Stephen F. Williams, Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals (Washington, D.C. Circuit); Margaret Paxson, Senior Associate, Kennan Institute

Williams will outline the major arguments of his book on the Stolypin agrarian reforms, Liberal Reform in an Illiberal Regime: The Creation of Private Property in Russia, 1906-1915. He assesses the reforms against the background of Douglass North's thesis that liberal reform comes about when interests that have been more or less excluded from political power acquire enough de facto economic clout to demand a greater political voice and more security for their property interests. The Stolypin agrarian reforms do not neatly fit this model. Williams traces reform inadequacies in part to the absence of North's pre-conditions (thus in part vindicating North's analysis). But he argues that the reforms nonetheless set in motion changes that had a serious prospect of generating an enduring liberal transformation. The analysis thus suggests a qualification of North's thesis.