Standard of civilization, nomadism and territoriality in nineteenth-century international society

In this chapter, the encounter between the Russian Empire and the nomads of the Eurasian steppe in the nineteenth century is analyzed using the theoretical framework of the standard of civilization. The creation of the Westphalian state-model in Europe in the seventeenth century, linked to the later emergence of the notion of the standard of civilization led to the ‘othering’ of the nomads of the Eurasian steppe as barbarians, as a threat to the borders of civilized Europe. The chapter presents also an argument to define ‘territoriality’ as not only an institution of international society of the time but also as a distinctive quality and requirement for being considered ‘civilized’. In this analytical framework, the nomads become the ‘other’, the ‘alien’, the ‘menace’, onto which projections of rationality and modernity were cast in order to prevent threats to Russia’s European and civilized identity. The chapter sheds light on the encounter between ‘fixed’ and ‘mobile’ units in the course of expansion of international society; contextualizes the role played by nomadic tribes in resisting the application of Westphalian spatial categories in the Eurasian space; and scrutinizes what the role of nomads was in constructing a European, civilized identity.PostprintPeer reviewe

Gerschenkron revisited: The new corporate Russia

© 2015, Journal of Economic Issues / Association for Evolutionary Economics. Our analysis is based on firm-specific data compiled from the Russian Trading System stock exchange and SKRIN (CKP-H in Russian) database. We seek to identify the factors behind Russias dramatically improved corporate sector performance from the beginning of the 2000s to December 2007. We argue that improved long-term corporate performance was a consequence of several policy initiatives associated with the state-dominated banking sector, which enabled statesubsidized investment funds to be channeled from a structurally reengineered energy sector to targeted investment projects located in other industries. We claim that Russias industrial strategy closely conforms to Alexander Gerschenkrons catch-up theory