Systemic Pressures and the Intersubjective Bases of State Autonomy in Russia: A Constructivist-Institutionalist Theory of Economic Crisis and Change

Abstract

Over the economic crises of the 1990s, global economic understandings shifted from the early classical orthodoxy of the ‘Washington Consensus’ to a later Keynesian support for demand stimulus and capital controls. However, Russian policy – particularly after the 1998 ruble crisis – partly deviated from these broader trends, combining Keynesian capital controls with classical budgetary restraint. In offering a ‘constructivist-institutionalist’ explanation for this policy mix, we assume that agents can always interpret or construct events as varying types of crises, reshaping state society relations in the process. We then argue that classical interpretations of the early 1990s' crises legitimated orthodox policies and more importantly – alienated the Russian state from society. Given this backdrop, while later interpretations of the 1998 ruble crisis legitimated capital controls, the prior alienation of state from society precluded any domestic Keynesian coalition. Global pressures must, from this vantage point, be situated in specific social and institutional contexts.