Book Discussion: Thieves, Opportunists, and Autocrats: Building Regulatory States in Russia and Kazakhstan, by Dinissa Duvanova

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

Looking at Russian and Kazakh state-building through the prism of the regulatory state, this book attempts to understand how autocratic regimes balance between state predation, corruption, and preferentialism on the one hand and investment in state capacity and effective regulatory intervention on the other. It focuses on a previously under-theorized aspect of state institution-building that helps explain how institutional choices strengthen autocratic regimes. The book argues that regulatory state-building by authoritarian rulers made the Russian and Kazakh states simultaneously more rule-bound and clientelist. The book uncovers the logic underpinning the authoritarian structures of economic governance and connects these to the outcomes that have allowed Eurasian states to command resources necessary for their long-term survival, agility, and in the case of Russia, military aggression. Empirical analysis of nearly a million national and regional regulatory documents enacted in Russia and Kazakhstan between 1990 and 2020 shows that formal regulatory institutions the autocrats built have a profound effect on economic outcomes. Moreover, at times of political vulnerability, autocracies use formal regulatory mechanisms to discipline state agencies responsible for policy implementation. By reducing capricious policy implementation by the regulatory bureaucracy, autocrats can reinvigorate economic performance and rebalance elite and popular interests. The theoretical argument advanced in the book links the use of institutional instruments of policy implementation to the political survival strategy. This study effectively shows that regulatory state-building has emerged as an effective tool for strengthening autocratic regimes and enhancing their long-term survival.

Sub Unit

• Economic History/Economics/Business

Chair

• Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, King's College London (UK)

Roundtable Members

• Dinissa Duvanova, Lehigh U

• David Szakonyi, George Washington U

• Alexei Trochev, Nazarbayev U (Kazakhstan)

• Sarah Wilson Sokhey, U of Colorado at Boulder

• Andrey Yakovlev, Institute for Advanced Study (Germany)