Book

Global Finance and Local Control: Corruption and Wealth in Contemporary in Russia

Publication date: Fall 2021
Cornell Studies in Money 
​Cornell University Press

Summary:

When Vladimir Putin finished his second term as president in 2008, Russia was more integrated into the global financial system than at any point in the previous one hundred years. Nevertheless, traditional ailments of Russia’s political system and its economy – widespread corruption, weak rule of law, and an increasingly overbearing state – were as pernicious as ever. Global Finance and Local Control demonstrates that Russia’s re-entry into the global capital markets between 1991 and 2005 was deeply entangled with an unruly competition for control over the vestiges of the Soviet industrial empire in an environment of insecure property rights. Russia’s unusual path toward financial integration, with its emphasis on the internationalization of the stock market, allowed domestic elites to raise capital from foreign investors and bolster the legitimacy of their new wealth without improving the local rule of law. The book delivers a somber lesson for the advocates of integrating emerging markets into the globalized financial system. Without credible domestic property rights protections, financial internationalization entrenches oligarchic capitalism and strengthens kleptocratic political regimes.
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Recent publications

2020. “Authoritarian Welfare State, Regime Stability, and the 2018 Pension Reform in Russia.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 53-1: 100-116.
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2019. “Before the Interests Are Invested: Disputes Over Asset Control and Equity Market Restrictions in Russia.” Review of International Political Economy

2018. "Weak States and Uneven Pluralism: Lessons from Mali and Kyrgyzstan"  Democratization  [w/ Jaimie Bleck]


Google Scholar profile

Work in Progress

“Has Financial Globalization Contributed to Authoritarian Retrenchment in Russia and China?” (with Stephen Hess) (in draft)

“Open Economy, Closed Polity: The Case of Kazakhstan.” (in draft)

"Clearing Property Rights" (an early stage project on the use of automated electronic systems of clearance and settlement of cross-border financial transactions in Russia and other emerging economies).