Russia S Crony Capitalism

A penetrating look into the extreme plutocracy Vladimir Putin has created and its implications for Russia’s future This insightful study explores how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control over the country. By appointing his close associates as heads of state enterprises and by giving control of the FSB and the judiciary to his friends from the KGB, he has enriched his business friends from Saint Petersburg with preferential government deals. Thus, Putin has created a super wealthy and loyal plutocracy that owes its existence to authoritarianism. Much of this wealth has been hidden in offshore havens in the United States and the United Kingdom, where companies with anonymous owners and black money transfers are allowed to thrive. Though beneficial to a select few, this system has left Russia’s economy in untenable stagnation, which Putin has tried to mask through military might.

This book examines the coexistence of crony capitalism and traditionally democratic institutions such as political competition and elections in Russia after the collapse of communism. The combination, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova argues, has produced a distinct pattern of political evolution in contemporary Russia. Elections are meant to ensure government accountability and allow voters to elect a government responsive to their needs, but in postcommunist Russia the institutional forms of democracy did not result in the expected outcomes. Instead, democratic institutions in the context of crony capitalism--in which informal elite groups dominate policy making, and preferential treatment from the state, not market forces, is crucial to amassing and holding wealth--were widely devalued and discredited. As Sharafutdinova demonstrates, especially through her close scrutiny of elections in two regions of Russia, Nizhnii Novgorod and the Republic of Tatarstan, crony capitalism made elections especially intense struggles among the elites. Massive amounts of money flowed into campaigns to promote candidates by discrediting their rivals, money purchased candidates and power, and elites thereby solidified their control. As a result, the majority of citizens perceived elections as the means for the elite to access power and wealth rather than as expressions of public will. Through her detailed case studies and her analyses of contemporary Russia in general, Sharafutdinova argues persuasively that the turn toward authoritarianism associated with Vladimir Putin and supported by a majority of Russian citizens was a negative political response to the interaction of electoral processes and crony capitalism.

At great cost and risk to the American and world economies, consumers are ripped off billions of dollars every day by oil interests and their malevolent influence on market pricing mechanisms. It's essential Americans and oil consumers throughout the world understand where the money they pay for oil's downstream products goes including the money paid at the pump, the money paid to heat their homes, and the money paid for the array of other petroleum-based products. In Ruminations on the Distortion of Oil Prices and Crony Capitalism, author Raymond J. Learsy not only discusses the distortion of oil pricing, but also focuses on effects of the crony capitalism that has enriched a select few and left Main Street in the lurch as a result of government mismanagement, moneyed influence, and craven oversight. This collection of previously published writings shows how speculators ratchet up the prices of basic material goods essential to daily lives. Learsy describes how ceding the determination of those prices not to the laws of supply and demand but predominantly to gambling dens on the trading floors of commodity exchanges as well as the price fixing collusion of producer nations (OPEC) is crippling to the world's economy. Focusing as well on Wall Street's corrupting influence on the price of oil, gasoline, and other commodities, Ruminations on the Distortion of Oil Prices and Crony Capitalism provides an overview of the basic and important theme: the United States' enslavement to oil and the moneyed interests inextricably tied to it.

"Gulnaz Sharafutdinova explores the development of crony capitalism in Russia, based on the contrasting cases of Tatarstan and Nizhnii Novgorod. She argues that the corruption which accompanied the market transition seeped over into electoral politics, and was a major factor in undermining popular support for democratic institutions. This finding is a challenge to transition theory, which posits that democracy and capitalism work hand in hand.-Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University --Book Jacket.

Even in Korea, corruption was far greater than the conventional wisdom allows - so rampant was corruption that we cannot dismiss it; rather, we need to explain it."--BOOK JACKET.

Crony capitalism systems—in which those close to political policymakers receive favors allowing them to earn returns far above market value—are a fundamental feature of the economies of Latin America. Haber and his expert contributors draw from case studies in Mexico, Brazil, and other countries around the world to examine the causes and consequences of cronyism.

How Capitalism Was Built tells the story of how the former communist countries in East and Central Europe, Russia, and Central Asia became market economies from 1989 to 2006. It discusses preconditions, political breakthroughs, and alternative reform programs. Three major chapters deal with the deregulation of prices and trade, price stabilization, and privatization. Early radical reform made output decline the least. Social developments have been perplexing but mixed. The building of democracy and the establishment of the rule of law have been far less successful. International assistance has been limited but helpful. This region has now become highly dynamic, but corruption remains problematic.

China’s efforts to modernize yielded a kleptocracy characterized by corruption, wealth inequality, and social tensions. Rejecting conventional platitudes about the resilience of Party rule, Minxin Pei gathers unambiguous evidence that beneath China’s facade of ever-expanding prosperity and power lies a Leninist state in an advanced stage of decay.