International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (ICSID)Postdoctoral research positionsExpired

Field of Study:

Institutional Economics / Comparative Political Economy / Political Science / History

Subject Research Area:

History of Russia in New Institutional Perspective: Limited Access Order/ Open Access Order Approach

The National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow invites applications for a Post-Doctoral position at HSE International Center for the Studies of Institutions and Development (ICSID) to work on the project devoted to applying Limited Access Order/ Open Access Order approach to the Russian historical dynamics of XX-XXI centuries .  

The new analytical framework developed in the recent books by D. North and his co-authors e.g. Violence and Social Orders (2009) and In the Shadow of Violence ( 2012) states that social and political stability is usually a result of economic resource manipulation that provides elites with the incentives not to exercise violence in defending their economic interests. However, these incentives are often rooted in informal arrangements between elites, and thus can create uncertainty and prohibit economic development. 

Violence, on the other hand, can be exercised by law enforcement officials at different agencies who have a significant discretion and strong incentives to abuse their office for economic gain. ICSID has collected a unique database, which contains statistics on economic crimes (total number of registered cases, the number of cases ended with an investigation, and the number of cases handed over to courts) in Russia’s 83 regions from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Following the approach introduced in Violence and Social Orders (2009) , we aim to test the link between criminal persecution of business and economic development.

The historical dynamics of the last two Post-Soviet decades makes Russia an excellent case for testing hypotheses that can be extracted from LAO/OAO theory. Furthermore, the Russian case study might become an ideal turning pointfor moving from qualitative to quantitative analysis within this framework.

A Post-Doc candidate is expected to work in team on collecting and analyzing data on the evolution of the Russian and late Soviet organizations (such as business associations, political parties, NGOs, trade-unions, public organizations) with a special focus on organizations that regulate the use of violence in the society (courts, police, enforcement agencies, military forces, secret services).

Duties & Responsibilities:

Full-time research position includes participating in the development of project research design; collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data on the evolution of organizations of different types in Russia; managing research assistants’ data collection activity e.g. preparing presentations (2) and research papers (1-2) during the year.

General conditions for Post-Doctoral Research positions can be found here.

Contact person: Anton Sobolev, Research Fellow at ICSID (asobolev@hse.ru).