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This article examines the issue of Putin’s presidential successor from a historical perspective of long-term political cycles. Contemporary Russia still shows considerable similarities to the polities, characteristic of old agrarian empires in Asia. Based on the thesis on the origins of the monocentric political system in Russia, our article analyses how the transition of presidential power takes place in Russia, who might be the next president of Russia and whether we will see a new ‘time of troubles’, or smuta, after Putin’s departure. A generational change in Putin’s elite cohort will require a specific candidate to ensure a successful transition as a long-term solution. This will involve balancing clashing interests between key informal power networks. In all likelihood, a repeat of a political cycle of empires will happen in Russia again, resulting in a continued consolidation of its monocentric political system.

The article examines emerging financial capitalism in Russia and its recent developments, the rise of collateralised finance and trading in repo markets. The main conclusion is that a combination of sophisticated speculative practices with a strong state presence in financial markets is a distinctive feature of Russia after 2008. The decoupling of the financial system from the credit supply to the real sector is still continuing after the collapse of Communism. The role of the capital markets is restricted to short-term liquidity management in money markets, which rose after 2011 due to an increased provision of state liquidity. The existence of a large monetary overhang accumulated within the Russian banking system and its interconnectedness with collateralised markets are discussed. The development stages of the repo markets and the main collateral types are considered in relation to the expansion of the state liquidity supply. This study provides an additional perspective within the ongoing debate on contemporary state capitalism in emerging markets.

This article contributes to international political economy debates about the monetary power autonomy (MPA) of emerging market and developing countries (EMDs). The 2014-15 Russian financial crisis is used as a case study to explore why an accumulation of large international reserves does not provide protection against currency crises and macroeconomic adjustments in EMDs. The analysis centres on the interplay between two dimensions of MPA: the Power to Delay and the Power to Deflect adjustment costs. Two structural factors condition Russia's low MPA. First, the country's subordinated integration in global financial markets increases its financial vulnerability. The composition of external assets and liabilities, combined with cross-border capital flows, restrict the use of international reserves to delay currency crises. Second, the choice of a particular macroeconomic policy regime embraced the financialisation of the - mainly state-owned - Russian banking sector, thus making it difficult to transform liquidity inflows into credits for enterprises. Russia's main comparative advantage, hydrocarbon export revenues, is not exploited. The type of economy created due to the post-Communist transition means that provided excessive' liquidity remains in the financial system and is channelled into currency arbitrage. This factor increases exchange rate vulnerability and undermines Russia's MPA.

The chapter introduces the reader into developments of illegal corporate raiding ("reiderstvo" in Russian) in post-Communist Russia and explains its interdependency with privatization in the 1990s and persistence of weak property rights protection that followed. It connects the issue to the concept of Russia's network state enabling understanding of how existence and interaction of informal power networks facilitate redistribution of property and economic assets. Typology of reiderstvo is presented in historical perspective and a number of empirical cases of reiderstvo from the 1990s until 2010s are discussed. In particular, the role played by representatives of security services in the state apparatus and business (“siloviki” in Russian) for increase of reiderstvo after 2000 is stressed.

This article explores the expansion of the Russian state into financial markets after the 2008 global financial crisis. The main argument is that the Russian state has been unable to pursue its own developmental agenda in the sector despite increased regulation and state takeovers. While independent private market participants were pushed aside by state-controlled financial intermediaries, the state failed to follow its own policy strategy towards establishing an international financial centre in Moscow. Instead, the Russian financial market institutions were rendered into a vehicle for inter-bank lending under control of the Central Bank of Russia. Data from Russian stock market and corporate bond market trading highlights the trend. The study discusses the role played by informal power networks in redistribution of state-controlled resources and financial flows, and how this factor influenced the state regulation of financial markets in Russia.

This 70-page special section “Economic development in Russia” of the Swedish scholarly academic journal "Baltic Worlds" contains six peer-reviewed articles on recent developments in Russian economy, an interview with professor Andrei Yakovlev of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and introduction written by the section's academic guest editor, PhD Ilja Viktorov.Contents:Andrei Yakovlev. Russian economy at the crossroads, before and beyond the Ukrainian crisis, interview with Ilja ViktorovAnton Oleinik. Price of opulence. On a constellation of interests in the European market for natural gasLeo Granberg & Ann-Mari Sätre. Agency and development in second Russia: using opportunities in a local contextOlga Golubeva. Business climate in Russia: Swedish investors’ perspectiveSusanne Oxenstierna. Prospects for institutional reform in the Russian economyMi Lennhag. The rise of anti-corruption demands: The Ukrainian Maidan movement as different from everyday discussions in RussiaAlexander Abramov, Maria Chernova, Alexander Radygin. Financial markets regulation in Russia: models, evolution, efficiency, Special Section: Baltic Worlds, ISSN 2000-2955, Vol. 8, No. 3-4, Pages 49-118.

The article examines how informal networks inside the Russian state influenced the formation and further development of the country' s financial markets during the 1990s and 2000s. The main argument is that the activities of these networks made it difficult to implement any coherent state regulation policy in the field. At the same time, rivalry between competing informal networks and different organizations contributed to institutional development and some improvements. The result was a dualist institutional structure of the Russian speculative financial markets that reproduced itself throughout the period in question. The study is based on in-depth interviews conducted at Moscow-based financial institutions.

One of the most controversial debates in contemporary Swedish history centred on a proposal to create “wage-earner” funds. The main institutional actors of Swedish society were involved in this debate during the 1970s and 1980s. The aim of this thesis is to analyze how the most important institutional actors in Sweden, namely LO, the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) and the Swedish Employer Confederation (SAF), participated in and defined themselves in the wage-earner funds debate, against the background of the crisis of the Swedish Fordism, i.e. the mass production society. Chapter 2 consists of an analysis of those inherent features of Swedish Fordism that potentially could imply dissolution of the Fordist society in Sweden after the 1960s. Chapter 3 investigates debates about wage solidarity policy and the concentration of power and ownership in the Swedish economy that resulted in the LO wage-earner funds proposal from 1975. Chapter 4 discusses the opinions of active members in LO regarding the wage-earner funds proposals from 1975 and 1978. Chapter 5 investigates the Social Democratic Party's relationship to wage-earner funds. The chapter surmises that SAP leaders took a pragmatic attitude towards funds. This pragmatism differed from the opinion expressed by the radical activists in the party. Chapter 6 deals with the reaction of the Swedish Employer Confederation to the wage-earner funds proposal. The SAF anti-fund campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s are investigated in detail in the context of a neoliberal ideological offensive in Sweden. The chapter argues that the decision to abandon the centralized wage bargaining model influenced SAF's strategy in the debate over wage-earner funds. The dissertation’s main conclusion is that the radical wings of LO and SAP as well as the SAP leaders and the Swedish employers all used the mobilization around wage-earner funds for their own political purposes to solve problems resulting from the crisis of Swedish Fordism.