Abstract
Post-socialist transition raises crucial issues about the institutional setting of a market economy. The priority has been given to property rights, and privatization has been advocated as a means to depoliticize economic activities. The dismissal of external interventions, allied with the attraction to the American model and Hayekian ideas, often led to the introduction of minimal laws and wait for their evolutionary development. The failure of corporate and public governance, notably in Russia, helps to show why, on the contrary, democratically established legal rules are essential. Legislation should not only protect corporate shareholders and stakeholders, but more fundamentally all citizens against predatory collusive behavior of political, economic and criminal elites