The dynamism of HSE makes it a really exciting place to study Russian Political Economy

Brendan McElroy, Research Fellow of International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (HSE), Ph.D. student of the Harvard University told about his work and life in Russia.

Brendan McElroy, Research Fellow of International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (HSE), Ph.D. student of the Harvard University told about his work and life in Russia.

– Why did you choose Russia and the Higher School of Economics as the place to do your research?

– At the risk of sounding clichéd, Russia has interested me for a long time – the history, especially nineteenth century history, before the politics. I began studying Russian as an undergraduate and travelled to Moscow for the first time in 2007. My interest in political economy developed later, but, as it turned out, Russia offers excellent opportunities for answering many of the questions that I started to ask once I began studying political science. The dynamism of HSE makes it a really exciting place to study those questions.

– What is currently the subject of your research?
– The main project that I'm working on this summer focuses on the politics of skills. We're attempting to map and explain variation in the design of vocational education programs across Russia's regions. Among the questions we're interested in are, when do business associations succeed in overcoming their internal dilemmas – conflicts between small and large firms, firms in different industries, and so on – and establishing a collective system to produce and certify specific skills? Similarly, when and how do firms cooperate with the state to share the costs of vocational training? Apart from this, I have several projects on the zemstvo in late imperial Russia: for example, I’m trying to identify the effect of shocks such as crop failure in stimulating local governments to redistribute the tax burden more equitably among the peasantry, gentry, and urban dwellers.

– Why did you choose these topics?
– One of the major research programs in contemporary political economy is the "Varieties of Capitalism" perspective, which argues that enduring differences in how capitalism is organized in the developed countries are related to the ways in which firms solve coordination problems with other firms, workers, and the state. There have been attempts to extend this agenda to other parts of the world, Latin America and Eastern Europe in particular, but as I see it, most of these are too typological. I see our project on skill formation in Russia as a way of taking the central insight of the "Varieties of Capitalism" literature – that macro institutional variations are complemented and 
supported by strategies at the firm level – and applying it in a context where institutions are very different from those in Western Europe and the United States. My zemstvo project has somewhat different motivations. I want to understand why elites, under certain circumstances, concede to redistribute income and wealth more equitably, even though most of the time, for obvious reasons, they resist redistribution. Natural disasters and similar shocks are interesting in this respect because, paradoxically, they often lead to more egalitarian outcomes.

– What kind of research to you plan to carry out in the future?
– I see myself doing more historical research, work that combines modern methods of causal inference – which are advancing at an incredible pace – with data from late imperial Russia. The quality of the data is actually quite high, for the most part, and the institutions are interesting because they're so exotic: there are few places today where you can find anything like the three-curia system that was used for zemstvo elections. The institutional variation gives us opportunities to answer causal questions that might otherwise be beyond our reach.

– As I now you have been learning Russian language already 6 years. And you had starting this process in Russia. Do you note some changes which more obvious for you now in our country?
– I'm afraid I don't have anything especially insightful to say about changes over the past six years. The most visually striking things, here in Moscow, are apparent to anyone: fewer advertisements, billboards, and street vendors, more greenery, better sidewalks. It struck me, upon returning to Moscow after a few years away, just how much of a difference those things make for the city's image.

– Do you have practical advice for foreign colleagues who are going to do research in Russia firstly?
– Perhaps needless to say, take the time to brush up on your Russian. It's amazing how quickly you  forget words and phrases that you once used on a daily basis.