Cambridge University Press Building Business in Post-Communist Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia: Collective Goods, Selective Incentives, and Predatory States

Prior to 1989, the communist countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR lacked genuine employer and industry associations. After the collapse of communism, industry associations mushroomed throughout the region. Duvanova argues that abusive regulatory regimes discourage the formation of business associations and poor regulatory enforcement tends to encourage associational membership growth. Academic research often treats special interest groups as vehicles of protectionism and non-productive collusion. This book challenges this perspective with evidence of market-friendly activities by industry associations and their benign influence on patterns of public governance. Careful analysis of cross-national quantitative data spanning more than 25 countries, and qualitative examination of business associations in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Croatia, shows that postcommunist business associations function as substitutes for state and private mechanisms of economic governance. These arguments and empirical findings put the long-standing issues of economic regulations, public goods and collective action in a new theoretical perspective. Review “Much of the literature takes the existence of business associations as a given. Dinissa Duvanova helps us understand how such organizations could have emerged in the harsh environment of post-Communism. Her novel and persuasive thesis – that business associations exist to provide the selective benefit of protection against the state – should be taken seriously by anyone with an interest in the origins of civil society.” – Scott Gehlbach, University of Wisconsin–Madison“In providing the most comprehensive treatment of business associations in the post-Communist space, Dinissa Duvanova pushes back hard against facile portraits of organized business as exclusively protectionist and rent-seeking, presenting a compelling case that much of what these associations do and seek is complementary to the development of better-functioning, more competitive markets.” – William Pyle, Middlebury College“Dinissa Duvanova’s book makes a valuable addition to our understanding of state-business relations in the post-Communist world. Examining the reasons firms form and join business associations, she finds that they help protect firms against weak, corrupt, and intrusive regulatory environments. She tests her thesis with survey data and case studies of associations in four countries. She makes a compelling case that business associations play an important role in building market economies.” – Thomas F. Remington, Emory University Book Description Duvanova examines the development of business interest representation in the postcommunist countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia. About the Author Dinissa Duvanova is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University at Buffalo. Her research explores business-state relations, state regulatory quality and bureaucratic institutions. Native to the country of Kazakhstan, in 1998 she received the prestigious 'Bolashak' Presidential Scholarship, awarded to the top graduates of Kazakh universities. She was a recipient of the Foreign Language and Area Studies and the German Academic Exchange Service academic fellowships. After receiving her PhD from Ohio State University, she spent the 2007–8 academic year as a visiting scholar at the Princeton University Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. She was also awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. In 2008, Duvanova joined the Department of Political Science at the University at Buffalo, where she researches the issues of regulatory intervention, bureaucratic discretion, civil service reforms and public accountability of state bureaucracy. Her work has been published in the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Post-Soviet Affairs and Europe-Asia Stud