CInSt Research Seminar "Chronicles of a Democracy Postponed: Long-term Impact of Non-inclusive Reform"

Speaker: Leonid Polishchuk (HSE Department of Applied Economics, HSE Laboratory for Applied Analysis of Institutions and Social Capital)

Co-authors: Elena Gaber, Kharis Sokolov, Denis Stukal.

We explain a lack of civic culture in today’s Russia, closely related to democratic deficit in the country, by a path-dependency which has originated at the critical juncture of transition to market economy. Suppression of democracy in the early 1990s to expedite unpopular reform had exposed the new institutional order to oligarchic capture and set in motion a vicious circle of extractive economic and political institutions. The latter have been shaping views and attitudes in the society via institutional learning, continuously suppressing civic culture and solidifying social foundations for extractive institutions. We present evidence from the World Values Survey supporting the above conclusions. We also demonstrate on the panel of transition nations persistent impact of transition's "plurality", measured by the number of veto players at the time of reforms, for the quality of post-communist institutions, economic inequality, and societal attitudes to market and democracy.

Place: 4 Slavyanskaya Square, building 2, room 101-102.
Date and time: November 16, 2017; 16:00
Language: English

Free entrance.
If you don't have an HSE ID, please send your name and surname to lovakov@hse.ru before 13:00, November 16.