Exploring anti-corruption knowledge on Russia: an analysis of how the context matters

By analysing anti-corruption literature on Russia published since the fall of the Soviet Union, this paper compares the domestic and external production of knowledge and explains how the former reflects the particular academic and political context of the country. In fact, these studies are characterized by a focus on legal and technical issues and by a dearth of empirical research. The result is a static and unvaried literature that isolates itself from the international debate on anti-corruption, missing the opportunity to contribute to global scholarship, but that also reflects the difficulty for researchers of conducting independent research in Russia. Comparing domestic and external works, this article explains how they have evolved differently, failing to establish a dialogue and a collaboration, and provides further evidence of the barriers to overcome to strengthen the Russian production of knowledge, especially in the social sciences.