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The Ambivalence of Power in the Twenty-First Century Economy

Cases from Russia and beyond

Edited by Vadim Radaev and Zoya Kotelnikova

ISBN: 9781800082687

Publication: July 07, 2022

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The Ambivalence of Power in the Twenty-First Century Economy contributes to the understanding of the ambivalent nature of power, oscillating between conflict and cooperation, public and private, global and local, formal and informal, and does so from an empirical perspective. It offers a collection of country-based cases, as well as critically assesses the existing conceptions of power from a cross-disciplinary perspective.

The diverse analyses of power at the macro, meso or micro levels allow the volume to highlight the complexity of political economy in the twenty-first century. Each chapter addresses key elements of that political economy (from the ambivalence of the cases of former communist countries that do not conform with the grand narratives about democracy and markets, to the dual utility of new technologies such as face-recognition), thus providing mounting evidence for the centrality of an understanding of ambivalence in the analysis of power, especially in the modern state power-driven capitalism.

Anchored in economic sociology and political economy, this volume aims to make ‘visible’ the dimensions of power embedded in economic practices. The chapters are predominantly based on post-communist practices, but this divergent experience is relevant to comparative studies of how power and economy are interrelated.

Vadim Radaev is Professor and Head of Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology at the HSE University, Russia.

Zoya Kotelnikova is Associate Professor in Economic Sociology at the HSE University, Russia.

Series Foreword

List of figures

List of tables

Contributors

Acknowledgements

Preface
Alena Ledeneva

1 Introduction

Zoya Kotelnikova and Vadim Radaev

Part 1: Interdependency of political power and economic governance: a macroperspective.

2 Interrelation between economic freedom and democracy: the case of post-communist countries

Marek Dabrowski

3 The pitfalls of rent-seeking: alternative mechanisms of resource rent collection in Russia and Venezuela

Aleksei Pobedonostsev

4 Contradictions of centralisation: four models of interaction between Russian rural communities and government and agribusiness

Alexander Nikulin and Alexander Kurakin

5 Legitimation of innovation: the case of AI technology for facial recognition

Leonid Kosals

Part II: Power struggles in the economy: an organizational perspective

6 Power of non-compliance: inter-firm opportunism in the Russian consumer markets

Vadim Radaev

7 Abusive supervision in organizations: power, dependency, and employee voice in labor relations

Evgeniya Balabanova

8 Beyond the state and digital platforms: (in)formalization of freelance contracting in Russia

Andrey Shevchuk and Denis Strebkov

9 Power struggles and quality construction in the market for municipal rental housing in Sweden

Elena Bogdanova

10 Private authority in regulating markets: power dynamics around Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in forestry and the oil industry in Russia

Maria Tysiachniouk, Sara Teitelbaum, Andrey Petrov and Leah Horowitz

11 Depriving counterfeiting of legitimacy: how brand holders enforced their intellectual property rights in Russia between the early 2000s and late 2010s

Zoya Kotelnikova

12 Academic excellence through homogenization? Gaining legitimacy from the strategic positioning of top ranked universities

Ivan Pavlyutkin and Anastasiia Makareva

13 One man’s pill is another man’s poison. Ambivalence of definitional power: the case of breast cancer drugs in Russia

Elena Berdysheva

14 ‘Russian Parmesan, even better than the original’: an exploratory research of organic farmers' valuation strategies

Tamara Kusimova

Part 3: Resistance to domination and empowerment in the economy: an individual perspective

15 Everyday politics of consumption: why cynical consumers are disappointed citizens. The case of Moscow during the economic crisis of 2014−2017

Regina Resheteeva

16 Childbirth with doulas in Moscow: between empowerment and responsibility

Maria Denisova