Публикации

Do economic sanctions turn the public against the target government or cause it to rally around the flag? How do sanctions affect attitudes toward the sanctioner? How does bad economic performance under sanctions shape support for the target government? Despite their importance, these questions have rarely been explored with survey data. Results from two surveys in Russia find that exposure to information about economic sanctions does not generate a rally around the flag, leads some groups to withdraw support from the target government, and reduces support for the sanctioner. Respondents also react more strongly to the reasons why sanctions were put in place—the annexation of Crimea—than to the sanctions themselves. These results suggest the need to reevaluate theories of the impact of economic sanctions and blame-shifting under autocracy.

How do elections and post-election protest shape political trust in a competitive autocracy? Taking advantage of largely exogenous variation in the timing of a survey conducted in Moscow in 2011, we find that an election had little systematic effect on political trust, perhaps because vote improprieties were not new information. In contrast, the unexpected protest that followed increased trust in government. We argue that when autocrats permit protest unexpectedly, citizens may update their beliefs about the trustworthiness of the government. In this case, heightened trust arises largely from opposition voters - those most likely to be surprised by permission to hold the protest - who update their beliefs. Our results suggest that citizens may cue not off the content of a protest, but off the government's decision to permit it. In addition, autocrats can increase trust in government by allowing protest when it is unexpected.

We contribute to the debate on the optimal structure of Competition Authorities (CAs), a debate of particular relevance in younger developing country jurisdictions. We propose a model of a reputation-maximizing CA in which reputation is increasing with enforcement success. This predicts that generalist CAs will focus on decisions in activities with low probability of annulment and low investigation and litigation costs and that this could be detrimental to welfare (relative to the more balanced activity portfolio of specialist CAs). We use a data set of appealed decisions of the Russian CA to provide an empirical support for the model’s assumptions and predictions.

Available evidence indicates that there is considerable variation among autocracies in the extent to which subnational officials are rewarded for economic growth. Why is economic performance used as a criterion for appointment in some autocracies but not in others? We argue that in more competitive—though still autocratic—regimes, the political imperatives of maintaining an electoral machine that can win semi-competitive elections leads regime leaders to abandon cadre policies that promote economic development. Using data on turnover among high-level economic bureaucrats in Russia’s 89 regions between 2001 and 2012, we find that performance-based appointments are more frequent in less competitive regions. These findings demonstrate one way that semi-competitive elections can actually undermine economic development under autocracy

This article attempts to open up the black box of the Russian Presidential Administration (‘the Kremlin’). Borrowing from literature on ‘institutional presidencies’ and institutional approaches to authoritarianism, I argue that the administration institutionalised over the years. More stable and predictable procedures enhanced administrative presidential powers, but personalism and non-compliance with presidential orders remained. Original data on budget, staff, units, organisational structure, and presidential assignments demonstrates that presidential power should be conceptualised as a polymorphous phenomenon that varies depending on the level of analysis. Researchers should aim to depersonalise their analyses and focus on ‘institutional presidencies’ and ‘centres of government’ instead.

В статье рассматривается дискуссия в российской прессе о деятельности Д.Трампа во время избирательной кампании и в течение полугода после ее завершения. Авторы провели количественный анализ публикаций о Дональде Трампе в 500 журналах и 250 крупнейших федеральных газетах России. Источником данных относительно тона новостных сообщений об американском президенте послужила база “Медиалогия”, на основе которой делается вывод, что образ Трампа не был однозначно позитивным, как об этом писали некоторые зарубежные исследования. Опираясь на теорию сетевой повестки и базу печатной прессы “Интегрум”, авторы проанализировали контекст, в котором упоминался Д. Трамп за месяц до выборов, в месяц после выборов и в июне 2017 г., непосредственно перед его первой встречей с Владимиром Путиным. На базе анализа сетевых повесток в российской федеральной прессе можно сделать вывод, что во время выборов Трамп представлялся российскими СМИ не как фаворит гонки, а как противник Хиллари Клинтон и критик американской политики последних лет. В этом контексте его вероятный проигрыш позволил бы российским СМИ усилить негативное впечатление россиян от американских выборов. Однако после объявления результатов выборов российские СМИ поменяли тактику и начали писать о Трампе как о друге России, что было связано с надеждами на отмену политических и экономических санкций. Политика Трампа не оправдала ожиданий россиян, и уже с начала 2017 г. о нем стало выходить больше негативных, чем позитивных публикаций. Окончательно позитивный образ Трампа разрушился после начала американских военных действий в Сирии и введения новых санкций против России. В июне 2017 г. Дональд Трамп все чаще упоминался федеральными газетами в контексте таких вопросов, как хакерские атаки и протесты. 

В 2014 г. Федеральная антимонопольная служба РФ предложила ввести международный принцип исчерпания прав на товарные знаки в России (легализовать параллельный импорт брендированной продукции) поэтапно для отдельных групп товаров. При этом критерии выбора товарных групп для первоочередного изменения режима импорта не были сформулированы. Авторы статьи попытались с учетом существующего опыта оценки эффектов параллельного импорта сформулировать критерии отбора товарных категорий для легализации параллельного импорта в первую очередь. Товарные группы выделялись на основе анализа состава «защищенных» товарных знаков (внесенных в ТРОИС), внешнеторговых потоков брендированной продукции и объемов инвестиций правообладателей в России.

This article investigates the role of boards in founder-managed firms with concentrated ownership in emerging markets. The literature frequently suggests that in this type of companies, boards have little influence on the corporate decision making. The article conducts a case study of AFK Sistema—a large Russian founder-managed firm with concentrated ownership. We observe that, contrary to the expectations, in this company, the founder provided real authority to the board, at the same time focusing on recruiting independent (mainly foreign) members. Based on this case, we argue that selectively empowering boards in this type of ownership setting could be beneficial for the firm: Selective empowerment is a source of intrinsic motivationfor the independent board members, making them proactively search for new projects and assist in their implementation on behalf of the firm. As a result, the company can overcome a number of important barriers in its development.

Do businesspeople who win elected office use their positions to help their firms? Business leaders become politicians around the world, yet we know little about whether their commitment to public service trumps their own private interests. Using an original dataset of 2,703 firms in Russia, I employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effect of firm directors winning seats in subnational legislatures from 2004 to 2013. First, having a connection to a winning politician increases a firm’s revenue by 60% and profitability by 15% over a term in office. I then test between different mechanisms, finding that connected firms improve their performance by gaining access to bureaucrats and not by signaling legitimacy to financiers. The value of winning a seat increases in more politically competitive regions but falls markedly when more businesspeople win office in a convocation. Politically connected firms extract fewer benefits when faced with greater competition from other rent-seekers.

Corruption has been a constant factor in Russia’s political economy. From one era to another, the multifarious forms of corruption continue to pervade Russian politics despite sincere and insincere efforts to fight it. The election of Vladimir Putin as president in 2000 brought a new effort at consolidating and organizing authority in the country. However, far from eliminating corruption, politics of the Putin era have merely changed the form of corruption, integrating corruption into the “power vertical” through which Putin governs.

In recent years, corruption has played an ever larger role in the regime’s stability. It serves as a force to co-opt and control the political elite and to replace formal institutions with something more flexible and more amenable to the needs of a consolidated authoritarian regime. Only deep changes, such as higher levels of political competition, have a chance of reducing corruption in the long run. The approaching fourth term of President Putin will continue to increase the role of informal institutions in Russian politics, in which corruption plays an increasingly large role in the Kremlin’s management of the political process.