Uncertain New Middle Classes: Changing Consumption Practices and State Policies in Russia

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 464-484
Author(s):  
Volha Biziukova
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Import Substitution ◽  
State Policies ◽  
The State ◽  
Productive Capacity ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Significant Extent ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
New Policies

This article explores the reactions of Russia’s new middle classes to the embargo and import substitution and their changing consumption practices against the background of the economic crisis. It serves as an entry point to look at the interplay of the new middle classes’ socio-economic positionalities and affiliations with the state within a particular political economy. Drawing on fieldwork data collected in 2015–2018, the article traces the subjectivities and orientations that enable the new middle classes’ coping strategies. It demonstrates how their responses are mediated by their imagination of the state and the global hierarchies in which they feel situated to a significant extent through their state membership. The analysis examines how the arrangements of Russia’s political economy come into conflict with the image of a “proper” state, which the new middle classes associate with productive capacity and technological advancement. It invites us to revisit the idea of the eclipse of “production” by “consumption” in assessing the performance of a nation-state, which, as the article shows, is reversed in Russia’s context. Furthermore, it highlights how the reactions to these new policies become a medium to criticize Russia’s post-socialist development and to articulate aspirations for its repositioning in the global system, which is translated into negotiations of the new middle classes’ relatively privileged positions.

Moroccan Cronyism

2019 ◽  
pp. 146-170
Author(s):  
Mohammed Said Saadi
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Manufacturing Sector ◽  
Import Substitution ◽  
The State ◽  
Foreign Competition ◽  
Access To Finance ◽  
Economic Sphere ◽  
Countervailing Power ◽  
Preferential Access ◽  
Political Connectedness

This chapter looks at cronyism as a pillar of Morocco’s political economy and studies its manifestation and impact in the manufacturing sector. Cronyism and patronage have helped the Makhzen to strengthen its control on Moroccan society and prevent any countervailing power from taking root, especially in the economic sphere. After Morocco became independent, the state–business nexus was consolidated through “Moroccanization,” import-substitution strategy, and privatization. The network of cronyism and patronage was reinforced and extended during the liberalization era. This chapter uses a unique database to identify politically connected firms and measure their performance in comparison with non-connected ones. Political privileges are granted to connected firms through preferential access to finance, protection from foreign competition, and discriminatory implementation of rules and regulations. This chapter also provides some illustrative evidence showing that political connectedness tends to impede firms’ dynamics and innovation.

Political Stakeholder Theory: The State, Legitimacy, and the Ethics of Microfinance in Emerging Economies

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tricia D. Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Stakeholder Theory ◽  
Emerging Economies ◽  
State Policies ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
Role Of The State

ABSTRACT:How does the state influence stakeholder legitimacy? And how does this process affect an industry’s ethical challenges? Stakeholder theory adopts a forward-looking perspective and seeks to understand how managers can address stakeholders’ claims to improve the firm’s ability to create value. Yet, existing work does not adequately address the role of the state in defining the stakeholder universe nor the implications this may have for subsequent ethical challenges managers face. This article develops a political stakeholder theory (political ST) by weaving together the political economy, stakeholder theory, and legitimacy literatures. Political ST shows how state policies influence stakeholder legitimacy and, in turn, affect an industry’s ethical challenges. This article integrates the concept of agonism to address the perennial tension between markets and states and its implications for firms and their managers. Political ST is then applied to the case of microfinance, followed by a discussion of the contributions of this approach.

scholarly journals From Modernization to Import Substitution: Perspectives on State Development ‘from Above’ and ‘from Below’

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-87
Author(s):  
Ольга Владимировна Бизюкова
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Import Substitution ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Development ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Previous State ◽  
New Policies ◽  
State Projects

Citation: Biziukova V. (2019) From Modernization to Import Substitution: Perspectives on State Development ‘from Above’ and ‘from Below’. Mir Rossii, vol. 28, no 3, pp. 67–87. DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2019-28-3-67-87 This paper focuses on the policies of the embargo and import substitution in the context of previous state projects of socio-economic development in Russia. It explores how the country’s development, its means and objectives, are envisaged by the state and members of the new middle classes. In particular, this study inquires into the meanings and interpretations of ‘modernization’ and puts this concept into the context of broader theoretical debates. The paper follows the discussion on the ‘modernization’ and ‘neo-modernization’ paradigms and demonstrates how the term has acquired a primarily instrumental meaning as part of an increasingly particularistic project of socio-political development embraced by the Russian state. The analysis traces how this state vision resonates with, and differs from, the perspectives of the new middle classes on state development, in particular, the wide-spread sympathies towards ‘technocratic’ governance. Finally, it discusses the political implications of these interpretations and the ways they shape the enactment of the new policies ‘on the ground’.

