Åslund , Anders Russia's Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy (review)

Abstract

SEER, 99, 4, OCTOBER 2021 792 re-election, available at www.osce.org/odihr/elections/383577). Some may find this unsatisfactory, but it would be unfeasible within a single volume both to cover comprehensively the legal provisions and give opinion or speculation. This reviewer’s main criticism is of a different nature. The work contains, as well as the translation of the Constitution (helpfully indicating which paragraphs were amended in 2020), an Index of Names and seven pages of suggested Further Reading. However, as with previous editions, there is no subject index. But previous editions had detailed Contents, giving not only chapter titles but also listing subsections. This facilitated locating topics of interest. The current work’s Contents states chapter headings, with less detail than the summary at the outset of this review. It is thus very difficult to find and appreciate Butler’s scholarship on any particular issue. It is hoped future editions will revert to prior practice. The Dickson Poon School of Law J. Henderson King’s College London Åslund, Anders. Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 2019. viii + 324 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £25.00. Russia’s Crony Capitalism adds to the fast amassing literature on the nature and foundations of Putinism in Russia. Along with Karen Dawisha’s pathbreaking Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? (London and New York, 2015) and, more recently, Catherine Belton’s Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took On the West (London, 2020), this monograph tells the story of the political and economic system constructed in Russia under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, highlighting its personalist and rapacious nature. The book comprises nine chapters in which the author unravels how Russia’s president consolidation of control over energy rents enabled him to build a system of political control that has allowed him to maintain power over the last two decades. Similar to Alena Ledeneva’s conceptualization of ‘sistema’ in Can Russia Modernise? (Cambridge, 2013), Åslund describes Putin’s system as consisting of four circles: the first and closest, composed of his KGB friends, the second, based on state enterprises run by his close associates (including such national champions as Gazprom and Rosneft), the third composed of his long-term friends from St Petersburg who have become big businessmen, and the fourth circle which consists of the offshore havens in which Putin’s cronies secure their assets. Much of the empirical material in the book draws on rich investigative journalism that uncovers the nepotistic ties amongst Russia’s REVIEWS 793 political and economic elites and describes the key players in the circles of the system. Whilenoddinginthedirectionoftheage-oldpatrimonialsystemdescribedby such Western historians as Richard Pipes, Åslund views Vladimir Putin as the main culprit behind Russia’s more recent re-establishment of crony capitalism. In that, he echoes the dominant yet simplistic focus on Putin, his cronyism and his leadership shared widely in policy circles and think tanks in Washington, D.C. and other Western capitals. This view is conditioned by Åslund’s previous research into economic transformation in Russia, in which he focused on the early 1990s, and on what he saw as a successful transformation of a socialist economy into a market economy. What is missing from the picture here is a more systematic analysis of the origins of crony capitalism in Russia that, as I have argued in Political Consequences of Crony Capitalism Inside Russia (Notre Dame, IN, 2010), has characterized Russia’s political-economic realities right from the early 1990s. If we define crony capitalism not simply by characterizing it through the concentric circles of cronies around a leader taking advantage of energy rents, but as a system that lacks a clear separation of political and economic realms through functioning courts, contract-enforcement and other state and market institutions responsible for securing property rights, then such a system was present in Russia right from the start of the market transformation. One can even suggest that the absence of strong state institutions was the central feature of the 1990s in Russia. Åslund is correct in noting that the 1990s political-economic system was more competitive...