Book

Global Finance and Local Control: Corruption and Wealth in Contemporary Russia
Cornell Studies in Money 
Cornell University Press, October - 2021

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 2006 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.
​
Reviewed in Eurasian Geography and Economics
(2021); Ab Imperio Quarterly (2022); Russian Review
(2022).

Co-winner of the 2023 Best Book Award.
International Political Economy section of the
International Studies Association

Recent publications

2023. “Why did Financial Openness Reforms Succeed in Russia, but not in
China?” Russian Politics 8: 48-75.

​2022. "Gender and the Ukrainian refugee crisis: the case of Poland." European Journal of Politics and Gender  5-3: 402
- 405 [w/ Olga Brzezinska].

2022. "Analysis | Hundreds of Western companies quickly exited Russia. Why didn’t Putin see that coming?" The Washington Post

2021. "Authoritarian Populism, Courts, and Democratic Erosion: What Americans Can Learn from the Rest of the World." Just Security [w/ Michael Dichio]

2020. "Global Kleptocracy as an American Problem" Just Security [w/ Casey Michel]

​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 26-4: 695-721.

2018. "Weak States and Uneven Pluralism: Lessons from Mali and Kyrgyzstan"  Democratization 25-5: 804-823. [w/ Jaimie Bleck]


Google Scholar profile

Work in Progress

"Failed Autocrat: Trump and Courts in Comparative Perspective" [w/ Michael Dichio - advanced draft] -presented most recently at the 2022 workshop held at Occidental College. Journal Special Issue is planned for early 2024,

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

Battery Metals in a Circular Economy: The Intersection of Political Economy, Industrial Policy, and the Global Energy Transition (book project in early stages of formulation and research)