Introduction to the symposium “Asymmetrical resource exchange. Business, state and social welfare provision in Russian regions”

ABSTRACT

The introduction to the Symposium reassesses the role of companies as social welfare providers in Russia. Different from the mainstream, which has focused on the bilateral relations of the Russian state authorities either with civil society actors or with companies, this introductory article reconsiders the dynamics resulting from the interactions of companies with both the state authorities and NPOs. The introduction reveals how Russian companies influence the scope and nature of their involvement in social welfare provision. It summarises the four articles, which together show that social investments are part of a strategic response with which companies aim to preserve flexibility in an increasingly rigid authoritarian regime.

KEYWORDS:

• State-business relations
• nonprofit organisations
• Russia
• social welfare provision
• legitimacy
• regions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The article forms part of the research project “Variations of Governance in Hybrid Regimes”, funded by the German Research Foundation, project number 388732203.

2 Only in 2022, the Ministry of Finance reported a significant budgetary surplus of more prosperous regions, but also expected huge budgetary deficits for the end of the year (Mingasov 2022; Vedemosti 2022), caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

3 In 2015, 81% of expenditures on education and 47% on healthcare were financed by the regional budgets (Feinberg 2016).

4 https://национальныепроекты.рф/projects, accessed November 19, 2022.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [project number 388732203].

Notes on contributors

Katharina Bluhm

Katharina Bluhm is professor of sociology with a focus on Eastern Europe and Russia at the Freie Universität Berlin. Prior that, she taught and conducted research in Berlin, Göttingen, Jena, Cambridge (UK), and Osnabrück. As an economic sociologist she widely published on the transition from communism to market economy in Central and Eastern Europe. Among her publications are “Business Leaders and New Varieties of Capitalism in Post-Communist Europe” (together with the coeditors Bernd Martens and Vera Trappmann, Routledge 2014) and “Conservative Developmental Statism in East Central Europe and Russia” (together with Mihai Varga, New Political Economy 2019 25(1), 2019).

Sabine Kropp

Sabine Kropp is professor at Freie Universität Berlin. She wrote her dissertation on decentralisation processes in the Russian multilevel system during transition. She recently led a Metro Foundation-funded project as well as a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) that examined patterns of governance in Russian regions and different policy areas; special attention was paid to the role of NGOs and companies in governance networks. Her main areas of work include the topics of comparative federalism and parliamentary research as well as administrative-political issues, which refers to both western democracies and post-socialist systems.