Russia's political economy re-conceptualized: A changing hybrid of liberalism, statism and patrimonialism

Russian political-economic development since the early 1990s has been described as one of initial liberalization and subsequent re-etatization a decade later. Our paper critically builds upon this view, systematically adding patrimonialism as third dimension and conceptualizing Russia's trajectory as varying with respect to ideal-typical liberalism, statism and patrimonialism. We argue that Russian patrimonialism hindered the rise of the economically facilitating state capacity and undermined both liberalization in the 1990s and re-etatization in the 2000s.Furthermore, we add a comparative BRICs perspective that clarifies the peculiarity of Russia's development based on statistical data from the World Bank, the OECD and Heritage Foundation. The data confirm the de-liberalization of Russia and show an increase of patrimonialism. Another finding is that Russia was the only BRIC country that de-liberalized and increased its level of patrimonialism in the period under consideration.