Governors and Governing Institutions: A Comparative Study of State-Business Relations in Russia's Regions

The paper uses the latest 2011 round of
the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey
for the Russian Federation, which for the first time was
designed to be representative of Russian regions. The paper
takes a closer look at regional-level factors influencing
the business environment in Russia and, more specifically,
conditions that favor the emergence of symbiotic relations
between regional authorities and regional businesses.
Considering the argued significance of informal rules,
norms, and agreements for the regional-level business
environment in Russia, the paper uses proxy variables such
as tenure and origin of regional governors to identify how
these rules are being institutionalized. The findings reveal
that, at least in case of Russia, juxtaposing the state and
business actors as separate and opposed to each other may
overstate the distinction between these two groups of actors
and understate the fact that many localities in Russia have
witnessed the emergence of mutually beneficial
state-business arrangements. Defining whether these
arrangements are beneficial or harmful to regional
development is beyond the scope of this exploratory paper.