Economic crime in Russia

2012

Recently, J. Beckert and F. Wehinger (2011) argued about the importance of studies of illegal markets for economic sociology. When approaching this field one should keep in mind that the dividing lines between legal and illegal markets are often blurred. It is especially true for transformation countries with underdeveloped institutional setting and a lack of traditions of democratic legal regulation of economic behaviour. In this paper we consider these blurred boundaries taking an example of the shadow economic activities of police officers in Russia, in which the legal and illegal components are closely interconnected. We use a body of literature and empirical research compiled in the 2000s in Russia to shed some light on the off-duty activities of police officers as economic actors.

In this chapter, I question the theoretical conceptualisation of patron– client relationships in historical perspective and discuss the ways in which the fundamental patterns of patron– client relations – reciprocity, hierarchy and repetition – adapt to the workings of complex societies. In particular, I elaborate on the themes of timing, symmetry and status in patron– client relationships in modern societies. Finally, I emphasise the detrimental effects of patron– client relations for resource mobilisation, democratic accountability, party formation, and institutional development.

Informal relations from democratic representation to corruption. Case studies from Central and Eastern Europe, 2011

BOOK PRESENTATION: Informal relations have been one of the major research topics of the social sciences since the 1990s. In order to allow for meaningful comparisons between different combinations of the positive and negative effects of informal relations on democratic representation, all the articles in this book focus on post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe as a particular region where formal democratic rules have been established but competing informal rules are still strong. The first section discusses a broad spectrum of related analytical concepts from different perspectives and from different academic disciplines. The second part then goes on to analyse empirical cases of the relationship between informal relations and democratic representation. The contributions span the whole continuum, as we perceive it, from civil society networks seen as supporting democratic representation to the perversion of democratic representation through political corruption. The final part of the book then takes a closer look at corruption through four case studies from Russia. OTHER INFO: This book presents a selection of the papers discussed at the Changing Europe Summer School on "Informal Networks, Clientelism and Corruption. Case Studies from Central and Eastern Europe" held in Prague at the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in August 2010.

Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 2019

This article analyses the role played by the Ukrainian state in the everyday business of average Ukrainian firms under Yanukovych regime in 2007–2011. Relying on the empirical findings of a five-year case study conducted in Eastern Ukraine, this article confirms the image of the Ukrainian state as a “grabbing hand” or bespredel — ​ an unrestricted and violent power. The contractual relations of the researched firms and the state actors were fraught with illegal practices such as kickbacks from suppliers and the need to systematically violate the law on state procurement; pervasive Soviet-style personal relations; the risk of experiencing violent administrative pressure including criminal prosecution; and deficiencies in the enforcement of contracts. Notwithstanding these risks, the researched businesses revealed no absolute moral prohibition against joining the “grabbing hand” of the state to exploit public resources and advance their own private gains.

Theoretical Criminology, 2015

Includes Can Russia Modernise