useful practical theory behind, as demonstrated by the transformations currently taking place in Russia's borderlands. As the Soviet Union crumbles, the successor states face a unique and troubling situation. For over 70 years, their administrative structures have been centralized; their economies, transportation and communications systems, and the physical infrastructure all controlled from Moscow under a coherent ideological regime. The successor states find themselves adrift ideologically and administratively, but the centralized physical infrastructure remains.

How are these states to design new administrative structures? How are they to cope with the utter failure of their theoretical principles? How may they cooperate in the use of the physical systems while establishing their political independence? Soviet administrative theory—the “scientific theory of socialism” as it was called—has been unable to provide even the most basic guidance for the process, and western administrative theory is not equipped to address the special problems of the new states. The insights of the neo-institutionalists can provide guidelines for these urgent problems.