Matveev Ilia

№ 4, 2015

• HYBRID NEOLIBERALIZATION: STATE, LEGITIMACY, AND NEO-LIBERALISM IN PUTIN’S RUSSIA

  The article attempts to identify and explain the changes and continuity in the implementation of the neoliberal policy in Putin's Russia. Bereft of the opportunity to consider the whole array of factors that determine the process of neoliberalization, I.Matveev focuses on the internal springs of the changing economic and social policies such as the dynamics of state building and transformation of the dominant forms of the regime legitimacy. In the first part of the article he shows how the weakening of the state under Boris Yeltsin and then its “strengthening” under Vladimir Putin influence the process of privatization and (re)nationalization; in the second part of the article the author demonstrates how the wide plebiscite legitimacy of Putin was combined with the acceleration of neo-liberal reforms in the social sphere. According to his conclusion, despite the increasingly more active state intervention into the economy, in the modern Russia it is not so much about the failure of neoliberal policies, but rather about the specific local version of “real neo-liberalism.”

  DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2015-79-4-5-25-47