Conclusion

In the course of the past 20 years, Russia has increasingly been affected by the growing pace and intensity of economic and social interaction in the world. Moscow has responded to the challenges posed by this development, in part by joining global governance initiatives (often on its own terms), and in part by acting on its own. Scrutiny of any country’s response to the challenges of globalization is likely to uncover such a mix of self-reliance and collaborative efforts, although the balance between the two will differ from case to case. As this volume argues, the character of any response to globalization will always be shaped by domestic politics and processes and by country-specific framings. Globalization, as Legvold puts it in Chapter 2, ‘punctures holes in every country’s sovereignty … [but] the turmoil and uncertainty inherent in Russia’s domestic passage make the erosion of sovereignty particularly unnerving’ (p. 22).