The Political Economy of Rural-Urban Conflict

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Topher L. McDougal
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
The State ◽  
Hierarchical Networks ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Economic Relationship ◽  
Relationship Of

In some cases of insurgency, the combat frontier is contested and erratic, as rebels target cities as their economic prey. In other cases, it is tidy and stable, seemingly representing an equilibrium in which cities are effectively protected from violent non-state actors. What factors account for these differences in the interface urban-based states and rural-based challengers? To explore this question, this book examines two regions representing two dramatically different outcomes. In West Africa (Liberia and Sierra Leone), capital cities became economic targets for rebels, who posed dire threats to the survival of the state. In Maoist India, despite an insurgent ideology aiming to overthrow the state via a strategy of progressive city capture, the combat frontier effectively firewalls cities from Maoist violence. This book argues that trade networks underpinning the economic relationship between rural and urban areas—termed “interstitial economies”—may differ dramatically in their impact on (and response to) the combat frontier. It explains rebel predatory tendencies toward cities as a function of transport networks allowing monopoly profits to be made by urban-based traders. It explains combat frontier delineation as a function of the social structure of the trade networks: hierarchical networks permit elite–elite bargains that cohere the frontier. These factors represent what might be termed respectively the “hardware” and “software” of the rural–urban economic relationship. Of interest to any student of political economy and violence, this book presents new arguments and insights about the relationships between violence and the economy, predation and production, core and periphery.

The Political Economy of Post-Independence India—A Review Article

1989 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 787-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akhil Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Newly Industrialized Countries ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Balance Of Forces ◽  
The Third World

Economists and political scientists have become increasingly interested in the political economy of India during the past decade and particularly during the past three or four years. The titles under review will be valuable not only to India specialists but also to comparative scholars because of the intriguing mix of conditions found in India. More like a continent than a country in its diversity, India is in some ways very similar to densely populated, predominantly rural and agricultural China, differing most perhaps in the obstinacy and depth of its poverty. In the predominant role played by the state within an essentially capitalist economy, it is closer to the model of Western social democracies than it is to either prominently ideological capitalist or socialist nation-states; like other countries in the “third world,” the state in India plays a highly interventionist developmental role. Finally, since Independence it has pursued, more successfully than most nation-states in Latin America and Asia, policies of importsubstituting industrialization and relative autarchy. In terms of its political structures, India differs from most newly industrialized countries (NICs) in that it generally continues to function as a parliamentary democracy. The federal political system creates an intriguing balance of forces between central and the regional state governments, which are often ruled by opposition parties with agendas, ideologies, and organizational structures quite different from those of the central government.

The Saint with Indra's Sword: Khruubaa Srivichai and Buddhist Millenarianism in Northern Thailand

2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 681-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Bowie
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The State ◽  
Capital City ◽  
The Political ◽  
Northern Thailand ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Modern Context ◽  
A Charge ◽  
Social Causes

AbstractDespite a growing literature revealing the presence of millenarian movements in both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist societies, scholars have been remarkably reluctant to consider the role of messianic beliefs in Buddhist societies. Khruubaa Srivichai (1878–1938) is the most famous monk of northern Thailand and is widely revered as atonbun, or saint. Althoughtonbunhas been depoliticized in the modern context, the term also refers to a savior who is an incarnation of the coming Maitreya Buddha. In 1920 Srivichai was sent under arrest to the capital city of Bangkok to face eight charges. This essay focuses on the charge that he claimed to possess the god Indra's sword. Although this charge has been widely ignored, it was in fact a charge of treason. In this essay, I argue that the treason charge should be understood within the context of Buddhist millenarianism. I note the saint/savior tropes in Srivichai's mytho-biography, describe the prevalence of millenarianism in the region, and detail the political economy of the decade of the 1910s prior to Srivichai's detention. I present evidence to show that the decade was characterized by famine, dislocation, disease, and other disasters of both natural and social causes. Such hardships would have been consistent with apocalyptic omens in the Buddhist repertoire portending the advent of Maitreya. Understanding Srivichai in this millenarian context helps to explain both the hopes of the populace and the fears of the state during that tumultuous decade.

ESCALATION OF IMPORT SUBSTITUTION AS A REALITY AND A NECESSITY FOR IMPROVING THE STRUCTURE OF THE DOMESTIC ECONOMY

2021 ◽  
pp. 77-83
Author(s):  
V. V. Mishchenko ◽  
I. K. Mishchenko
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Import Substitution ◽  
The State ◽  
Domestic Economy ◽  
Provision Of Services ◽  
History Of ◽  
Balanced Structure ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Key Features

The article highlights the importance of a balanced structure of the economy in terms of the ratio of the production of goods and the provision of services; the history of specialization of the Russian Federation as a state and territorial entity, the key features of its structure are considered. Modern aspects of import substitution in Russia are described. A comment is made on the program “Import Substitution 2.0”, which is based on quotas for public procurement from Russian suppliers. Some problems and negative aspects of the state of implementation of the import substitution program in the Russian Federation are reflected. It is concluded that the measures for the development of import substitution were largely unsystematic, were of a fragmented nature, and in some cases even contradicted each other. Their implementation failed to optimize the structure of the economy. A set of measures to escalate import substitution is proposed, including the priority development of specific types of goods with a certain share of sales abroad and the coverage of import substitution in the sphere of services.

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