Because of their size, strategic importance, and the magnitude of the institutional changes they have experienced during economic transition, the economic policies and performance of Russia and China provide dramatic experiments for the social scientist. A key element of each country’s transition has been the attempt to construct a fiscal system providing a coherent framework for accountability of the government’s use of public funds. At the end of the 1990s, the contrast between China’s rapid growth and structural change and Russia’s economic decline focused attention on the difference in Chinese and Russian governmental institutions and policies. Today,.
