Will Private Businesses in Belarus Support Market Reforms?

It has become common knowledge among researchers of the post-communist transition that the private sector is a natural ally of market reforms because it is vitally interested in the development of a free economy, market institutions, and property rights protection. So far, this has basically been true, especially in the case of the ‘reform leaders’ (mainly in Central and Eastern Europe), at least during the early stages of reform. In the course of time, however, the inconsistency and slow pace of the reform process has often led to the deterioration of such support: private entities started to adapt to the distorted institutional conditions that had been created by incomplete reforms.