Explaining Post-Soviet Patchworks by Klaus s> Segbers (review)

Abstract

390 SEER, 8i, 2, 2003 Segbers,Klaus (ed.).Explaining Post-Soviet Patchworks. Ashgate,Aldershot,200I. Vol. I: ActorsandSectors in Russiabetween Accommodation andResistance to Globalization. xxii + 4I0 pp. ?5?.oo; Vol. 2: Pathways from thePastto the Global.xix + 436 pp. [55.00; Vol. 3: The PoliticalEconomy of Regions, RegimesandRepublics.xix + 332 pP.[47.50. Tables. Figures. Bibliographical references.Index. STIFLED by a narrowinterpretationof the writingsof Marx and of Lenin (and, for a quartercentury, of Stalin) imposed as dogma, the Soviet generation of academics and researchers offered little that can figure in the history of mainstreameconomic thought. Such isolation contrastedwith the substantial contributions of those whose work had begun before I9I7 notably Chayanov, Dmitriev, Fel'dman, Kantorovich, Kondrat'ev, Leont'ev, Slutskii and Tugan-Baranovskii and has stood the test of time. Of those of the Soviet generationwho brokethe Marxist-Leninistconstraint,some emigrated and made their mark in (mainly US) professionaljournals, but the works of those staying in the USSR were barely known in the West, even in the liberated I990s. The three volumes under review include fifty-sevenpages of bibliographic references, most to such newly prolific economists. Diaspora compatriotshelped to make the workof Armenian and Ukrainianeconomists better known, but, for Russians, Segbers, of the FreeUniversity of Berlin,has performed a signal service (with Volkswagen Foundation support) in presentingin Englishpapersby thirty-eightRussians.Of the thirty-fivein Russian institutions, most work in Moscow, but (contrasting with the metropolitan centralization of the USSR) five are in St Petersburg,three in Novosibirsk (whose akademgorodok nourished Zaslavskaiaand other innovative economists in Soviet times), and one each in Barnaul, Donetsk (Ukraine), Nizhnii Novgorod and Syktyvkar.Foreigncontributorscomprisefourfrom Germany, two fromthe United Statesand one each fromAustraliaandJapan. Segbers chooses 'Patchworks'for his title, appositeboth in weaving so wide a net of writers, and in describing the disparateforms of competitive forces, regulatorymechanismsand Sovietretentionswhich constitutetoday'sRussian economy. In itself,the knittingof a 'patchwork'to describeapoliticaleconomy is not novel Rudolf Bicanic, the Croat economist who clashed with Tito, presented fortyyears ago a marketsystem as a set of contiguous polygons in contrast to the vertical pyramid of central planning. But Segbers draws meaning from the variegation of the 'patches', and implicitly develops in volume one westernSovietologists'model of an interactionof 'interestgroups (Hough) and informal entrepreneurship(Berliner;Granick)with the formal party-state institutions, whereby bargaining over resource allocation in a 'shortage economy' (Kornai) could not derive an equilibrium growth path. Employing the principal/agent dichotomy, Segbers opens the trilogy by describing the weakening of the Soviet political centre, when 'the principals legalized defections [of agents] and tried to build coalitions with some of the defectors, therebyfinallyemasculatingthe political centre, i.e. themselves'(i, p. 3). Within the 'residualstate framework'of Russia after I99I 'subnational groupslike regions, economic sectorsand huge enterprises,social and societal interest groups, and also bureaucracies, compete with each other and build coalitions' (I, p. 6). REVIEWS 39I Aside from the declared link within each volume the behaviour of 'actors'for one, the development of 'institutions'for two, and diversitywithin geographic 'space' for three -a common motivation emerges from the imperfections of the Russian market system, 'rent-seeking' (as theoretically formulatedthirtyyears ago by Tullock and Krueger),that is, drawingincome from activities (or permits for activities) not fully open to competitive transaction. The institutions which facilitate rent-seeking are the focus of volume two. Easter evokes medieval Muscovy in characterizingthe Russian central bureaucracyas a 'neo-appanage state'with assymetricfederalismand cronycapitalism(2, p. 39);Ledeneva developsherearlier'economy offavours' which penetrate institutions and divert resources (2, p. 6I), reinforced by Nestorenko's evolution of the Soviet non-money economy into 'the virtual economy' (2, p. 90); and Kosals and Ryvkina illustratethe embeddedness of the 'shadow economy', with interalia a tabulation of the second jobs of the militsiia(2, p. 241). Kleiner innovates with a concept of an 'economy of individuals' instead 'of legal entities', ekonomiia fizicheskikh (as opposed to iuridicheskikh) lits(2, p. Io8), likethatof 'CEOcracy'coinedby Fergusson to typifythe deprivationof the rewardsof other corporatestakeholdersby Chief Executive Officers,as in the Enron and WorldComscandalsof 2002. Russian CEOs - these volumes use the Western abbreviation not only act domestically like their US counterparts, but harm the Russian external economy by engaging in massive 'capitalflight'and in minimizing the...