Newly independent, path dependent: The impact of the Soviet past on innovation in post-Soviet states

Abstract

Though vastly divergent in size, natural resource endowment and human capital, all of the 15 former Soviet states inherited Soviet institutions. The decision to shed those structures and ideas, however, has been anything but uniform across the post-Soviet region. This article aims to expand what limited understanding we have of the extent to which path dependency in research and development (R&D) institutions can explain the divergence in national innovation performance in three post-Soviet states: Estonia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. This study finds that those countries, which retained the institutional R&D model of the Soviet Union, demonstrate subpar national innovation performance compared to the countries that chose to actively reform their R&D systems post-independence. This presents an important theoretical and practical contribution to the scholarship on path dependency and national innovation.