Business Orders Under Disordered Bureaucracies

The dissertation, Business Orders under Disordered Bureaucracies, analyzes the behavior of post-communist firms and business associations, and explores how business interests and organization are affected by the types of states that firms confront. Focusing on the countries of the former Soviet Union, the project seeks to further our understanding of post-communist political economy and enrich extant theory on business-state relations. I challenge conventional explanations for why business organizes, and why some firms join formal business associations, while others do not. Existing theories draw primarily from the experience of advanced industrial democracies, and thus fail to capture the dynamics of organization when business confronts a corrupt, and frequently predatory, state.