Join George Washington University's Central Asia Program for a talk with Bekzod Zakirov on why some authoritarian regimes are motivated to increase state control over the economy while driving out the private sector. Informed by scholarly discussion regarding the rise of state capitalism in the developing world, this presentation will provide a fresh perspective on the political logic of nationalistic economic policies in authoritarian regimes. Using power politics in economic policy-making as a framework, it explains why the political power and stability that authoritarian regimes aspire to achieve leads to increased state control in key sectors of the economy. It also explores how these motives end up shaping an economically inefficient, yet politically stable economic system. Based on a detailed analysis of the post-soviet economies of Russia and Kazakhstan under presidents Putin and Nazarbaev, this presentation argues that the rise of such statist economic policies since 2000 does not stem from either economic modernization or internal fighting between domestic factions over property, as is usually argued in the literature.

RSVP is requested; information can be found on the event page.

Speaker:

Bekzod Zakirov, visiting scholar, Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University