Focusing on the impact of oil and gas abundance, this analysis explores how the 'resource curse' affects political, economic, and social developments in Russia and other post-Soviet nations like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. It delves into state building, regime changes, rule of law, property rights, and international relations, employing theoretical, historical, and comparative perspectives to systematically examine these complex dynamics.
Considers bad governance as a distinctive politico-economic order that is based on a set of formal and informal rules, norms, and practices quite different from those of good governance. Vladimir Gel'man considers bad governance as a primarily agency-driven rather than structure-induced phenomenon.
The politico-economic reforms launched during the late twentieth century in post-Soviet Russia have led to contradictory and ambiguous results. The new economic environment and mode of governance that emerged have been subjected to serious criticism. What were the causes of these developments? Were they unavoidable for Russia due to specific factors grounded in the country’s previous experiences? Or were they an intended result of actions taken by the leaders of the country during the last few decades? The authors of this book share neither a deterministic approach, which implies that Russia is bound to fail because of the nature of its economic and political evolution, nor a voluntarist approach, which implies that these failures were caused only by the incompetence and/or malicious intentions of its leaders. Instead, this study offers a different framework for the analysis of political and economic developments in present-day Russia. It is based on four ‘i’s—ideas, interests, institutions, and illusions.
This study analyzes the impact of generational changes and ideational changes on major political and economic reforms conducted in Russia during the late twentieth century.