ABSTRACT
This book presents three ethnographic case studies exploring how businesses deal with the risks they face in Russia’s private sector and what this reveals about business–state relations. This chapter offers four conclusions. First, the Kremlin’s longstanding support for private sector development has apparently not removed many of the risks facing independent businesses in practice. Second, businesses that succeed in insulating themselves from these risks may, nonetheless, survive or thrive. The case studies show that the state takes a personalised form in the real economy, and officials enter the market to meet their material needs, so entrepreneurs have opportunities to build relations and increase their leverage with the state. Third, Douglass North’s theory of limited access order (LAO) explains how Russia’s political economy works better than predominant theories by accommodating both the strength of the state and the capacity of entrepreneurs to defend their interests. Finally, entrepreneurship in the context of limited access is characterised more as a means to live independently from the state and, if necessary, to resist it than a commercial enterprise alone.
