Subnational political regimes and formal economic regulation: Evidence from Russian regions. Issue 2 (15th March 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Libman, Alexander
• Is Part Of: Regional & federal studies. Volume 27:Issue 2(2017)
• Page Start: 127
• Page End: 151
• Publication Date: 2017-03-15
• Subjects: Formal regulation -- subnational comparative method -- Russian regions -- competitive authoritarianism -- hegemonic authoritarianism; Regionalism -- Periodicals; Regional planning -- Periodicals; Federal government -- Periodicals; 321.02
• DOI: 10.1080/13597566.2017.1308925
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1359-7566

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The paper contributes to the studies of effects of political regimes on public policies by looking at a previously unexplored aspect of this issue: the propensity of political regimes to create vast and extensive formal regulation. To study this topic, it applies subnational comparative method and uses a dataset of subnational regions of Russia, which provides a unique opportunity for a large-N investigation of the research question because of substantial variation of regional political regimes and regulatory environments and because of availability of a proxy for comparing the use of formal regulation across regions. The paper shows that more competitive regimes are more likely to expand the formal law than less competitive ones; however, the implications of this expansion of formal law for the economy are ambiguous.