Review of Rentier Capitalism and Its Discontents Power Morality and Resistance in Central Asia (original) (raw)

How the free market created rentiers and plutocracy in post-Soviet Central Asian countries

2020

In a reversal of the classical ideal of a ‘free market’ (a market free from land rent, monopoly rent and interest), neoliberalism celebrates and promotes rent extraction, sometimes over wealth creation. Neoliberalism has created and expanded the role of rent and unearned income in post-Soviet economies. The article argues that the top 20 richest individuals in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan extract income based on their ownership and control of scarce assets, and thereby obtain unearned income. They also have considerable political power and influence. Neoliberalism has concentrated wealth and power into the hands of a few, and has emerged economic and political elites into the rentier class

The other road to serfdom: the rise of the rentier class in post-Soviet economies

Social Science Information, 2020

This article offers a moral economic critique of the transition to a market economy in the post-Soviet space. In a reversal of the classical ideal of a ‘free market’ (a market free from land rent, monopoly rent and interest), neoliberalism celebrates and promotes rent extraction, sometimes over wealth creation (Hudson 2017). In freeing markets from government regulation, neoliberalism enables powerful economic actors to extract income by mere virtue of property rights that entitle them to a stream of income from their ownership and control of scarce assets (Sayer 2015). Neoliberalism has created and expanded the role of rent and unearned income in post-Soviet economies (Mihalyi and Szelenyi 2017). The article will show the diversity and significance of rent in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan that go beyond natural resources and illicit public and private rent-seeking. Using three case studies on finance, real estate and the judiciary in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, this article will examine how property relations, rentier activities and unearned income have been morally justified and normalised. Despite its moral legitimation, rentiership has been harmful and damaging. It has produced social inequalities and suffering, and has resulted in plutocracy and corruption.

“Rentier states” or the relationship between regime stability and exercising power in post-Soviet Central Asia

Society and Economy, 2016

The paper intends to give an insight into the relations of the economic and political systems of the Central Asian republics using the theoretical framework of the “rentier economy” and “rentier state” approach. The main findings of the paper are that two (Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) of the five states examined are commodity export dependent “full-scale” rentier states. The two political systems are of a stable neo-patrimonial regime character, while the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan, poor in natural resources but dependent on external rents, may be described as “semi-rentier” states or “rentier economies”. They are politically more instable, but have an altogether authoritarian, oligarchical “clan-based” character. Uzbekistan with its closed economy, showing tendencies of economic autarchy, is also a potentially politically unstable clan-based regime. Thus, in the Central Asian context, the rentier state or rentier economy character affects the political stability of the actual r...

Power Distribution and Rentierism – Complementary Explanations for Bad Governance in Central Asia

Remoteness from Western incentive schemes and rentierism cannot fully explain bad governance in Central Asia. In this paper, I argue that the decentralization of power in the non-democratic regimes and the interplay with resource curse phenomena may explain why Central Asia suffer from unexpected bad governance and why some countries face a voice/stability trade-off while other don't. Preliminary results suggest that the voice/stability trade-off is especially relevant for intermediate decentralization while availability of oil revenues and diversified clan structures seem to drive corruption.

The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia: Crisis and Transformation by CharlesBuxton. Sterling, VA, Kumarian Press, 2011. 256 pp. Cloth, 75.00;paper,75.00; paper, 75.00;paper,24.95. Chaos, Violence, Dynasty: Politics and Islam in Central Asia by Eric McGlinchey. Pittsbur

Political Science Quarterly, 2013

Chinese economy. "China," asserts Hsueh, "only appears to be a more liberal state" (p. 3). Unlike the orthodox "developmental state," writes Hsueh, China has welcomed "foreign competition and know-how"; it has adopted "sectoral reregulation" of strategic industries; and has prioritized "bureaucracies and state-owned companies" (p. 267). This book is a must-read for students of political economy and for those seeking to make sense of contemporary China's complex economic landscape.

The Moral Matrix of Capitalism: Insights from Central and Eastern Europe

East European Politics and Societies, 2023

This special section aims to shed light on moral milieus and agencies in contemporary capitalist Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on case studies from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Russia, it offers insight into changing perceptions of proper economy and practice amongst a broad range of actors—from landfill workers to business managers and the super-rich. The contributors explore how actors at various scales morally construct, contest, and defend ideas of justice, (re-)distribution, and social worth, as well as socio-economic hierarchy, inequality, and harm. They analyse the capitalist moral transformation and order in the region and examine the local appropriation of and buy-in to (as well as critique of) aspects of neoliberal moral orders—a topic sidelined in much of the existing moral economy scholarship. Exploring a broad range of moral economic phenomena, the contributors move beyond the conventional definition of morals as prosocial norms and action, approaching morals as a broader empirical phenomenon of economy and politics. They examine the actions, practices, and reasoning of different actors in relation to shifting notions of acceptable and unacceptable, just and unjust, and praiseworthy and blameworthy behaviour. As such, this collection makes the case for widening the empirical object and analytical purchase of moral economy to include the study of not only moral critiques and resistance to capitalism but also the diverse moral agencies, milieus and orders of capitalism, and the ways in which the advancement and embedding of the capitalist moral order has shaped economic life in the region.

Global capitalism in Central Asia and competing economic imaginaries

openDemocracy, 2018

This article examines how the US, Russia and China have proposed different visions and strategies of economic development (including neoliberalism, economic union and trade corridors) for Central Asia. It will argue that these different economic imaginaries reflect the global powers' imperative to manage contradictions and crises inherent in advanced and emerging capitalist economies. The global powers' attempts to fix Central Asia are partly based on past failures to regulate their own economic problems and contradictions.