In addressing the question of how Country Email List society works, the image I offered was that of a vast institutional structure created and controlled by the state, and of individuals operating not only within that structure, but in its interstices. In other Country Email List words, I wanted to reflect that in order to get what they needed for life, people had to take into account that official structure and use it voluntarily or involuntarily. For all kinds of things they Country Email List needed that structure: to obtain consumer goods, to ensure that children receive a proper education, etc.
There they operated in the interstices Country Email List through personalistic connections. It is important to stress the importance of the Soviet term ' blat' . Blat is a system of reciprocal exchange of favors: I have the opportunity to do certain things for you Country Email List my position; you, on the other hand, have other opportunities and can do other things for me. But it is not a raw relationship that can be monetized and the compensation does not have to be immediate either. No, it is a continuous balance. In fact, in this economy of favors we consider ourselves Country Email List friends, although to a certain extent it is an instrumental friendship.
That way of operating, which I became aware Country Email List of because I was in the USSR in the 1960s and saw it first hand, was very important, in my opinion, from the beginning. It is interesting that in China, where the term «guānxi” to define this type Country Email List of favor economy, the system is prevalent and many trace it back to traditional Chinese roots. The truth is that there they have an institutional structure and similar responses, analogous Country Email List ways of dealing with it and avoiding it in order to develop.