INVITATION: February 27, New Voices on Russia - Dr. Dinissa Duvanova - Thieves, Opportunists, and Bureaucrats: Authoritarian Foundations of Russian Regulatory State

Thieves, Opportunists, and Bureaucrats:

Authoritarian Foundations of Russian Regulatory State

with

Dr. Dinissa Duvanova

In the Putin era, the Russian state redefined its role in the economy. In sharp contrast to the 1990s, today, Russia presides over a high-capacity regulatory state that uses formal, albeit often objectionable, administrative mechanisms of economic governance. But what factors promote state regulatory effectiveness in increasingly autocratic Russia? This research investigates formal rules governing bureaucratic institutions as the major source of regulatory quality. Unlike some other components of the regulatory state, statutory controls can lead to better quality regulation even when the traditional mechanisms of public accountability are absent. By tracing the evolving nature of Russian regulatory institutions, I am able to identify constraints and opportunities for the building of sound regulatory states by autocratic regimes. I argue that the conflicting incentives of autocrats can affect the extent to which the state relies upon statutory controls as a means of promoting regulatory efficiency. By treating the institutional mechanisms of state regulatory actions as being dependent on political strategies of regime survival, this research advances a more nuanced and compelling theory of how the nature of authoritarianism shapes economic outcomes.

Thursday, February 27, 2020

4:00 - 5:00 pm

Suite 412, Fourth Floor

The Elliot School of International Affairs

1957 E St. NW

Light refreshments will be served

RSVP

Dr. Dinissa Duvanova is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University. Her research focuses on political economy, bureaucratic politics, and technology-enabled forms of political participation in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Duvanova’s publications appear in British Journal of Political Science , Comparative Politics , Journal of Comparative Economics , World Development and other outlets. Her book, B uilding Business in Post-Communist Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia: Collective Goods, Selective Incentives, and Predatory States (Cambridge University Press, 2013), was awarded the Ed A. Hewett Prize for outstanding publication on the political economy of Russia, Eurasia and/or Eastern Europe. Her second book manuscript, Thieves, Opportunists, and Bureaucrats: Regulatory Discretion and Discretionary Regulation in Post-Communist States , addresses business-state relations from the state's perspective and investigates the bureaucratic dimension of state regulatory policy.

PONARS Eurasia is an international network of scholars advancing new approaches to research on security, politics, economics, and society in Russia and Eurasia. The program is based at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies ( IERES ) at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. PONARS Eurasia is supported in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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