The Ambivalence of Power in the Twenty-First Century Economy, Cases from Russia and beyond

Year

2022

Publisher

UCL Press

Language

English

Pages

ISBN

978-1-80008-269-4

Link

Last Update

12-Oct-2025

Keywords

Political Science ; Anthropology ; Sociology ; security-studies-discipline ; International Relations

Description

How are power and economy interrelated in modern state capitalism, and why does their association contain a great deal of ambivalence? These are the major questions addressed in this book. Let us start with three different cases.

An authoritarian state controls immense resources and exercises its power at different levels of the economy. Such a state imposes effective restrictions over the activity of any counteracting interest groups and is therefore able to implement large-scale centralized reforms in the economy. However, it uses its almost monopolistic power and consolidated resources to maintain an existing order and avoid any serious transformations. Such...