Practicing (State) Capitalism at Petrobras and Rosneft

ABSTRACT

Why do state capitalist regimes, while aiming to increase control over the economy, introduce partial privatization and liberalization at their national oil companies (NOCs)? The article presents a case study and discourse analysis of liberalizing reforms to the management of “Health, Safety, and Environment” at the Russian and Brazilian NOCs. Employing a constructivist political economy approach emphasizing the co-constitution of state power and market power, it argues that adopting the practices of effective oil multinationals allows NOCs to represent themselves as capitalist corporations – not state bureaucracies – and thereby better fulfill their coordinating function in state-permeated market economies.

KEYWORDS:

• State capitalism
• national oil companies
• varieties of capitalism
• shareholder value
• petroleum industry

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The article was prepared within the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) and supported within the framework of a subsidy by the Russian Academic Excellence Project ‘5-100’.