Russia's Half-Capitalist System
Russia is a regime where rules are there to be broken, explains Kirill Rogov, Senior Research Fellow at the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy in Moscow. If you want to understand how the current political and social order operates in Russia, you first must understand the two important and complementary beliefs upon which it is founded. The first is society's recognition of widespread corruption at all levels of state and economic life, and a similar recognition of the extreme inadequacy of existing institutions (in the first instance judicial institutions). This particular belief is held by people of varying political affiliations and social status — shared equally by shop attendants, members of the opposition, low-ranking officials and political functionaries. The second belief is just as widespread. It holds that for various reasons any change to the existing order is out of the question. In other words, when recognition of the sorry state of affairs of legal regulation does not lead to a corresponding demand for real improvement in law. In economics, this situation even has a name — "the institutional trap".
