Authoritarianism and the Market: the ‘Neoliberal’ Reforms in Russia’s Higher Education1 Natalia Forrat Northwestern University
When in 2000 Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, he started his term with a number of contradictory economic reforms. On the one hand, he brought to the government a team of liberal ministers1 who started deregulation of the economy, reduced tax rates, and introduced market mechanisms into the delivery of social services among other things. On the other hand, he declared right away that the state was going to restore an active role in the economy, initiated criminal cases against a number of powerful businessmen, and has been increasing the share of state equity in large industrial enterprises at least since 2004 (Nureev 2010, 18–34). During the same time, Putin consolidated his political power and undoubtedly led the country away from the democratic route. With the Russian economy now being dramatically different from the command economy of the USSR, the relationship between the political regime and the market in Russia is intriguingly unclear. Similar questions can be asked about countries in East Asia or Latin America, where we have observed the emergence of “authoritarian capitalism” in the second half of the 20th century (Lingle 1996; Bremmer 2010; Van Beek and Wnuk-Lipinski 2011; Witt and Redding 2012). Why would authoritarian governments give people more economic freedom and autonomy? And how do they mitigate the political risks that economic freedom may bring? The economic logic of authoritarian governments is likely to be different at least in some circumstances from the logic of their democratic counterparts since autocrats have a different set of political challenges and constraints. An account of how authoritarian leaders make economic decisions, how they use the state intervention and the free market is necessary to understand the development of
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A note for the reviewer: This paper is my attempt to find a theoretical framing for the issue of marketization of the public sector in Russia. So far, I only have the data about higher education, but I will collect data on other areas during my dissertation fieldwork. Two types of feedback, therefore, are particularly appreciated: (1) the appropriateness of the theoretical framing; its potential to connect my empirical data to larger theoretical debates; and other theories that may help develop my ideas; and (2) other types of data, which I can collect during fieldwork, that would be helpful to support the general argument. Thanks!
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