IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buspol/v27y2025i2p180-193_2.html

Business deserts politics under weak institutions: evidence from Russia, 2003–2010

Author

Listed:
  • Grigoriev, Ivan S.
  • Zhirkov, Kirill

Abstract

Businesspeople are expected to invest in political connections when the institutions are weak. Using an original dataset from Russia in 2003–2010, we document changes in political connections of the richest businesspeople and show that within the institutional environment of a fledgling autocracy political engagement stops paying off, and the businesspeople retreat from politics. The businesspeople’s political disengagement reveals their insider assessment of the quality of Russian political institutions, indicating that as autocracy consolidated in Russia, its political institutional structure was in decay. This finding contributes to our understanding of authoritarian institutions, suggesting that even though autocracies nowadays might be institutionalized to a much higher degree, in the short-run autocracy is still detrimental to institutionalization.

Suggested Citation

  • Grigoriev, Ivan S. & Zhirkov, Kirill, 2025. "Business deserts politics under weak institutions: evidence from Russia, 2003–2010," Business and Politics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(2), pages 180-193, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:buspol:v:27:y:2025:i:2:p:180-193_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1469356924000314/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:buspol:v:27:y:2025:i:2:p:180-193_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/bap .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.