Intellectual Capital (IC) in Post-Communist Economies? Is There an Alternative to Liberalism?

The collapse of communist states in the 1980s and 1990s brought about sweeping changes to most socioeconomic aspects of the former Soviet Bloc countries. It has also in numerous ways - influenced factors relevant to IC sustainability and growth. While the overwhelming majority of reforming communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) set out to pursue a path of swift transition to economic liberalism, largely devoid of former welfare state vestiges, certain governments favored amalgams of state interventionism and private enterprise. The key research proposal addressed herein relates to the purported linkage between socioeconomic liberalism and intellectual capital (IC) output. Cognizant of significant limitations (e.g. structural overlap, time lags, amalgamation among the measures), one can detect an intriguing relationship between the two paradigms. Thereby, IC output appears to be - to a large extent - driven by the effectiveness of national strategies. In other words - socioeconomic liberalism per se does not guarantee the growth of intellectual assets. Conversely - state interventionism, if specifically geared to IC creation (or elements of broadly defined immaterial infrastructure), can act as a powerful stimulus for the development of intellectual assets.